SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 11.

SECULAR.

—It is said that a force of 12,000 rebels is about to march on Mandalay, Burmah.

—On the 13th inst. $350,000 worth of cotton was destroyed by fire at Oldham, England.

—The time fixed by law for holding the Utah Legislature has expired, and Governor Murray refuses to have any further official communication with that refractory body; but the members seem determined to prolong the session. It is understood that they are now engaged in preparing a memorial to Congress, censuring Governor Murray for the deadlock on the appropriation bill and condemning his use of the veto power.

—A general state of anarchy prevails in Anam, and bands of robbers are scouring the country.

—There is great dissatisfaction in the British House of Commons over the extravagance of the royal family.

—The Brunswick cotton mill at Mosley, England, has been burned, throwing three hundred operatives out of employment.

—Two men were killed and twelve others injured, some of them fatally, by a fire-damp explosion in a mine near Dunbar, Pa., March 8.

—The Mormons expect to complete their great temple at Salt Lake City in about two years. It is estimated that it will cost $3,000,000.

—Professor Huxley says it would take nearly 1,000,000 barrels of herring to supply the cod on the Norwegian Coast with one breakfast.

—A telegram of the 9th inst. states that the attitude of Greece is still belligerent, and fears are entertained that she will yet precipitate war.

—On the 9th inst. the navvies working on the Turkish railways near Trajja were attacked by a desperate mob. Several engineers and thirty workmen were killed.

—The dock of the Monarch Steamship Line at Jersey City, N. J., burned March 8. Two steamers were badly damaged, and the Erie Company’s milk depot was destroyed.

—Prince Bismarck’s bill giving the German Government a monopoly of the traffic in spirituous liquors has been rejected by the committee of the Reichstag to which it was referred.

—A large and enthusiastic meeting of Mormon women was held in Salt Lake City, March 6, in which many speeches were made declaring their inalienable right to vote and to practice polygamy.

—A fire has completely destroyed the great Convent of the Ursulines at Laeken, Belgium. The inmates of the convent—30 nuns and 105 young girls, boarders at the convent school—were all saved.

—A verdict of $3,000 was rendered last week in Westchester County, N. Y., in favor of a widow whose husband committed suicide while under the influence of liquor purchased in the saloon of the defendant.

—On the night of March 12, a daring robbery was committed on a Rock Island train between Joliet and Morris, Ill. The express messenger, who stubbornly defended the property committed to his care, was killed, and over $20,000 in money was secured.

—M. Pasteur claims that his system of treatment has proved successful in 325 cases of persons bitten by mad dogs. He is ambitious to found an international establishment for the treatment of hydrophobia patients, and $10,000 of the $400,000 needed for this purpose has been subscribed.

—The largest breech-loading gun ever made on this continent has just been completed at Washington. It is an 8-inch gun nearly 80 feet long; it carries a ball weighing 250 pounds and a charge of powder of fully half that weight. Still larger guns are in process of construction.

—On Tuesday, March 9, some person threw poison into the coffee used at the almshouse at Lebanon, Pa. The almshouse has 80 inmates; and the doctor in attendance thinks that more than half of them would have been killed, had not the poison been so strong as to cause vomiting. As it is, several are in a critical condition.

—An extensive strike, involving many thousand men, railroad employees, coal miners, and men of other occupations, was commenced in several of the Eastern States last week. In some instances the employers have acceded to the demands of the laborers, and work has been resumed; in others the contest is still maintained.

—The Times of Osage Mission, Kan., gives an account of a horrible murder that has recently been committed in that vicinity. A young boy is believed to be the murderer, and the victims are his father, mother, brother, and sister. No cause is assigned for the terrible deed, and the most charitable conclusion is that the boy has been corrupted by dime-novel literature.

—It costs Russia $5,000,000 a year to maintain the royal household; $20,000,000 go to the navy and $105,000,000 to the army, and the annual interest on the national debt is $100,000,000 more. And for the last ten years the national debt has been constantly increasing at the rate of about $20,000,000 annually, until this year, when the deficit has been reduced to $13,000,000.