NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Mrs. Emma Clark, who has died at Nottingham, left £1550 “for the use' of the King.”

For three months a dog has daily visited the grave of his master at Crook in Durham (England). The Governor-General of the Belgian Congo ■ has forbidden hunters to slay more than one hippopotamus a year, to prevent the extinction of these animals.

Emeralds were credited by the ancients with the power of strengthening the eyesight of those wearing the beautiful stones. !

Recruits for the London Metropolitan Police must be at least 5 feet 10 inches in height and between the ages of 20 and 25.

Each pupil in an elementary school in England and Wales now costs the State no less than £255.6 during • the years of compulsory education. Weather warnings cau now be supplied by wireless to „ aeroplanes flying 3000 feet above London. They are sent out by a low-power station at Heston Aerodrome, Middlesex.

Conversations are taking place between the Imperial Airways and the French Air Union with regard to the possibility of amalgamation of the Lon-don-Paris air route.

An aerial bomb, weighing nearly a hundredweight, believed to have been dropped by a Zeppelin in 1917, was unearthed by Mrs. H. F. Page. while digging in her garden at Lower Brook Street, Winchester (England). Television broadcast by wireless was received on a moving train for the first time in England, the experiment being made on a L.N.E.R. express with the normal television broadcast through Brookman’s Park 8.8. C. station.

In the parish hall of the church which he built himself 47 years ago, St. Clement’s, East Dulwich, the Rev. H. E. Jennings, who has been its vicar ever since, received his golden wedding presents. He is S 3 and Mrs. Jennings is 86.

Upholstered tip-up seats for the en-gine-driver and fireman will be but one of the features of the 54 new locomotives on this year’s L.N.E.R. programme in England. “Padded seats!” sighed an old driver to whom the-inno-vation was mentioned. “Why was 1 born so soon? Driving an express nowwill be a rest cure compared with what it was in the old days.” Mr. H. H. Davies, leader of the Southern Rhodesia Labour Party, while prospecting for gold five miles from Bulawayo unearthed a skeleton of an ancient man. The grave contained old copper bangles, gold ornaments and two carved native pots. The skull has been sent to Sir Arthur Keith, the authority on ancient types of man, and the other finds to the Rhodesian Museum.

A new method of notifying all stations on' the Underground railways, London, of a breakdown, or any other state of emergency anywhere on the system is being installed. Loud speakers in every booking office' will be connected with microphones in the control room at Leicester Square Station. In case of a breakdown or other mishap, booking clerks will all be told simultaneously and given instructions. A gold medal for the bravest deed of the year was awarded to Mr. G. Jenkins, a Liverpool ship’s cook, at the annual General Court qf the Royal Humane Society, York Buildings, London. Mr. Jenkins, while on board a schooner, dived into, the sea and attempted to rescue a man who had been washed overboard. He did -not succeed, and was picked up nearly exhausted by the ship’s lifeboat, which was smashed by rough seas. Even the Royal. Princes did not escape the scramble for seats in the galleries of the House of Commons when the famous tariff speech was made. The Prince of Wales, indeed, had a difficult passage .to his usual seat behind the clock, and only his agility saved him from falling‘ as he took his fences over the rows of peers’ legs. The House of Commons may be the Mother of Parliaments, but it is cer.tainly not a house of comfort,-especi-ally for visitors.

Experiments with a new anti-air-craft gun, which it is claimed can bring down an attacking bomber ' from a height of 7} miles, are being carried out .on the Riviera coast, near La Seyne (France). The secret of the gun’s construction is jealously guarded by the Schneider firm, whose engineers planned it. Anti-aircraft guns ■ have previously proved effective at-a height of about 34 miles, but modern • aircraft can attain much greater altitudes. In the experiments off La Seyne an aeroplane, with pilot and mechanic, ascended 7 J miles, towing, suspended 1000 ft. beneath it, a target on which the antiaircraft gun opened fire with live shells. The record figure of nearly £1,000,000 was claimed for alimony and maintenance by wives who >figured in divorce cases in Great Britain last year. The cases for the year totalled nearly 4000, the largest number for any post-war year. “In quite 5 per cent, of these cases guilty wives who had been left stranded claimed, and- are getting, maintenance from the husbands who divorced them,” a divorce official told a. Daily Mail reporter. “In many cases fantastic claims for alimony were .made, but these on examination by the court registrar were reduced to a reasonable proportion of the husband’s income. A total of more than £700,000 in alimony and maintenance is being paid by husbands who appeared,in cases last year.”