p. 2 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 21, 1916

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Miss Jeannette Rankin, Republican, of Missoula, Mont., is the first woman to be elected to Congress.

— A new naval station has been completed at Chollas Heights, Cal. Over 70,000 feet of wire were used in the aerial system, which is arranged in three steel towers, each 600 feet high. The entire structure cost about $300,000.

— Many people will be interested to know that the midget who became the bride of Gen. Tom Thumb, fifty-three years ago, is still living in Middleboro, Mass., and passed her seventy-fifth birthday, October 31. She is now the wife of Count Magri, who is just a trifle taller than she.

— According to an article appearing in a London magazine, Orville Wright, the American aeroplane inventor, has presented all his patents to the English government. These patents are worth millions of dollars; now every English manufacturer has a right to use them as often as he chooses.

— The repairing and rebuilding of the Alaska Northern Railway is being satisfactorily carried out, it is reported. About 600 men are now working on it, and it costs the government $50,000 a month for wages alone. The work consists mainly of building bridges, eliminating high trestles with fills, and reducing grades.

— Congress reconvened December 4 for a three months’ session, with a calendar overcrowded with general legislation, facing railroad reforms and the high cost of living as new issues, and confronted with unprecedented estimates aggregating $1,654,819,654 to meet expenditures of the government for the fiscal year 1918.

— Temperance forces throughout the country will rejoice in the success of prohibition in four additional States as a result of the recent election. Michigan, Nebraska, Montana, and South Dakota have been added to the prohibition list, making twenty-three States, or almost one half of the Union, now in the dry column.

— Representative-elect O. D. Bleakley, of Franklin, Pa., arrived in Washington on the evening of November 21, in his own aeroplane, and earned the distinction of being the first Congressman to make his entrée to the national capital under such novel circumstances. He came from Philadelphia, making the trip in a little less than three hours.

— Before a crowd which filled Plaza McKinley, the open space in front of the Ayuntamiento, seat of the central government in the Philippines, the first Filipino congress was inaugurated on October 16. Nearly 20,000 people saw the first session of the first wholly elective national legislature the Philippines have ever had,—a session made possible by the passage at the last session of Congress of the Philippine bill.

— Last year the United States bought more than $1,000,000,000 worth of merchandise from tropical countries. There were brought into American ports more than $300,000,000 worth of sugar, $160,000,000 worth of rubber, $125,000,000 in raw silk, $115,000,000 in coffee, $60,000,000 in fibers, $40,000,000 in fruits and nuts, $40,000,000 in cotton, $35,000,000 worth of cacao, while the remainder of the $1,000,000,000 imports included a very large variety of items.

— Nearly three hundred years ago John Endicott, colonial governor of Massachusetts, planted a pear tree which a friend had sent him from England. For years he cared for it, and it grew famous for its delicious fruit. Today the tree is still bearing luxuriantly; it yielded about three thousand pears this season. Washington, Lincoln, Webster, and many other great men have tasted its fruit, and on one occasion a quantity of it was shipped to the royal palace in London.

— BERLIN: “Polish provinces occupied by troops of the central powers,” says the Overseas News Agency, “were the scene today [November 5] of a great and momentous historic event. Germany and Austria-Hungary by joint action proclaimed Warsaw and Lublin the kingdom of Poland, and reëstablished the right of the Polish nation to control its own destinies, to live an independent national life, and to govern itself by chosen representatives of the nation.”

— A movement has been launched by the World’s Court League, of which Hon. William H. Taft is honorary president, to organize an international council, with a view to calling a third Hague conference, perhaps before the close of the war. In the latter event, the conference would be prepared to act as a medium for peace proposals. After the war it would act as a permanent international council of conciliation for formulating and codifying new rules of international law.

— A copy of the New Testament, which is said to be one of the oldest now extant, has been brought to Portland by A. J. Eyth, formerly of New York. It has been in the possession of his family three hundred and fifty years, and was an old book when it came to them. The pages consist of palm leaf, engraved or written on in Egyptian Arabic. Mr. Eyth’s ancestors were missionaries, and one of them obtained this book in Egypt. Since then it has been handed down from father to son.

— Dr. Hipolito Irigoyen was recently inaugurated president of Argentina. He showed a decidedly democratic spirit, for while he is very wealthy and an educated man, he proposed to ride to the capitol for his inauguration in a street car, paying his own fare, and to wear his ordinary street clothes. His friends persuaded him to modify his plans far enough to wear a frock coat and to ride in a public taxicab. He took the oath of office, refused to make a speech, and was driven through the streets in a modern stage coach. His annual salary is $31,600, which, as he did with his former salary as professor of civic instruction in Buenos Aires Normal School, he turns over to the united charities of the city.

— The Russians are far ahead of the rest of the world in the use they make of sunflowers. One million acres are planted by them every year. The seeds are eaten as we eat peanuts, only always raw. A very nutritious bread is made from the seed ground to flour. Large quantities of unrefined yellow oil are used in illumination. Candles and soap are made from it. The “cake” left after the oil is extracted makes fine food for the Russian cattle. Silk is made of the fibers of the stalks, which are fine, silky, and very strong.

— The first resignations from the diplomatic corps, which are expected to be the forerunners of others as a consequence of President Wilson’s reëlection and the closing of his first term, were announced recently. Dr. Henry van Dyke, minister to the Netherlands, has resigned, and probably will be succeeded by John W. Garrett, of Baltimore, formerly minister to Argentina. Dr. van Dyke, it was explained, has been concerned over his health for some time, and also desired to return to his literary work after being abroad nearly four years.

— The fighting front, reckoning the battle alignment in all the theaters of war, extends in length about 2,500 miles, or more than two thirds the distance from Liverpool to New York. Fighting is continuous and violent on about a sixth of this 2,500 miles of front. The Roumanian western front is nearly 700 miles long, or 160 miles longer than the front on which the French, British, and Belgian armies are fighting. The density of troops in the various theaters of war ranges from 6,000 to 2,000 men a mile. The densest concentration in any war theater is on the Somme.

— The old blacksmith shop which inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write that famous poem, “The Village Blacksmith,” was torn down May 24 of this year. This old shop was located on Swan Street, Medford, Mass., and had been occupied for more than forty years by Henry Francis Moore, who was the blacksmith hero of Longfellow’s poem. A modern structure is to be erected on the site of this famous shop. When the old building was torn down, hundreds of men, women, and children went to the place to obtain souvenirs. Horseshoes and horseshoe nails were especially sought, and practically every scrap of old iron of this kind was carried away.

— Attorney-General Gregory has authorized the following formal announcement: “The Department of Justice is investigating the recent abnormal and suspicious increases in the prices of various necessaries of life, especially coal. Wherever any such increase is found to have been due to conspiracy or other unlawful action, the department will invoke against the offenders the severest penalties which the law prescribes.” Three separate investigations into the abnormally high prices of commodities, it was said at the department, are in progress, with a view of criminal prosecution of persons or corporations responsible for the increase in the prices of milk, bread, and coal. The Interstate Commerce Commission also is conducting an inquiry into the alleged shortage of coal cars, which middlemen claim is responsible for the rise in the price of coal.