p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1909

Current Mention

— At Potsdam, Germany, October 2, Orville Wright, in his air-ship, sailed to an elevation of 1,600 feet, the greatest height that has ever been attained by a heavier-than-air flying-machine.

— An investigation of the quartermaster's department of the Russian army at Moscow, Russia, recently resulted in the discovery of irregularities in that department amounting to more than one million dollars.

— By the use of powerful electric lights surrounding a baseball field in Chicago, it has been made possible to play the game at night. It is expected that similar arrangements will be made in other large cities for playing this game in the evening.

— The British steamer “Macintosh,” belonging to the Madras Steam Navigation Company, is reported to have blown up at sea. Every man on board, with one exception, is said to have perished. This vessel was on her way from Rangoon to Calcutta.

— After several postponements the trial of the two American missionaries in the Kongo Free State has begun. These missionaries are accused by the Belgian government of “calumnious denunciation,” because they have been telling the world of the terrible atrocities practised on the natives in the rubber country.

— Captain Knud Rasmussen, of Denmark, has sailed for Greenland to question Dr. F. A. Cook's Eskimos in reference to the matters in controversy between Dr. Cook and Commodore Peary. Two eminent Danish scholars have been appointed by the Danish government to examine Dr. Cook's observations and records.

— Through the aid of wireless telegraphy prompt assistance was rendered to the steamer “Carib,” of the Clyde line, when in distress off Cape Hatteras, on September 20. The vessel had 300 passengers on board, and would have been at the mercy of the sea but for the means of communicating with other vessels by wireless telegraph.

— Advices from Saragossa, Spain, indicate that there is a virtual reign of terror in Barcelona. It is stated that not a day passes in Barcelona without bombs exploding in the streets. The anarchist agitations have increased since the arrest of the anarchist leader Ferrer. The anarchists are demanding “Ferrer’s liberty or the king’s head.”

— Mr. Geo. H. Cove, of Summerville, Mass., has invented a solar thermo-battery which is claimed to produce enough electric current during ten hours' sunlight to supply thirty tungsten lamps for three days. This turning of sunlight directly into electric light has great possibilities before it, and opens up a new field of exploration for inventors.

— Reports received at Havana, Cuba, on September 23 state that a cyclone of great destructive force visited the province of Pinar del Rio, killing ten persons, and destroying crops and other property to the value of $2,000,000. Two thousand persons are homeless as a result of this storm, and the Cuban congress has been called in special session to provide for the sufferers.

— At Parnell, Ill., October 6, a head-on collision between two trains resulted in the death of four persons and the injury of about thirty others.

— Ten men were killed and six probably fatally injured by a collision between a freight- and a passenger-train at Chicago on September 28.

— There was completed at Seattle, Wash., October 6, a relay automobile run which began at Philadelphia September 25, thus completing the journey from Philadelphia to Seattle in twelve days.

— The swiftest vessel in the United States navy is the torpedo boat destroyer “Reid,” which has just completed her speed trial at Rockland, Maine, making thirty-four and one-half knots an hour.

— At Nanaimo, B. C., on October 5, an explosion in a coal-mine resulted in the death of thirty miners. Twenty-five others, who had been imprisoned at the time of the explosion, were rescued.

— On October 6 Prince Henry of Prussia presided at the meeting of the directors of the Zeppelin Air-Ship Expedition to be undertaken under the auspices of the German Society. A party will go to Spitzbergen early next summer with equipment for the operation of an air-ship in the polar regions.

— On October 6 there was unveiled, in the city of New York, a statue of Giovanni de Verrazano, an Italian navigator who entered New York harbor in the year 1524, eighty-five years earlier than Henry Hudson. Previous to its unveiling there was a parade through the streets of New York City of 20,000 Italians, in honor of the occasion.

— Because of the injury of Bishop Boggiani, of Adrea, Italy, during an anticlerical demonstration in that city, the Pope of Rome has excommunicated all the inhabitants of the city. This excommunication is not only general but personal. The report states that this is the first general excommunication of a city during the reign of the present Pope.

— The National Geographical Society has invited Commander Peary and Dr. Cook to present their data as early as possible for examination by the society. Commander Peary has signified his intention to comply with the society's request, and Dr. Cook promises to submit to this society his records at the same time that they are submitted to the University of Denmark.

— On the second of March, 1912, Russia purposes to come into line with the rest of the world in the matter of reckoning time. For a long time the two kinds of reckoning have caused more or less confusion in the Russian empire; but on the date mentioned the Russian passover falls upon the same day that will be celebrated as Easter in other parts of the world, and from that date on she will follow the Gregorian calendar.

— The great Gunnison Tunnel in the mountains of Colorado, which has been driven through a mountain a distance of six miles to bring water from one valley where it was not needed to another where it was greatly needed, was opened by President Taft on September 23. The water brought through the mountain by this tunnel will reclaim for agricultural purposes 140,000 acres of rich land. This was the largest of the government's reclamation undertakings in the West.