SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 15, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 31.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—There are 174,041 farms in Pennsylvania.

—Minnie Warren, the well-known dwarf, recently died at Fall River.

—The Shah of Persia invested about $20,000 in pictures while in Paris.

—The Western farmers are harvesting by moonlight to escape the terrible heat of the day.

—The number of drowning accidents and of deaths by sunstroke this season is unprecedented.

—Queen Victoria has reigned forty-one years, only three years less than the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

—According to the new directory there are 1507 saloons in Cincinnati, 400 more than there are groceries.

—Nearly the entire business portion of Castleburgh, Kentucky, was destroyed by fire, July 22. Loss $200,000.

—July 26, fourteen children and three teachers were drowned by the capsizing of a boat in Blackwater river near the town of Bailieborough, Caven county, Ireland.

—The first balloon ascension in England was made by a young man attached to the Neapoliton Embassy, from the Artillery Ground, at Moorfields, September 15, 1784.

—The British Government will require an increase of revenue this year over last of about £3,500,000, but the returns of the quarter just ended show a falling off of about £50,000.

—An explosion occurred August 7, in a coal mine, at Scremerston, near Berwick, England. Thirty-five men were in the mine at the time, only two of whom got out, and they were severely burned.

—The largest of the pyramids is 481 feet high and 693 feet on the sides; its base covers eleven acres. The stones are above 30 feet in length and the layers are 208. Three hundred and sixty thousand men were employed in its erection.

—From 1866 to 1878 the coinage of sovereigns in Australia has been about 48,000,000 sterling, against 98,000,000 issued by the London mint. These coins are current in England, and the Economist thinks them powerful emigration agents.

—It is stated by a Chicago authority that 30,000 boys and girls of Chicago are patrons of drinking saloons, and many of them are drunkards. About 9,000 of these tippling children are arrested annually for drunkenness and one species of crime and another, and many of the saloons could not exist if it were not for these juvenile drinkers. There was a city ordinance prohibiting the sale of liquors to minors, but this was declared invalid through some influence. A committee of the Citizen's League now call for a restoration of the ordinance or the passage of another and still more binding, to save 30,000 of Chicago's children from the drunkard's death and drunkard's doom.—Church Union.

—A terrible accident occurred on the Pittsburg, Cincinnati and St. Louis railroad, August 7, at a point one and a half miles west of Mingo Junction, Ohio. The train was composed of two sleepers, one hotel car, one baggage car, two postal cars, and two coaches. The latter was occupied by emigrants. The fast line, which was about twenty minutes behind time, and running at the rate of forty miles an hour, collided with a freight train. The entire train, except the hotel cars and sleepers, were thrown from the track and fearfully wrecked. Eleven or twelve persons were reported killed, and fifteen or twenty seriously wounded. All the passengers in sleepers escaped without serious injury. The loss of life was confined to those in the forward cars, occupied by postal clerks and emigrants.