Secular News by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 16, 1879

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 5, No. 3.

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Secular News

By Editor

—The plague is reported to be very violent in Astrakhan.

—Storms, disasters, losses by sea, have been unusually frequent of late.

—Petroleum in great quantities has been discovered in Southern Russia.

—Michigan has just dedicated a State House which cost $1,500,000; worth it, too.

—The question of Chinese immigration is becoming a prominent one in Congress.

—Afghanistan appears to be subdued, if not entirely destroyed as a nation. But the end is not yet.

—Gold has not been on par before since the outbreak of the rebellion. In 1864 it was 285 for the dollar.

—During the late cold spell ice was gathered in Atlanta, Georgia; a thing scarcely ever known before.

—In nearly all parts of France there has been a snow blockade, suspending all travel and communication.

—Congressional investigation is showing up a great deal of crookedness in the late elections, in the South.

—A powder mill at Preakness, N. J., exploded on the 28th of December; three men were blown to pieces.

—The reports of distress in England multiply. As the saying is they are altogether "too numerous to mention."

—Senator Sargent's daughter has graduated in medicine and is practicing in the Freedman's Hospital in Washington.

—The plague in Astrakhan is increasing and spreading. It is now reported as being very severe in some Russian towns.

—We saw ice on Twelfth street, in Oakland, nearly a quarter of an inch thick, at one o'clock P. M., January 13. An unusual sight.

—A quicksilver mine is reported as having been discovered in the north end of Lake Co., equal to that of the Sulphur Banks.

—Dr. L. E. Hudson, a young physician of Oakland, died January 6, from inhaling poisonous gases while engaged in dissection.

—Reports against the working of female suffrage in Wyoming are denied by resident witnesses. They say elections are conducted with greater propriety.

—The Erie Railway has completed their third rail, making a narrow as well as a broad gauge from Buffalo to New York. The distance measures 425 miles.

—The hostile Cheyennes confined at Fort Robinson made a dash for liberty on the night of Jan. 9 and more than forty were shot by the military who pursued them.

—On Sunday, Dec. 22, Fox's Variety Theatre in Philadelphia was opened for a "full dress rehearsal;" a crowd was present. The manager was arrested on Monday.

—The loss in wages by a strike at Oldham, England, amounted to $300,000, besides the expenditure of Union funds, and the loss to capital by the suspension of four million spindles.

—The city of Cork refused to receive Gen. Grant. That is ungrateful. The United States have received a great number from that country whom we could as well spare as they could spare Gen. Grant.

—A Chinaman connected with the embassy in Paris, has passed his examination for the degree of Bachelor of Letters, though he has been there but one year, and knew not a word of the language when he came there.

—Mrs. Catherine Roe, of Washington, Orange Co., N. Y. brought suit at White Plains against George Eppell, for damages for the sale of ale to her husband, recovering $200. The Judge allowed her 5 per cent, additional.

—There has lately been a great uprising of students in Russia. Hundreds of arrests were made, and some injured by the soldiers. It originated in the Medical Schools on account of some new orders against which the students protested.

—At the Sulphur Banks Quicksilver mine in Lake Co., Cal., Daniel Sullivan fell from a scaffold into a shaft and into a stream of water which was a temperature of 180 degrees. He was taken out immediately, but soon died, being so badly scalded.

—A Moscow telegram says that an express train on the Rostow and Vladi-Kavkas Railway recently fell off an embankment. Twenty persons were killed, including General Hintze and several functionaries and officers of the army of the Caucasus. Thirty-eight persons were injured.

—Mrs. Stevens said, in a temperance meeting in San Francisco, January 9th, there were no less than 4,000 places in that city where liquor is sold, where at least $40,000 are spent each day, and yet men are starving here for want of work." And so it must continue while temperance people denounce prohibition.

—John S. Morton, President of the Permanent International Exhibition Company of Philadelphia, and Samuel P. Huhn, Treasurer, have been sent to States Prison for ten years each, for fraudulently issuing stocks which they used, to the amount of $2,000,000. Stokes, the secretary, their associate in crime, is in an insane asylum. Morton was also President of the Market Street Railway, grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and late a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania.