NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Britain’s rat population has been estimated at the enormous figure of 40,000,000, which is not far short of the human population. Britain has on an average one doctor to every 1069 of the population; in America it is one to 1326; in France, one to 1596; in Austria, one to 837. The Women’s Association in Japan has formulated regulations limiting the <x»st of a wedding to one-third of the bridegroom’s annual income. Wedding receptions are to be abolished. Six Communists were shot by Ogpu firing squads in. the' Northern Caucasus after a short public trial, on charges of failing to ■ carry out the Government grain collections obligations. Mr. Frank Callahan, a wealthy racehorse owner, of Tiffin, Ohio, U.S.A., spent £250 on the burial of a pet Pomeranian dog. The coffin, which was made of bronze, cost £lOO. A motor-car killed a man near Brunn. When the driver stopped he was confronted by a dancing bear belonging, to the dead man. The bear rushed,on the motorist and killed him. It was ■ then shot. : 'John Rees, of Webster • Street, Treharris (Glamorganshire), who is 78 years old, has worked underground continuously for 71 years and still works regularly. He has never met with a serious accident, and has come unscathed out of a colliery explosion and a»pit-flood. The churchyard at . St. Peter’s, Tiverton, Devon, was recently the scene of a fierce struggle between a fine fox and’. a cat. The : fox was first seen leaping among the tombstones, then the cat challenged it, and the fox, much plied with claw and teeth,, had to retire. Professor W. H. Keesom, of Leyden University, has produced a temperature which is 273.3 degrees below the freezing point of water. This is only seventenths of a degree below what scientists describe as the point where all heat vanishes. This low record was reached with liquid helium. Gluck, the prominent woman artist, has solved the problem of framing pictures to match a room in a simple but ingenious way. She uses a few strips of three-ply wood and a pot of paint, .or a piece of wallpaper of the same shade or pattern as that in the room. The pictures then appear to be let into the walls. The frames are made in carefully proportioned “steps,” the lowest step being flush with , the wall. - .They cost only a few shillings, and are easily moved about A woman walked into the provision department of Selfridge’s,- London, and said, “I want a roast swan.” And she obtained it. . Ready-cooked swans are sold regularly in the West End of London, and roast swan is on the menus of, several" clubs and restaurants. “Sivan meat tastes something like roast goose, said a provision store manager. “Each bird-weighs about 301b.and will feed 2(y people.” The birds have been sold at Is a lb. Journeys, are being arranged by aeroplane to the heart of Africa, bis order that hunters may be able to. reach the big game country in a few days, instead of* by weeks of continuous travelling. A journey to : and, from .the .African big game country is,about 10,000 .miles, and trips will be: made available from London and Brussels, aeroplanes- being boarded -at Brindisi, which will take the travellers to one of the Central African; air , stattons. Here a motor convoy will be waiting to complete the journey inland. ‘

The '51,656-ton North German Lloyd liner Bremen, has set up a, new record for the Atlantic crossing, having accomplished the voyage' from Cherbourg to New York in 4 days 16 hours 43 minutes. This time is 23 minutes faster than the previous east-to-west record held by the Bremen’s sister-ship, the Europa (49,746 tons), which, in March, 1930, made the crossing in 4 days 17 hours 6 minutes. One of the finest atlantic performances is that of the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Britain (42,348 tons), which crossed from Quebec to Cherbourg in June in 4 days 7 hours 58 minutes.

A television broadcast was made re- / cently by Mr. Carl Brisson, the , actor, from Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, to the Arena Theatre, Copenhagen, .where he made his debut. The screen used in Denmark was 7ft. by 3ft. It was the first attempt to use a screen

of this size 'at so great a distance as 600 miles. The transmission was reported by ; telephone to be as clear as if the “lookers-in” were watching an actual picture, except for a slight flickering. “The whole thing was a great success. The recording of the voice was perfect,” adds the message. ’ '

.The results of the Canadian census pf native races will surprise many people in Australia, if not in Canada itself. Not only is the Red Indian population on the increase, but Canadian experts believe that there are now more Indians in the Dominion than when the white

man first set foot there four ( -centuries ago. The official figures are now 122,920, an increase of 17,000 on the returns of 1902. What the Indians have gained in numbers they have lost in picturesqueness. They no longer offer scope for the novels' of a Ballantyne or a Kingston. They are now wards of the State and live on special reserves, of which the biggest is in Alberta. Nibbled match-ends led to the arrest of Elmer Rabideau as the slayer of Samuel Bradley, a JO-year-Old retired farmer of Cannon’s Comers, New York. The match-ends were found beside the victim’s body.. Evidently someone had been chewing matches nervously while looking for Bradley’s valuables after shooting him through the head. The police took Rabideau, a neighbour, into custody. They denied him cigarettes, but permitted him to keep his matches. He produced one after another and chewed away the ends. The authorities declare that Rabideau, when they confronted him with similar ones they found beside Bradley’s body, confessed. If it were not for the brain we might all go about seeing people and houses upside down, said Sir William Bragg, the scientist, as he explained the marvels of human sight at the Royal Institution in London recently. “Why do we not sec everything upside down? What causes short and long sightedness? Why does a diamond sparkle?” Sir W. Bragg answered these questions by experiment with a model of the human eye as large as a football, a real diamond, and a “diamond” bought for sixpence. “The human eye,” he said, “is so shaped that every object is shown upside down on the retina, and the only reason why it is seen the right way up is that the brain, through centuries of habit, automatically reverses every image cast on the eye., Short and long sightedness are caused by the lens of the eye being out of • • [shape.”