NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLANCE

Gatun Lake, in the Panama Canal Zone, is the largest man-made lake in the world. It took four years to fill. A twice-daily ’bus service is run across the Equator between Pemangtaat and Pontianak, in Dutch Borneo. Men are forbidden to work in the village of Tenganan, Bali, Dutch East Indies, on penalty of a public thrashing administered by women. Colombo municipality employs a corps of natives armed with long poles to prevent birds from roosting in the trees of the city. . . . ' Earthemware jars containing thirty million gulden (£3,500,000) worth of prepared opium are stored in the premises of the Opiumfabriek, in Batavia, • Java. Candy phonograph records have been patented in England. When you. get tired of hearing the record, you can eat itl Herr Neumann, a respected German resident of Saigon, lived for three months on a diet of coffee, and brought his weight down from 352 to 288 pounds. Toasted hawk, monkey’s head, dried newts, and baked sparrow are some of the primitive “cures” still to .be procured in some chemists’ shops in Tokio. Following an appeal at Melbourne for ,men with twisted noses and women with pale faces to take part in a film, 600 people responded. Every devotee taking part in an unusual religious celebration at Ellore, Madras, has to write the name of a god 10,000,000 times in specially ruled books. The convicts of Bilibid Prison, in Manila, go through a programme of “physical jerks” in time to their own band every afternoon at 4.30 for the edification of tourists. Remains of prehistoric monsters similar to those described by Conan Doyle in “The Lost World” have, been brought to light during excavations in Trinidad’s famous Pitch Lake. The “star exhibit” in the Yokohama Earthquake Museum is a glass case containing the rims of a pair of steel spectacles, a pencil sharpener and four gold teeth—all that was left of one victim of the 1923 earthquake. In England there are nearly three million persons in receipt of old age, widows’ and . orphans’ pensions. The estimated cost of these is about £55,000,000 per annum. 1 Level-crossings in Great Britain, cause an annual loss of 40,000 years' by the holding up of road-users, while an average of more than one person a week is killed. Britain’s highest railway trough, from which express engines pick up water without stopping, has been fitted with hot-water pipes to prevent freezing. It is on the main line to Inverness and 1480ft'above sea level. \ . Among the leading racehorse owners during the last British season are the Aga Khan, with £64,957 •winnings; .Lord Glanely, with £16,160; the Maharajah of Rajpipla, with £13,469; and .Lord Derby, with £12,742. Cambridge’s new library,, ’ recently opened-by H.M. the. King, holds about 1,250,000 books in twenty-three miles of shelves, so arranged that every book is within arm’s, reach of a man of average height. . '■ ', At the age of 106 a man is looking for work. He inserted the following advertisement in a London newspaper: ‘Man, aged 106, active and of youthful appearance, highly-educated linguist, needs employment.”' - ' Tenants of a block of flats at Biella, Italy, are encouraged by their landlord to have children. With the advent of each baby, the parent is let off . a months rent, while the child receives a moneybox containing 3s 4d. Among the viashitch Mountains of Yugoslavia men do the knitting and heavy housework as well as their work In the fields. The women enjoy thenselves. They are able to do as they liKe ( because there are so many more men than girls. . Golden eagles fly faster than-two miles • a minute. Timed over a three and a half mile course in the mountains of Scotland, one was observed to ba making this speed, at the same time' gaining 1000 feet in altitude. Twelve thousand pats per hour are formed, stamped with a d£S1 En packed in a- tin by the butter pat’ champion of Cadby Hall, London. No machine has yet been found tq equal her dexterity. A Natal native is expecting to receive about 27s from a South African bank for a sovereign which he found in the stomach of a slaughtered ox. Though the date—l926—is still quite clear,, the animal’s gastric juices have destroyed most of the other markings on the coin. The smallest monkey ever seen in England has just arrived in London. It is a midget marmoset from South America. Although almost full-grown, it weighs only Ifoz., and is valued at one guinea an ounce. Germany is the only EuropeanP&wer which has continued to develop airships; her famous Graf Zeppelin has accommodation for twenty passengers, and a much larger vessel is . now nearing completion. Pictorial signs—a telegraph post for the telegraph office, a trunk for the baggage office and<’a big question mark for inquiries*—are in use at Parkes Lon Quay, Harwich. All the symbols selected are known the world over, and visitors of all nationalities can “read them. An enterprising London picture house has installed a dog nursery on its premises. This theatre has provided most comfortable, white-painted cubicles for each dog, raised well off the ground, numbered and lined with clean straw daily. A competent attendant ie in charge. Sunflowers wake up at midnight Records kept by scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Yonkers, New York, show that the cells speed up their work after the dock strikes twelve. Formerly it was assumed that the spurt in activity started at sunrise. • About 250 frogs took part in a jumping contest at Angel’s Camp, California, and 20,000 spectators watched them jump. The contest is held annually to revive memories of California’s gold rush days, when frog-jumping was a popular pastime among miners and prospectors. The record jump of 13ft. lin.' was made by a frog named “Budweiser.” A clock, 75 feet in radius, or 150 feet across the dial, has been given for erection on the summit of San Cristobal Hill, which rears 1000 feet above the city. The clock is to be set in an abandonee .quarry.