NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23061, 11 June 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Denmark is raising a loan to buy stores for oil and food in case of war. Pigs are said to be the only animals that will eat primroses. Last year 22,000 miles of new roads were made in America. Elephants in Africa are being killed off at the rate of 36,000 a year. Coal was sold in Britain for as little as 2s a ton at the pithead in 1709. A new 4500-milo road across Canada will be finished in two years' time.

The use of dogs for hunting criminals has been developed in the United State* Germany and Belgium. Mr. James Patterson, who lived near Edinburgh and had been blind from birth, wrota his will iu Braille.

It is proposed to regulate the number of Jews admitted to posts in banks, industry and the press in Hungary. Oldest of European coins is the French sou. Its value is so low that it is less than the cost of production. Mr. Wallace Elliot has bequeathed 200 pieces of porcelain to the British and the Victoria and Albert Museums The Hague Government has ordered the building of 18 tbree-en£ined Dornier flying-Doats for the East Indies Navy. Repairs and restorations to 43 of the churches in the City of London have cost £123,000 during the last seven years. About 60 per cent of England's fatal road accidents, and 76 per cent of the non-fatal, occur on 30-mile-an-hour roads.

Miss Greta Garbo, the film star, is reported to have bought diamond, valued at £42.000, from Stockholm. In five years nearly 200,000 children have seen school films made available by the Scottish Educational Film Association.

Doncaster Corporation has refused permission to a local firm of colliery owners to work coal under Doncaster racecourse.

A milk bar was opened recently at the Ffaldau Colliery, Pontvcymmer, n ear Ogmore Vale, South Wales, where 1000 men are employed. Dublin City Council has passed a bylaw making it an offence to throw litter in the streets or in the trams, buses or trains; penalty £5.

The sum of £1,750,000 is to be devoted by the German Government to the provision of dwellings for workmen and officials in Austria.

For every 10 vacancies for resident domestic servants registered at London labour exchanges, only one girl could be found to accept such work. The British gliding record was broken recently by Mr. J. S. Fox, who flew in his motor less aeroplane from Huish, in Wiltshire, to Fowey, in Cornwall, 144 miles.

More th«in half the 753 candidates accepted during a recent year for London's Metropolitan Police Force had had university or public school educations.

One of the world's longest road races for cars, the South American Grand Prix of 4030 miles, was won by a Ford V-8 at an average speed of 56.19 miles an hour.

The civic authorities of Manchester have discovered the first mayoral chain and seal in the town clerk's safe, where it has lain forgotten for 87 years, enclosed in its case.

Fattest children in the world, Toni, aged 16, and his sister, Wetti, aged 14, each weighing 225t., are members of an Austrian family. They have five normal brothers and sisters.

In the first year of the company's existence, 14 years ago, aeroplanes of Imperial Airways carried under three tons of'letter-mail; last year the machines carried 700 tons of letters. In only one great nation —Soviet Russia—is the birth-rat© increasing rapidlv. Its present population of 168,000,000 is expected to become 300,000.000 during the next 25 years. Complaints having been made in the Golborne Urban District of Lancashire that oil had contaminated the water, ti5,000 gallons of water were wasted in one day in a vain effort to get rid of it.

"When farm land is flooded by sea water the earthworms, which aerate the soil and improve it, are killed off. When a largo area of Essex was flooded 40 years ago, it was two years before the worms began to return. The new television transmitter of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, which, with a power of 25 kilowatts, is the strongest in the world, was opened lately. The power will be raised to 30 kilowatts during the summer. Such foreign exchange restrictions as still existed for travellers across the former German-Austrian frontier have been removed, so that any amount of money may now be carried across the old frontier in either direction.

Most dangerous hour, from the point of view of road accidents in Britain, is between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., and the most dangerous day is Saturday. This day has an all-the-year average of 23 fatal and 676 non-fatal accidents.

Squadron-Leader Mole set up m Egypt recently a new record of 147 successive loops in a glider. The previous record was 125 loops. He was towed up to 15,400 ft., by an aeroplane, which carried two official observers representing the Egyptian Royal Aero Club. By order of King Carol all Rumanian villages are to have fire-figliting appliances as soon as the money for them can be found, and in the meantime every villago is to begin training a fire brigade and teaching the rest of its inhabitants what to do in case of fire.

Mrs. John Asham, believed to be the oldest Indian in Saskatchewan, reached the age of 107 about the end of March. She calculates her age by moons from the Indian Treaty of 1874. She is in good health and lives alone in her house on the Pasqua-Indian Reserve, doing her own cooking. Two men were killed and four injured by an explosion at the naval ordnance depot at Pillaiij near Konigsberg. The men were loading high explosives for a coastal battery when fire broke out and reached the explosives before it could be extinguished. One building of the depot was destroyed. The Trinidad Legislative! Council has voted 33,000 dollars to erect a building in Port of Spain for a central library service, which it is hoped later to extend to other West Indian colonies. The Carnecie Corporation of New York has offered, and the Government has accepted, 80,000 dollars toward the expenses.

Shoos that fit like a glove are being made in Now York. It is said that their secret is that the real leather is permanently elastic. When a skin goes through the process of tanning it loses its flexibility, and so in this new type of shoe it is treated with chemicals to make it flexible again and then covered with an elastic material, making it comfortable because it gives with the foot. No longer, apparently, need we be troubled with corns.

Regarded a3 the oldest resident European in India, Mr. J. C. Lainjj, of Karachi, recently celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday. He was born in Aberdeen in 1843, enlisted in the 3rd Field Royal Artillery, in 1861, and landed m Calcutta on October 21, 1864. He retired from the Army on February 12, 1884, with a colour-ser-feant's pension and joined the United 'rovinces' Police the same year. Twelve years afterwards ho retired from the police, having earned a second pension.