News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The first snow for twenty-five years fell in San Francisco, February 26. It was accompanied by heavy thunder.

— Cholera is reported as having found a foothold in Hawaii, four deaths having occurred there recently from that disease.

— February 25 the House of Representatives voted $3,000,000 as a beginning appropriation for fortifying the Panama Canal.

— A derelict vessel has been found in the Caspian Sea, a few miles off Astrakhan, with the crew of thirty men frozen to death. The ship was a mass of ice.

— The American Red Cross Society is endeavoring to raise $2,000,000 as an endowment fund, for use in various contingencies which may arise from time to time, such as the famine in China.

— The army estimates for Great Britain for 1911 and 1912, issued by the secretary of war, show a total of $138,450,000. The sum of $565,000 is provided for the aeronautic branch of the army.

— February 22 a huge earth-slide of 500,000 cubic yards was precipitated in the Panama Canal cut. Unlike other slides, this was wholly unexpected. Important changes in some features of construction, to prevent similar occurrences in the future, are now planned.

— The finding of two survivors of the French steamship “Bin-Thuan,” which disappeared in January, has cleared up the mystery connected with the loss of that vessel. It develops that a terrific explosion occurred, in which thirty-nine of the forty-two men of the crew were burned to death.

— Cable despatches report an important victory of the Turkish troops, February 27, over the rebellious Arabs in Yemen. This victory is considered of the utmost importance to the Mohammedan forces, in that it relieves about sixty thousand troops, who were in state of siege by the Arabs.

— The French Chamber of Deputies voted, February 24, an appropriation for the construction of two new battle-ships. The naval program presented called for the expenditure of $268,000,000 during the next ten years. It was stated that this sum is modest compared with the American and British programs, and indispensable in order to replace old warships and guarantee national security.

— An outbreak of diphtheria among the nurses, patients, physicians, and students in the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, has assumed quite threatening proportions. Over fifty cases have developed. The health department has discovered many “carriers” of the disease, who, not being ill themselves, yet communicate the disease to others. A strict quarantine has been placed on some of the boarding-houses where the students and hospital employees live. Strenuous efforts are being made to stamp out the disease.

— In Illinois 250,853 farms are valued, land and buildings considered, at $3,510,194,000.

— Present indications of the nation's death-rate are that it was fifteen to the 1,000 in registration area in 1910.

— The publication of recent census figures in Germany gives the empire a population of 66,898,881, an increase of more than 4,000,000 in five years.

— Insurgent troops have been giving the government of Haiti much trouble during the last few weeks. The government is showing a strong hand, and bids fair soon to put an end to the rebellion.

— According to statistics furnished by the German-Austrian Alpine Association, there were 120 fatal accidents in the Alps last year. This total includes twenty-eight lives lost through plucking Alpine flowers.

— The State of Nevada has recently passed a bill making it unlawful to sell or give away cigarettes or cigarette-papers to any man, woman, or child. If such a law were enacted by all the States, and strictly enforced, it would be a great protection to the rising generation.

— British economists and medical men are joining their French colleagues in the complaint that the birth-rate is constantly decreasing. In 1850 there were thirty-three births to 1,000 inhabitants; in 1908, only twenty-six. In France there are only twenty; in Germany, thirty-three.

— The largest consignment of postage-stamps ever sent out in this or any other country to one place was shipped from Washington to Chicago on January 4. There were 72,500,000 stamps, having a face value of $1,522,000. Two million five-cent stamps were in the consignment, the largest order ever received for that denomination.

— The general superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League reports that during the last year, saloons were closed at the rate of forty a day, and that in the last eighteen months between 140 and 150 breweries were obliged to go out of business. He states that about three fourths of the total area, and 41,000,000 of the population, of this country are now under prohibition.

— The temperance forces won a decided victory in the recent elections in Ontario, though they were deprived of much to which they were entitled by the law requiring a three-fifths vote. In fifty-five municipalities, containing 225 places where liquor is sold, the temperance people had a majority, but not the necessary three-fifths. The liquor forces won a clear majority in only twenty-six of the 158 municipalities.

— The loss by fire in the United States and Canada for 1910 was $234,470,650, an increase of more than $30,000,000 over that for 1909. December losses were exceptionally heavy, aggregating $21,528,000. Thirty-six fires caused a damage of $500,000 or more, and in ten the loss exceeded $1,000,000 each. In only three preceding years have the fire losses been heavier than in 1910, one being the year of the Chicago fire and one of the San Francisco fire.