p. 21 | Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1902

Current Mention

— The Rev. John Henry Barrows, president of Oberlin College, died June 3, of pneumonia.

— A fire at Rockaway Beach, Long Island, June 1, destroyed seven hotels and a number of dancing halls. Four lives were lost.

— The May fire loss in the United States amounts to $13,197,700, and for the expired portion of the present year, to $72,272,100.

— According to figures furnished by the operators and miners concerned in the anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania, the loss for the first three weeks of the strike amounts to $14,850,000.

— Fifty persons committed suicide in Chicago during the month of May, says the Chicago Tribune, which paper adds the statement that this is the greatest recorded number of suicides for one month.

— Adherents of the “New Thought,” or “Mental Science” teaching, have purchased a large tract of land on the Hudson River, some distance above New York City, where they will establish a school for the dissemination of their doctrines.

— A cloud-burst near the city of Joliet, Ill., June 3, caused a damaging flood in neighboring creeks, and cut off Joliet from communication with outside districts, inundating its streets, paralyzing business, and causing three deaths by drowning.

— The Boer war in South Africa, after continuing nearly two years and eight months, was officially ended May 31, by the agreement of the Boer representatives to accept the terms offered them by Great Britain. The news caused great rejoicing in England.

— The announcement comes from Berlin that the German gun maker, Krupp, has invented a projectile which will penetrate through the heaviest armor he can produce. Emperor William, the report says, has ordered him to manufacture these projectiles exclusively for the German navy.

— A committee of German chemists in Berlin have submitted a report to the German government on the question of the effect of borax on the human system. After an investigation covering two years’ time, during which tests were made upon four men, the chemists report that the presence of borax in the human body, even in minute quantities, is unquestionably injurious. A single dose, they assert, remains in the system eight days.

— A large district in Alaska was shaken by an earthquake last April, says a report brought by travelers from that country, and simultaneously with this disturbance a mountain in southeastern Alaska, which was not known to have any crater, burst into eruption, sending out clouds of ashes and a stream of mud, mixed with bowlders. Passengers arriving at Seattle from Alaska report that the Redoubt Volcano near Cook Inlet is active, sending out fire and smoke, the latter forming dense black clouds, which obscure that entire region.

— Bold bank robberies, some of them committed in open daylight and in full view of the citizens, are reported from several towns in South Dakota.

— A dispatch from Panama reports that Ecuador is facing revolt. The revolutionary movement is led by General Alfro, a former president of the republic.

— Wireless telegraphy is to be employed in establishing communication between the Klondike gold fields and the outposts of civilization in the higher latitudes of North America.

— A report from Turkey which comes by way of London states that the Turkish government is in a worse financial situation than it has faced in many years, and that the sultan, in order to avert bankruptcy, may defy Europe by confiscating revenues already ceded by Turkey to foreign creditors, amounting to about $15,000,000 yearly; in which event it is believed Europe would unite to bring the sultan to terms.

— So far the year 1902 has broken the record of the past decade for immigrants landing at New York City. January and February showed a large increase on the figures for the same months last year. March showed 23,000 more than March, 1901, and during the first two weeks of April there entered 40,000 souls, as against 28,000 in the same fortnight a year ago. For the rest of April the proportions are as large, if not larger, and May bids fair to outdo April.

— The London Globe (England) reports that “Dr. Bunge, a Russian medical man, proposes to establish a sanatorium for consumptives in the polar regions. He has observed that the members of exploration parties returning from the polar regions are always in perfect health, owing to the purity of the air and complete absence of all harmful microbes. In the polar regions bronchitis, laryngitis, influenza, and other contagious diseases are unknown.”

— As showing the risk of disaster that would be incurred to a canal constructed over the proposed Nicaragua route, one authority states that “there are not less than twenty-five volcanoes, at fairly equal distances, on the line of crustal weakness which is occupied by Lakes Nicaragua and Managua, most of which have been active within a very moderate period of time, while some are active to-day. Yet it is proposed that the United States government shall spend $200,000,000 in building a canal, with an elaborate system of locks, through the heart of that volcanic region.”