p. 23 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 31, 1916

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

—On August 9 a cloud-burst swept the Cabin Creek and Coal River valleys, near Charleston, W. Va., spreading devastation throughout the district. Seven towns are in ruins, and the loss of life is placed at 150. Property valued at $1,000,000 was destroyed, and 5,000 persons are homeless.

—On the spot in the old Maryland statehouse, at Annapolis, where George Washington resigned his commission in the Continental Army, a wedding ceremony was recently conducted entirely in Esperanto—the first of its kind ever performed.

—Newfoundland, oldest of the British colonies,—by many erroneously thought to be a province in the Dominion of Canada,—is about to put into operation a most stringent prohibitory law. At the end of this year the law will be in full force, forbidding the importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage.

—It is announced that a cure for eruptive typhus, the disease which made such terrible ravages in Serbia, has been discovered by two Paris doctors. The physicians have described their discovery to the Academy of Medicine. It is a serum found after exhaustive experiments. Its use reduced the death rate from twenty-five to three per cent.

—Swift & Co., of Chicago, have announced the adoption of a pension system for their 30,000 employees. The company will supply all the funds, and the workers will not be required to contribute, as is the case in many instances. The pensions will run from $140 to $5,000 a year, and will go mainly to those who have worked twenty-five years or have been rendered unfit for work through accident.

—Harry McNish, a member of the Shackleton expedition into the Antarctic, is the first of that party to return to London. His story of Sir Ernest’s trip across the open sea from Elephant Island to South Georgia in search of help, adds another epic to history. McNish believes the worst danger to the members of the expedition left on Elephant Island, whom Sir Ernest is now trying to rescue, is that they must believe their chief and his crew did not survive the rescue trip. McNish and three others decked over the largest boat Sir Ernest had on Elephant Island with sledge runners, box lids, and canvas. For two weeks there were constant storms, the sun not being visible for observations half a dozen times. One man was employed constantly with an ax cutting off the ice which formed on the boat, but even then the boat became so weighted that large quantities of provisions, and even the oars, had to be jettisoned to keep afloat. They even lost the sea anchor, but Sir Ernest kept up confidence, and finally they sighted the west coast of South Georgia during a snowstorm. The wind was blowing a hurricane, so they had to lay off the coast for a day before they could land, and then they reached shore only by sleepless industry and a chance turn of the wind. McNish has little hope of the rescue of the men left on Elephant Island.