News Notes from Around the World
The Greek steamer Patris, arriving in New York from Athens recently, brought five patients with a malady that puzzled the ship doctor. Six had died on the way. The disease, when diagnosed by other physicians, was pronounced spinal meningitis. It is said that Greek ships bring in the most people with this affliction, which leads to the conclusion that the germ that causes spinal meningitis is more prevalent in Greece, or part of it, than in other countries. The survivors are being treated with a serum which has recently been discovered, and which, it is declared, cures the great majority of spinal meningitis cases. Wireless messages from ships on the Pacific, from Porto Rico, from Japan, and it is thought from Cornwall, England, were heard in San Francisco, March 26, when tandem kites for experimental purposes were sent aloft carrying wireless apparatus. Waves from a distance of 6500 miles were picked up by the temporary station on Baker's Beach. In time of war information by wireless would make it possible to anticipate an enemy's fleet two or three thousand miles away. An awful tragedy occurred in New York City, March 25, when 175 women and children met death as the result of a factory fire. Only one flimsy fire-escape was provided for an emergency exit of 2000 employees. An iron door held back scores, who in terror trampled each other to death. In addition to the dead, one hundred have been injured. Many leaped to their death from tenth-story windows, landing in heaps on the pavement eighty-five feet below. A man who is now in a New York hospital, fell face foremost into a set of revolving cogs, and his whole face was mangled. By means of plastic surgery a new face has been furnished him, the flesh being kneaded into a chin, giving him a mouth and lips. For the nose the small finger has been slit open and put over the place where the nose would be. The finger will be amputated after the flesh has knitted. The London "Times" of March 10 says: "We share Sir Wilfrid Laurier's noble and generous conception of ensuring eternal amity between two great communities [Great Britain and the United States]. But we remember that the relations between the two countries were never so good as at present, nor have questions likely to cause friction ever been so few or so insignificant." Three banks in different cities were plundered on March 24: one at Hudson, Kansas, in which $4600 was taken; at Curryville, Missouri, $4600 stolen; and at Decatur, Illinois, in which the cashier was locked in the vault, the robbers escaping with $2500. In the Norman open pit mine at Virginia, Minnesota, thirty men were engulfed in a 500,000-ton slide of iron ore, earth, ice, and snow. Only four men escaped, and many of the workmen left large families. One whose wife died a month ago left seven children. It was a pathetic scene to see the little ones sobbing as they stood about the edge of the pit. The total number of deaths from the plague in India during February reach 88,498. The disease has become such a fixture in that country that its ravages are little heard of except through occasional official statistics. The most persistent efforts to stamp out the disease have failed to effect a permanent improvement in the situation. Reports of the hostilities in Yemen, Turkey, state that the Turkish troops are putting the Arabs to flight, and that the machine guns have caused great havoc among the tribesmen. The Arabs have lost 200 in the last two fights, while forty of the Turkish troops were killed. The Nevada Legislature has inserted a clause in the crimes and punishment act which makes it a misdemeanor for a hat pin to be worn the unprotected point of which protrudes more than one half inch beyond the crown of the hat. Dr. Booker T. Washington, the most prominent colored educator in the United States, received severe injuries in New York from a suspicious householder who conceived the idea that the professor was trying to invade his home. Four masked men held up and robbed a passenger-train near Coffeyville, Kansas, March 24. The express car was wrecked by four charges of dynamite used to blow open the safe. The bandits made their escape in a buggy. A general strike of teamsters in New York and vicinity in sympathy with the striking express drivers, is feared. Nearly 5000 men of the Adams, United States, and Wells Fargo companies are now on strike. More than twenty cases of bubonic plague have been discovered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, according to cables received from Buenos Aires. The authorities are much alarmed through fear of an epidemic. It is given out at the Vatican that under no circumstances will the Pope receive pilgrimages during the present year, regardless of whether the audiences are sought by Catholics or not. Nine persons have been indicted in $10,000,000 coal frauds in Alaska, charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States Government out of 10,000 acres of mining property. Louis Breguet, in France, carrying eleven passengers in his monoplane, made a record flight of two miles. The machine and its twelve occupants weighed 2600 pounds. The Boy Scouts of America held the first annual meeting of their national council at Washington recently. There are now over 300,000 Boy Scouts in the country. At present there are twenty-five cases of cholera, with twenty-one deaths, reported in Hawaii. The majority of the victims are natives. Fighting a fierce gale off the coast of Victoria, B. C., a passenger boat capsized and went down with twenty-six on board. A bridal party of 118 was attacked by a pack of ravenous wolves at Tashkend, Asiatic Russia. Only two persons escaped. Forty-five cases of smallpox are reported from London, and 132 deaths from measles, in one week. Fourteen lives have been lost as the result of a collision of two steamships in the North Sea.