ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17242, 29 October 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS. Mrs Ernest Bird, Birmingham, has given birth to triplets—all girls. When swimming at Eastbourne Mr T. Watt caught with his hand a goodsized whiting, which he threw ashore.

One seventh of the British working population is now employed in the clothing trades.

Mr Edward Weare, aged 75, died while conducting a service at Biddest<?u Baptist Chapel, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

London Fire Brigade one day recently received, 20 false alarms, of which 15 were given maliciously by practical jokers.

Leicestershire miners’ wages for September were reduced by 3d per shift to the highest paid men and other grades in proportion. The vicar of Middleton, near Wlrksworth, Derbyshire, the Rev. G. J. Cottle, helped by 15 voluntary workers is building a parish hall.

Free grants of Canadian land were taken up in July by 659 persons, including 93 from the United States and 57 from the United Kingdom.

The general rate for the City of Westminster for the half-year ending next April will be 43 9d in the £, a decrease of Id. for the current half-year.

Agricultural shows in Glamorgan will probably have io be cancelled owing to the existence of foot-and-mouth disease on a farm at Llangeinor, near Bridgend.

Mr F. W. Dixon crashed at Brooklands track, Weybridge, Surrey, when travelling on a motor-cycle at about ilO miles an hour, but escaped with slight injuries.

The efforts of the British Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast the speeches at the opening of the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva were not successful.

Mr Frederick Kenneth head of an Edmonton Green firm of auctioneers, who disappeared recently, was found by friends at Clacton-on-Sea suffering from loss of memory. In the North Sea the Grimsby drifter Belovar secured such a big catch that the mizzen mast broke when an effort was made to heave the net inboard and the fishermen had to pick out the fish by hand.

The French war film, “ Verdun," will be presented in England under the patronage of the Lord Mayor of London, Verdun having been “ adopted ” by the City of London in 1920.

The school “ strike ” at Awre, near Newuham, Gloucestershire, has ended after a week, a more suitable motorvehicle having been provided to take the children to the Newnham school.

Horses are so rare in Yeovil, in Somerset, that a resident states that, apart from those belonging to the corporation, he doubts if there are half a dozen now owned in the town.

Bananas are said to exceed nearly any other fruit or vegetable in food values. They contain 460 calories per pound, as compared with potatoes, 385; milk, 325; macaroni, cooked, 415.

Parasol ants derive their name from the fact that they cut large pieces out of leaves for making nests and then march along carrying the pieoes over their heads like umbi-ellas.

Additional organisers are being appointed by the Junior Imperial League for the London,'South Wales and West Country areas, in preparation lor the extension of the franchise to women of 21. Mr John R. Blanchard, who served in the research ship William Sooresby in the Southern Seas, has returned to his homo at Hull with a collection of albatross eggs and photographs of the expedition.

Registered packages to the number of 2,000,000 pass through London’s head post office alone every year; many of these have contents valued at from £SOOO to £IO,OOO.

“ I would not bail him out, and so I let him have a night in the prison cells because I thought it would be a lesson to him,” said a father when his son was hound over at Kingston Juvenile Court charged with larceny. At Mark Cross, Sussex, Thomas Edwin Sales, aged 51, a postman with 37 years’ service at Growborough, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment in the second division tor stealing two £1 notes from a letter. The St. Hilda Colliery Band, of South Shields, has been disqualified from taking part in the Crystal Palace competition this year, as the pit has been closed for nearly two years and the bandsmen have become professiona!s. v

At a revision court at Hastings the deputy registration officer complained of insulting treatment received during his investigations, and added, “ More and more people are prepared to lose their vote rather than have to serve on a jury.”

So plentiful are runner beans in Devon that when a Newton Abbot street hawker placed a hundredweight oa a barrow in a main street with the notice “ Please help yourself ” five hours elapsed before ail the beans were taken.

Mr J. M. Andrews, Minister of Labour in the Northern Ireland Government, addressing a meeting of Ulster Unionists Labour Association, stated that in Northern Ireland 22,000 more people are now working than at the beginning of the year. Alexander Clements, aged 40, unemployed, of New-road, Canning Town, was fined 10s. at the Mansion House for waving a banner on an omnibus advertising a Sacco--VanzeHi demonstration, and, after being turned off the omnibus, creating a disturbance in Fleet-street, London.

“New Zealand’s relative position to her great rival, America,” said Dr. Tillyard at the lunch given to Dr Kidd recently (states the Nelson Mail), is like that of the Ilea to the elephant. “When we are big enough to bite her then she will turn round and try to squash us. Then will be the time to look out.” The remark was called forth by the Mayor’s reference to America as New Zealand’s and the -Empire’s great commercial rival.

Yvrifing to a friend in New Plymouth a Melbourne business man interested in the dairying industry saysi “The dairy industry is not expanding;' in fact it is going back. Mr. V. Crewe (the dairy expert) stated in an adtiress which he gave recently at the Melbourne show that there are 11,000 fewer persons engaged in dairying in Victoria to-day than whs the case in, 192£v - 1