SECULAR NEWS by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 38.

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SECULAR NEWS.

By Editor

—The king of Burmah died October 2.

—Pennsylvania has over 3,000 mills manufacturing flour.

—The volume of the Amazon is estimated at 7,000,000 cubic feet a second.

—The British government has ordered the emancipation of all slaves on the island of Cyprus.

—Large deposits of fine marble have been discovered near Ishpeming, Lake Superior district, Michigan.

—Since 1865 the spinning power of the world has increased from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 pounds per year.

—An earthquake at Montefalco, in a province of Umbria, Italy, has rendered 143 houses uninhabitable.

—The latest census shows the population of Japan to be 34,338,404, a steady and large increase since 1875.

—The net profits of the Western Union Telegraph company for the quarter ending September 30, are estimated at over $1,000,000.

—It is estimated that there are between thirty and forty thousand people out of employment in Brooklyn, N. Y., at the present time.

—Diphtheria is raging in Washington Territory.

—Large numbers of Chinese are going to Prescott, Arizona.

—It is stated that there has never been so much building going on in Washington as at the present time.

—Last year Paris consumed 10,000,000 gallons of wine. The probable consumption of this year is set down as 75,000 gallons more.

—October 2, six blocks of business houses in Palestine, Texas, were burned. The loss is estimated at $60,000 including $40,000 in stocks; insurance about $20,000.

—A single factory in Redditch, England, turns out between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 needles each week, or about 350,000,000 a year, which is equal to one-fourth of the population of the globe.

—Washington has a population of 134,000, of whom 43,000 are colored. There were found twenty-two colored persons over 100 years old, one being reported as old as 110. Seventy persons were between 90 and 100.

—The Italian Government has kept open for nearly two years in Rome, a popular library consisting of about 500,000 volumes, being principally the collections of sixty monasteries. An average of 400 readers have visited it daily.

—The damage in Ohio by the recent flood proves to have been very great. A large number of railroad bridges have been swept away, causing for some days a suspension of railroad travel. The damage is estimated at not less than $500,000.

—Fortune-telling is carried on to an extent in San Francisco unknown elsewhere. Some of the women engaged in the business charge from $5 to $10 for an interview and are visited by credulous stock speculators, who seek to obtain supernatural "points" as to the market.

—On the north side of the St. Gothard tunnel 1,000 men are employed underground, and 400 in the open air. Three hundred wagon-loads of earth are excavated every day, and in the daily blastings 600 pounds of dynamite are used. The energy shown on the Italian side is said to be equally great.