GENERAL NEWS

Waipa Post, Volume 47, Issue 3385, 26 October 1933, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS

SWAM NIAGARA FALLS. An eighteen-year-old youth was recently placed under arrest for "vagrancy and unlawfully swimming the Niagara River." It is alleged that he plunged unclothed into the roaring torrents below and swam the rapids. He was swept twice around the whirlpool, and finally emerged into the calmer waters on the Canadian side after two and a half hours in the water. It is asserted that he is the first person to swim the rapids of the Niagara gorge and reach the shore alive. BOY IMPRISONED IN CEILING. All one morning recently a search party scoured the district for Kevin Donoghue, aged nine years, who was missed from his home in North Bendigo. At about midday he was found imprisoned in the roof of his home with one foot firmly jammed in a cleat of wood. He had been there since the previous afternoon. When the boy had not appeared the previous evening his father and a number of neighbours searched until a late hour without finding any trace of him. Meanwhile the boy was in the ceiling of the house, which was undergoing repairs. He had climbed up into the ceiling and in a space enclosed by two walls and a chimney one "of his heels was firmly caught in a cleat. He called for assistance, but apparently his voice did not penetrate from the confined space. Eventually his mother heard a noise in the ceiling and a younger brother climbed up and freed the boy. He had been in the ceiling for about 20 hours. £7,000,000 TUNNEL SCHEME. The United States Public Works Administration announces that it has granted New York City a loan of 37,000,000 dollars (over £7,400,000 at par) at 4 per cent, for the immediate construction of a vehicular tunnel beneath the river Hudson connecting the mid-town section of Manhattan with New Jersey. RECORD ROCK CLIMB.

A message from Innsbruck says that the well-known guides, Josef and Angelo Dimai, from Cortina, in the South Tyrol, and Emil Comici, from -Trieste, have succeeded in climbing for the first time the northern wall of th« Great Pinnacle in the Dolomites, tried in vain by the best climbers of Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, in consequence of its extraordinary smoothness. A large part of the wall is quite vertical, and offers no opportunity whatever for the tourist to find a footing. The courageous conquerors used no fewer than 90 wallhooks, 50 carbines, 270 yards of rope, and 170 yards of cord.