NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE |

Ice when pure and clear is more transparent .than Water. v ‘ Britain’s population, according to of?., firial statistics, should attain its .maxi- -; mum figure about 1950. ■ l -

When some hens were recently taken a journey by aeroplane, in Canada they , •{ suffered from severe air-sickness. While Britain’s natiohal consumption • of spirits and beer is decreasing, the people are drinking more wine, coffee, and cocoa. Practically every British aeroplane fly-, ■filing across the English Channel from •‘■'cj either Paris or Croydon carries a full complement of passengers. ”'*? Net-ball and dancing have been allowed in the women’s prison at Holloway for a year past, and now tennis is to be arranged for. ■ Whales taken in English tidal waters. '. belong to the Sovereign. By a very old custom the King can claim the head and his Queen the tail of such captives. Shorthand-typists in Paris have decided that in future they will refuse to *.y, “take down” the love-letters of their employers, as it is an insult to their .': dignity. , •- During a thousand-hour “endurance test” for dancers in Madrid, two of the participants, to relieve the .. .tedium' of the contest got married while they were dancing. , ' Mercedes Gleitze, the well-known-en-durance swimmer, began the New Year by completing a 46J hours’ swim at the Huddersfield (Eng.) Corporation Baths, She thus created a new record. s ~ Horsehair fetches so, high a price in J; Temuco, a town of Chile, that stealing y y horses’ tails is quite a common crime. Even the mounts of the police do not jy escape the pilferers. Among the declining trades and cations in Great Britain are pawnbrok-ti. ing, money-lending, and male servants. y There are 10,000 fewer menservants than y there were four years ago. ■ ‘ No fewer than ninety-six livings in tire Church of England in England have' a j stipend of less than £2OO a year, 1110 . than £3OO a year, and 2233 less than £350 a year. While the human population of the i y world is’estimated at 1,849,500,000, the rat population is placed at 10,000,000,000, or at the proportion of five rats to every human being. •, It costs in England between £3OOO and i.y ,-' £4OOO to cover an acre of land with glass for growing tomatoes and other hothouses produce, and each acre so used provides employment for six men. Amateur smugglers entering Britain paid over £150,000 to Customs officials last year. The worst offenders were', women, who tried to get silk garments in without duty. ( : Glass curtains, made by a secret process in which silk or cotton can be enclosed between two sheets of glass, may soon be on the market. The curtains will neither get dirty nor wear out Electricity is the driving power of a new model motor-car intended for children. It has all the fittings—gears, selfstarter, lamps, and horn—of the real /- article, costs £3O, and is intended for use in gardens and private grounds only. One of the curiosities-of London is the mummy preserved in St. James’s Church, Garlick Hill. It is that of a man, and is over 250 years old; but there is no information as to who he was and why or how he became mummified. / There are said to be 1100 different kinds of animals and insect? tin the >’ world, with thousands of varieties of each, including 120,000 types of spiders, '50,000 types of butterflies, . and 40,000 types of flies. , .• Seven lynchings occurred in the United States in 1932, five of them in the south. “A Lynchlesg South in 1933” is the goal set by 7000 women who are members of the Association of Southern Women for . ' the Prevention of Lynchings. . A party of British archiaelologists have literally gone to Jericho—to excavate the ruins of the old palace where Herod had his winter residence. They may find out why the walls fell down/before Joshua’s trumpets. .7 • The room in the tower of Beg Ben, which houses the clock of the Commons, formerly used to imprison refractory members of the Commons, is being devoted to the provision of additional space for official residence. Members apparently do not get removed nowadays. Two pairs of fishing boats belonging to Dunure, Ayrshire—the Marguerite Virginia May and the Southern Sun—had record herring fishing at the end of December. Working together, their catches for a week fetched £3BOO, which averaged £l4O per-man. This is believed to be a record for the. country. The disease of adenoids is more prevalent in the middle-class of England I thsm among the poorer classes. In many first-class preparatory or Public schools as many as sixty or seventy per cent, of the pupils have had tonsils and adenoids removed before they are fourteen years old. . < Reputed to be one of the heaviest men in Wales, Mr. William Jones, Llettygwillim, of Llanfaircaeroeinion, Montgomeryshire, has died after a short illness. A well-known sheep dealer, he attended fairs regularly and did his business from his motor-car, as his weight of over 32 stone was a handicap to him. Hartley’s, the Liverpool (Eng.) jammakers, recently paid their 1000 workers their 47th share of the profits of the firm. This amounted to ' nearly £lO,OOO, a welcome Christmas-box. Nearly 50 years ago the founder of the .firm called a few of his staff together to tell them that/ his year’s profits had been good; and he gave them a part as the custom has persisted. London’s first telephone directory is dated April, 1880. It contains the names of 446 subscribers, spread over three exchanges—A.’ B. and C. To-day there are about 400,000 subscribers spread over 232 exchanges.. In April, 1880, the great family of Smith had six telephone entries; now something ljke 4000. The greater family of Macs had five, the Joneses none! To-day the former occupy nineteen • columns, and the latter twenty-two! Five entries began with London, and one each with British, Royal, and National. It was the City that made the telephone possible, and in 1880 nine-tenths of the subscribers had E.C. in their address. Few banks were on the telephone. They feared it would lead to fraud. Stockbrokers, on the contrary, were its keenest pioneers. • Only one railway is in this first telephone book—the old London, Chatham, and Dover, now part of the Southern Railway. No Government office had the telephone, and you could not have booked a seat by telephone in any London theatre, called up any newspaper office, or ordered a meal at any resIrani.