News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 23, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Eight hundred clergymen in Massachusetts have sent to Congress a remonstrance against further increase of the navy.

— Seven members of one family, the father, mother, and five children, were killed by gas in their home in Philadelphia, February 11.

— A Munich statistician estimates that the Germans last year were swindled out of $12,500,000 worth of beer through a system of short measure employed by the brewers.

— Earnest appeals are being sent to various centers of the United States by the Red Cross Society for immediate aid in the way of contributions of money and provisions for the famine sufferers in China.

— It is positively asserted by those directing the work that the Panama Canal will be completed by 1913, in ample time for the proposed celebration two years later, and that the cost will not exceed $360,000,000.

— By the adoption of the Crumpacker reapportionment bill on the part of the House of Representatives, that body will doubtless be increased from 391 to 433 members. While the Senate has not yet concurred in the measure, there is but little question that the bill will become a law.

— For the benefit of thousands in London who will be unable to see the coronation of King George, and the royal procession to Westminster Abbey, the managers of all the leading music halls have made arrangements to show moving pictures of the pageants on the same evening.

— A great storm raged at Madrid, February 1, 2. Reports of wrecks and loss of life have been received from many places. At Saguntum five steamers dragged their anchors. One of them broke up, and twenty-two of the crew were drowned. At Barcelona twenty-five fishermen perished. Other fatalities are reported from various places.

— Radium has at last been found, and actually seen in its metallic form. This is the crowning glory of one of the most remarkable researches conducted in modern times, and has been accomplished largely through the untiring zeal of Mme. Curie, who, with her husband, spent years in seeking to discover and isolate from other metals this latest precious discovery. Great things are predicted in the use of this metal.

— The famine in China appears to be rapidly spreading. Recent advices from Peking state that thousands are dying daily of starvation and famine fever in the three afflicted provinces. There is little likelihood that conditions will improve for the next three months. The imperial government is making strenuous efforts to aid the sufferers. Relief committees have been organized. Large donations have been sent from this country and other countries to relieve the distressed.

— At Brockton, Mass., February 10, a bull calf seven weeks old was sold for $10,000, the highest amount, it is believed, ever paid for a calf of this age.

— It is estimated that on New-year’s eve there was spent, in New York City, $1,500,000 for food and wine, $170,000 for theaters, $50,000 for candy, $75,000 for flowers, and $10,000 for cigars.

— The German Machinery Hall at the Brussels Exposition collapsed February 11, burying a number of persons in the ruins. Three bodies were recovered. Twenty persons are missing, who are supposed to have been killed.

— In Normandy, June 15, will begin the one-thousandth anniversary of the day when the duchy of Normandy was constituted by Charles the Simple. It is claimed that the festival will surpass anything ever seen in Europe. Rouen will be the center of the festivities.

— Investigations of the conditions existing in the Infants’ Hospital of Odessa reveal that during the last six months 1,002 of the 1,060 infants received into the institution have died. The government is taking energetic measures to place the responsibility and to remedy conditions.

— America’s first great missionary exposition will be held in Boston, Mass., April 24 to May 20, 1911. There will be exhibits from every mission field of the world, which will show in a very vivid manner the transformations which have been brought about by the coming of the gospel to darkened lands.

— A bill introduced into the Senate, providing for an increase of the postage rate on magazines, is meeting with much opposition on the part of leading magazine publishers throughout the country. It is claimed that the increased postage which many publishers would have to pay, under the provisions named in the bill, would exceed the profits now made on their business.

— The bubonic plague is making rapid progress in China, and the efforts to arrest its spread have thus far proved powerless. The prevalence of the plague, together with the wide-spread famine, is seriously alarming the government, which is now seeking advice and inviting medical aid from foreigners. Much alarm is felt lest the plague invade European countries.

— A measure has been drafted which will be introduced as a bill at the next session of the English Parliament, with the object of abolishing the gallows as the form of capital punishment in Great Britain. It is proposed to substitute some strictly private form of despatch of condemned men in their cells, such as the administration of an anesthetic or of some drug that will cause death as swiftly and painlessly as possible.

— Those who sell intoxicating liquors in Tennessee were declared ineligible to citizenship in the United States in a ruling announced February 12 by Federal Judge John F. McCall, who ruled that no man could support the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Tennessee, and uphold the laws of both, as required to do under oath, and at the same time engage in the unlawful vocation of selling liquor in a State where its sale is prohibited.