NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1933, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

An oil-proof rubber, which is resistant to solvents, has been developed, and promises great possibilities in industry. Nearly half the time lost to industry . through illness is due to influenza and the common cold .

High-explosive shells are the most dangerous and gas shells the least dangerous of the various forms of attack from the air, according to German experts.

Since Britain went off the gold standard in September, 1931, gold worth £100,000,000 has been importe’ into the country from India.

Mary Pickford, the film star, who was born in Toronto, Canada, inherits 1,144,000 dollars (£228,800 at par) from the estate of her mother, Mrs. Charlotte Smith. Mrs. Alice Allen, of Cove, Oregon, was stone blind for 25 years. Suddenly, at the age of 75, she regained perfect sight without medical or surgical aid. During a violent rain-storm on the Mersey a 400 ft. waterspout swept up the estuary to the Waterloo shore, where it suddenly collapsed.

As a nation Great Britain' should be able to continue drawing wireless licences until at least 10,000,000 homes are equipped with receiving sets. France is losing her tourist traffic, the number of visitors falling from 1,911,107 in 1929 to 994,358 last year. The drop is least heavy in the case of British visitors, who numbered 522,000 in 1932. A golfer at High Post, near Salisbury, sliced a ball into the rough. The caddje followed it, and found it on the top of the three eggs in a yellow-hammers nest, which were not even cracked. Red-haired girls are to be all the rage this year, according to the Massachusetts League of Hairdressers. But the red heads must not be too red just a ruddy coppery • brown.

Lord Warwick, whose engagement to Miss Rose Bingham was recently announced, has decided to let Warwick Castle, the family seat, on a yearly or more extended tenancy. According to a health expert, there is more solid nourishment in a meal of bread and cheese with a glass of beer than in the most expensive “fancy dishes.”

Parisians can now read the time on a clock erected on the Eiffel Tower. The dial of this timepiece, which is illuminated at night, is 61 feet, and.it is placed at a height of over 600 feet.

Not one male recruit has entered the postal telegraph service in Newcastle (England) for the last 15 years. Sixtyseven girls have been enrolled in i-.e same period. i

The cleverest jigsaw puzzle solver m Los Angeles is David Reeder, who is totally blind. He starts with a corner piece glued to the board, and fits the rest of the puzzle together by feeling the outlines of the pieces. Of the 12,000,000 insured persons in Great Britain 7,000,000 are in practically continuous employment, 2,000,000 undergo brief periods of unemployment, and 1,000,000 are out of work for less than three months in the year. Hassan Aghu, of Osmanje, Turkey, slapped the face of a neighbour With whom he had quarrelled, and was fined £1 for assault He paid the £l, slapped the man nine times more, and paid him another £9. .

Housekeeping at Dr. Barnado’s Homes is done on an enormous scale. More than 25,000 meals a day have to be provided for 8456 children. One big item is milk, 1000 gallons per day being required. Six black horses drew'the hearse which took Mrs. Sarah West to her grave from Duncan Square, Oswaldtwistle, England, recently. She was known as queen of a tribe of gipsies, and attended all the important race meetings. Her coffin weighed half a ton.

The last bank failure in Scotland occurred' in 1878. The basic banking law of Scotland was passed in 1845, and since that date no new bank has been established, and the 95 banking houses then in existence have been reduced to. eight. Restriction of the note issue privilege to the banks having that right in 1845 tended to develop branch banking until in 1932 the eight banks had 1808 branches in Scotland, or one banking office per 2666 people. - .The Feminine Revolutionary Party in Mexico has decided to erect in Mexico City a monument in granite and bronze to the soldadera (soldierettes) who went to war smoking cigarettes and wearing lace petticoats, followers of Mexico s fighting men, federals as well as insurrectionists, sharing their hardships, doing their cooking laundry, and mending, nursing them when wounded or ill, laying them to rest when they stopped bullets or bayonets with fatal results, and oft times using to good advantage the rifles of their dead mates.

Mexico has 350 located earthquake sources, and possibly more regions where periodical temblors originate, according to the National Seismological Institute, which is making a study of the areas where'have occurred earth shocks more or' less frequently since the cycle of temblors in May and June, 1932. The institute finds that in 1926 the country had but 109 earthquake sources and has ascertained that most of the present sources have originated since that year. According to the institute, Mexico s worst earthquake areas are the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Tehuantepec region in Southern Mexico.

Reading of the recent death of a woman who had stated she had not slept for 22 years, Mr. William Colson, a 73-year-old curio dealer of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, has come forward with a claim for the record for insomnia. He declares that he has had 45 years’ complete sleeplessness. “I have not slept a wink all this time, and I never feel the need,” Mr. Colson stated. “I go to bed every night, though, because I formed the habit before I lost the power to sleep at the age of 28—and because there is nothing else to do at night. Among the cases of those who are condemned to continuous wakefulness is that of a Hungarian Government official, M. Paul Kern, who was shot in the head on the Eastern front in 1915. He now works a 24-hour day, only suffering from occasional headaches, but never having any desire for sleep. Mr. E. T. Maher, a storekeeper, of Heaton, New-castle-cn-Tyne, England, who lost his power to sleep after a cycling accident in 1910, has only been able to achieve a kind of conscious doze since.