News and Notes

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 36.

SINCE OUR LAST ISSUE.

FOREIGN.

—General Pierola has been officially proclaimed president of Peru. So state despatches from that quarter.

—A Swiss scientist has been testing the presence of bacteria in the mountain air, and finds that not a single microbe exists above an altitude of 2,000 feet.

—Telegraphic communication has been established between Derby and Cape York, Australia, a distance by the wires of 7,246 miles. This is the longest telegraph line in the world.

—Three torpedo-boat destroyers, with a guaranteed speed of thirty-six land miles per hour, have been ordered by the British Admiralty. It is proposed to make these vessels the fastest of their class afloat.

—Besides her plague of rabbits, Australia is now threatened with a plague of foxes. These animals, imported for the sport of fox hunting, have increased so rapidly that a reward is now offered for their capture.

—The proposed alliance of the states of Central America has witnessed a step towards the project, Nicaragua and Honduras taking the lead by signing a compact of peace. It is expected that Guatemala and Salvador will follow soon.

—How well Russia is prepared for war is shown by the fact that in the district of Warsaw, which lies wedged in between the Russian provinces of Silesia and Prussia, there are five large fortresses, and 350,000 men ready to march at a moment’s notice.

—A remarkable speed run was recently made by the new fast train between London and Aberdeen, on the London and Northwestern Railway. The distance is 540 miles, and was made at an average speed of 63.47 miles per hour, including all stops. This is the fastest railroad time on record for a long run.

—A second attempt has been made by anarchists on the life of Baron Alphonse Rothschild, of Paris. The first was by means of an infernal machine in a letter sent to the bank, and the explosion destroyed an eye of the banker’s confidential clerk. The second resulted in nothing but the capture of a bomb thrower.

—In the beginning of his reign, Czar Nicholas, of Russia, dispensed with the usual body guard of the former czars when he appeared on the streets. This action was loudly applauded by the populace, who thought they saw in it a sign of better government. But the lapse of time has proved the new czar to be an autocrat, as were his predecessors, and he now moves about surrounded by a heavy guard. It is stated that extraordinary demonstrations or threats are being made by the Nihilists at present.

DOMESTIC.

—On August 29 water broke through the walls of the Bob Tail Tunnel mine, near Central City, Colo., drowning thirteen miners.

—On September 7 the Osceola mine, near Calumet, Mich., caught fire, and at latest reports thirty-two miners were cut off from escape. Over two hundred were rescued.

—A trial trip has just been made between Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver to test the utility of the bicycle in the military service. The trial was ordered by officials of the army.

—A new sect has sprung up calling itself the New Light Community. Recently at Arthera, Ill., fourteen men and twenty-five converts were baptized by a woman preacher of the cult.

—A runaway engine on the Sea Beach Railroad near Brooklyn, dashed into the rear of a standing passenger train on the 2d inst., telescoping several cars and injuring about fifty people.

—At least two methods of sending pictures by telegraph have been recently patented. Both methods, while totally unlike, are said to be very simple, and are likely to prove of great service to newspapers.

—Following the example of controlling dealers in other lines, the great lumber dealers of the Pacific Coast have formed a trust to control the entire manufacture and output of pine lumber from this section.

—Surveys and examinations of the bituminous coal beds of Pennsylvania have led the government experts to announce that at the present rate of consumption the supply will not be exhausted for 800 years to come.

—It is now announced that Monsignor Satolli, papal ablegate to the United States, is to be advanced to the dignity of a cardinal. It is stated that the gentleman will remain in America with the title of Pro-delegato Apostolico.

—A decision has been reached by the Controller of the treasury refusing to pay sugar planters the $5,260,000 appropriated by the last Congress for bounties under the McKinley tariff act, which bounties were ended by the new tariff law.

—A recent invention is the folding bicycle, the frame being so hinged as to permit the wheels to be folded side by side. The advantage claimed is that it may be easily doubled up and carried, where necessary, while being equal in other respects to an ordinary wheel.

—The health officers of San Francisco have undertaken the somewhat disagreeable task of inspecting the Chinatown district of that city, on the lookout for cholera germs. This district, comprising perhaps a square half mile, is said to hold over twenty-five thousand Chinese.

—Special action is being taken by the San Francisco and California state Boards of Health to prevent the entrance of Asiatic cholera. It is feared it may find its way in through Mexico, where the quarantine laws are said to be very lax, from Honolulu, where it has made its appearance.

—Paper sails are a recent invention. The paper is subjected to a process, whence it issues in sheets of the usual width and thickness of cotton duck. These sheets are cemented and riveted together so as to form a smooth, strong seam. The sails are said to be light, durable, elastic, and air tight.

—The head chemist of a molasses factory at Chino, Cal., has found a novel but very useful use for refuse molasses. The product was mixed with a certain kind of sand and the resultant mixture used as a pavement for a sidewalk, equaling the best asphalt pavement. The idea suggests a use for waste product for other mills.

—The great tobacco trust, whose field has been the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes, recently began the manufacture of plug tobacco. This invaded the territory of manufacturers of that article, and a combine of nine of the heaviest firms in this line has been formed to protect themselves and retaliate by beginning to make cigarettes. And so the war is on between two great trusts.

—One of the largest dealers in tobacco and cigars in Boston sells 1,000,000 cigarettes each week; there are three more who sell 500,000, five dispose of 100,000 each and two others 250,000 each, making an appalling weekly total of 3,500,000 of these worst of tobacco compounds. Most of these cigarettes are smoked in Boston. This basis as an average would give every individual in the city of Boston a cigarette daily and leave a reserve fund.

—Boston is to have a subway, that is, a tunnel to which will be removed the bulk of its electric street car system, especially those lines supplying the great business centers. The standard height is fourteen feet, and the top of the rails will be seventeen feet below the surface, while the width for two tracks is twenty-four feet, and for four tracks twenty-eight feet. Five great stations are provided, reached by stairways from the street. Work on the tunnel is now in progress.

—Articles of incorporation have been filed for the Civic Federation of San Francisco. The object of the corporation, which is similar to other federations of like name, is the “formation of a non-partisan, non-sectarian association, embracing all the forces that are now laboring to advance the municipal, philanthropic, industrial, and moral interests of the city, and to use such forces in promoting the honesty, efficiency, and economy of its municipal government and the highest welfare of the citizens.”