News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 21, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Ford's theater, the building in which President Lincoln was shot and which now houses many of the records of the adjutant-general of the army, virtually has been condemned by President Taft's economy and efficiency commission. The building is considered by the commission to be insanitary and unsafe.

— A diamond weighing 1,649 carats has been discovered in the Premier mines, near Johannesburg, British South Africa. This is now the largest diamond in the world. The famous Cullinan diamond, which was found in the same mine in 1905, weighed 3,024 carats, but it was cut into eleven separate stones.

— Dr. Victor C. Vaughn, of the University of Michigan, advocates vaccination against tuberculosis. He says he has had success in vaccinating the unaffected members of a household when one or two have consumption. He used the non-poisonous residue of the tubercle bacillus, and urges that it be generally employed.

— Porto Rico is to have a free port, and will thus evade the United States customs laws which make all foreign goods landed in United States territory dutiable, or requires the depositing of a bond equal to the amount of the duty. This is the announcement of Vice-Governor Carrol. The port will be opened for the accommodation of the European, American, and Panama Canal trade.

— Ten million dollars will be appropriated Jan. 1, 1913, by the associated interests controlling the Bell telephone system, the Western Union Telegraph Company, and the Western Electric Company, as a permanent pension fund for their 175,000 employees. Sick benefits and life-insurance will be a feature of the pension system. Annual appropriations from the treasuries of the allied companies will keep the fund up to $10,000,000.

— John D. Rockefeller is having an extensive telephone system installed in his new million-dollar residence, at Pocantico Hills, N. Y., and when it is ready for operation he will be his own operator. The system is intercommunicating, and will have 33 extensions. It was especially designed for Mr. Rockefeller, and there is not another one like it. By pressing a button, he may call any room from any other room in the house, and the conversation can not be overheard by any one else, because when he talks he is automatically cut off from other stations.

— An artificial milk, manufactured from vegetables, which is said to contain all the elements of the best cow's milk, and can be used for the same purposes, was shown recently to a gathering of scientists in London. The discovery was the work of three Germans, who spent three years in perfecting it. The process of manufacture is simple, and always produces the same result. It is not touched by hand, nor exposed to atmospheric influence until it is poured into bottles for delivery. The principal vegetable used in the manufacture of the milk is the Seya bean.

— The Nobel prize for medicine this year comes to this country, having been awarded to Dr. Alexis Carrel, of New York City. Dr. Carrel has been in this country only since 1905. He is a Frenchman, a graduate of the University of Lyons. Before that time his work as an original investigator was widely known, and yet he is now only thirty-nine years old. His greatest achievements are in the suture of blood-vessels and the transplantation of organs.

— Two aviators, Lieutenant-Commodore Mustin, of the United States Navy, and Mr. Reid, had a most unusual experience. They left Cape May for the Philadelphia (Pa.) navy-yard and were flying one hundred feet above the ground. Their engine exploded, all four cylinders blowing out together. The hydroaeroplane fell into the Maurice River, going down so slowly they were not hurt. The pontoons kept them afloat, and they drifted around for fifteen hours before they were rescued.

— The English papers continue to give accounts of the funeral of General Booth. Such funerals for religious leaders have been seen in London only twice before, and they were the funerals of David Livingstone and Charles H. Spurgeon. In these three cases not only was the outpouring of the people by the tens of thousands, but the universal grief was wonderful. At Booth's grave, when his daughter could not sing the song she sang to him when dying, she asked the great throng to sing it. Thousands began it, but broke down, weeping.

— Vihljalmar Stefansson, the explorer, has reached New York after four years in the arctic regions. He started April 21, 1910, from Cape May, accompanied by three Eskimos. He crossed a region of ice and snow for two hundred fifty miles to Cape Bixley, which region was entirely uninhabited. Beyond it he found white Eskimos. For a year he lived among them, going from village to village. In the Coronation Gulf region he says there are two thousand of these Eskimos, divided into thirteen tribes. They had never seen a white man except themselves.

— In the near future France will elect a president for the term of seven years, to succeed M. Fallières. It will be remembered that a French president is not elected by an electoral college nor by a general vote of the people as with us, but by a joint ballot of the two houses of the national legislature, the senate and the chamber of deputies. These bodies act separately, as do our two houses of Congress, except to change the constitution or to elect a president. The president does not represent the people as a coordinate branch of government, but rather he is a creature of the legislature, and is responsible to the powers that give him his office. At present the French situation is chaotic. The president of the senate is usually promoted to the presidency of the republic; but this is not the law; it is merely a custom that may be broken at any time. The man now occupying that position is M. Antonin Dubost, an aged man who will probably be rejected because of his age, and because of the fact that the socialists will not support him. There are to be a large number of candidates for the presidency. The one most likely to be chosen is M. Bourgeois.

— Almost every article exported by the United States to Turkey and the Balkan States is mentioned by the Ottoman empire as being contraband, according to advices received at the State Department from Ambassador W. W. Rockhill, at Constantinople. In addition to putting up the barriers against the materials commonly known as munitions of war, the Turkish government has forbidden the shipment of clothing, boots, or shoes suitable for military use; gold, silver, or bullion; vessels, boats of all kinds, and docks; railway and rolling stock, telegraphs and telephones; balloons and aeroplanes; barbed wire, horseshoes, harness, and saddlery. Any or all of these will be confiscated when found within three miles of the coast of any country with which the Ottoman empire is at war.

— This month will see the completion of the transfer of India's capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Calcutta, founded by the British East India Company in 1686, is comparatively modern, and has grown to its present vast and splendid proportions and development under the influence of British interests. It has always stood apart and aloof from the real genius of the people of India. To them it has been the seat of an alien power. On the other hand, for more than twenty centuries Delhi has been prominently associated with the history of the Pathans and the Moguls, whose capital it was. It has been held in the highest reverence by all the nations of India from time immemorial. Now its restoration by the king of England and emperor of India is expected to fill the people of that land with a renewed spirit of loyalty, and to make their government seem more like their own. Delhi, being more central, is more easily accessible from all parts of the empire, and its climate is far superior to that of Calcutta.

— Adrianople, now virtually surrounded by the Bulgarian troops, is the principal fortified city of European Turkey. Its history is a most interesting one. In 1305 the Bulgarians sent a great army against it, and won a victory over the emperor Baldwin. It was a stronghold of Christianity until 1360, and frequently offered its hospitality to the crusaders, especially those from Germany. In that year, however, the Moslem Turks took the city, and it was the chief city of their empire until 1453, when they captured Constantinople and made their capital there. The Russians have occupied Adrianople twice, the first time in 1829, when they forced Turkey to sign a treaty giving independence to Greece, fighting once more against her former masters. Again, during the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, the Russians took the town without resistance. The modern Adrianople is a scattered, uncared-for city, which has lost all its former splendor, although some of its forty mosques are fine examples of architecture. Its people number about 80,000, one half being Turks, the rest Armenians, Israelites, and Greeks, except for a handful of Catholics and Protestants. The fortifications are very strong. They are composed of forty modern forts in a semicircle, running around the northern part from east to west, with minor forts between. The south is the weakest spot, being guarded practically only by the river, and a number of treacherous marshes.