SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 37.

SECULAR.

—Coulanges, the French historian, is dead. —Congressman S. S. Cox died at New York City the 10th inst. —Melbourne, Australia, had a million-dollar fire the 14th inst. —The attendance at the Paris Exposition averages 150,000 people daily. —Insanity has increased in Paris between 1872 and 1888 by 30 per cent. —It is now proposed to organize a huge trust to control the entire Florida orange crop. —Ten thousand French workmen will make a pilgrimage to Rome about the last of October. —The stockholders of the Eiffel Tower in Paris have already received dividends of 420 per cent. —Corporal Tanner has resigned his position as Commissioner of Pensions, at the request of President Harrison. —The Aurora Watch Company of Illinois has assigned for $200,000. It is thought the difficulty is only temporary. —A Siberian explorer has left Peking with the intention of penetrating Thibet. He is accompanied by a Chinese escort. —Eleven men were buried in a burning mine near Golden, Col., on the 9th inst. There are no hopes for their recovery. —A steamer and tugboat collided on the Niagara River near Brockville, Ontario, the night of the 12th inst. Three lives were lost. —A colossal bronze statue of General Grant was unveiled at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the 14th inst., with appropriate ceremonies. —Indians in the far northern portion of Manitoba, British Columbia, are reported to be dying of starvation owing to the absence of game. —A lady in New York City who swallowed a needle twenty-six years ago, recently had it removed from the wall of one of the arteries of her heart. —Joseph Kelly, son of the millionaire banker, was blown from a moving express train near Hackensack, N. J., the 9th inst., and was instantly killed. —Captain Wissman has offered $25,000 for the head of Chief Bushiri, of Africa, on account of the latter's threat to destroy the missions in the interior. —Prime Minister Crispi of Italy came very near being killed by a stone thrown at him by a lunatic in Rome the 13th inst. His wound is quite painful. —The entire bench of district and circuit judges of Riga, Russia, have been arrested for using the German language after they had been ordered to use the Russian. —The Canadian Pacific Railroad will order at once three new steamers at a cost of $1,000,000 apiece, to run on the Pacific mail service to China and Japan. —Both of the Western Union cables across the Atlantic are broken just off the Flemish Cape, close to the American coast. It will require several months to repair them. —According to the official report 135 persons were killed and 20 missing, 100 seriously injured, and 200 slightly injured by the recent explosion of the cartridge factory at Antwerp. —The Porte has at last been roused to give some attention to its naval forces, and the ironclads so long left in utter neglect are being docked and repaired, so as to be fit for service in case of need. —London is greatly excited over another murder recently committed in the Whitechapel district, supposedly by Jack the Ripper. As usual, the police have no clues to speak of. The victim was a woman. —A terrific boiler explosion occurred at the works of the California Sash and Door Company in Oakland, Cal., September 16. Six men lost their lives, and twenty others were injured, some of them very seriously. —The descendants of Benjamin Talbot, colored, lay claim to 640 acres of land covering the central portion of Logansport, Ind. Their title is said to be indisputable. The property is worth several millions of dollars. —Fire in the exposition building at Chicago on the 14th inst., left one-fourth of the interior in ruins, and caused ten thousand people to become so panic-stricken in their efforts to escape that several were more or less injured. —One of the fiercest and most destructive fires yet reported from Montana occurred in the St. Regis district the 8th inst. The destruction of property will aggregate $1,000,000, and at last accounts it was feared that several lives had been lost on the mountain slopes. —In a recent official trial of British war vessels, the fact was developed that many of them were deficient both in speed and power. This was especially true of the earlier types, some of which were rated at sixteen knots, but could only make ten knots actual speed. —There has been such an epidemic of unbooked-for and almost supernatural fires on the Pacific Coast during the present season that the Pacific Insurance Union has decided to raise the rates of insurance all over the Coast. In some towns the rates have been advanced fifty per cent. —An earthquake shock in Pennsylvania on the 10th inst., caused an extensive cave-in of the coal mines in the vicinity of Wilkesbarre. Five acres of the surface over the Delaware and Hudson mine went down, but as no one was at work in the mine at the time, there was no loss of life. —The John Hopkins University at Baltimore, Md., one of the foremost educational institutions in the United States, is said to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Its magnificent endowment of nearly $4,000,000 was largely invested in Baltimore and Ohio railroad stock, which is now practically worthless, hence the distress accruing to the university. —Henry Golding (colored), who lives near Leary, Ga., claims to be 120 years old. He says that he was nine years old at the commencement of the revolutionary war. He belonged at that time to George Humphreys, of Richmond, Va. Humphreys sold him to George Heard, of Augusta, who had owned him ten years when the “stars fell.” —The great London strike has ended with victory for the striking dock laborers. The dock companies offered to advance wages the first of next year but the strikers refused, and asked the advance to begin October 1. The present settlement was on the basis of a compromise, and the advance will be given the 1st of November. Cardinal Manning was largely instrumental in bringing about the settlement. —The fifty representative American workmen who were appointed to compare the methods, wages, work, and general condition of the workmen of foreign countries with those of the United States, returned recently from a six weeks' tour in Europe, fully satisfied that the lot of the average American workman is immeasurably better in every respect than that of the workmen in the countries which they have visited. —Five members of a gang of horse thieves which has been operating in a wholesale fashion for the last eighteen months along the South Dakota and Wyoming border, were captured the 11th inst. The gang is estimated to have made away with at least fifteen hundred horses since its organization, and it is likely that the members who have been captured will suffer the extreme penalty of the law, which is fifteen years' imprisonment. —The thickest armor afloat is that of the British ship Inflexible, twenty-four inches, but it is of wrought iron and has not the resisting power of some of the later steel and compound plates of less weight. The heaviest armor in the German navy is 17.25 inches thick. It is of iron and could be pierced at short range by any modern gun from the eight-inch upward. Of course, if it were not struck squarely, as it seldom would be, the shot would have less effect. —A terrible gale, the worst known in fifty years, if not the most destructive one that has ever visited the Atlantic Coast, swept from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras September 10, 11, and 12. The damage is simply immense, being far beyond any reasonable computation at this writing. Scores of wrecks lie along the shore in either direction as far as eye can reach, and the loss of life has been awful. The summer resorts along the New Jersey Coast suffered severely, many of the large bathing pavilions and cottages being undermined by the fury of the waves, and smashed into fragments. Several of the hotels shared a like fate, and it will require hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair the damage done to piers and sea-walls. Sandy Hook was completely cut off from the mainland, leaving Atlantic City standing on an island. The water rose higher than ever known before in lower New York City, and the first floors of many buildings were flooded. It is probable that appeals for aid will be sent out.