News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 12, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A typewriter invented in Germany is said to do perfect work, although it is small enough to be carried in a pocket.

— Chicago is now taking 10,000 cubic feet of water per second from the Great Lakes for its sewers. The city desires to take more, but Canada and the American cities on the Lakes protested. The United States and International Commission has decided that the protest is just.

— Like many other inventions, perforated stamps were the result of an accident. A man just about to start on a horseback ride wanted to stamp a letter, but could not find knife or scissors with which to cut a single stamp from the sheet. He suddenly thought of his spur. Running the rowel along, he perforated the edges of the stamp, tore it off, and thus started a new invention.

— An English firm has brought out a new luminous varnish for automobiles, which is said to render a car, without being fitted with lamps, visible for a long distance on a dark night.

— Chile yields to no other country in the extent of her unbroken coast line, which extends from Peru to Cape Horn, a distance of about 4,000 miles. The Chilean government is now engaged in making this great coast safe for mariners by erecting lighthouses, at dangerous points, along its entire length.

— James Bryce, British ambassador to the United States since 1907, has resigned his position. He is seventy-four years of age, and will retire from public life, returning to his home in England within a few months. Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, now minister at Stockholm, Sweden, has been named as a probable successor.

— The Navy Department will recommend to Congress in December the construction of a one-thousand-foot naval dry dock on the Atlantic coast, probably at New York. A dock of similar size now building at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is about one third finished, and will cost nearly $3,500,000.

— A German surveying vessel has been taking soundings in the Pacific Ocean, and has discovered a depth of over 32,000 feet, or over six miles. It would take the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, with Snowdon on top of it, to reach from the ocean bed to the surface of the water. The greatest depth found in the Atlantic Ocean is 23,250 feet.

— President Taft has issued a proclamation fixing the rates that the foreign shipping of the world shall pay for passage through the Panama Canal. The proclamation, made under authority of the Canal Act passed by Congress in August, establishes a merchant-vessel rate of $1.20 per net ton of actual carrying capacity, with a reduction of forty per cent on ships in ballast.

— It is said that American cedars furnish the only wood known of which good lead-pencils can be made, and in connection with this information we learn that American cedars are becoming scarce. The pencil industry is a big one, and, curiously enough perhaps, it is said to be bigger to-day than it was before the day of typewriters. A factory in Germany turns out annually 300,000,000 lead-pencils made out of the wood of the cedar-tree of America.

— Several years ago a plan to tunnel under Bering Strait and connect the railway systems of North America and Siberia aroused much interest. At the time nothing came of the plan. Now, according to the Electrical World, it has been revived in earnest, with the result that it may some day be possible to travel by train all the way from New York to the capitals of Europe. Both in Alaska and in Siberia long railway lines will have to be built to connect with the tunnel entrances. The tunnel itself will have to be forty miles long. The promoters purpose to sink shafts from islands in the middle of Bering Strait, so that they can begin work at several points at the same time. These shafts would ultimately serve to ventilate the tunnel.

— France has reason for searchings of heart over the great increase in drinking. During five years the consumption of alcoholic drinks generally has increased twenty-two per cent, and of that most deadly of all, absinth, forty per cent; and this although a special tax has been placed on it. Last year 34,500,000 gallons paid duty, and it is estimated that that was only one third of the amount used. Many owners of vineyards and orchards distil liquor.

— According to a special report just issued by the New York custom-house, no city in the world, either ancient or modern, has ever owned such a fabulous collection of gems and works of art as New York can boast of to-day. The total value of registered jewels, privately owned, is estimated at over $250,000,000, while at least $500,000,000 worth of priceless paintings, statuary, and other objets d’art are to be found in the homes of the multimillionaires along Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive.

— The political campaign is ended. The accounts are being audited. The Democratic party spent $815,052. The Republican party reports expenses amounting to $744,688. The Progressives spent nearly as much as the Democrats. The Socialist and Prohibition parties also had expenses. There were many private expenses of politicians of which there is no record. Much money was lost through betting on the results. It has undoubtedly cost the country in round numbers over $4,000,000 to elect a president.

— The sun will regulate the lights in the acetylene beacons that are to line the Panama Canal, if a regulating device now under consideration meets the requirements of the canal engineers. Each of the new regulators contains a copper cylinder that expands under the influence of sunlight, and thus closes a valve and shuts off the flow of gas to the burners. A small pilot flame only is left burning. At sunset, or when the sun is obscured, the cylinder contracts, a spring opens the valve, and the gas flows to the burner. The apparatus is said to reduce the consumption of gas materially.

— The most remarkable town in the world, in some respects at least, is Ironspot, with 700 inhabitants, in southern Ohio. The Ironspot post-office was closed some months ago because the postmaster had not sold a single stamp in five weeks, nor had he received any incoming or outgoing mail. The people explain that they have no friends to write to, and that they are all too busy anyhow. There has not been an idle man in Ironspot since 1909. The mines are running full time, and every miner owns his own home. Some time ago the police department disbanded, the chief declaring there had been no arrests made within six months, and that it was only a waste of public money to keep salaried policemen. The village records one fire in two years. The damage then amounted to $300. A recent census showed that the population is composed of 637 Irishmen, 11 Welshmen, and 52 Germans. Until October, 1911, there were only eleven men and women in Ironspot who had “no church.” The school-teachers of Ironspot, four in number, declare that Ironspot children are unusually bright, owing to the moral influence of the town.