Current Events

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jun 28, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 26.

DURING thirty-nine years of mining, Alaska has produced gold to the value of £62,000,000.

A “COMMUNIST university” is to be opened at Vitebsk, Russia, “for the preparation of responsible workers.”

FOUR hundred and fifty thousand pounds is to be spent on the Brazilian Government Census of the population this year.

BEFORE the war, one hundred thousand persons in Greater Berlin registered as having “no religion.” There are now one million.

A SAPPHIRE is reported found in Burma measuring eight inches long and weighing more than five pounds. Its value is estimated at nearly £30,000.

APPROXIMATELY forty thousand million cigarettes were manufactured in the United States last year, an average of one each day of the year for every man, woman, and child.

THE Protestant churches of America can seat 53,500,000 persons. The membership is only 25,000,000, and not more than sixty per cent, or 15,000,000, attend church regularly.

THE number of drug addicts in the United States is now estimated at more than one million. Newspapers report that the society women of London are becoming addicts to perfume tippling.

RELIABLE reports stated that in December of last year the supplies in Petrograd were so limited that food was distributed only by order of a physician. The fuel supply was also alarmingly low.

PARIS has been visited by a new form of influenza called “Italian grip.” It is attended by violent headache, a feeling similar to seasickness, intense fatigue, and a hacking cough. It is not considered so dangerous as Spanish influenza.

BARON ROSEN, former Russian ambassador to America, declares: “If Bolshevism be not now extirpated root and branch and if it be suffered to spread any further, it might ultimately come to mean the doom of our race and civilisation.”

BEFORE the Prince went to Canada he made a point of becoming acquainted with the slang of the country. He made a similar study of the picturesque expressions of New Zealanders and Australians, so that he might not be caught napping here.

THE Mayence correspondent of Le Petit Journal asserts that three secret organisations in Germany are plotting against the British Empire, i.e., the Hindoo Club, the Asiatic Club, and the union of Islam. These, it is alleged, are all sending arms and ammunition to India.

STRIKES and lockouts referred to the American Department of Labour for settlement during 1919 involved 2,300,000 workers, and cost them in lost wages upwards of £20,000,000. But, we are further told, these cases constituted “only a small percentage of the actual number of strikes.”

OF the first eighty-six daily flights scheduled between Paris and London 83 were successful. One was interrupted by a mechanical defect, and one by weather. Only once was the weather so bad that the flight was not attempted. Yet this route is considered one of the worst in the world in the matter of weather.

THE Prince of Wales takes photographs of his family with him wherever he goes. Numbers of these are to be seen even in his private apartments on the Renown. Several favourite ones of his mother the Queen and Princess Mary, and his young brother, the late Prince John, of whom he was very fond, are among them.

“A COMBINATION pontoon and floating dry-dock, being built by the British Admiralty for raising ships that have been sunk during the war. Extensive operations are being made by all the nations to salvage the immense amount of tonnage that was sunk in the past four years.”

A BRITISH syndicate has obtained an option from the Persian Government to build a railway from the present railhead at Karaitu, via Hamadan and Kazvin to Teheran, with a branch from Kazvin to the port of Enzeli. The Caspian port will be fortified and closed to the outside world. A line from Teheran to Meshhed later is contemplated.

ALL building records went by the board recently when a 230 x 36-foot structure, complete with electric lighting, bathrooms, tiled floors, and sewer connection, was completed in New York City in five hours. It was the last of sixty-five buildings constituting a Federal base hospital on Staten Island. The entire sixty-five buildings were completed in ninety days. They accommodate three thousand beds.

THE late Dr. Osler said, “When workers have living wages, when the house becomes the home, and the nation spends on food what it now spends on drink, then there will be millions instead of thousands with practically continuous immunity from tuberculosis. For the enemy has been tracked to its stronghold, which is defended by three allies—poverty, bad housing, and drink.”

ON May 1, 1788 (just 132 years ago), the live stock of Australia consisted of 1 stallion, 3 mares, 3 colts, 2 bulls, 5 cows, 29 sheep, 19 goats, 49 hogs, 25 pigs, 5 rabbits, 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, 122 fowls, and 87 chickens. The marines owned two of the rabbits, the others belonged to Governor Phillip, which settles any dispute as to who had the doubtful honour of introducing the rabbit to Australia.

A PROCESS has been discovered by which wine-grapes can be turned into a kind of raisin, which has not been produced before, but which is finding a ready market, both in England and abroad. The demand for it, we are told, will be large enough to absorb the entire wine-grape crop of California, amounting to about 400,000 tons, which will probably not be needed for wine under temperance legislation.

PRINCESS MARY recently bought a big floor mop of the labour-saving order in the hardware department of a great store in London. It is said the Princess takes on a spell of duty in assisting the professional housekeeper in the Palace from time to time in order that she shall understand everything about household management. The Queen has a great contempt for women who do not know how to conduct their household both in theory and practice.

IN a report recently issued by the Chicago Elevated Railroads, attention is called to the fact that these lines have operated for eleven years without a single fatal accident to a passenger on a train. During this period approximately two billions of men, women and children have been carried. For the year ended December 31, 1918, the amount expended for damages amounted to only 1.3 per cent of the gross operating revenue. It is claimed that this notable record is unequalled by any similar transportation company.

A LIGHT that far surpasses any existing arrangement of artificial rays and that is the closest approximation to actual daylight ever effected, is understood by the American Chamber of Commerce in London to have been perfected there, says E. C. Porter in The American Machinist (New York): “The apparatus consists of a high-power electric-light bulb, fitted with a cup-shaped opaque reflector, the silvered inner side of which reflects the light against a parasol-shaped screen placed above the light. The screen is lined with small patches of different colours, arranged according to a formula worked out empirically by Mr. Sheringham, the inventor, and carefully tested and perfected in the Imperial College of Science and Technology. The light thrown down from the screen is said to show colours almost as well as in full daylight. Under the new light, delicate yellows were quite distinct, indigo blues were blue, cobalts had their full value, and violets lost the reddish shade which they display under the ordinary electric light. The American Chamber says a great future is expected for this invention in such uses as the lighting of show-windows and art-galleries, studio work of all kinds, dyeworks, tea and tobacco blending, and many other industries. Colour photography will also probably benefit from it.”