Town Talk

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 5, 6 January 1940, Page 6

Town Talk

Railway Excursion. Special arrangements have been ; made by the Railways Department for < a week-end excursion on January 13 from Wanganui to Wellington for the Centennial Exhibition. N.Z. Bowling Tournament. The New Zealand Bowling Cham- ! pionship tournament begins in Wei- : lington on Monday. There are several Wanganui players in the list of those who have entered, Ihe clubs represented being St. John’s, Gonville, Wanganui East and Cosmopolitan. Palmer,ston North Welcome. More than a thousand people assembled at the Palmerston North railway station at about 10.30 a.m. yesterday to extend a welcome to the officers and ratings of H.M.S. Ramillies in the course of their trip to I; Wanganui. i Small World. I Evidence of Ihe fact that the world (is small was given yesterday when Mr. F. J. Best, city accountant, disI covered a man in the naval 'party i from H.M.S. Ramillies who belonged to his home town in Lancashire. These two had a long talk of England as they both know it. Visit of Australians. Great interest is being taken in the visit of three Australian cyclists to Wanganui next week. They are to appear at a meeting on Cook's Gar- - dens next Wednesday night. All three have good record, details of which are given on another page in this issue. Do xvii (he Patea River. Negotiating many rapids en route, Messrs. G. Francis (Patea) and R. Bates (Waverley) made an adventurous journey down the Patea River during the holidays. The trip from Toko to the river mouth took three days in a fourteen-foot canoe, with sleeping bags, and food contained in two large cream cans to keep them dry. Prisoner at Large. According to the Wanganui police last night, Eugene Charles Dominic Patrick McCarthy, the prisoner who escaped from the lock-up at Palmerston North on Wednesday night, was still at large. McCarthy, aged 31, escaped while he was held on remand on a charge. He was known to have been at Longburn later on Wednesday night but had left when the police arrived. Con-missions in the Army. Six members of the Wellington West Coast Regiment will sit for an examination for commissions at Trenthair. on January 13. iney are Sergeant J. R. Barry (A Company. Wanganui), Corporal N. R. Ingle (*D Support Company, Marton)/ Sergeant C. H. Raven (C Company, Feilding), and Corporal H. Hayman (C Company, Taihape). The candidates will "undergo a verbal examination, and will return on January .15. Man's Interest in Cup. The story of a little man who displayed a deep interest in a valuable piece of plate at a civic luncheon in London was told by Canon S. Parr at a Christchurch Rotary Club luncheon. The particular piece of plate was a loving cup, which had been passed round the table, all the guests sipping the wine. The man was noticed following the progress of the cup round the table, and was questioned by detectives. Why was he so interested in it, they asked. He replied: “Because my teeth are in it.” Antarctic Does Not Appeal. Probably because the war is something of a “counter-attraction” or possibly because Dunedin experienced i too much snow last winter, there I were no applications by men or j youths from this city to join Ihe ( United States Antarctic expedition on i the journey to the polar regions. Great interest was displayed by tht , thousands who visited the ship, but no . one volunteered for service on the ( North Star. Any application would, ; however, have been in vain because i the-expedition could not take on any . more hands. There were no stowa- T ways on board when ihe North Star { left for the soutn. i Txt o Horses Killed. * Two horses were killed on the property of Mr. J. Edwards, of Horsham Downs, when a hay-stacker they were drawing struck the main high tension electric-power lines from Arapuni to Auckland. As a result pow : er was j cut off for some time. One of the ' lines broke and fell, the electric current travelling along the shaft of the stacker and striking the two horses. The owner, who was directing the horses with reins, did not feel any j shock. The switches at Arapuni t “tripped” immediately and power ( throughout the district was cut off for six minutes. < Two Eclipses in .194(1. j The year 1940 will be a poor one 1 for eclipses, so far as New Zealand is concerned. The minimum number possible, two eclipses, will occur dur- ] ing the coming year, and both of ] these will be solar ones. An annular j eclipse which will occur on April 7 . will be visible only in America, while 4 the second, a total solar eclipse, will ; be equally visible from South . America and the southern tip of Africa, in both of which places the total duration of obscuration will be about four minutes. As some compensation for the fact that neither of these phenomena will be visible in New Zealand, a transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the sun ‘ on November 1.1 wfll be visible in all stages from the Dominion. The last ( occasion on which such a transit, oc- 1 curred was in 1927, and there will not 1 be another until the year 1953. In ] centennial year it is interesting to recall that the European astronomical observation conducted in New . Zealand was an observation of a transit of Mercury made by Caplair Cook on the occasion of his first visit to these shores in November, 1769, and the incident lives in the names Mercury Bay, Red Mercury, and Great Mercury Islands, which the ’ famous navigator bestow'ed upon ‘ portions of the east coast of Hanraki Peninsula.