News Items

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4384, 11 March 1909, Page 1

News Items

A lifeboat costs about 27s a week to maintain.

A bottle of champagne contains three pounds of grapes. A hippopotamus’s hide in some parts is 2in thick. The national wealth in property is £5.500,000,000; in gold, £167,900,000.

At least £144,000,000 worth of British property is always on the sea.

There are in London 1700 to 1800 charitable institutions and agencies, - dispensing funds amounting to more than ten million pounds annually.

Three Primitive Methodist ministers are coming out by the Athenic to take charge of various New Zealand churches.

The bachelor hath a merry life. ’Twere better to have loved and lost ' Than, shackled to a nagging wife To be forever loved—and bossed.

The British PostmasterGeneral proposes to make a small issue of stamps with mournjng borders. This issue is intended as an experiment. .

A Stockholm engineer, named Grell, has obtained a patent for an invention by means of which not only photographs, but also “ animated pictures,” may be sent and received by means of the ordinary telegraphic apparatus. The Earl of Warwick, who left New York for England on the Lusitania on December 16, recently visited President Roosevelt at the White House, and will have a superb pair of hunting boots made in England for the President to wear on his African trip. He expects to join Mr Roosevelt in Africa.

The latest Government Department to feel the touch of retrenchment is the Government Printing Office. A large number of hands in the mechanical departments (some of them of several years’ service) have received notice of dismissal during the last few days. The oldest iron ship in the world is the United States warship “ Michigan,” the material for whose construction was “ dragged across the mountains from Pittsburg to Lake Erie,” where the 3hip was built, as long as 66 years ago.

Ten thousand electric flatirons are to be leaned to reliable customers of the (Chicago Edison Company for a period of six months. The object of this is to popularise the use of electricity in the household, and lead to the introduction of other electric utensils.

General Stoessel, Commander oi Port Arthur during the siege and Admiral Nebogatoff, both of whom are undergoing ten years’ imprisonment in the Peter-and-Paul fortress at St. Petersburg, have petitioned the Czar to pardon them on the occasion of the Russian New Year.

Evidence of the profound im • pression made upon France by Wilbur Wright’s recent success with his aeroplane is shown by the statement in the “ Army and Navy Gazette ” that the French Ministry of Marine is seriously considering the placing of an order for a large number of aeroplanes of the Wright type for the Coast Guard Service.