HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18546, 21 August 1928, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. Armless Artist. An armless man living in a South Wales mining town can paint picture*, write letters and play the piano. H# is Mr W. G. Collins, a clerk, at Ebbw Vale. lie plays the piano with hl§ nose, and uses a paint-brush or a pen with his mouth. ♦.j j.; Thirty-four Children Drowned. A steam launch carrving eighty children capsized on the river Kuban, near the town of Temryuk. Russia. 1 nirty-four of the children were drowned. Kuban is a river flowing nom the Caucasus into the north-east-ern waters of the Black Sea. Temrvuk is between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Driver Blinded by Lightning ; While a storm was at its height in London, an L.G.O.C. bus driver was struck and blinded by lightning. The man, Charles Nelson, if Hoinerton Terrace, K.. succeeded in bringing liis bus to a stop in Morning Lane. Harktnen was taken to the hospital. -•\t tne time the bus was full of paSsrngers. Nelson's eyes were affected, but lie will recover his sight Gun Accident. A frisky lamb was responsible for a tern hie tragedy which occurred at Gibraltar Farm, near Chatham, England. c Cambers, aged forty-nine, farm bailiff, was balking with a shepherd who was looking after some sheep in a P e *?- had in his hand a double-bar-relled gun, the butt of which rested on inc ground. A lamb stumbled against Chambers and accidentally fired the gun, and the full charge of shot from one barrel entered Chambers’s head. Fake Suez Bonds. An attempt to forge 5000 Suez Canal bonds, of a total value of £BOO.OOO, was discovered when a Paris printer informed the police that a man giving the name of Roger Netter had asked him to print that number of bonds, declaring that he needed them as duplicates, the original bonds being held in England. Netter, who was arrested, confessed to the attempt, declaring that he intended to lodge the shares as security for loans at a number of banks. He had estimated that each bank would advance him up to 50 per cent of the value of such gilt-edged securities, and that he would therefore make £400,000. Caught by Camera. A camera was successfully used in Paris by a newsagent named Raoul Lafour to discover the author of a series of petty thefts. Lafour was in the habit of placing his takings on the. chimneypiecc of bis room, and every day he found that money had been taken from it. He hid a camera which was so placed that the approach of anybody to the chimneypiecc would open the shutter automatieallv. When he returned in the evening, he developed thfc plate, and found the image °f 3. woman, Madame Normandy, who li\»ed in .the next flat to him. She was shown taking the money. Madame Normandy was shown the picture by the police, and confessed her guilt. a k Sword Charge on 70,000 Crowd. Many people were injured in a riotous scene which occurred when two queues, totalling 70,000 people, were waiting at an office in Amsterdam to purchase tickets for a match between Uruguay and Holland in the Olympic football tournament. It appears that late-comers endeavoured to obtain places to which the}' were not entitled in the queue, with the result that the police had to charge the crowd with drawn swords in an effort to maintain order, and to prevent people who had : waited twenty-four, and even thirty, hours for their tickets losing their places. The Olympic Committee pc- ' ported that one man had been killed ’ by a police sword, but the police deny this, while admitting that a large number of people were injured 3 3 M Innumerable Windows.

It has just been discovered that there is no one who can say precisely how many window’s there are contained in the British Houses of Parliament, and it asserted that no two totals have ever been made to agree. Several country houses at Home are in similar plight. Wentworth Woodhouse, the Yorkshire home of Earl Fitzwilliam. for instance, has an unknown number of windows, while the late Duke of Marlborough said the same of Blenheim. adding that there were so many windows there that their repair cost him £SOO a year for putty alone! It would seem, too, that no endeavour has ever been made to count the number of windows at Windsor Castle. a •*» »■* Rates 36s 2d in the £. An appeal is being made to the Ministrv of Health, on behalf of overburdened ratepayers in Gelligaer, South Wales, asking that any further loans to the local council should not be sanctioned. The rates are 36s 2d in the £, the. highest in the country. Collieries having closed down in the area thera are thousands of unemployed; thrifty people have spent all their savings and have to borrow to pav rates; and there are more shops closed than at any previous time. In a letter to the Ministry of Health, a Bargoed ratepayer writer: “You are doubtless aware that the majority on the council is held by irresponsible Labour men who contribute to the Socialist programme, and who are pledged to pursue wild-cat scheme* for the extension of our electrical undertakings and publicly owned omnibuses.” London Man Fined £550. A penalty of £550 was imposed by AMe-man Sir David Burnett, at the Mansion House, upon Carlos Fonteyn, *j«.Lv.viir of iriiperi Fonteyn and Co, Blandford Mews, Baker Street, W., for evading Customs duty on motor-cycl* tyres. The evasions, it was said, had been cleverly carried out by an arrangement with the exporter whereby invoices and ledger, both incorrect, corresponded. Had defendant’s figure* been accepted, the loss to the revenue would have been £194. He had rendered himself liable to a penalty of £1293.