News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4381, 4 March 1909, Page 1

News Items

The average Atlantic fog is I 30 miles in diameter. I Over two-thirds of the land „j| surface of the earth snow never I falls. I It takes a Persian rug weaver 1 J about 20 days to weave a square .1 foot. , | I A man’s chances of sudden J death are eight times as great 1 as a woman’s. I It is possible to read by the I light emitted by half-a-dozen I Jamaican, fireflies. \ I While it takes England - two 1 years to build a battleship, it I takes France five years. Some of the largest ocean .JJ steamers can be converted into armed cruisers in 30 hours. In China there are 1557 j walled cities where there is 1 neither a foreign nor Chinese ; pastor. In some of the Swedish hotels women are charged because they eat less than men. France imports 170 tons of human hair every year, and the | greater part of it comes from | China. .1 At the age of 30, the female brain begins to lose weight, but that of the male not until the age of 40, Europe loses 960,000 natives every year by emigration, while-, j only 200,000 return in the same 'i period. . People suffering from kiono- :-|f mania, or snow-madness, strip J themselves of their clothes and J roll in the snow. The estimated number of eggs laid by a toad every year is 11,500, of which only one in .;■ thousand develops fully. The native Russian does not seek his morning bath on rising, but, rushing out into the snow, rolls himself vigorously in it., . | The hardest wood in the world is net ebony, but coeus, which is much used for making flutes and similar musical instruments. • There are 11,004 mines and quarries in active operation in the United Kingdom. These produce 280,000,000 tons of minerals in a year. The clearness of the air at Horn Sound, Spitzbergen, is such that it is possible to make out objects on the horizon at a distance of 80 miles. Some of the machines for I making matches make 200 revolutions a minute each, and turn out abort 2,500,000 » daily, -shouts. 900,000-, GpUMraaliy. Tn the Middle Aeres nepper was a very costly condiment. So much was it valued that a small packet was deemed a suitable present for a noted person. Manchester in and Boston in the United States, are almost exactly equal in nopulatioa, while Birmingham and Baltimore are also very nearly alike. A baron’s robe has two rows \ of ermine; that of a viscount two and a half rows ; an earl’s has three rows; a marquis’s three and a half; and a duke’s robe four complete rows. In Eusfiia an unmarried farm servant receives £6 to £7 a year with free hoard. If a married man with a family, he receives less in proportion to (he number of children he has. Wire hairpins were first manufactured in England in ■ 1545. The female coiffnreg fl were held in 'place by fine wooden skewers before that ’ time