ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17466, 28 July 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS.

Taxicabs are now about 20 yean old.

Chemicafly speaking, ordinary sugar is an alcohol.

The London ’buses ran over 560,000 miles on Easter Bank holiday.

Camels and pigs are said to be the only animals that cannot swim-

Miss Agnes Murdoch, a resident of Glasgow, celebrated her 105th birthday last month.

Only two transatlantic: telephone calls have been booked so far this year from Manchester.

Costers were originally sellers of costard apples. They were then called costard mongers.

A room decorated with blue tiles has been excavated at the Sakkara Pyramid in Egypt.

One of the passengers in an Imperial Airways liner from London .to Paris was a woman of 90.

A Derby sweepstake organised by Bexley, Kent, Cricket Club, was stopped by Scotland Yard.

Scorpions are known to have fasted for 3GB days, and spiders have existed for 17 months without food.

A burglar who broke into a cinema at Bath left a note saying: “Sorry I have made a mess; I forgot my keys.”

Count Karolyi, the Hungarian statesman, has left Havana for Mexico, where he proposes to study the agrarian problem.

The Mayor of Poole, Dorsetshire, has r considered his decision not to observe the ancient custom of beating the harbour bounds.

The flag over the Admiralty in Whitehall, London, is never lowered, as a sign that the work of the Board of Admiralty never ceases.

Sir Richard Ashmole Cooper was presented with the freedom of Lichfield, Staffordshire, for his gift to the city of the Friary Estate.

The sailing ship is dying fast; during 1927 Great Britain and Ireland launched 371 merchant ships, but not one sailing ship was built.

The British film industry is already immensely overcrowded, one agent alone having between 20 and 30 professional people on his books.

Britain's sheep population is nearly half a million lower than it was in 1914, while there are over a million fewer pigs than there were in 1924.

The pilot of an aeroplane in the Warsaw-Prague-Paris service was lulled and his only passenger severely injured in a crash near Liebau, Silesia.

A python 25ft long, a giraffe 20ft tall, an elephant weighing four tons, and an insect measuring 12in. are among the “records” of the London Zoo.

While bronze tablets are affixed to six houses in which Charles Dickens lived in London, there is not a single statue to the great novelist in that metropolis.

“Of all the patients in British hospitals with heart disease, 90 per centof those under 10 years of age are suffering because of rheumatism,” said an official lately.

Hissing is not permitted in the British Parliament. The rule forbidding it—“whoever hisseth shall answer for it at the bar as a breach of order and contempt"—dates back to IGO4.

Mr W. H- Dunkley, who modelled a new sort of perambulator on the tramcar principle, and so rendered a great service to babies, has died in Birmingham. He was a great Salvationist.

Good food is not altogether a matter of price- There is no better green food than a cabbage, while a herring supplies nearly as much body-building food as the same weight of salmon.

One of the smallest income taxes ever collected has just been paid in New Jersey. It amounted to Id. The largest, received, at the same collector’s office at the same time, amounted to £IBO,OOO.

So great has been the demand for tickets for the Wimbledon _ tennis championships this year that it is estimated that more than £40,000 will have to be returned to disappointed applicants.

The expression, “The game’s not •worth the candle,” arose when candles were expensive and card-playing for money was prevalent- Small stakes meant that the illumination came to more than possible winnings.

The first wireless telephone conversation between Vancouver (8.C.) and London, a distance of some 7000 miles, took place recently. The call is said to be the longest telephone conversation ever made within the British Empire.

After completing 10 years’ service without being involved in any accident for which they are held to blame, drivers of the London General Omnibus Company are to receive a gold medallion from the Kational Safety First Association.

In clearing and rebuilding the slum areas of Kensington, London, the new block of flats are being given Dickens names, as many of the scenes of “Oliver Twist are reputed to be laid there. The blocks known as “Pickwick” and “Oliver" Houses are already completed.

“ You might have gone crook had the defendant pulled up his car?" was a question asked a witness by a young counsel in the Magistrate’s Court at Oamaru last week. His Worship: What was that remark? Counsel: I asked her if she would have “gone crook." His Worship: Please put your questions in a proper manner.

Describing her husband’s disposition, a wife who sought a maintenance order at the Magistrate’s Court, -Wanganui. said he had threatened to illuse her so as to provide a sensation for the Press. On another occasion he had taken the luncheon she had prepared for him and kicked it abou* like a football.