NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Eagles live to be 200 years old. A cubic foot of marble weighs 1601 b. People in British prisons cost the nation about sid a day to feed. It cost® £3O a year to dust the books in the Library of the House of Lords. The tallest man who ever lived was a native of Palermo; he was 30 feet. ■ The Archbishop of Canterbury gets £15,000 a year. A canary has died in England, thirtytwo years old. Irish stew is a dish unknown in Ireland, being an entirely English dish. Kid gloves are not kid, but lamb or sheep skin. Charred meat is being injected into the veins of French patients to cure infection. , Japan’s birth-rate is decreasing;, last year the total was 61.618 fewer than in 1932. ’ ’ i The number of employed people in Great Britain—lo,lB7,ooo-is the highest figure since December, 1929. British motoring offences averaged 1000 a day last year; fines to the total of £266,178 17s lid were administered. , Any one who becomes a Cabinet Minister in Spain, even for a day, is entitled to a pension of £270 a year. Compressed air is used in South African fields to blow diamonds out of crevices. The cuttie fish is not a fish; it is an octopus belonging to the cephalopoda class of molluscs. The famous Iron Mask, worn hy the prisoner of the Bastille, was made of—velvet. Sealing-wax no wax at all. It is made of shellac, Venice turpentine, and cinnebar, and is a liquid. Cleopatra’s Needle was not built by, or in honour of, that famous Queen, but by Thothmes 111. 'Red does not madden a bull, because a, bull can’t see red. Tests have shown the animals are colour blind, so red looks like black. Laboratory tests show that we might live for 900 years if we could keep our blood temperature at forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. A humming bird has, proportionally, more brain than a man. Its brain is a twelfth its body weight; a man’s is a thirty-fifth. ' ' America got its name from a great liar, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine astronomer, who pretended he'had discovered the New World. Britain’s rat population is estimated at - 45,000,000, roughly, one to every human being. Their damage amounts to ap- , proximately £55,000,000 a year. A married couple wjio have never had a cross word for twenty year have decided to separate—they were both deaf and dumb. “Ants’ eggs” given to goldfish, ate not the eggs of ants; it is the pupae in the white cocoons which are sold as food for goldfish. By scoring' 45 bulleyes in 45 shots with a pistol, Major G. R. Rede, of the United States Army, recently established a new world’s record. 1 It cost £23,540 to maintain the Tower, of London last year. Against this, the return-from admission fees and. sale of guidebooks was £18,706. London’s shortest bus route is No. 516; it is a mile- long, between the Nag’s Head and Alma, Ponder’s End. The journey takes four minutes and costs Id. • . t Elm wood has, up till now, been regarded as of little use because of its ( tendency to warp. A new process has been discovered that -is said to cure this defect. ’ c.

In the white dial of Big Ben, as the famous clock of the Houses of Parliament in London is known, there axe holes made by shrapnel during air raids in the Great War.' • Grandfather, father and son entered as competitors for the King’s Prize, in Britain, the most prized trophy for shooting. The grandfather won it in 1888, and the father in 1526 and 1931. At a freak show in New York they are showing a lead pencil with which (so the proprietor says) Noah checked off the animals as they came out of the Ark. Lions in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, are so numerous and so tame that motorists have been held up for jhours waiting for them to conclude their roadside siestas. Red, white, and blue roses can now be grown. The first of this new kind was grown by a patriotic Czecho-Slova-kian . horticulturist as it is his country’s national colours. Chemical. research shows that deadly gases are useless in war. The only usable, gas is mustard gas, and people can be safe from this by merely sitting in a hot bath. Probably the only persons who welcome thunderstorms are the employees of the Woolwich Arsenal. Whenever thunderstorms are expected, all work is immediately stopped. The men, however, still get paid for their lost time. There is a town in Mexico with a population of over 6000, and it has one place of worship for every day of the year—Leap Year excepted. In London, with a population of seven and a half millions, there are about 2000 churches. The smallest countries in Europe are Luxemburg, Liechstenstein, San Marino, and Monaco, and their respective populations are 265,000, 11,500, 12,000, and 23,000. You can compare these with that of London, which is 8,202,818. '» From property left more than 150 years ago to help children of Hulwell, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, to start in life, the income has risen from £BO to £3OOO a year. Out of this alms-houses and village halls have been built, endowments have been made, and grants to twenty children a year are paid.