NEWS IN BRIEF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 291, 8 December 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

ITEMS FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS The Metropolitan Fire Brigade, London, costs about £650,000 a year to maintain. It is authoritatively stated that one well known British shot accounted for 50,000 wild ducks during his sporting life. The world's gold reserves are estimated at £2,519,800,000, the principal holders being America, Britain, France, and Japan. Half the total population of Britain lives in live foreign countries; the figure for the United States is not much more than half this. There is one policeman to each acre and to every twelve of the population of the City of London. This latter figure refers, of course, to the small population. Allotments in England and Wales numbered 1,079,000 and covered 163,500 acres at the end of 1926. This was a decrease of about 36,000 allotments on the tiguro for 1925. The stocking trade of Leicester is in such need of trained labour that the firms put their names down months beforehand to secure girls from the elementary schools as learners. When George Bernard Shaw’s play, “Man and Superman,” is given in full the actor playing the principal part speaks 50,000 words. This jxirt is as long as the average novel. Recent tests prove that London’s busiest traffic centre is Hyde Park Corner-; 64,268 vehicles, including 55,441 omnibuses and motor-cars passed it during a recent checked period of twelve hours. British manufactures thousands of millions of needles every year and supplies practically every other country in the world, eighty per cent, of the output of Redditch being exported. Yet no one has discovered where all the old needles go.

Successful tests have been carried out on Lake Ammer, Bavaria, with a new device for ensuring the safety of vessels in foggy weather. Two fingers are suspended over a map, and in response to wireless control continuously indicate the ship’s position.

A freak rainstorm recently occurred in Kent, between Cobham and Chatham. Rain fell in torrents over an area about 30ft. wide and two miles long, roofs on one side of the road running with water, while those on the other side were quite dry.

To establish his poetic merit the Turkish poet Kiazim Bey, of Konia, has had his brain X-rayed. The radiologists agreed that it showed exceptional weight and striking convolutions. The poet has sent photographs of the medical report to all his critics.