p. 21 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— New York is to have the largest hotel in the world. It will be erected at Thirty-third Street and Broadway, and will be known as the Greeley Square Hotel. The hotel investment, including site, hotel building, and furnishings, will represent an outlay of $13,500,000. The site, which covers 31,500 square feet, cost $7,600,000. The building will be twenty-five stories high, and will have 1,600 sleeping-rooms and 1,000 baths.

— The Pennsylvania Railroad claims a record of carrying 136,000,000 passengers during 1910, with not a single death caused by accident during that time.

— Recent researches in the interior of German East Africa reveal a lake of soda. According to the Chemical News, the surface looks like pink marble. During the wet season, which in that region is very short, the surface is covered with a few inches of water. After the cessation of the rain, the whole of the surface becomes dry, with the exception of a margin about thirty yards wide. For many years Indians from Narobi have used the soda for washing purposes and snuff. The area is about thirty miles square. It is hoped that this product can be employed in commercial ways.

— An important discovery of phosphate rock has been made by the geological survey in Montana. The land was a part of the railroad land grant to the Northern Pacific. The country was being prospected to see whether it contained minerals that would warrant the withdrawal of the area from the railroad grant. It was found that the land contained phosphate rock, apparently the largest deposit in this country. It was not known previously that the rock occurred at all in Montana.

— The Interstate Commerce Commission has issued its first accident bulletin under the new law. It includes many accidents that were not included in previous bulletins bearing on the subject. The number of persons killed in train accidents during the months of July, August, and September last was 321, with 3,892 injured. Accidents of other kinds, including those sustained by employees while at work, by passengers in getting on and off cars, by travelers at highway crossings, by persons doing business at stations, by trespassers, and others, bring the total casualties up to 22,328, or 2,948 killed and 19,380 injured. The accident statistics of those electric lines on which interstate traffic is carried on show that there were 146 persons killed and 1,070 injured during the months named.

— J. Carvallo, of the Marey Institute, Paris, France, has recently succeeded in making cinematograph X-ray pictures showing the process of digestion in both warm- and cold-blooded animals. The value of these results is obvious, as these moving pictures gave an actual view of the interior workings of the body, and for the first time physicians have been able to see an absolutely reliable reproduction of the organs of the human body in action. Many attempts have been made to produce this result, but they have failed heretofore because of the difficulty experienced in obtaining the Roentgen pictures with exposures lasting but a small fraction of a second; also because no suitable cinematograph apparatus was available for producing the pictures. The animals under test were fed with an alimentary paste, or with their usual food mixed with a basis of bismuth nitrate. The results of these pictures have been checked by special investigations, showing that the pictures are true photographs of the actual movements of the organs. Mr. Carvallo has produced X-ray pictures which are said to show the digestive process in the most differently constituted animals.

— March 15, for the third time, Manuel Estrada Cabrera was inaugurated president of Guatemala. Under his past administration of twelve years that country has made wonderful progress in material development.

— In one of the worst railroad disasters ever known in the South Atlantic States, eight persons were killed and twelve injured on the Atlantic Coast Line, March 25, by a train crashing through a trestle over the Allapaha River, eighteen miles from Tifton, Ga.

— It seems that the full acceptance of Russia’s proposals by China was not wholly unconditional, as was indicated by the despatches of last week. China declares her present acceptance of Russia’s demands, and proposes to refer the ultimate settlement of the dispute to the great powers of Europe.

— Premier Stolypin, of Russia, who recently tendered his resignation, has by request of the czar agreed to remain in office. This averts a cabinet crisis in that country. Premier Stolypin insisted on the removal of several reactionary opponents of his policy in the Russian Duma, and these were suspended from all sittings in the council until January, 1912.

— A despatch from London states that treasure to the value of $1,250,000 is reported from Jersey in the pulling down of an old manor house built in the thirteenth century. The discovery includes ancient urns filled with spade guineas, coined during the reign of King George III, and bearing the British arms on a spade-shaped shield. One urn bears the monogram of the emperor Vespasian, the Roman emperor of the first century.

— On March 24, the members of President Díaz’s cabinet placed their resignations in his hands. These resignations were accepted later, and a new cabinet was formed. Mr. Limantour, of the old cabinet, will remain minister of finance. Mr. De La Barra, who has represented his government as ambassador to Washington, has been appointed minister of foreign relations. It is hoped that the formation of this new cabinet will go far toward pacifying the revolutionists, and bettering conditions in the republic.

— A terrible catastrophe occurred March 25 in the burning of the Triangle Waist Factory, 23 Washington Place, New York City. The fire started in some unknown manner, and rapidly spread through the building. One hundred forty-one persons met death as the result of suffocation or by jumping from the building to the street below. Twelve others were mortally hurt. Seven hundred persons were employed in the factory, five hundred of whom were women. The mortality was largely among those employed on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The building possessed no outside fire-escapes, and improvised means of fire rescue were altogether insufficient to meet the demand. It is claimed there are nearly four thousand buildings in the metropolis which are inadequately safeguarded against fire. This terrible catastrophe will, it is hoped, lead to a careful investigation of other buildings, and a bettering of existing conditions therein.

— Off Beechy Head, British Columbia, March 25, the steamer “Sechelt” turned turtle, sinking and carrying to a watery grave twenty-two passengers and a crew of four men.

— Suicide, it is claimed, is alarmingly prevalent in St. Petersburg. According to the Russian Public Health Department, 10,000 persons have taken their lives in the Russian capital during the last five years.