p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 17, 1907

Current Mention

—James Bryce has been appointed ambassador from Great Britain to the United States.

—A fire destroyed the greater part of the plant of the Michigan Stove Works at Detroit, Mich., January 8; loss, $750,000.

—By the throwing or dropping of a bomb in the largest banking institution of Philadelphia, January 7, the cashier of the bank and the would-be robber were both instantly killed; twenty other persons were injured, and the interior of the building was completely wrecked.

—By an explosion of gas at the base of a blast furnace in Pittsburg, Pa., January 9, tons of molten metal were showered about the workmen near by. Twelve bodies have been recovered, ten men are in hospitals, dangerously burned, at least four of whom can not recover, and seventeen men are missing from their homes. It is feared they were engulfed by the molten mass from which they were last seen fleeing.

—The captain of a British steamer arriving in New York January 8, said that for the first time in his experience of over thirty years he was unable to tell when his vessel left the Gulf Stream because of the high temperature of the water between where the stream is supposed to be and Sandy Hook. Ordinarily at this season the temperature of the water is about the freezing-point, but he found it to be 60° Fahrenheit.

—Earthquake shocks were quite severe and very general over the State of Pennsylvania in the early morning of January 10. Also reports come of shocks felt about the same time in Maryland and Michigan, as well as from Christiania, Norway, Stockholm, Sweden, and Russia. The crater of the Mokuaweo-weo Volcano, Honolulu, is sending forth fire and smoke that can be seen hundreds of miles, and streams of lava are crossing the snow fields.

—The shah of Persia, who had long been ill, died January 8. In August last, as the result of long-continued agitation in Persia and many disturbances of a serious nature, the shah granted a constitution to Persia, with a national assembly and other reforms. His eldest son, Mohammed Ali Mirza, thirty-five years of age, will succeed to the throne. He has a good education, both European and Persian. But his official troubles are beginning early, as his father's third son, Ishrat, has raised a force of 10,000 men in Luristan, in the hope of capturing the throne.

—The feeling of alarm in official circles of St. Petersburg has been increased because of the success of the social revolutionists in learning the most carefully concealed movements of its marked victims, many of whom have suffered the past few months. Major-General Von der Launitz, prefect of St. Petersburg, was assassinated January 2, and on the ninth the military procurator, General Povloff, was shot down by a man who gained access to the garden surrounding the military court building. The circumstances point to widespread treachery in the military court.