SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 17, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 20.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—119 ocean ships have been loaded with grain in Vallejo since the 1st of July.

—The recent visit of the small-pox to Los Angeles, Cal., cost that city $21,000.

—Of the 3,247 teachers in the public schools of New York city, 2,912 are ladies.

—Twenty-three hundred wells were completed in the Pennsylvania oil regions last year.

—Philadelphia supports 5,455 taverns and beer saloons—718 more than at the 1st of June, 1875.

—The German village of Eyschoff, in Valois, has been destroyed by fire, leaving five hundred people homeless.

—There are 50,000,000 pins manufactured per day in England. Nobody yet has been able to tell where they all go to.

—A great European tunnel will probably be finished Jan. 1, 1878, through the Pyrenees connecting France with Spain.

—The damages done by avalanches in Switzerland this spring have been unusually severe, on account of a very rapid thaw.

—Mendocino county, Cal., has 300,000 acres of unsurveyed land, consisting of twelve whole townships, besides the fractions of many townships.

—Iquique, a town of about one thousand inhabitants, in the department of Arequipa, South Peru, was destroyed by an earthquake May 10.

—The eruption of Vesuvius is slowly increasing. Subterranean rumblings are heard, and during the night the fire lights up the dense volumes of smoke which issue from the crater.

—The total value of merchandise exports from San Francisco during the past week amounted to $478,761, an increase of $194,389 over those of the previous week.

—A terrible explosion of gas occurred in the Wadesville mines, near St. Clair, Pa., on the 9th of May. Seven men were killed and six seriously injured by the accident.

—The legislature of the State of Texas, at its last session, passed a law which provides for the punishment of profanity by a fine of one hundred dollars.

—It is apparent that the famine in India is approaching its worst point, but there is good reason to hope that the maximum distress may be less severe than anticipated.

—Part of a large meteor, which recently passed over Vermont, has been found buried four feet in the earth. It weighs two tons, and is composed of iron ore, lava and soapstone.

—San Francisco, with a larger paid-in banking capital than St. Louis, Cincinnati and Chicago combined, has only about a quarter as large a debt as the smallest sum of liabilities in the trio.

—A mail bag that was lost in the San Luis Obispo river over one year ago, by the upsetting of a stage, was recently found on a snag in the river. It was forwarded to Washington, and the contents found to be in good condition.

—A petition has been sent to the State legislature, praying that body to enact a law prohibiting the sale on draught, of spirituous or malt liquors in any store, or elsewhere, where groceries are sold for family use, in New York city.

—Nine murders have been committed in the State of Maine, since the abolition of capital punishment in that State, which was but little more than one year ago. Previous to that time there had been but two murderers executed within six years.

—A large six-story brick building in Allegheny, Pa., which was occupied as a manufactory by the excelsior cotton works, fell last Thursday. One man who was engaged in making repairs on the building was buried in the ruins. Others were seriously injured.

—The Treasurer of the “Bliss Fund” has received $11,130.37 for the family of the late P. P. Bliss. Of this sum he has invested $10,000 in United States bonds, bearing interest at the rate of four and a half per cent, and registered in the name of the Bliss children.

—There has been great excitement in the bread stuff market, incident to the declaration of war between Russia and Turkey, for which there seems no good reason, as prices are reported as being lower in Europe than here; but the speculators will avail themselves of every pretext for a run on prices.

—The wars of this century have been the most bloody and costly since the palmy days of Rome and Greece. For its ten great bloody periods, viz., the Napoleonic, Grecian, Crimean, Italian, Danish, Austrian (1866), Brazilian, American, Abyssinian and Franco-German wars—leaving out minor expeditions and skirmishes—the figures foot up $38,667,600,000 expended, and 11,708,600 lives lost from 1800 to 1871. Two thirds of this aggregate outlay of men and money are to be charged to Napoleon I., up to his closing battle fought at Waterloo.

—A partially erected Court-house in Rockford, Ill., crumbled into ruins on the morning of the 11th. The walls were inadequate to hold the immense weight of the iron pillars and dome which rested upon the pillars, and so fell the distance of 125 feet with a crash that was heard nearly a mile distant. At the time of the accident there were about twenty-five men at work on the building. The mass of human beings, with the exception of four or five who jumped from the windows, fell inside the tottering walls and were buried in the debris; some being seriously injured, while others were killed.

—The first bullet proof car ever manufactured in the United States has just been completed in York, Pa. It was ordered by the Spanish government for use in Cuba. The car weighs about six thousand five hundred pounds, and is thirty-one feet long, eight feet high, and furnished with all the latest improvements in ventilation, etc. The body below the windows is covered with three-eighth inch iron, and the panels between the windows and the body above them are covered with three-sixteenth inch steel. The windows can be closed with steel slides, and when they are down the entire car is bullet proof. The interior is richly ornamented and the appearance inside and out resembles a first-class passenger coach.