News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 10, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A Missouri boy has made $800 growing sweet peas on one third of an acre.

— A floating dock 950 feet long, with a lifting capacity of 25,000 tons, is to be built in England and towed to Montreal, where the Vickers' interests are establishing a shipbuilding plant. It will be brought over by three powerful tugs.

— From Ireland last year 32,923 persons emigrated to other lands; 18,113 were males and 14,810 females. The United States of America was the destination of 24,905 of these emigrants. The Irish have wonderfully prospered in the United States, and as a whole have been of great service to their new home.

— At Worcester, Mass., the inhabitants have been carrying on an anti-fly crusade, which began June 22. Over ten barrels of flies have been caught by 232 contestants. The winner turned in 95 quarts, or a total of 1,219,000 flies, captured in traps of his own construction. For this he received a prize of $100.

— A colossal statue of Black Hawk, Indian chief, was recently dedicated at Oregon, Ill. The statue, which is the work of Lorado Taft, is forty-seven feet high, and stands on a bluff overlooking Rock River. It symbolizes the vanishing of the red man from the country where once his freedom was unvexed by white intruders. The great figure of the chief shows him taking farewell of the valley of his council grounds.

— Sherman Thorp, a well-known artist, who has painted the portraits of many famous men, claims that by an embankment system the growth of trees can be forced, so that at the end of seventeen years a tree may appear to be fifty years old. He says the embankments keep the surface water from running off into streams, thereby nourishing the trunks and limbs, with the result stated.

— The population of Great Britain and Ireland is now well over 45,000,000, a gain for the United Kingdom of nearly eleven per cent since the census of 1901. Ireland, however, is still losing population, the loss in the last decade being 77,000. London has 7,250,000 people. As in the United States, increase of population is largely in and near the cities; the rural population is decreasing in some places, and in all others the rate of increase is much less than in the towns and cities.

— There are nine men by the name of Smith in the United States Congress. Four occupy seats in the Senate, and five are members of the House.

— Vacuum cleaners were recently used with great success in a New York office building which had been visited by fire, in the removal of the water which had accumulated as the result of the presence of the firemen. The janitor was instructed to make every effort to have the offices in readiness for the occupants next morning, so that their business would not suffer any interruption; and in order to get rid of the water in the carpets and on the floors a number of vacuum cleaners were secured and put to work, with the result that things were in perfect order for business the following morning.

— There are towns in Old England which take their vacation every summer. Oldham, the center of cotton industry, for instance, shuts up shop for a week or two, and goes to the seashore or to the mountains in Scotland or Wales. Everybody is expected to leave town; nobody stays home but the policemen. Every year the mayor collects from each pater familias a contribution to the summer fund—it amounts to a million dollars!—and every one gives according to his means. The town treasury bears the whole expense of the town's outing. Last year 700 people from Burnley went as far as Paris, and paid their respects to President Fallières. Nearly all the towns observing this pleasant custom are found in Lancashire.