MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3996, 14 October 1930, Page 71

MULTUM IN PARVO.

—ln Jewish weddings the woman is always placed on the right side of her mate. In almost every other marriage ceremony the custom is the opposite. Sickness cost Great Britain nearly 27,000,000 weeks’ work last year. —Every year China uses 4000 tons of lilies as food. The flowers are made into a nourishing soup. —A “ master wireless clock,” capable of controlling watches by wireless, has been patented in Russia. —What is believed to be the first private telephone installed in England has been presented to Plymouth Museum. —When an aeroplane over the Californian desert was struck by lightning the mechanic saved himself by his parachute.

—Owing to modern methods, a gang of men can turn out three times as many motor cars as they turned out in the same time in 1914.

—A boy who joins a British trawler at 16 is entitled to try for his “ ticket ” after five years, and, if he passes, become mate or skipper. —Beef will in future be graded as “Select,” “Prime,’’ and “Good” if experiments to be tried at Smithfield and Birmingham, England, prove successful. —A perfect violin made by a Peterborough (England) artist is 4in long, weighs a quarter of an ounce, and has 99 separate parts. —lf you were to own a picture worth £lO,OOO it would cost you in interest on capital and insurance at least £5OO a year.

—Women outlive men owing to several reasons, one of which being that they breathe a much greater number of times to the minute. This burns up the body’s waste products. —-Every ton of coal burned in a locomotive’s firegrate boils eight tons of water. Four tons of coal are required to take an express train from London to Plymouth.

—The village blacksmith of Great Sampford, Essex, England, Mr Robert Goldstone, is 75. He is the fourth generation of his family to hold this post, and has himself spent 67 years at the anvil.

—lt is estimated that foreign countries are under obligation to pay £200,000,000 yearly in gold or credit to the United States of America on account of war debts and private loans. —Although the Duchess of Bedford completed her flight from England to India and back in 7 days 12} hours, no night flying was done during the whole of the trip.

—Fourteen words, including “ fetid,” “ entourage,” apparent,” “ humour,” and' “ disputable,” have caused the experts in English trouble. Nobody seems to be sure of the proper method of pronouncing them. —ln the dome of the great St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, 450 ft above' the ground level, there are living quarters for some of the workmen who are permanently employed to keep the building in repair.

—Epsom, the famous racing town of England, derived its name from Ebba, a queen who reigned about 590. The place where she lived was known as Ebbs-Hame. This became in turn Ebbishani. Ebsham. and finally Epsom. —Said to have put £3OOO on Cragadour and lost at the Derby, a Paisley Corporation clerk was at Edinburgh sent to prison for three years for thefts involving £ll,llO. —More than 2600 swimming certificates have been awarded to London school children in one year. —Sixty pounds of potatoes grown from one pound of seed have won a prize at a Chertsey (England) allotment show. -—A postcard posted in 1870 has just been found in a crevice of a Reading (ftigland) pillar box dismantled for repairs.

—Said to he over 2000 years old, a black oak boat, unearthed at Llandrindod Wells, has been sent to the Welsh National. Museum.

—Judged by the quantity of whisky consumed in America “ for purely medicinal purposes.” Uncle Sam must be the Sick Man of the World. —Motion pictures of the moon have been taken in America through the Princeton telescope, to which a camera was fastened by special apparatus. —A novel “ safety first ” device is now being tried on motor cars. It pushes the pedestrian out of the way. and then automatically applies the brakes. —Seaplanes to spot whales are the latest development in the whaling industry. The ’plane is carried on board the whaler, and let down on to the water by means of a derrick. —While there are no reliable data as to unemployment in the United States, the Ministry of Labour admits that there are approximately 5.000,000 unemployed people in the States. -—An unprecedented number of resignations and voluntary retirements of officers in the United States Navy has caused the Navy Department to undertake an inquiry to discover the reason. —A boomerang has been discovered in the canyon of the Colorado River. America. This is a most interesting discovery, for the boomerang has never before been known to have been used outside Australia. —Chocolate boxes containing vanity cases are shortly to be put on the market in Britain and elsewhere, in order to try to stop the growth of the cigarette habit with women and revive the chocolate trade.

—Mine thieves having constantly held up the silver trains from a mine near Death Valley, U.S.A., its owner made the silver into balls, each weighing 7501 b. which the thieves found impossible to carry away. —-A message nearly 1000 words long, all clearly readable, was embroidered on a square of cloth by a woman who suffered from the delusion that she was Eve. All the work was done under the coverlet of her bed so that her nurse should not see it.

—Among the effects which can be produced on a first-class kinema organ are birds’ songs, fire engines, the smashing of crockery,- sleigh bells, the sound of surf and waves, and whistles of all kinds. Sneh an organ would contain more than 2000 pipes.