News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Apr 3, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The senate of the State of Indiana has passed a bill providing for an obligatory medical examination as a condition of being lawfully married in that State. The certificate of health must be issued at least ten days before the marriage ceremony is performed.

— Moving pictures have fallen under the condemnation of high medical authority. Dr. G. M. Gould, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says they tire the eyes and the brain, and cause the evils that result from eye-strain, sick-headache, dizziness, upset stomach, lack of energy and appetite, sleeplessness, etc.

— Twenty-eight foreign nations have already accepted invitations to participate in the Panama-Pacific exposition which will be held in 1915.

— By the new antisaloon law in Illinois, which allows one saloon to every 500 inhabitants, 5,000 saloons have been closed in the city of Chicago alone.

— More people were murdered last year in the comparatively small city of Atlanta, Ga., than in all England with her 50,000,000 people. Back of practically all this slaughter are firearms and liquor.

— The Library of Congress is growing at the rate of 88,000 volumes a year. During the last twelve years its accessions have exceeded the total number of volumes accumulated during the entire preceding century.

— Mr. Alvin B. Giles, treasurer of a motion-picture company, states that at the present time American people are spending $500,000 daily on moving-picture shows. Every day in the United States more than five million persons seek this source of entertainment.

— Southern Italy is experiencing the severest winter in twenty years. Hard snow-storms with mercury several degrees below zero are almost unknown, yet Rome has experienced such a storm. At Messina the cold is severe, and Mt. Etna is said to be white with snow. There is much snow in Sicily and Calabria.

— Hundreds of inhabitants of the province of Fu Kien, China, have been killed during the past week or two, while offering armed resistance to the government troops engaged in destroying poppy plants in order to put an end to the opium traffic, according to an official report from the governor of the province, which is confirmed by several missionaries.

— Reports submitted to Postmaster-General Burleson show that approximately 50,000,000 parcel-post packages were handled throughout the postal service during the month of February, which is about 10,000,000 in excess of the number handled during the previous month. These figures are based on the amount of business done at the fifty largest post-offices, where about one half of the postal business of the United States is handled.

— More than a million dollars' worth of automobiles have been stolen in New York in the past five years. The situation is becoming acute for the insurance companies, which have been obliged to pay the loss. These companies have hired private detective agencies for the apprehension of the thieves. It is said that 110 cars of an average value of $3,000 have been reported stolen this year, and less than half of these have been recovered.

— Typewriters are now made for use in nearly 100 different languages, and they are sold the world over; but China has no typewriters that write its tongue, and probably never will have. The English alphabet has twenty-six letters. The typewriter produced for the Russian market is the largest made; but no typewriter could be made that could begin to be big enough for the Chinese language, which has no alphabet, but is represented by sign characters, of which there are about 50,000.