p. 527 | ITEMS OF NEWS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 24, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 44.

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ITEMS OF NEWS.

— Moody and Sankey have commenced revival meetings in Newcastle, England.

— The thermometer in northern Minnesota last week indicated eight degrees below zero.

— There are now 40,000 applications for reduction of rents before the Irish Land Commission.

— In a single year, diamonds to the value of $17,400,900 have passed through Cape Town post-office.

— The St. Gothard tunnel through the Alps, which has lately been completed, is nine and one-third miles long.

— Last year Ireland was having a famine; this year they are sending cabbages and potatoes to the United States.

— Two hundred and twenty-one towns and cities of Germany are now connected by the subterranean telegraph system.

— The Jews who have fled from the persecutions in Russia and Germany, are coming in large numbers to the United States.

— The gross earnings of all the railroads during the past year were in the aggregate $615,401,931, against $529,012,999 in 1879.

— The wheat crop of the United States for 1881 is estimated at about 369,000,000 bushels, and the corn crop at 1,194,000,000 bushels.

— The revenue from internal taxes for the past fiscal year reached $135,229,902, making a grand total for the last five years of $602,310,787.

— The Imbecile Asylum at Columbus, Ohio, was destroyed by fire Nov. 18. Over 700 persons were in the building, but all escaped.

— Professor Swift of Rochester University has discovered another comet. This is the seventh that has been discovered since January.

— The small-pox hospital at Snake Hill, N. J., is so overcrowded that the authorities are using tents for the overflow, and new cases are arriving daily.

— All the registered letters in the Hatton Garden, London, post-office were stolen recently. They contained valuables to the amount of about £100,000.

— A dispatch from Constantinople, Nov. 16, says: Five hundred persons are dying daily in Mecca from cholera. The steamers at Djidda refuse to embark returning pilgrims.

— The tunnel under the British Channel is likely to be constructed. The earth has been penetrated about a mile on each side, and indications are favorable for the work.

— Fifteen passengers were injured by the falling of a train through a trestle bridge, near Springfield, Ohio, Nov. 18. The supports of the bridge had been weakened by rains.

— Dr. Cunningham Geikie, author of the “Life and Words of Christ,” has resigned the charge which he has long held in Paris, and will assume charge of an Episcopal church in New York.

— Quite heavy rains fell last week throughout the State, doing a great amount of good. In some places the grass has started, and the ground has generally been rendered fit for ploughing.

— The complete annihilation of the village of Elm, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland, appears to be only a question of time and bad weather. The summit of the peak nearest the village is moving.

— The emperor of Japan has decided to create a Parliament, for the purpose of giving his people a constitutional form of government. The Japanese are surpassing the Russians in civilization.

— Dr. Benjamin Franklin Bache, a great grandson of Benjamin Franklin, died at Brooklyn, N. Y., recently, at the age of eighty-four years. He had been an officer in the United States Navy for sixty years.

— The British ship Edith Lorne foundered as she was crossing the bar at the mouth of the Columbia river, Nov. 17, and had to be abandoned. The ship was valued at $70,000, and the cargo of wheat, at $44,000.

— Suit has been commenced against seven Bowdoin College students, by the father of a student whom they had injured by hazing. Ten thousand dollars damages are asked in each case. Hazing will soon become unpopular.

— To guard against another scarcity of water in New York, the papers of that city are advocating the use of sea water for sprinkling the streets, flushing sewers, etc. The Croton water will then be used merely for household purposes.

— A serious land-slide occurred at Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 14. The soil of a hill on the south side slid into the valley on Walworth Run, damming the stream, and entailing a loss of $50,000, with a probability of an increase of damage.

— The truce between the Pacific Roads, and the Pacific Mail Steamship line has been broken by the roads, who propose to put an opposition line on the ocean. If by this means the old mail line is destroyed, the public will not be benefited.

— On the Second Avenue Elevated Railroad in New York, a trial of a compressed air locomotive was recently made, with entire satisfaction. The locomotive is capable of a higher rate of speed, and is free from the objectionable odor, smoke, and noise.

— November 20, two freight-trains collided on the bridge over the Kankakee river at Wilmington Ill., when a thirty-foot span gave way precipitating a engine and twelve cars into the stream. The damage to both train and bridge was quite heavy.

— At the late exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, a remarkable feat was accomplished. At seven o'clock in the evening, the Governors of Georgia, and Connecticut each wore suits of clothes that were made from cotton that was growing in the field at seven the same morning.

— The District Attorney of Monterey County, Cal., has issued a circular notifying all business men in the county that they will be prosecuted if they violate the Sunday law. Two saloon keepers in Salinas have been fined $10 each for keeping their saloons open on Sunday.

— November 16, an explosion, supposed to have been of dynamite, on the steamer Severn, bound from Bristol to Glasgow, carried away a portion of the decks, killed nine persons and severely wounded forty-three others. Four were taken to a hospital. These last were in a dying condition.

— Another accident recently occurred on the Seventh-street railroad in Oakland. As the train was passing Webster street, a ship carpenter, named Turner jumped from the train, and fell under it. Both of his legs were cut off. And yet people will not take warning. Who'll be the next?

— A party of disguised and armed men a few days ago entered the house of a farmer at Castle Island, County Kerry, Ireland, and asked him if he had paid his rent. Upon his answering in the affirmative, they began shooting at him, lodging three bullets in his thigh, and then beat him severely with their guns.

— According to the recent census, British India has a population of 252,541,210. The area of the provinces under British rule is 1,472,854 square miles, making the density of population 171 to the square mile. India's foreign commerce amounts to $577,000,000 a year in gold, and she has 14,000 miles of telegraph line.

— The International Trades Union Congress, met in Pittsburg last week. Over 400 delegates were present from different parts of the United States and Canada. The object of the meeting is to unite labor unions of all kinds, and also to ask Congress to pass an Act allowing a charter to be granted to a National Trades Union.

— An immense gun has recently been cast at the Scott Iron Works, Reading, Pa. It is twenty-five feet long, and is warranted to throw a shot twelve miles, and force it through a solid mass of wrought iron two feet thick. Those who look for a temporal millennium, doubtless think such instruments as this are designed for playthings.

— Several cases of typhoid fever in New York have been traced to a tomato-canning factory. The workmen are described as sleeping “fifty in one room, over a stable, on unchanged straw on the floor,” and as eating the worst kind of food. The factory is on Staten Island, in a marsh, and all the foul refuse collects in a black, stagnant pool near the stable.

— The fishing boat Pirate, from San Francisco, embarked with a crew of five on the 16th for a fishing trip to the Farallone islands. Nothing has been heard of her since, but a spar, an oar, and some other articles that have been picked up, have been identified as belonging to her. It is thought that she was swamped in crossing the bar of the Golden Gate.

— Jesse Baldwin, an Ohio farmer, had $17,000 in U. S. bonds, for which he insisted on receiving gold. When the money was paid to him at the Treasury Department, he put it in a satchel, carried it home, and put it in an old-fashioned safe. As a natural consequence, he was lately robbed of the whole amount, the thieves taking his horses and carriage to assist them in their flight.

— A dispatch from Portland, Oregon, Nov. 15, says: Small-pox is increasing at such a rate in Dayton, Washington Territory, that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company issued orders this morning stopping trains from running into the place. Passengers and mails will go no further than Walla Walla. More than 100 cases are now in Dayton, and deaths occur at the rate of two per day.

— The authorities of Basle, Switzerland, recently shipped to this country a confirmed criminal and pauper, as a short way to get rid of him. The American Consul protested that the United States does not desire such immigrants, and telegraphed the facts to the proper authorities. The probability is that those who sent the thief here, will have the pleasure of paying his passage back to Switzerland.

— It has been proved that alcohol is shipped every week from the Chicago market to various places in France and Italy where it serves as a basis of wines and brandies, which are exported to the United States under brands which have long been supposed to cover nothing that is not honest in trade. Statistics of the French wine-growing trade show that the United States alone consumes very much more of many brands of wine than is ever produced in the countries from which this wine pretends to come, and the records of our own Custom Houses prove that a very small percentage of these importations are concocted in this country.