Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 28, 1907

— M. Petkoff, premier of Bulgaria and minister of the interior, was assassinated March 11.

— On March 8, practically all the electricians of Paris went on strike, leaving the city in darkness two nights.

— An American mail-bag, whose contents were valued at approximately $400,000 was stolen while in passage from New York to Havre, France.

— On the trip from Havre to New York, the French Line steamer “La Savoie,” encountered a monster wave fully fifty feet high that broke over the decks and flooded the cabin and state-rooms.

— A five-days’ strike of eight hundred union employees of the Louisville (Ky.) street-railway began March 10, and resulted in the usual mobs, violence, injury, and arrests, before the differences were settled.

— The peasants of northern Rumania are in revolt against the exactions of the farmers, and the new taxes recently voted by Parliament. The peasants have also attacked and plundered the Jews, large numbers of whom have crossed the frontier into Austria.

— The worst flood ever known has recently been experienced in Pittsburg, Pa., and it has extended along the rivers of that system affecting four States. More than a hundred lives are known to have been lost, and the property loss reaches millions of dollars.

— Six vessels were reported ashore in different places on the coast of the British Isles, the eighteenth. Among them was the White Star liner “Suevic” from Sydney, N. S. W. Six hundred persons were on board when she hit the rocks, but all were taken off in safety.

— On March 14 the wireless telegraph operator at the naval station at Point Loma, Cal., accidentally caught a message that was being sent from Washington, D. C. to Pensacola, Fla., and also one from the battle-ship “Connecticut” in New York to the navy-yard at Washington.

— The opening of the Russian douma on March 5 was made the occasion of great socialistic demonstrations in St. Petersburg. The police and gendarmes exercised only such restraint as they could, armed with whips. Feodor Golovin, who was elected president of the douma, is a prominent liberal, but not a radical. He not only has many friends in court circles, but also enjoys the support of the labor and peasant members of the house.

— John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion City, Ill., died at his home there, March 9. There had been no reconciliation between him and the other members of his family, and only about two hundred of the many thousands of his one-time followers remained loyal to the last.

— An explosion of the magazines of the French warship, “Jena,” while in dry dock at Toulon, on March 12, resulted in the death of about 120 officers and men of the crew and the serious injury of 150, besides the practical destruction of one of the finest ships of the French navy.

— Geo. W. Glover, the only son of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the founder of “Christian Science,” and other “next friends” have filed a bill in equity demanding an accounting of her property from the men who surround her. Some strange revelations are expected at the trial.

— Mrs. Russell Sage has set apart ten million dollars for the endowment of the “Sage Foundation” whose object is the relief of distress and the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States. Miss Helen Gould is one of the seven well-known philanthropists who are named as trustees.

— An explosion occurred in the mixing house of the powder mill near Emporium, Pa., March 20, where one thousand pounds of dynamite were stored. No trace was found of the six men employed, and where the building stood is a hole in the earth twelve feet deep. The shock was felt twenty miles distant.

— Disastrous floods, due to unusually heavy rains, are reported from central California. Owing to the floods and consequent washouts on the railroads, Stockton, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, and many smaller towns are cut off from traffic communication with San Francisco, and the railway service is greatly demoralized.

— The city council of Fort Dodge, Iowa, has passed an ordinance that “all able-bodied persons between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five years, whose mental and physical propensities are normal and who are not now married, shall be required to obtain a license and wed within sixty days or be subject to a fine of from $10 to $100.” Paternalism in government could hardly go beyond this. But as we are in a time when a large portion of the people are turning to legislation as a remedy for all real or fancied social ills, we need not be surprised at such enactments as this.

— The fighting between Honduras and Nicaragua continues, and there is manifest on the part of the other Central American States a disposition to help Honduras, supposedly the weaker power, to prevent Nicaragua’s further aggression in case she is victorious. Already Salvador has joined Honduras, sending troops. For a time victory was with first one army and then with the other, but the latest advices say that a decisive battle of three days and two nights resulted in victory for Nicaragua over the combined armies of Honduras and Salvador numbering six thousand men. The United States has four gunboats patrolling the coasts to protect American interests in the captured Honduran towns.