p. 19 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 10, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 38.

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News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The Panama Canal is lighted along its entire length by electricity, for lighthouses, buoys, etc.

— Near Boulder, Colo., twenty-five beavers recently gnawed down 100 trees, some of them three feet thick.

— A railroad bridge in Switzerland has the largest masonry arch in the world, 205 feet high, with a span of 330 feet.

— The United States' bill for diamonds the last decade has been just about enough to buy and build the Panama Canal.

— The Eiffel Tower, Paris, recently received a coat of orange paint. It cost $20,000. Sixty thousand pounds of paint were used, and it took fifty painters to put it on.

— The Anti-Saloon League of America, working through its Lincoln-Lee Legion, plans to make World's Temperance Sunday, November 8, a big factor in the campaign for national prohibition. — The British coast is so well protected with lighthouses that if a ship sailed right around England, Scotland, and Ireland by night, only on six occasions would it be where it could not see the flash of a lighthouse lantern.

— The population in the reconstructed Balkan States is distributed, according to the Geographical Journal, as follows: Turkey in Europe, 1,590,000; Bulgaria, 4,467,006; Roumania, 7,514,976; Servia, 4,547,990; Greece, 4,363,000; Montenegro, 516,000. These figures are from the latest available estimates.

— Sterilizing milk by electricity is an experiment that is being made in Liverpool. An electric current of high voltage is passed through the milk while it is flowing. The advantage claimed over sterilization by steam is that the milk tastes the same as when it leaves the cow. Strict tests seem to show that any tubercular or other contamination is removed. Leading bacteriologists are studying the process very closely.

— A perennial ice house, requiring no labor to keep it full and independent of an open or closed winter, has been discovered in New Jersey. On one of the hottest days this summer a lumberman, noticing a cold draft from a space covered with bushes and trees, investigated the phenomenon and found a cavern of solid rock, from which 300 pounds of ice were soon cut. The thick foliage overhead prevents the rays of the sun from striking the rock, beneath which the water congeals.

— Reports which come from various parts of the country indicate that this will be a busier season in church building than there has been for ten years past, despite the talk of financial and industrial depression. Contracts thus far let call for structures that will cost between $35,000,000 and $40,000,000. While all this money may not be spent upon the buildings before the end of this year, contracts uncompleted at the beginning of the season will make the total expenditure this year approximately $40,000,000.

— About forty years ago, on Aug. 4, 1874, a group of clergymen and Sunday-school teachers held the first Chautauqua meeting. These summer Chautauquas are being held in 3,000 American cities and towns. It is estimated that by the end of the season in September, 8,000,000 persons will have paid their admissions to Chautauqua tents and auditoriums, and that approximately $7,500,000 will have been disbursed as gross expenses for the holding of Chautauquas. Such is the popularity which has been attained by the Chautauqua, "the most American thing in America."

— In the calendar year 1913 the Pennsylvania Railroad lines east of Pittsburgh, Pa., carried 108,000,000 passengers without the loss of a life from a train accident. The story of exemption from accident is made more impressive when it is stated that the record of six months means the safe operation by day and night, in all kinds of weather, of 680,000 passenger trains. At the same time approximately as many freight trains are being operated. On the Pennsylvania lines east of Pittsburgh no passenger has been killed in a train accident since 1912. During this period these lines have carried more than 161,000,000 persons without the loss of a single life in a train accident. — Approximately 584,000 acres of land in California and Oregon have been set aside by Secretary Lane of the Interior Department under the enlarged homestead act. The designations include nearly 300,000 acres in California and 284,000 acres in Oregon. The Secretary also has recommended to President Wilson the restoration of 129,601 acres of withdrawn land in Montana and more than 43,000 acres in western Wyoming. These lands have been classified as coal lands, but examination by the geological survey has shown that they possess but little coal.