ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15359, 6 October 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS.

Horses know at once when they have a nervous rider.

Only nine deaths occurred out of a total of 784 street accidents in the City of London in 1921.

Elementary education in £reat Britain, it is estimated, will cost £33,069,100 during this year. In the 295 bull-fights held in Spain during 1921, four bult-fighterS, 28,764 hsrses, and 1692 bulls were killed.

Natives of the interior of Africa hoard cattle as their wealth. They never kill or sell an ox.

There are altogether about 400 street telephones kiosks in England, practically all of them in the provinces.

The copper money bearing the uncrowned head of Queen Victoria is being called in by the Bank of England.

Cabinets of cigars, containing as many as 10,000, and costing up to 1000 guineas, are luxuries procurable by millionaires.

About 18,000,000 tons of coal are consumed in London annually, 5,000,000 tons being used for domestic purposes.

Special aircraft rbr high-speed mail services over long distances should have three engines and travel normally on two.

Knowledge of the coming weather changes shown by birds as attributed to atmospheric pressure on their nerves.

Machines for the detection of the deadly carbon monoxide in gas, for use in American mines are now being tested.

'Treasure estimated at £1,000,000 is said to be lying in the Wash (Lincolnshire). It belongs to King John, and was lost in 1217.

The largest towns in Kent (Eng.) are Gillingham, with 54,026 inhabitants; Margate, with 46,480; and Chatham, with 42,013.

x Coal dust powder, specially prepared, is the latest aid to beauty. II is placed round the eyes to enhance the whiteness of the orbs.

The Post Office, England, on April J had a staff'of 181,173; it is the only Civil Service department with a smaller staff than in pre-war days.

At one Bavarian hotel a visitor found the tablecloths and napkins to be paper, the butter margarine, the coffee oats, and.the rice breadcrumbs. St. Kilda, Britain’s most remote island, with a population of eighty souls, is cut olf eight months in the year by the stormy seas on its rocky shores.

When does a boy become a man? A committee of the Camberwell Borough (Eng.) has decided that the change takes place at the age at eighteen.

Household pets are. losing . their popularity amongst children. Boys especially are now more interested in wireless and other mechanical apparatus.

Photographic transmission of telegrams is to be tried in France. By this method copies of a message in the sender's • own handwriting will be delivered to the addressee.

Over 300 blind people are being trained as gardeners by (he “Guild of Blind Gardeners”, (Eng.), which was founded by a lady, herself sightless, who was a keen gardener. For the use of the Metropolitan Police Force (Eng.), a new edition of the “Instruction 'Book” has been issued. It cantains 050 nlosjely-printed pages, and weights nearly 31b.

In order to record native tunes, a West African native of giant stature was invited to sing into a gramophone; so powerful was his voice, however, that it wrecked the machine.. Girls who remain at elementary schools till the age of fourteen are more apt to develop round shoulders than are boys, as they grow faster and do not take as much exercise.

After buying a wooden mantel-board for a shilling at a second-hand furniture shop at Croydon (Eng.), a woman took off the -cloth covering and found twenty-one £1 Treasury notes. Athough the personnel of the British Army and Navy js about 40,000 less than in 1913-1914, the annual cost to the country of these services is nearly £60,000,000 more. While a briar root was being cut to make pipe bowls, a stone of fair size was discovered; geologists say that this stone must have been imprisoned in the root for 1000 years.

The three largest gas companies in London now supply more than three times as many gas-heating and cooking stoves as twenty years ago, when the figure stood at 623,185. Broadcasting from the bottom of the sea will be a feature of diving exhibitions at Fo'lkstone (Eng.) by Captain Lawson Smith, using a specially constructed wireless transmitting set. The introduction of a small quantity ol a recently discovered “sneeze gas” into illuminating gas has been suggested by an American expert with a view' to lessening suicide by gas poisoning.

A wmman was hanging out clothes at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, when a brown owl flew dowm from a tree apd attacked her head and face. It was found that the owl had a nest of young birds close by. , 1

French novelists formerly wrote at great length; one novel, entitled “Grand Cyrus,” ran to ten volumes, but this was exceeded by another, which filled no fewer than twenty-three volumes.

Frogs by the thousand are needed annually for scientific research in the hospitals. Before the war collecting them was quite a lucrative business, but few men will take the trouble to catch frogs now-days.

City clerks and other office workers are earning good wages as bricklayers in New York; they are being trained at the Y.M.C.A., where classes are also held in plastering and other building operations.

Accounts of showers of fishes, according to one scientist, are not necessarily “fish stories.” He says such falls of fishes from the sky may he caused by high winds, whirlwinds, and waterspouts that draw' up thn fishes from the w'aler and then let . AhfiHL.QDQ&^^4h^.ii£nmiSa^aeßQti.-