Around the Wide World

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19771, 19 February 1927, Page 16 (Supplement)

Around the Wide World

Clippings from Varied Sources

BIG UNION JACKS ; FLY OVER WESTMINSTER. i Not everyone who has seen the 'British Houses of Parliament will have I noticed that, rising above the big West- ! minster tower, at the opposite end of 1 Big Ben. is a tall flagstaff, on which jail the limp that Parliament is sitting i a Union Jack is kept flying- Ff'w even i of the people who pass it every day are aware that a special staff of ex-sailors jive in the tower and that it is their special duty to “keep the fl'ag flying” when the Houses are in session. The biggest Jack is 36 feet by 24 feet, and two medium sizes are kept—--24 feet by 12 feet and 18 feet by 12 feet respectively. Anyone looking at ■ these flags from the pavement would i find it hard to credit their actual size. | Every tear or frtay lia.s to be mended I immediately, for such flags as these are [not cheap. There is a special room in ) the tower where they are taken as soon ’as they show signs of cl antage, and in ; this room they are mended with characI teristic sailor’s neatness. LISTENING FOR U-BOATS WARTIME ADVENTURES. ' Group Captain C. R. J. Randall, 11. N., retired, giving evidence before the | i Royal Commission on Awards to Invenjtors —supporting ti claim by Mr Norman Thompson, of Boulin Plantes, 1 Pyrenees, concerning improvements in flying boats —recalled h> own experii cuces with flying boats during the war. i One occasion, he said, was the borfibj ing, of Heiiogoland, which would not I.have been jmssible at that time with | ordinary seaplanes. The flying boats [ als.o went out searching for submarines. ' They would drop on the surface and put down listening apparatus, and if this revealed the presence in that I region of a submarine, they would rise in the tiir. definitely locate the vessel if.nd drop bombs. i TATE GALLERY PICTURE i PLUMBEE AS AN AETIST. ! ! The British Nation has bought a picture painted by la working-man who, ' earns £2 14s a week. i As a rule only artists are interested 'in purchase for the Tate Gallery, but ■there is something romantic about this ! purchase. ; The picture is a cottage interior, and j is painted on apron-cloth because the i artist could not afford canvas. He is i Mr A. Hattemore, who spends his days i in repairing pipes for the Metropolitan ! Water Board. Not for him wias a long. I expensive training in an art school, but his love of pictures was so real that i he managed to visit the galleries and exhibitions and to lattend a painting |class at the Bethnal Green Men’s Institute two nights a week. i Mr Hattemore would not let anyi thing stand in his way. and at last he | has Idarned how to produce the beauty he loves. No one ought to despair I after this. His picture was bought by ! the Duveen Fund for twenty guineas? THE RARE CROSSWORD I ] LIBRARY DICTIONARY DAMAGED. 1 c I . c i The Liverpool Libraries’ Committee « | has decided to withdraw the expensive t : dictionaries from the Pieton Reference c I Library, because of damage done to v them by crossword enthusiasts. i It was stated that a £l2 12s diction- 1 >:ry had been damaged by the erasure i '•f a rare word by a competitor in i order, presumably, that no one else i should be able to trtaee it. £

ST. MATTHEW GOSPEL TABLOID ON SUCCESS e Edward W. Bok says in “Scribner’s b Magazine’’ that the Gospel According to St. Matthew is the greatest and f shortest book on success ever written, i “It is strange,’’ he says, “that, in < this widespread thirst for reading about i material success, we should have so 3 universally overlooked the greatest 5 book of success ever written, or that f ever will be written. “The more puzzling is this fact because it is pre-eminently the' book of L success written within the smallest ’ compass; a fact which usually has a ■ very strong appeal to the busy Ameri- ' can, who is so completely wedded to the digest or tabloid idea. There are only 28 short chapters in the Gospel According to St. Matthew, and yet ‘ within that limited space is contained every rule to achievement. Every sign to success is there, pointing straight and true. “The entire road to success is charted there. Of course, the explanation of the lack of knowledge of this greatest of all messages to achievement lies, strangely enough, in the fact that it is in the Bible.” A POSTAL RARITY FAMOUS FLIGHT RECALLED Stamps come Io albums by devio'.i'j routes. There is an example of this now. lying in Messrs. Stanley Gibbons’ safe, the envelope (technically a “cover’’) of a letter carried in the Ross Smith flight to Australia.. The' ’plane landed in Mesopotamia, and a soldier, hearing the aviators were bound for Australia asked them if they would take a letter to a friend of his. Permission being granted and handed over—to become one of the greatest rarities of the air-stamp collectors. “PHINEAS” KIDNAPPED STUDENTS AND A SHOP SIGN. Nine University undergraduates visited a shop in Tottenham. Court Road, London, and, after giving an undertaking marched off with “Phineas,” ' the kilted Scot, who has been a shop ' sign for 200 years. • At the gates of University College a mob of men and women students waited to cheer them in, the squaws being I dressed in fancy dress to welcome the < trophy-bearing warriors home to the < tribal camp. 1 Since the wtar the students of Uni- 1 versity College have regarded him as their peculiar mascot, and many a 1 battle has raged round his form. The j sudents sang their war song las they s took “Phineas’’ to the College for i their art bazaar. f —_ ] A GAY OLD DOG ' STATESMAN’S MEMORIES. When Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-man went to Windsor in 1905 to see the King on his lappointment as Primo Minister, one of the most beautiful maids a of honour at the court weighed up his qualifications. “He will do all right,’’ r she said. “He is clever, fascinating - and a gay old dog with a twinkle in his eye. The Marquis of Lincolnshire, e who is in his 84th is three I years older than any member of the t House of Commons —told this anecdote s in the House of Lords in December, when he delivered a speech of charming a inconsequence on the Government’s t Small Holdings and Allotments Bill. c

PERPETUAL MOTION DREAM POWER FROM TBOPIC SEAS. .s The sensational claim that harnessing g tropical seas will solve the secrets of d perpetual motion and revolutionise ini, dustry, has been made before the n Academy of Frtince by M. Claude and t M. Boucherot, two French scientists, o It was stated that the surface of the t sea in the neighbourhood of the Equa--5 tor is an inexhaustible reservoir of motive forces, because its surface tem- - poraturc averages 25deg. Centigrade, f while a thousand yards down it falls to t " 4 d(, g- , Commercial adaptation of this difference in temperature would produce sufj ficient power to drive a turbine. This 3 discovery, it is claimed, will enable j France’s tropical colonies to be inde- [. pendent of coal and oil power, and I will turn the Sahara into irrigated fer- , tile plains. It is also claimed that r after the initial operation necessary to ’ start the movement the apparatus used would work automaticially. WIVES “ON APPRO!’’ NOT SUCH A NEW IDEA. The divorce-as-you-please' marriages . that have become so popular in America seem to indicate that the old Scottish custom of “handfasting” would be welcomed there. This custom is referred to in Sir AValtor Scott’s novel, “The Monastery,” where Sir John Avenel, answering a preacher, says:—“We take oui wives like we take' our horses—on friai. When we are 1 handfasted,’ as we term, it, we are man and wife for a year and a day. That space passed, each may choose another mate, or at their pleasure may call the priest to marry them for life.” The ceremony of “handfasting” was a simple one. The man and the woman agreed to the contract verbally in the presence of witnesses. I To set the seal on the year-and-a-day < marriage, they merely shook hands. A SPORTING FEAT SINGLE-HANDED SEA VOYAGE. ■ j A sporting feat of admirable quality. ' but accepted quite as a matter of ‘ course, is that recently performed by Captain Malcolm Goldsmith, R.N. f Receiving orders to proceed from , Plymouth to Malta and there assume , the duties of King’s harbour master. Captain Goldsmith immediately set out on the 2000-mile voyage, alone, and with no sort of fuss, in his little fif-teen-ton yacht Rame. Autumnal weather in the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean is not such as to tempt most yachtsmen; south-east gales were prevalent, no ship reported sighting the Pump, and considerable anxiety was felt until the little yacht dropped anchor at Gibraltar. after covering the first leg of 1100 y miles in 23 days. c A HUGE DYNAMO f THE WORLD’S LARGEST r A huge dynamo, nearly three times V and the steam turbine which is being h day, is being built in America for the new State Railway Station on Lake <i Michigan. H The enormous size of the dynamo v can be imagined by the fact that the q power it will generate will he nearly <j two-thirds of the whole power at pre- fa sent generated from Niagara Falls. S It will weigh four million pounds, cl an dthe steom turbine which is being r built to drive it will burn two tons of m coal a minute. ] (

1 APPLES WITHOUT CORES SCIENTISTS' EXPERIMENTS g An attack has been launched on the f homely apple. Scientists have decided e "that pips and core are superfluous, e Already experiments have been sucd cessful, and 100 per cent, all fruit apples are to be on sale at Covent Garp den early next autumn. This news will come as a terrible shock to thousands of small urchins, who regard unwanted 1 ‘ cores as their own special property. ’ The historic appeal, “Give us yer 0 core!’’ will be answered with literal truth, “There ain’t goin’ to be no core.' ’ ’ s ! PROFESSIONAL CHESS 1 J JUDGE’S GAME FOR MONEY 1 Speaking at an Authors’ Club dinner in London recently on “Chess and Other Hobbies,” Judge Haydon, K.C., deplored the decay of the chess professional, and thought it dated from the time when playing -of games of skill on licensed premises was prohibited. The Judge said that it became necessary when playing a professional for a shilling a game—he had done it himself ’ ’ —to paSs his winnings under the table lest some constable should see and the license be endangered. A ROMANTIC CAREER STORY OF ACTRESS’ FAME The romantic career of a girl who, going alone to Paris at the age of .18 with a determination to make a career for herself, became first a music-hall star, and then a princess, is recalled by the announcement that Princess Georges Ghika, better knowft as Madame Liane de Pougy, is suing for divorce from the prince, to whom she has been married for 18 years. The girl found an engagement in a conjuring act at the Folios Bergcres, and, learning that King Edward, then Prince /of Wales, was in Paris, she wrote to him to say that she was making her debut in Paris, and that if his Royal Highness would condescend to visit the show she would be successfully launched on her new career. The Prince complied with the request, and from that moment the young actress was a successful star of the musichall. Poets, artists and musicians paid high tribute to her in sonnets, sungs and pictures; her portraits became a feature of popular magazines. A SLIGHT MISTAKE SIXTEEN MILIONS INVOLVED The New York Stock Exchange handles immense sums, both in securities and loans, and thus a mistake of one figure in a column means a good deal when it is made in the ten mil- 1 lion column. This appears to be the explanation of - n difference of over £.16,000,000 in the ' report of brokers’ loans from New 1 York banks for October, as given out < by the Stock Exchange and clearinghouse banks. When the matter was brought to the attention of the Stock Exchange «iuthorities various ingeneous theories were advanced to explain the discrepancy. Finally, however, an expert went over the figures with a, couple of clerks having a computation chart for the Stock Exchange, and the mistake was discovered in the Stock Exchange issues. A correction was accordingly issued, reducing the amount of brokers’ J* loans by £16,000,000. *