ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17502, 8 September 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS. Nearly 3000 miles of canals are fa use in England. Motor-cars are more widely used in the provinces than in London. Cardiff has to-day not a single house unfit for human -habitation. Milk is in itself a complete food; its only rival in this respect being the oyster. The crops im the Baltic countries have been practically ruined by heavy rains. More pianos were made and sold in England last year than in any year since 1913. About £55,500 was collected in Greater London on Alexandra Rose Day, £2OOO more than last year. Edmonton, in North London, has sent a shield to Edmonton, Canada, for -competition among schoolboy cricketers. Detectives in the Dover-Ostend mail boat arrested, as the boat approached Ostend, two well-dressed Americans, who, it is alleged, they cought in the act of stealing a passenger’s wallet. A British miner Mr W. H. Dingle, aged 65, whose wife lives in Cornwall, was killed at the Kolar (Madras) goldfields by falling from a bucket 150 ft. to the bottom of the mine shaft. Ebbw Vale (Monmouthshire) coroner censured 30 spectators, including several good swimmers, for making no effort to save Ivor Thomas, aged 16, drowned at Beaufort. Precious stones are smuggled into the United States to such an extent that it is estimated that half the diamonds and other gems sold there have never paid duty. Apartments are so scarce in the larger German cities that thousands of young married couples are condemned to live for years in boardinghouses or with their parents. Mental strain, night clubs, -the cocktail habit, and excessive smoking are four of the reasons given for -the startling increase in the number of British people suffering from heart disease. Starting off in a race from Worcester, England, over two years ago, a homing pigeon has just returned to Us owner’s cote in Little Drayton, Shropshire. Of 47'? foreigners refused permission to land in England during the first three months of this year, 66 were German, 62 Scandinavian, 42 Polish, 36 French, and 11 Russian. While the number of deaths from influenza in Great Britain in the first 20 weeks of this year shows a great decrease on last year, the mortality due to measles is much higher. There are 15 divorces for every hundred marriages in the United States of America; the majority of wives who divorce their husbands do so on the plea of cruelty and desertion. The Rev. F. D. V. Narborough, formerly Fellow and Chaplain of Worcester College, Oxford, has been appointed Canon Residentiary of Bristol Cathedral. For the past three years, voluntary workers have been busy decorating the interior of Christ Church, Streatham Hill, London, the work being done in glowing colours and original designs.

Importation into Great Britain of live elm trees has been banned since i-925 in the effort to stop the spread of “ Dutch elm disease,” which has aiready done much damage on the Gon-» tinent. Presented to Prince Charles Edward., the young Pretender, by his admirers in 1745 a shield was recently sold in London’for £4OOO. The Pretender's snuffbox brought £l3O, and his pistols £2OO. \fter disappearing from a Norfolk church in 1919, a piece of silver plate has just been bought in a London saleroom The cup to which this belongs which also disappeared, was recovered in 1921. Storks, which are regarded as a great sanitary asset in Holland, are decreasing greatly in number, due, it is said, to their eating poisoned grasshoppers while wintering in South Africa. One short blast from a liner’s whistle when she meets another liner, means that she is taking the starboard course: two blasts that she is taking her course to port; three that she is going fuii speed astern. A new record was made at Hie Llanelly (South Wales.) Steel Company's sheet mills galvanising department when a workman produced 27 tons in a shift, two tons more than the previous record. Every known Scottish word will be included iu the new dictionary which is projected by an Aberdeen professor. The work will take about ten years to complete. The first Scottish dictionary was produced by a Scottish minister in 1808. Tfic rose topped the list for the third successive year, in a flower popularity census taken in 259 schools in New York State. This flower received nearly half of 900,000 votes recorded, next coming the carnation, the tulip, and the violet. England manufactures thousands of millions of needles every year, and supplies practically every other country In the world, 80 per cent, of the output of Redditch being exported. Yet no one has discovered where all the old needles go. Mrs Sarah Coe, of Hospital-road Burv St. Edmunds, Suffolk, has been presented witht a framed photograph of the King, from whom she iias received a congratulatory letter on her IOOHi birthday anniversary, and she lias aUo received 100 new shillings subscribed by the corporation and inhabitants of Bury St. Edmunds. Flame-throwers, as used by the German forces during the Great War, have been suggested as a means of melting snow and ice to make a takingoff ground for the aeroplane of Captain Wilkins, the Polar airman. But by the Treaty of Versailles Germany is forbidden to construct this terrible weapon.