News of the Week

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 25, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 17.

The fury of the mob was vividly illustrated at Springfield, Mo., on April 14. Two negroes had been accused of assaulting a white girl, and had been placed in jail to await trial. A mob estimated at 5,000, after hooting at and insulting the sheriff and assaulting the jailer, literally demolished the jail, took the accused men out and hanged them to an electric light tower in the center of the public square, building a fire under their victims while they dangled from the ropes. Besides wrecking the jail, the mob attacked the sheriff's house, demolished the furniture, and rendered the sheriff's wife unconscious by threats and violence; and all this without giving the accused an opportunity to prove their innocence, or the state an opportunity to prove them guilty.

The volcano of Mount Vesuvius is now thought to have spent its force, tho the eruption still continues, and ashes continue to fall over a very wide area. It is estimated that 2,000 persons have lost their lives as a result of this catastrophe. While more persons lost their lives in the eruption of 79 and 1631, it is believed that neither of these exceeded this in intensity and the amount of material thrown out upon the surrounding country. Some of the villages nearest the volcano have been practically buried. The railway up the mountain has been destroyed; railway tracks and tram tracks in the vicinity have been buried under several feet of sand and ashes, and 50,000 persons have been rendered homeless. The property loss is placed at $20,000,000.

A religious war is now going on in certain districts of Russian Poland between the Catholics and a sect known as the Mariavits (formerly Catholics). Numerous encounters have taken place between the two bodies, in which several lives have been lost and many on both sides have been injured.

Another great earthquake is reported from the island of Formosa, in which upwards of 1,000 persons are said to have lost their lives. The financial loss due to the Formosan earthquake of last month is now placed at $45,000,000.

M. Sleptzoff, governor of the province of Tver, Russia, was blown to pieces by a bomb while passing along the street of the capital of that province. The assassin was arrested.

Famine is rampant in the Russian provinces of Riazan, Kazan, Simbirsk, and Tula, and hunger typhus has broken out among the peasantry.

An explosion occurred on the United States battleship Kearsarge, on April 13, killing seven officers and men, and injuring fourteen.