NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

Waipa Post, Volume VII, Issue 329, 10 July 1914, Page 1

NEW, ODD, INTERESTING.

A railway station costing £10,000,000 is to be erected at Chicago.

There is neither thunder nor lightnmg in the Arctic circle.

A revolver has been invented by a! gunsmith in Brussels that shoots seven times in a second.

India-rubber nails, for use in places where ordinary nails are liable to corrosion, are a German novelty.

No picture is hung on the walls of the Louvre in Paris until ten years after the death of the artist.

Lobsters are said to have a great dread of thunder, and when peals are very loud will swim to deeper water.

By using mercury vapour lamps in her greenhouse a Scottish woman horticulturist forces seeds to sprout and plants to grow in half the usual time.

Cigarettes are sometimes made of the leaves of the .coffeo plants. Many who have tried them prefer them to tobacco cigarettes.

Witlj most of the leading wrestlers of Japan wrestling is an occupation which has been handed down from father to son for many generations.

A naturalist declares that the feathers with which birds are covered combine the highest degree of warmth with the least weight.

The average number of horses killed in Spanish bull-fights every year exceeds 5,000, while from 1,000 to 1,200 bulls are sacrificed.

Of the letters written in a year by the world at large, two-thirds are in English, one-tenth in German, and one. twelfth in French.

“Widows’ Town,” as the Berlin (suburb of Charlottenburg is popularly jknown, is officially stated to contain 14,543 widows and 2,35 S widowers.

In the alluvial deposits of Madagascar remains have been found of ostriches which, when alive, were 14 feet to 15 feet in height.

Three-tentlis of the earnings of a /Belgian convict are given to him on the expiration of his term of imprisonment.

Lightning, when it strikes a tree, sometimes converts the sap into steam with such energy that it explodes, scattering the wood in every direction.

A church organ has recently been 'made in Belgium which is composed entirely of paper, the pipes being rolls of card-board, The sound is sweet and powerful.

A flat in New York, just let to Mr. Samuel Sachs, a banker, is the largest in the world. It- has thirty-four rooms and eight baths, and covers more than half an acre.

An autograph love-letter of King Henry VIII. to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn has been unearthed in the Vatican library. It is in French, and in the approved style of the love-sick swain.

Queen Elizabeth made her breakfast and suppers of salt beef and ale. In contrast, Mary Queen of Scots, whose tastes were French, had a most dainty table, and' was luxurious in the extreme.

The men-of-war of the ancient Roinans had a crew of about 225 men, of whom 170 were oarsmen working on Ehree decks. The speed of these vessels was about six knots an hour in fair weather.

When wine-tasters are employed in their professional duties they never swallow the wine they taste. They merely hold a sip of the beverage in jfche mouth for a few moments and breathe through the nostrils.