HERE AND THERE

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 149, 7 September 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

HERE AND THERE

NEWS IN BRIEF ITEMS FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS A lifeboat costs £7O per annum to maintain. Five is the great sacred Chinese number. Nearly 3000 miles of canals are in use in EnglandThe rays of the sun take 8£ minutes to reach the earth. Finger-nails grow at the rate of rather more than l|in. a year. Hearing, as a rule, is more acute With the right ear than with the left. Lake Baikal, in Siberia, is 4,500 ft. — over four-fifths of a mile—deep. A mounted specimen of the great auk’s egg was sold in 1905 for £4OO. Shrove Tuesday was formerly a great day for the sport of cock-fighting. It is estimated that there are 55, 000,000 squar e miles on the planet of Mars. Angling was indulged in by the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The food and drink c nsumed by the average man each year weighs about a ton. Private persons who own and fly aeroplanes in Britain now number 70 or overAn Indian spider ’s-web only six inches in width was found to contain over 41,500 meshes. In the Wieliczka salt mines at Cracow there are altars, shrines and statues made of salt. The flrst perambulator "was built in 1780 for a daughter of the fifth Duke of Devonshire. A total consumption .of tobacco averages 241 b. per year for every inhabitant in the world. The most expensive chair in the world belongs to the Pope. Of solid silver, it cost £IB,OOO. During the first year of the war, nearly 1000 French guns were blown up by imperfect fuses. Last year £220,000 was collected for charities in the streets of London, £13,790 less than in 1926. Lake Victoria, in Africa, the second largest fresh water lake in the world, fs almost circular in shape. Travellers reaching Palestine recently from Transjordians reported passing through five miles of locusts.

An album containing about 500 photographs of anarchists, was published by the French Governments in 1894.

The highest inhabited plaec in the world is *he Buddhist monastry of Ilaine, in Tibet. It is 17,000 ft. above sea-level.

Milk contains 871 per cent, of water, while cauliflowers contain 901 per cent, cabbages 891 per cent., and tomatoes 9ill per cent. “Cat" is now adjudged too difficult to spell for New York schoolchildren under nine years of age. They will be limited to “at," “if," “as," and such words.

Pallc lluld, the Danish boy scout who undertook to go round the world in 44 days, completed his journey according to programme, ha’f of it being under the British flag.

The oldest love-letter in the wor’d is in the British museum. It is a proposal of marriage for the hand of an Egyptian princess, and is in the form of an inscribed brick. Two women policemen control the traffic at the busiest spots in Constantinople, tlie authorities of that city considering women better fitted to handle traffic “jams." Coal has been reached at a new pit at Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, within a mile of the famous Major Oak- To preserve the beauty of the surroundings the pit is without chimneys, and smokeless.

Sir Harry Lauder has a collection of between 300 and 400 sticks. He is constantly acquiring new ones, a recent addition having been specially grown during the last fifteen years by an American admirer.

The term “furlong" is a shortened form of “furrow-long." The average length of a furrow cut by a plough across a field was about 200yds. From a rough indication of distance it gradually became fixed at 220yds. The coldest spot on earth is not the North Pole, but at a new laboratory in Berlin, where temperature as low as 425dcg. below zero are obtained. This is done by liquefying helium gas under high pressure, then allowing it to expand.