MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 75

MULTUM IN PARVO.

• —Figures show that Britain is now th« leading export country in the world fox electrical equipment. • —The city ot London, in Ontario. Canada, has a population of 66,132, ami over 60,000 of these are British born. —During last year 80 per cent, oi the motor cars sold in the United States were bought on the deferred payment plan. —The natives of America were called Indians because Columbus thought that, by sailing west, he had reached India. —Otto Kemmerich, a great German swimmer, has succeeded in beating his own world’s record by swimming over 46 hours in a tank. —A Brighton (England) bookseller named Brewer invented the envelope in 1830. Edwin Hill, brother of Sir Rowland Hill, invented the first envelopemaking machine. —A golf ball lost on a Lincolnshire (England) farm was found in a hen’s nest. The nest contained four eggs, on which the hen was sitting. —One more X-ray martyr has given his life for’science. He was M. Henri Bourdon, who must have conducted over 100,000 X-ray operations. —Produced about a century ago at a cost of £BO,OOO, and sold to subscribers for £1226, a copy of the most expensive book in the world was recently sold for £215. —There were on’y 24 bath chairs at the annual inspection at Bath, England, compared with 68 20 years ago. One chairman had plied for hire there for 50 years 1 —The first typewriter was invented by an Englishman early in the eighteenth century. The first workable pattern, however, was designed in Detroit, U.S.A., just 100 years ago. —An ancient wall recently discovered in London dates back to the fourteenth century, and is part of the great priory of Black Friars, where three English Parliaments assembled, the last in 1529. —The lowest British birth-rate on record was registered in the last quarter of 1927, when there were 11,255 fewer babies born than in the previous quarter. The marriage rate, on the other hand, is rising. -—Steel rails on a north and south track of the English railways last longer than those laid east and west. The magnetism generated by the train friction is undisturbed in the former ease; in the latter it is resisted. —With the regular clergyman preaching from one puipit and a local schoolmaster questioning him on his discourse from another pulpit, a new style of “ sermon ” has been tried successfully in a Mansfield (England) church. —Our bodies need nourishment in seven forms according to Sir George Newman, chief medical officer to the Board of Education, London. These are food, fresh air, sunlight, exercise of the body, warmth, cleanliness, and rest. —Bad weather last year had a disastrous effect on the number of visitors to Kew Gardens, London. The decrease, compared with 1926, was 84,459, the highest attendance being 60014 on Easter Monday, and the lowest 6 on November 26. —British railway directors are men of experience, if age is any guide. The average ages of the directors of the “ big four” systems are: —Southern, 67 years; Great Western, 62 years; London, Mid-_ land, and Scottish, 62 years; L.N.E.R., 60 years. ■ —The church door in the beautiful village of Birling, in Kent, England, is one of the few which is locked against visitors. —A cricket ball set a box of matches alight in the pocket of one of the players whom it hit at Acton Reynold, Shropshire, England. —The first home of Robert Burns, in the Dumfries district, Scotland, has been given to the nation. - He wrote “Auld Lang Syne ” there. —Two great pylons, costing over £3OOO, are to mark the point at which the road from London crosses the new Greater Brighton boundary. —The finger-prints of a man detained by Scotland Yard were wirelessed to Chicago. They were reconstructed in five minutes at the other end. —Seaweed baths for rheumatism have exhausted the natural supply of seaweed at Hastings, England, and large quantities have to be imported. —The Lisbon (Portugal) Chief of Police has ordered that people not in their seats when a theatre or kinerna performance begins must wait till the next interval. —To-day there are 544 universities in the world—twice as many as half a century ago. Public funds defray threequarters of the cost of teaching their halfmillion students. —A New York investigation showed that during a recent period there were 15 motor car fatalities and 32 home accidents, disproving a theory that the home is safer than the streets. —There is more in coffee than in any other beverage. It contains water, sugar, fat, caseine, gum, oil, mineral matter, wood, and caffeine —a drug composed of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, and water. —A gigantic hand, made of glass and illuminated by electric means, opposite the Munich (Germany) railway station, draws the attention of tourists to the various interests of the town. —The people of Hastings, on the south coast of England, cannot stand the dismal bellow from the new lightship siren on the Royal Sovereign Shoal, and have petitioned for the restoration of the old one. —According to a recent census of pas* sengers on a road outside Brighton, England, 71.2 per cent, were travelling in private cars and on motor cycles, 14.4 per cent, by charabanc, and 9.7 per cent, by omnibus. —Casual wards in London are said to be particularly well arranged for the use of tramps. There are facilities for baths, washing and repairing clothes, and mending and cleaning boots, while in some cases even razors for shaving may be borrowed.

According to the custodian of the muni* cipal tepid baths, swimming has not yet become a popular pastime in Christchurch in the winter (states the Sun). Although the water is heated, and there are hot showers under which one may “ soak ” pleasantly, not many visit th* baths u| the winter months.