NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1935, Page 11 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Our eyes see only one star in 5,000JE0. America now has 10.000,000 unemployed persons. Dancing and musical e-gerriae* are said to be very beneficial to the patients in mental hospitals. America’s biggest brewery, founded and owned by a London-born man, produces 500,000 barrels of ale a year./..

Two hundred women were widowed and 800 children left fatherless by the recent mining disaster at Gresford. Parchment records may not now ba sold for commercial purposes until they have been examined by a State expert

Furs dyed in all colours, including sky blue and pale pink, are to be shown and worn this winter.

A Tom Thumb has been found living in a remote hamlet of Ceylon. He is 19 years old, but only 32 inches tall. Forests are said to cause rainfall, which is often twenty-five per cent ' greater in wooded land than in open areas.

Chocolates,' cakes, lemonade, gingerbeer, and ice-cream were all “bestsellers” at British Army canteens during the last summer camps. .Britain imported canned fruits to the value of £4,900,000 last year; ninety-three per cent of this came from British Empire countries. On the teleprinter, an instrument like a typewriter, it is claimed that it is possible to train an operator in six months to send eighty telegrams an hour. India claims to have found the oldest living man; he is Baz Gul Khan, aged 160. He has two sons, one aged 99 and the other 110. Madrid taxi-drivers recently struck In support of the right to toot and in protest against fines inflicted for breaking new anti-horn laws for night drivers.'

liiere are estimated to be about 22,000,000 unemployed in the world today, as compared with 29,000,000 two years ago.

Apples weighing 81b. each have been grown by Mr. Ichitaro Matsuda, of Nagano, Japan. Although sour, they have a good flavour. Their size is the result of many experiments. Men receiving any form of public-re-lief in Germany are now forbidden to bet; if they do, the relief payment may be made to their wives, or stopped altogether.,

Postage-stamp collectors have had a busy year, as more than 1700 new varieties have been issued in the past twelve months. Of this total 542 were European, i

Britain is now supplying the world’s fastest fighting aeroplanes to Belgium, Turkey, Finland, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Peru, Brazil and many other countries.

A Bible in a Berlin library is printed on palmleaves; one in the Vatican Library weighs a quarter of a ton; while in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is a Bible so tiny that it fits inside a walnut shell.

Eight hours’ sleep, morning exercises, three, good meals a day, and a regular “constitutional”—of course, in addition to their daily patrols—is the recipe given by a New York commissioner to the police of that city. Mlle. Marcelle Barbier, aged twentyfour, of Lyons, has had to postpone her marriage because when she went to get a copy of her birth certificate she was told that she was registered as a man and, moreover, had been dead six years!

A man in East London, South Africa, has turned bright pink. He is suffering from the rare disease known as chromidosis, which causes perspiration cd various colours, including violet, green, yellow, and even coal black. A long human hair, first dipped in j weak solution of caustic soda • and then suspended with a weight just sufficient to keep it taut, will fortell changes of weather by growing longer for wet and contracting for dry conditions. A market gardener in California has cleared his garden of a pest of grasshoppers by the use of a vacuum cleaner. This is only one example of uses never contemplated by the manufacturers of various articles of commerce. ; Ping-pong balls are used in large numbers in the water-tight compartment of racing motor boats. The late Major Seagrave gave an order for no fewer than 5000 of these balls for his last Mis’ England.

Visitors to Great Britain from abroad would, it is estimated, have spent £15,000,000 in Australia by the end of last year. In ?933 the total number of visitors was 191,830; last year the figure was expected to exceed 250,000. At a party given at Stockholm by Professor Lindberg, Arctic explorer, the meat was cut from a mammoth that chased prehistoric butchers around 10,000 years ago! The guests found the primeval steak very palatable. Concrete piles, driven thirty feet Into the ground, will support the new buildings of the University of London; they are to cost £3,000,000 and are planned so that any necessary Internal alteration to meet requirements for years to come can be made without touching the outer shell.