p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 25, 1909

Current Mention

—Already the War Department of the United States is testing a newly invented gun which is designed to destroy air-ships.

—Charles N. Crittenton of New York, the founder of the seventy-three Florence Crittenton Rescue Homes for Girls, died in New York, on Nov. 16, 1909.

—An incipient rebellion is now in progress in Haiti, and in an encounter between rebels and government troops on November 1, the government troops were defeated, and the insurgents seized the town of Guayabin.

—The State Department of the United States has notified the government of Chile that in case the Alsop claim is not settled within ten days, either by payment or by Chile signifying her willingness to submit the claim to The Hague Court, diplomatic relations will be broken off between the two countries. This claim is of long standing, dating from 1876.

—An explosion occurred on November 13 in the St. Paul Company's Coal-Mine at Cherry, Ill., as a result of which 385 men were entombed. The fire raging in the mine after the explosion made it impossible to render any effective service for the entombed men for several days, and for a time practically all hope was abandoned of getting any of the men out alive. On the sixth day after the explosion five dead bodies had been taken out. The day following twenty men were taken out alive, and hopes are entertained that still others may be found. This ranks as one of the greatest mining disasters of this country.

—As a result of the recent shooting of two American citizens as insurgents by order of President Zelaya of Nicaragua, the new Nicaraguan minister to the United States has been informed that he can not be received by the President under the present circumstances, and two American war-vessels have been despatched to the opposite coasts of Nicaragua to protect American interests. It is reported that about 500 Nicaraguan revolutionists have recently been shot without trial by order of the Nicaraguan president. The American government has expressed to Nicaragua its intention to recognize the validity of the revolutionists' blockade of Nicaraguan ports so long as it is efficiently maintained.

—The general superintendent of the Union Pacific Railroad Company is authority for the statement that one human being is killed every hour and one injured every ten minutes on American railroads.

—Statistics show that nearly 10,000 persons are murdered each year in the United States, while the sum total of deaths from crimes of violence in Great Britain and Germany together is only 1,000.

—Work is to be begun immediately on the fortifications for the protection of the Panama Canal. It is reported that the work of building the canal may be completed within the next four years, and to have the fortifications completed by that time, work must be begun at once. These fortifications will cost between fifteen and twenty-five million dollars.

—President Alcorta of Argentina has issued a decree proclaiming martial law throughout the entire country for sixty days, because of the spread of anarchistic propaganda, which reached its climax in the assassination on November 14 of the chief of police of Buenos Aires and his secretary. The police assert that the assassination of the chief and his secretary was part of a vast anarchist plot.

—A report from the central bureau of the German public weal society in Berlin shows that as a result of an inquiry into the feeding of schoolchildren in 189 German towns, 36,000 children habitually go breakfastless to school, while of the total number of children in these towns five per cent were sent to bed each night supperless and hungry. No fewer than 95,000 children had to be fed by public assistance committees.

—Dr. Louise G. Robinovitch demonstrated in New York City on November 18 her ability so to manipulate an electrical apparatus of her own invention as to bring to life a rabbit which was pronounced dead. The rabbit had been killed by an electrical shock administered for the purpose of making the demonstration in resuscitation. She claims that the apparatus can be utilized in bringing to life persons who have been killed by electrical shock.

—The new monorail car, whose equilibrium is maintained by the use of the gyroscope, and which was first shown in model form some eighteen months ago in London, received its first public demonstration on November 10, on a full scale, on the war-office grounds in London. The car was forty feet long, ten feet wide, and thirteen feet high, weighing twenty-two tons, and was mounted on a single rail, running freely around curves of all sorts and angles, and carrying forty passengers with complete safety and very little vibration. Two gyroscopes weighing three quarters of a ton supplied the stability. The motive power is entirely contained in a petrol engine, which is used to drive the dynamo. Mr. Brennan, the inventor, declares he found the efficiency of the new principle in a full-sized car far greater proportionately than in the small model. He asserts also that a speed of 150 miles an hour can be attained with greater safety in cars thus operated than at sixty miles an hour with the present apparatus.