NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEWS IN A NUTSHELL

THE WORLD AT A GLAWOE

Nearly half the British population are either bachelors or-spinsters. Babies now eat about four times as much as their parents did as infants. Russia’s population has increased by 25,000,000 in the past ten years. Telegram collection boys on the Lon- Z don railway stations are to wear illuminated buttons on their uniforms. Two thousand eight hundred pounds was given at a Southey auction recently for a 12-inch picture by Bellini. A “Garden of Rest" has been dedicated by the Bishop of Buckingham at Stoke Poge’s churchyard, scene of Gray’s famous “Elegy.” public, which the King returned _ to , South Africa after it had been in Windsor Castle for many years, has now been hung in Vryburg Town Hall.\ e

Rev. C. O. Dutton, a Methodist pastor, won his title* of champion liar in the tail-story competition of the village club at St. Paris, Ohio. At Governor Phillip’s advent in 1788. the estimated aboriginal population was 150,000. At the 1933 census the number of full-bloods was 60,101.

The Czechoslovakian Government has lent Oxford University 1636-6 milligrams of radium for three years—and insured it for £20,000 before shipping it. At the age of 4, William Gale, a farmer, of Knossington, Leicestershire, has made a rug containing 49,522 pieces of wool.

An explosion costing £2900 will blast away 5000 tons of rock from a ledge in the Niagara Falls. Experts say that this rock is unsafe. . For biting off the tip of his wife's nose, Victor Lanza, an Italian, has been sentenced at Paris to four years’ imprisonment, and ordered to' pay £l5OO. Two British speedway riders are to gallop on horseback over Dick Turpin’s famous track from the Spaniard 1 * Inn. Hampstead, London, to York. They expect to take three days. An English police, constable walked 33 miles from Barking to Southend to win the Metropolitan Police championship for the seventh time in 15 years. The prize was a quart of beer. An artificial nose, which costs £6 6s, and can be fitted to any face to repair the ravages of accident, has been approved by an English hospital committee.

Crusadier, winner of Electric Handicap, Marlborough, New Zealand, in 1902, was ridden by the 7-year-old son pf George Murfitt, well-known trainer. The baby scaled 3.7. Imperial Airways are now issuing family season tickets enabling husband, wife, and two children under 21 to travel on almost any air line in Europe at considerable reductions. Mrs. Mary J. Stubbin, of Richmond (Surrey, Eng), has just turned 103, and is still going strong. She is the last living, relative of Constable, the wellknown painter. V A 22-year-dld Leningrad wife and her 25-year-old ” husband have been sentenced to death for an orgy of murder extending over years. She acted ’as a decoy for men her husband shot and robbed. ' ‘

Waves c£n be produced artificially lin the great new swimming pool constructed at Wembley. -It. measures 60ft fly 200 ft, and’ is" a. few inches deep at one end and- over 16ft at the other. The flag of the old Stellaland' Re-' The boy of to-day is nearly ten, pounds heavier and two inches taller than the boy of 1883. Since 1919 13-year-old schoolboys have increased in weight by an average of five pounds, and are an inch taller.

A plan of a large estate at Beaconsfield, dated 1753, and drawn on a sheep’s skin, has been dug up in Ameraham (Eng.). The plan was contained in a metal tube, and is in a perfect state of preservation.

Where industrial. disputes are concerned 1934 was the most peaceful year in Great Britain for half a century. Onlv 960,000 working days were lost, as compared with 162,230,000 in 1926, and even 30,440,000 in 1893.

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.

Turkish newspapers are to use a “ration” of five new words a day in. ah effort to encourage their use in daily speech. The Language Commission will send them a daily bulletin! which will kill off five words of the ol<i vocabulary, an<i order the use of five new synonyms. A startling feature of the British Home Office report on criminal statistics is the proportion of youths who appear on the list. Of the total number of indictable offenders, 21 per cent, were under the age of 16 years, while no fewer than 33 per cent, of house and shopbreaking offenders were also under 16 years. I " ~ •The rarefied air of high altitudes has a strange effect on the minds of mountain climbers. They not only experience difficulty in remembering what they are doing, but sometimes have hallucinations which cause them to descend the mountain while believing they are still going upward. The habit of being bom is falling away. ■ At the 1J per cent, average of the 1924-1933 decennium the ’ Australian population would have doubled- itself in 48 years. In the quinquennium 19291933 the rate had fallen to 1 per cent., and our population would require 75 years to double. At the present (and falling) rate of .79 eighty-eight years would be necessary. ‘

. While playing... in a twelve-a-mde cricket match at Canberra, Mr. T. O’Connor was informed that his wife had just given birth to a bady. Anxious to see his son, he .asked to be put on to bowl to get the other side out quickly. Eleven wickets for thirty-eight runs was 'his analysis, and then he hurried off to the hospital.

The belief that eyes have the power of . influencing persons, animals, plants or inanimate objects is widespread among the Semitic, Hamitic, and negro tribes. Among the amulets used as countercharms against the evil eye., are blue beads, flat glass eyes, miniature hands,' rings, bells,, small models of “tools, necklaces of berries, horns filled- with medicine, medicine packets, cowrie shells, Mohammedian prescriptions, and miniature copies of the Koran.

iniuiiiiiiuiHiiuiiiiiiiiiitKUiiitiiiiiiniiiuitmuiiiHHUiiiHiSlpath for scientists to follow. Whatever the failures in Britain or Australia Stringfellow really had . initiated the “conquest of the air” that is > now accepted as a commonplace fact.