UNITED STATES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7147, 19 December 1949, Page 5

UNITED STATES

SOME INTERESTING BRIEFS About 50,000 sawmills are used in the lumber industry of the United States. During- World War 11, the United States possessed the largest merchant fleet the world has ever known.. It numbered 4221 vessels. There are 43 professional schools of architecture in the United States. U.S. researchers have found- the anti-allergy drug dramamine effective in curing motion sickness and the nausea that often accompanies pregnancy. More than 5,320,000,000 cubic metres of fresh air are pumped into coal mines in the United .States every day, the National Coal Association reports. The Association says that chemical tests show that the air in many mines is fresher than that in New York offices. In 1948, the 82,000 taxicabs in the United States carried about 2,000,000,000 passengers nearly 5,250,000,000 miles, the Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reports. Enough milk |is produced every year in the United States to fill a river 3000 miles long, 40 feet wide and 3 feet deep, the Milk Industry Foundation report. In 1948, the United States exported 4,354,061 tons of steel, 6.6 per cent, of total production. In 1938 exports amounted to 1,829,907 tons, 8.6 per cent, of total production. About 10,000 mechanical cotton pickers will be used to harvest the 1949 cotton crop in the United States, the National Cotton Council reports. The average machine can gather cotton 50 times faster than it can be picked by hand. During the first 8 months of this year, 6483 books were published in the United States. This is an increase of 423 over the number published during the same period of 1943. United States exports of processed vegetables and vegetable products totalled 86,000,000 pounds in 1948, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports. This is a 57 per cent, decrease from the record exports in 1947. Yale University, a leading university for men in the United States, reports it has more than 52,800 graduates. Of these 1535 are now in other countries. There are two layers of coal in Wyoming, in the western part of the United States, which are 90 and more feet thick, the National Coal Association reports. China is believed to have the world’s largest layer which is 400 feet thick.

There are approximately 992,006,100 crossties in the trackage of United States railroads. Every mile of track has about 3000 crossties. On the average, more than 40,000,000 new crossties are installed each year.