Secular News | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1879

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 5, No. 4.

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Secular News.

—Senator Jones has been re-elected in Nevada.

—Great damage has been done by ice gorges in the Ohio River.

—Anderson Valley in Sonoma Co., Cal., reports ice six inches thick.

—One thousand eight hundred Communists have been pardoned in France.

—Political trouble is growing in France. Fears of the result are entertained.

—The State Grange of Iowa is reported to be nearly extinct. “Up like a rocket,” &c.

—The new capitol building at Albany, N. Y., is at last completed. It cost $15,000,000.

—Eighty men were cut off from hope of rescue by the explosion of “the Dinas Mine,” in England.

—The great bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis was sold at auction recently, bringing $2,000,000.

—The nineteenth Molly Maguire was hanged in Pennsylvania last week. Only two more await execution.

—Prussia, by her oppressive acts, is like to bring upon herself all the trouble which she is aiming to avert.

—Several disastrous fires lately in eastern cities. Most worthy of note is that of the Chicago postoffice.

—The Chinese New Year commenced Jan. 20th, and in California it sounds very much like the 4th of July.

—Chicago ranks next to New York City in amount of business with the post office department of the Government.

—The Texas Legislature has passed an act requiring all railway trains to stop not less than five minutes at any station.

—A fire in New York city, January 17th, caused the loss of several millions of dollars. Several insurance companies are seriously affected by it.

—A railroad bridge over the river Arda in Turkey broke down, and a Russian General, several other officers, and two hundred men were drowned.

—Reports from the East give encouraging news of the revival of business. The amount of gold in the treasury is increasing, and the wisdom of resumption is fully proved.

—The publisher of the Morning Call, San Francisco, has been “bound over,” on a charge of libel on juror Reed, of Placerville. It was in reality a fight with the Chronicle.

—In the departments at Washington 1,300 women hold clerkships. The highest salary paid any one of them is $1,800. Many receive $1,200 and $1,400, and none less than $900.

—At a pond at Chapelle Moch, France, forty-eight children were drowned on Christmas day by the breaking of the ice on which they were sporting. No sadder event occurred during the year.

—Some wind as well as cold in California. In a squall last Monday night, a ship dragged her anchor in San Francisco Bay, and only by strenuous efforts was prevented crashing into Oakland Long Wharf.

—A trout fishery between Truckee and Lake Tahoe was destroyed by the recent cold weather. Ice covered the pond to a great depth, and the streams leading to them were frozen up, cutting off the supply of fresh water.

—Senator Grover, who as Governor of Oregon figured so conspicuously in the “cipher despatches,” has been charged by a committee of investigation with misappropriating over $90,000 of the funds of the State.

—A strange tale of fatality from Ailsa Craig, Ontario. A Miss Walker died suddenly. Her betrothed, Edward Cousins, hearing of it, committed suicide, and Mrs. Walker on seeing the corpse of her daughter dropped dead.

—The electric light will make a valuable saving of coal in England. According to a very careful estimate, recently, the quantity consumed in gas making was set down at 6,560,000 tons, against a production of 114,300,000 tons.

—The superintendent of the Hartford Library Association says that, as a rule, boys and girls read too much. Our accounts show that one boy has taken 102 story books in six months, and one girl 112 novels in the same time.

—The Giant Powder Works of San Francisco, near the Ocean beach, were blown up January 14. Four men, one a Chinaman, were blown to atoms. One witness testified that when he left the building a few moments before there were four Chinamen in it.

—The fish are dying in the Gulf off the Florida coast to a distance of 150 miles. It is laid to a “poisonous current” from the streams coming from the Everglades. Fears are entertained that the dead fish will seriously affect the health of the people along the coast next summer. Why such a “poisonous current” just now sets in is not easy to solve.

—Poughkeepsie, N. Y., according to the Chicago Railway Review, is to have no more locomotive whistling. A bell, worked by electricity, is set up at the depot, and when the trains come within a mile of the station it will ring until they arrive. The danger signal is thus given, and the waste of steam is avoided, to say nothing of the racket. Any engineer, who whistles hereafter when in Poughkeepsie loses his situation on the Hudson River Railroad.