News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 16, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A Cornell student has shown that he can live on eighty-five cents a week and thrive, his diet being butter, eggs, milk, and vegetables.

— In an address in New York City, Professor Parker, of Johns Hopkins, said there were now in various institutions in the United States 200,000 insane and feeble-minded persons, and the expense of caring for them is $80,000,000.

— Babies in the United States die at the rate of 300,000 a year, according to Dr. Cressey L. Wilbur, chief statistician for the vital statistics of the United States Census Bureau. This means that one baby out of every eight dies before it is a year old.

— Upon his return from Panama, Chairman Fitzgerald, of the House Committee on Appropriations, announces that the first ship will pass through the completed Panama Canal on Sept. 25, 1913, the four-hundredth anniversary of the day when Balboa and his intrepid comrades discovered the Pacific.

— Young Thorpe, the Indian in the Carlisle school who at the Olympic games in Stockholm proved himself the champion all-round athlete of the world, and who has made a similar record at football and other sports in this country, has quit athletics altogether because of his utter abhorrence of the large amount of notoriety he has received.

— The Pope has established a new bureau of administration and supervision. It has its offices at the Vatican, and its business is to instruct Italians who are immigrating to America, where they will find churches in the new land, and prevent their becoming indifferent to or estranged from the church. There are agents at the points of departure who keep in touch with the emigrants and give them instruction.

— On January 1, 7,052 visitors paid their formal farewell to President and Mrs. Taft at the annual New-year’s reception held at the White House.

— On Friday, January 3, the most destructive storm of the season swept the Atlantic coast, causing great property loss, and destroying a number of lives.

— The oil-tank steamship “Rosecrans,” from Monterey, Cal., bound for Portland, Oregon, ran aground on Peacock Spit, while crossing the Columbia River, early on the morning of January 7, and was lost with thirty-one members of her crew of thirty-five.

— Statistics compiled by the Interstate Commerce Commission show that 772 persons were killed in train accidents throughout the United States during 1912, as compared with 795 in 1911, 773 in 1910, and 606 in 1909. There were 13,698 collisions and derailments, and the damage caused reached a total of $11,527,000.

— Secretary MacVeagh, of the Treasury Department, has ordered that the common towel be abolished from railroad cars, vessels, all other interstate vehicles, and from railroad stations, in an amendment to the interstate quarantine regulation. This action follows closely the abolition of the common drinking-cup from use on interstate carriers. Towels may be used again only after having been sterilized in boiling water.

— President Taft recently pardoned Capt. William H. Van Schaick, who commanded the steamboat “General Slocum,” which was burned in the East River, off New York City, in 1904, with a loss of 1,030 lives. Captain Van Schaick was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for criminal negligence in not having sufficient life-saving equipment aboard his vessel. He is seventy-three years of age, and was paroled last August.

— Suffragists soon will publish in New York the first woman’s newspaper devoted exclusively to politics. The editorial staff has been assembled, and the first copy of the paper will soon be for sale on the streets, at five cents each. The editor-in-chief is Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch, leader of the Woman’s Political Union, and the associate editors are Mrs. Nora Blatch De Forest and Miss Beatrice Brown. The paper, which will appear weekly, is to be called The Woman’s Political World. Its aim is to obtain for women the franchise in New York in 1915.

— Queen Olga, of Greece, intends to visit the twenty-one monasteries on Mt. Athos, eight miles to the southeast of Salonica, thus breaking the rule prohibiting women visiting the sacred mountain, which has been strictly observed for 1,500 years. On many occasions the monks on the mountain have refused to permit royal ladies to visit them, always excusing themselves behind the legend that the Virgin Mary with her infant Christ visited the mountain, and that no woman had been allowed to do so since. “But now that the Greeks have conquered the territory, and the king and queen have proposed a visit to the mountain, the monks have summoned their council and decided that they have no course but to rescind the rule.”

— The first annual convention of the Woman’s National Democratic League convened in Washington, D. C., January 7.

— North Dakota farmers to the number of 513 entered a corn-growing contest last spring. The winner is the youngest farmer on the list—Harper Brush, aged twelve. On a four-acre plot he grew an average of 71.7 bushels of corn to the acre, for which feat he receives a prize of fifty dollars in gold.

— Although but a month has elapsed since Dr. Friedrich Franz Friedmann, of Germany, announced the discovery of a cure for tuberculosis, it has received more attention than any other alleged discovery in medicine during the past twenty-five years. Patients are taken to him in all stages of the disease, weak, emaciated, supported, borne on stretchers, and all are said to receive the same benefits. Dr. Friedmann takes Roentgen-ray photographs of all, in order that his assertions will not lack scientific proof. The cures are effected by means of the injection of turtle serum. It is to be hoped that a specific cure has been found for this terrible malady; however, it will be wise to reserve judgment for a season.

— Bavaria is determined to have a real king. An amendment to its constitution will be submitted to the diet in January, so as to permit dethroning mad King Otto, and crowning Prince Ludwig in his stead. King Otto occupies a unique position among the monarchs of the world in that he does not know he is king, although the crown of the ancient state of Bavaria has been his for twenty-five years, and every official act of the government has been done in his name. He is in his sixty-fourth year and entirely devoid of reason. He is always dressed in black; has a long beard, which he will allow no one to trim; and although he often washes his hands and face, can seldom be persuaded to take a bath. He is an inveterate smoker of cigarettes. His gaze is generally fixed on vacancy, and he does not appear to recognize even his servants, his malady having taken the form of stupor. Prince Luitpold, who was regent for twenty-five years, and who died recently, has been succeeded in that post by his son Ludwig.

— During the first moments of the new year Postmaster-General Hitchcock sent out from the Washington, D. C., post-office the first package to be entrusted to the domestic parcel-post service. This package contained a silver loving-cup addressed to the postmaster of New York City. This cup will be placed in the National Museum at Washington. A few words concerning parcel-post rates may be of interest. The country is divided into eight zones for the fixing of rates. The first zone covers a distance of fifty miles from the mailing point, and the charges are five cents for the first pound, and three cents for every additional pound within that zone. Beyond that the postage increases for each successive zone through which the package goes. The maximum rate is twelve cents a pound, which will carry a package across the continent, or even to Alaska or the Philippines. A parcel may be insured for ten cents, and if such a package is lost the government pays its value to the amount of fifty dollars, but not in excess of that amount.