NEWS IN BRIEF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 16 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

In Holland all Christian names after the first are taxed.

The bark of a tree which grows in :he Malay Islands yields a <nc soap.

Only about one-quarter of the property stolen in London is ever ro?ov

There was not one death sentence passed in Scotland, nor was there o*ie execution in Scottish prisons, throughout 1931.

Tortoise eggs take a long time —from eight to thirteen months —to hatch, M*cording to the conditions in which they are laid.

John Hogan, a man at Waterford, Ireland, aged 100, has never slept w»r one night away from the house in which he was born.

Nearly twenty-six million motor-cars are registered in the United States, the owners paying about £70.000,000 in registration and Hcense fees tnst year.

Grace Darling’s cousin, Mr. James Anderson, a churchwarden at Earsdon Parish Church, recently celebrated his 99th birthday. Ro still lives a useful and active life.

The Chester City Council has agreed to postpone the bypass road over the site of the Roman amphitheatre, so that the site may be excavated at some future date if the money can be raised.

German policemen now are wearing bakelite hats. Recently the standard equipment of such officers was changed to include moulded helmets, which afford protection, and are more durable than steel.

The massacre of 2000 monks at the Battle of Chester in A.D. 613, when they were helpiifg the Welsh against, the Northumbrian Saxons, will be :e--enacted at the .1933 Welsh National Eisteddfod.

Tomatoes and grapes are grown *n Britain in glasshouses covering 3000 acres. Half of these are in the Lea Valley, a large proportipn of the otner half being situated round Worthing, on the South Coast.

Alleging that his moustache, which he had grown continuously for 47 years, had been closely cropped when he had ordered only a shave, a man at Providence, United States, has claimed £5OO as damages from the hairdresser.

A deep blue South African stamp of the value of fourpcnce has been soxl in London for £36. Its great interest centres in the fact that it was an emergency stamp, issued 77 years ago because a valuable ship failed to arrive at Capetown.

A grant of £45,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation has been made to McGill University in Montreal for the establishment of a neurological institute, and plans are under way for the development of a neurological centre, second to none on the American continent.

The highest cliffs in the British Isles, and perhaps even in Europe, are to be found on tho little island of Foula, to the westward of the Shetland group. Here, facing the north-west, is a cliff known as tho Kame, which has a drop of no less than 1372 ft. Curiously enough, on the east side of Foula the cliffs are very low, and in some places the land is almost level with tho seashore.