News and Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 37.

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News and Notes.

SECULAR.

—The Porte has given notice that Turkey accepts Alexander’s abdication.

—At Bath, Me., 550 shipbuilders have struck on account of a cut in wages.

—Lightning caused a $250,000 fire at Chippewa Falls, Wis., on the 16th inst.

—The deaths from cholera in Seoul, Corea, now average about five hundred daily.

—Another slight shock of earthquake was felt at Charleston on the morning of September 15.

—Two bakers were each fined 10 shillings and costs, in London, recently for baking bread on Sunday.

—On the 16th inst. a terrible storm swept over Southeastern Michigan, doing a great deal of damage to property.

—The bark Lizzie Croter reached Boston from Matanzas, Cuba, September 12, having lost five of her crew from yellow fever.

—The Philadelphia Ledger of September 3 says that there was frost in parts of New York and Pennsylvania the day before.

—Cholera is dying out in Yokohama, Japan, but is still raging in Tokio and vicinity. The total number of cases up to August 23, was 59,087; deaths 37,544.

—The main shaft of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was the scene of an extensive cave-in on the 13th inst. Several miners lost their lives.

—Fifteen thousand dollars will be paid by the Government for each design which is accepted for the two armored vessels which it is proposed to build.

—September 13 the French authorities at Havre seized eleven English fishing-boats for infringing international maritime and fisheries laws in the channel.

—The Albert bridge, spanning the Lagan River, at Belfast, collapsed on the 15th inst. Twenty persons were thrown into the river, four of whom were drowned.

—A suspension bridge over the Ostrawitza River, in Moravia, collapsed on the 15th inst., while a squadron of ulans were riding across. Several lives were lost.

—The Sultan is insisting on the withdrawal of all British forces from Egypt. In the demand Turkey is being openly encouraged by France, and secretly by Russia.

—Damage to the amount of $1,000,000 was recently done in Paris and its environs by a hailstorm. The Bois de Vincennes resembles a forest riddled by cannon-balls.

—Minneapolis, Minn., is said to be turning out more than 25,000 barrels of flour a day, or enough to supply the three largest standing armies of Europe with bread.

—Cholera is said to be gaining ground in Austria. The people distrust the doctors and conceal their sick as long as possible. The doctors are frequently stoned in the streets.

—The Viceroy of Canton, China, has announced a compulsory loan of about $3,000,000 to be taken by wealthy persons. Many threaten resistance, but all will have to subscribe.

—Twelve persons were killed and seven seriously wounded by a railroad collision near Silver Creek, N. Y., on the 14th inst. The train was an excursion train from Ashtabula, Ohio.

—The Labrador fisheries are an entire failure. The catch this year will not pay the cost of transportation and supplies. There is said to be great destitution among thousands of people who are dependent upon these fisheries.

—El Coyote, the noted Mexican bandit leader, who for three years has been causing the authorities of that country as much trouble as Geronimo caused this country, has at last been killed.

—One-third of the native police of Hongkong have been detected in taking bribes from gambling-house keepers. So it seems that Hongkong is not so very far behind some of our large American cities after all.

—On the 13th inst. a yacht propelled by electricity made a trip from Dover to Calais and return in eight hours and six minutes actual running time. Her accumulators were charged only once for the whole trip.

—On the night of the 12th inst. a small cyclone swept down upon New York doing considerable damage to telegraph poles, small sailing craft, etc. The same storm did some damage in Connecticut. No lives were lost.

—A late London dispatch says: “Great excitement has been created at Chatham by the unexpected receipt of urgent orders from the Admiralty to expedite the completion of the men-of-war. This is regarded as indicating possible continental complications.”

—A band of about 200 robbers near Canton, China, a few days since, defeated a body of 500 troops sent to capture them, killing and wounding a large number. In Mexico such an occurrence would be called a “revolution,” and the robbers would be known as “revolutionists.”

—Lord Randolph Churchill proposes to reform the English civil service. The abuses are said to be high salaries, short hours, excessive staffs, extravagant pensions, imperfect supervision over accounts, antiquated methods of business, and general incompetence and mismanagement.

—Sargent Brainard, one of the six survivors of the late Greely expedition, proposes to return to the Arctic regions in 1890. The expedition will have for its sole object the exploration of Hayes’s Sound, and bringing back of the original records and the scientific collection of specimens abandoned by the Greely party at Fort Conger.

—A pitiful story of the condition of working people in Belgium is told by a delegate to the International Trades Union recently in session at Paris. He says that miners work for 38 cents a day, and that some of them toil 500 feet below the surface of the ground for as little as 20 cents a day. Even these small wages are not always paid in cash, some of the employers paying their hands in flour and other necessaries, and trading in these supplies.

—The gale which struck Galveston last month passed over the island of St. Vincent, in the West Indies, on the 16th, having laid waste the whole southern part of the island. Thousands of valuable trees were destroyed, particularly the nutmegs and the bread-fruit trees. Five churches and mission-houses were blown down, besides three hundred houses, with many more seriously damaged. Five persons were killed and thirty injured. One thousand five hundred persons were reported destitute.