NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 18 June 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Britain’s liquor industry is capitalised to the extent of more than £500,000,000. It finds employment for 617,000 persons, but, including those indirectly dependent upon it, it supports altogether 1,957,000.

When. William Collett, of Bow, London, E., was putting a spare tyre on his lorry at Honiton, the tyre burst, throwing him ten feet in the air and clean over a lamp-post. He died a few hours later of a fractured skull. Two other men with him were blown into the air but escaped injury. A miniature searchlight which throws a beam visible for 50 miles has been

invented for aeroplanes. It weighs only 50 pounds,' and is " operated from a storage battery on the ’plane. The beam of light is concentrated in so narrow a compass that by its light a newspaper can be read five miles away in spite of its only using a 500-candle-power lamp. A Bill to enable a man to marry his deceased wife’s- niece' is now before the Canadian Parliament. The Bill, if it becomes law, will also enable a widow to marry her deceased husband’s nephew. Such marriages have been prohibited up to the present, although Canadian law allows a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister. J The Rev. W. E.> Wycliffe-Jones, vicar of Christ Church, Surbiton, Surrey, found among the church documents an old P.O. Savings Bank book, in which a church repairs fund account had been opened over 30 years ago. It showed a credit of £50. : He took it to the Post Office, and found that, with interest, the account now stood at £l'2B. An appeal for a “comradeship of the road” has been made to all motorists by the presidents of the leading German motor clubs. No new degrees of regulations are desired, they say, but. the voluntary acceptance of the unwritten moral law. Motorists are urged to cooperate iu thought for others when driving, and in mutual assistance. One hundred and seventy-three chairs of learning are vacant at present in Spanish universities.. The faculties most affected by the shortage of professors competent to take up, the chairs, or willing to accept the remuneration offered, are literature, Latin, philosophy, geography and history, French, mathematics, natural history, physics, chemistry, and agriculture.

Because village women at Sujauli grew hoarse when singing they decided to offer a human sacrifice at the altar of the goddess Bhagwati. One named Umrai decoyed an eight-year-old. girl, and killed and mutilated her with a spade. The sacrifice had. the desired result on the women’s voices, but Umrai nevertheless has been sentenced to death.- . , ' " ‘ ' ■'■ ■■

-Owners of New York beauty shops have decided to organise free parlors for women victims of industrial depression. Here women who are-put of work or whose families are' destitute will be marcelled, given -facial massage, and other beauty treatment without charge. This is being done, according to the organisers, to prevent, in women’s morale through the financial catastrophe from spreading farther. •- Claimed to be the fastest night-flying aircraft in the world, a new high-altitude Armstrong-Siddeley -biplane, capable, of flying at a speed of more then 200 miles an hour at a height of three miles above ground, has successfully passed . flying trials. It is actually capable of climbing to ovdr six miles above earth level. Electrically-heated clothing and. oxygen breathing apparatus . itre provided for ■use by the pilots at high altitudes. Professor Arnold Plant, of the London School of Economics, addressing the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade in London recently, said that he had analysed some I'soo budgets showing the way women spend their dress allowances. He found, he said, that the 12s lid hat and-the 30s coat were fairly universal, and that the tendency of those with the greater allowances was not so much to pay more for the article, but to buy more articles.

The arrest of two men in Paris on a charge of burglary has revealed the existence of a “burglars’ club,” of which they were the leading members. About 20 burglaries had been committed in the neighborhood by the “dub,” which was composed of men who exercised trades otva . them & plausible

which would give rnem a piausxmo reason for their presence about a house. The two burglars in question were workers in zinc, and were perfectly capable of mending roofs. An Italian correspondent refers to the good health and long life which are enjoyed by the simple villagers of the Piedmontese Alps, although, the climate is severe and the inhabitants are poor. ■One village has five centenarians and 33 inhabitants of 90. Rarely do these people eat meat. An Italian physician who studies longevity declares most centenarians are country people who are mainly vegetarians, tee-total-lers, and non-smokers.

Six young women of my acquaintance agreed together to test the value of the Leap Year proposal. All of them failed (writes a London correspondent of the News-Chronicle). The excuses, politely given, were as follows: Two had parents to provide for, one found it all he could do to meet the income tax, two preferred to have,; cars, and the sixth honestly replied that he proposed to remain a bachelor all his life. There is obviously nothing doing in Leap Year. A Chicago prohibition agent expresses surprise at the amount of “kick” to‘be found in some Easter eggs. He entered a store, asked the price of the chocolate eggs, and found they were three for a shilling. He took a doaen. "Those eggs,” he said later to a United States commissioner, “are chocolate on the outside, but there is enough liquor inside half a dozen of them tc start a war.” The proprietor of the store blames the “hen.”

Buildings a mile high are made possible, engineers say, by the invention of a brick so light that it will float in water. It is the latest accomplishment of Dr. Charles F. Burgess, one of the United States’ most distinguished chemists, who recently received the coveted Perkin medal for achievement in that field. A bricklayer can set six of the new “floating .bricks,” it is said, in the time he requires to lay one of the conventional type. Despite their light weight the bricks have-the necessary structural strength to build towers five times as high as the Empire State Building. They are made from ordinary clay, and require but 12 hours, instead of the usual three weeks, to manufacture. Any- desired shape may .be produced and, the bricks may even be sawed.' t