News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 19, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— During the past year one aviator was killed for every 62,000 miles flown.

— King George of England rules 11,475,054 square miles of the earth’s territory, and 378,725,857 of its population.

— According to notice issued by Secretary of the Treasury MacVeagh recently, white phosphorous matches will not be permitted to be imported or exported after Jan. 1, 1914. This is in compliance with a recent act of Congress.

— The militant suffragettes of England decided at a recent meeting to resort to the use of explosives in the event of the government’s refusing to incorporate woman suffrage in the forthcoming franchise bill. Volunteers are to be called for to use bombs both inside and outside the House of Commons.

— In Vienna every man’s home is his dungeon from 10 P. M. to 6 A. M. Vienna is a city of flats, and at 10 P. M. the common entrance door of each block is closed and bolted. Thereafter persons passing in and out must pay a fine of 2d. to the concierge until midnight, and 4d. from that hour to 6 A. M. To go out to post a letter costs 2d., and the same amount to return. To prolong a visit to a friend after 10 P. M. means 2d. to get out of his house and 2d. more to enter your own. A natural result of this irritating tax is that of all capital cities Vienna is earliest to bed.

— Canada proposes to add three of the most powerful battle-ships afloat, at a cost of $35,000,000, to the naval defense of the British empire. These vessels are to be built in Great Britain, and will form part of the British fleet, but they can be recalled to form part of a Canadian navy should such a step be necessary.

— On December 6, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson submitted to President Taft the last annual report he will make as head of the United States Department of Agriculture. This report contains a summary of the agricultural advance of the country during his long term of sixteen years. Statistics show that the value of farm products has advanced from $4,000,000,000 to $9,532,000,000 annually.

— One of the reforms which the new leaders in China desire to carry out is the simplification of the system of writing. The old way required the student to memorize about 8,000 ideographs, or word-signs. A committee of learned men has been at work on the preparation of an alphabet, and has now devised one which will represent every sound in the Chinese tongue. This alphabet comprises forty-two characters, twenty-three of them vowels and nineteen consonants.

— A gun of fourteen-inch caliber and of fifty tons’ weight, the largest and newest type built by the United States government, at a cost of $130,000, exploded at the Sandy Hook proving-grounds December 9. While the explosion of smaller guns has taken scores of lives, the big fourteen-incher blew to pieces without causing so much as a scratch to the men around it. The two-ton breech-block was blown a quarter of a mile, the muzzle was hurled still farther away, and fragments were spread in every direction.

— The German government has decided to introduce an imperial petroleum monopoly in the wholesale oil trade. This new enterprise in oil will be conducted on the same plan as the Imperial Bank, which has been most successfully managed. It is declared that this new governmental effort will be a blow to the Standard Oil Company, as well as an economical venture. The Roumanian and Galician oil-wells which have been worked by German capital are to be taken over, and, in addition, American petroleum not under the control of the Standard will also be purchased. The imperial company will be formed by the greatest banks of Germany.

— Exhibits at the Museum of Anthropology of the University of California in San Francisco show that some of the aboriginal tribes supposed to be densely ignorant showed remarkable skill in invention. Among these is the Eskimo with his oil-heater and cook-stove, his water-tight boat, the arch in building, the water-proof overcoat, the best fish-spear ever invented, the spear-thrower, and the harpoon. From Peru comes a whistling jar said to be 2,200 years old. One pulls a string, and “chirp, chirp,” goes the little bird on the cover of this pre-Inca relic. The jar is double, Siamese-twin fashion, and when partly filled with water and tilted by the pulling of the string, the air rushes out of the little slit in the bird’s mouth, producing a call like a live bird. All the inventions are not to be credited to this generation.