p. 238 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 15.

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SECULAR.

—Six thousand carpenters were on strike in Chicago April 4.

—The large military barracks at Aldershot, Eng., were burned April 6.

—A sharp shock of earthquake was felt April 4 in Antigua and St. Kitts, West India Islands.

—It is rumored in Berlin that a secret treaty has been concluded between Sweden and Germany.

—Four thousand two hundred and seventy-three emigrants were landed at Castle Garden April 8.

—A mill-dam at Ingersoll, M. T., was carried away by a freshet April 4. Several persons were drowned.

—The steamer Mexico, which struck a sunken rock on Belt Chain reef on March 30, will prove a total wreck.

—The bark El Dorado foundered April 1 off Cape Flattery, W. T. But two men were saved out of a crew of twenty.

—The drought still continues in Texas, and the condition of the people in some neighborhoods is truly distressing.

—More than ten million pounds of sham butter was produced in the months of November, December, and January last.

—An attempt was made April 3 to blow up a street-car in Patterson, N. J. Nobody was hurt. This is the third attempt.

—The town of Kuty, Austria, has been completely destroyed by an incendiary fire. About one thousand persons are homeless.

—The Pope is corresponding with France in reference to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and China.

—April 7, a gigantic naphtha fountain burst at Baku, Russia. Oil, sand, and enormous stones were carried to a height of 350 feet.

—The steamer Scythia reached New York March 31. The fact of her non-arrival on time gave rise to the report that she was wrecked.

—A riot took place at a meeting of the Salvation Army at Savannah, Ga., April 3. Twenty-five or thirty persons were more or less wounded.

—The Swiss Government has resolved to take vigorous action against the Socialists, whose activity is calculated to disturb the peace of the State.

—Two freight trains collided four miles west of Corinth, Miss., April 1. Two men were instantly killed and fifteen loaded cars destroyed by fire.

—Recently the roof of the church at Linguaglossa, Sicily, fell without warning during the service. One hundred persons were buried in the ruins and forty were killed.

—A heavy land-slide occurred April 7 near Monte Carlo, France. The trains from Cannes and Menton, loaded with tourists, had marvelous escapes from destruction.

—Great Britain has demanded of Hayti $1,000,000, as settlement of old demands. Failing in its immediate payment, she wants Tortuga Island, which lies north of Hayti.

—A new automatic submarine torpedo has been invented, capable of carrying a charge of 600 pounds of nitro-gelatine at the rate of thirty miles an hour so as to overtake the fastest cruiser.

—Dr. Windhorst, the German Catholic leader, has sent a telegram to the Pope, saying that the Center party will accept the Prussian Ecclesiastical bill as a filial duty to the head of the church and without any reserve.

—During the last week two different attempts have been made to cut the levees on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Should the levees be cut and the adjacent parishes overflowed, the damage done would be very great.

—A successful attempt has been made to cast a steel stern for the cruiser Baltimore. This piece weighed 15,000 pounds and was cast without a defect, and is said to be the best piece of steel casting done in this country.

—At Omaha April 6 during the celebration of a silver wedding, a prominent farmer was shot and killed by one Edward Carr, who was drunk. The murderer says he was so drunk that he knows nothing of the murder.

—The coal miners throughout the country are discussing the formation of a gigantic organization by the amalgamation of the National Federation of Miners and the Miners’ National Assembly of the Knights of Labor.

—Trouble is to be expected between England and Venezuela, on account of the imprisonment of English sailors in 1883 without just cause. No satisfaction has been obtained from the Venezuelan Government, and diplomatic relations are severed.

—The Ameer of Afghanistan is seriously alarmed at the discovery that a number of native tribes are combining against him, and has appealed to the Indian authorities for help. The dissatisfied Afghans assert that the country has been secretly sold to the British.

—April 3 a violent snow-storm set in very generally throughout New England. In Boston the streets were filled with snow and street-car traffic retarded. Advices along the coast state the storm to be the most severe for ten years. In some places two feet of snow fell.

—At a grammar school in New York on the 6th inst. a thirteen-year-old boy was shot in the head by his playfellow. The principal of the school raised the alarm of fire, which caused a panic among the children, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the teachers prevented a disaster.

—Five lives were lost April 5 by a small steamer being carelessly run into a drift of logs and capsized on the Cœur d’Alene River. The captain and engineer, who also acted as pilot, and who had never been in a steam vessel before, knew nothing of navigation nor a single foot of the channel, and never had any licenses.

—During the sitting of the Chamber of Deputies at Madrid, Spain, April 2, a small parchment case of gunpowder was found in the doorway of the President’s bureau. Later in the evening a petard exploded in the vestibule adjoining the offices of the Ministry of Finance. Nobody was hurt, but the two events caused much alarm.

—Mons. G. A. Cassagnee, of Paris, has invented a system of steno-telegraphy by which he can transmit a dispatch along a single wire and print it at a distant station in shorthand with a rapidity exceeding that of any telegraphic apparatus now in use. With this machine more than 200 words can be reported and telegraphed a minute.