p. 20 | News and Miscellany by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 18, 1912

News and Miscellany

By Editor

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Nearly 1,000,000 women will vote for presidential electors this year.

— Eramus Page, 103 years old, the oldest newsboy in the world, is believed to be dying at his home in Joliet, Ill. He was stricken while selling papers at a railroad station, his stand for years.

— Recently 150 athletes, representing the best in the United States, sailed for Stockholm, Sweden. This month these men represent this country in the Olympic games, and they will be in competition with the chosen athletes of all nations.

— Nineteen cases of bubonic plague, with seven deaths, have been reported by the authorities in Porto Rico. Some cases of the plague have also been found in Havana, Cuba.

— The American government and people began the new fiscal year with $3,640,407,621, of which all but $363,621,008 is in circulation; this is held in the Treasury vaults as the assets of the federal government.

— The most severe earthquake ever recorded in Alaska occurred at Fairbanks at ten o'clock on the night of July 7. The earth rocked continuously for forty seconds, and less violent shocks occurred at intervals during the night.

— Damage estimated at $150,000 is reported as the result of a severe electrical storm that beat upon Chicago, Ill., for more than five hours on the afternoon of July 7. Twelve houses were struck by lightning during the storm, and five inches of rain fell.

— While groping its way through a dense fog in Narragansett Bay early on the morning of July 7, the Fall River Line steamer "Commonwealth" rammed the United States battle-ship "New Hampshire," which was at anchor near the Newport, R. I., naval training station. Both ships sustained considerable damage, but no fatalities nor injuries resulted from the collision.

— Paris is threatened with a bread famine, owing to the high price of flour. This commodity is $4.60 a sack higher now than it has been for ten years, being $14.60. Flour from the new harvest can not reach the market until August, and the prospect is alarming. The conditions are more serious on account of the seamen's strike, which will prevent the arrival of flour from Algeria.

— Recent despatches from Cuba announced that the rebels had been badly defeated in battle, and that General Estenoz, leader of the rebellion, had been killed. It was also reported that General Lecoste, another leader, had been captured by the federals. Cuba is rejoicing over the success of the government arms; and an announcement from President Gomez to the effect that tranquility in all but one province has been secured, tends to strengthen confidence and set the wheels of business and industry moving. Officials in Cuba are loud in praise of the President of the United States, whom they call the "illustrious friend of Cuba."

— On the fourth of July Uncle Sam unfurled the new flag, with its forty-eight stars. Over every public building and government reservation throughout the land the new emblem was flung to the breeze, gloriously typifying the culmination of the great plan outlined by our forefathers of 1776. The new flag had an addition of two stars, one for each of the two new States—Arizona and New Mexico. The admission of these two States marks the end of the chapter. There can be no more States admitted to the Union, as all the Territories of continental United States have now reached Statehood, and the only possibility of additional stars being added is the partition of Texas into two or more States, which was reserved as a constitutional right by that State upon its coming into the Union.

— During the last week ten aviators were either killed or injured.

— Forty or more passengers were injured in a collision near Greensboro, N. C., July 6. The Southern Railway Limited No. 38, collided head-on with a freight-engine.

— Early on the morning of July 4, forty-one persons were killed and sixty injured, when an excursion train bound for Niagara Falls was wrecked by the Lackawanna express near Corning, N. Y.

— Gov. Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey, and Gov. Thomas R. Marshall, of Indiana, were chosen, July 3, by the Democratic National Convention as party candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States.

— A writer in Aircraft explains the "holes in the air," which have been so dangerous to aviators. They are "regions in the atmosphere where the wind happens to be blowing in the same direction as the aeroplane's flight, and with equal speed."

— It is estimated that between 400 and 500 persons were killed, and a property loss of $14,000,000 was entailed, by a tornado that, after a day of thunderstorms and high wind, swept through Winnipeg, Manitoba, on the evening of June 30. Six hundred families are homeless.

— Two thousand Chinese troops have mutinied in the city of Tsi-nan because their wages had not been paid. They burned, shot, and looted the stores. They were careful not to hurt any of the foreigners. Poor China is traveling a hard road. The governor of the province was forced to take refuge in a mission station.

— It is estimated that more than $5,000,000 was expended in Chicago by delegates, politicians, and convention visitors during the Republican National Convention at Chicago. Of this sum it is estimated $3,500,000 was expended for food, drink, and sleeping-rooms, the remainder being distributed among the theaters, amusement parks, and retail stores. Chicago entertained 200,000 visitors during the convention.

— The Bunker Hill Monument Association of Boston presented to the Canadian government a request that a small cannon, which for many years has been shown to visitors at the citadel in Quebec as a capture by the British at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, be given up in order that it may be treasured hereafter by the association as a relic of the battle. The Canadians have refused to grant this request.

— Some alarm has been caused by reports of volcanic symptoms in the neighborhood of the Panama Canal. According to the Telegraph's New York correspondent, "great excitement prevails among the workmen on the canal, owing to the clouds of steam and blue smoke arising from the ground in many of the deep cuts, principally the famous Culebra cut; and the heat in many places is so intense that it quickly chars wood and demolishes paper. The canal geologist insists that the phenomena are caused by the oxidation of pyrites; but despite official denials, the rumor about a volcano persists, and much hindrance has already been caused by the refusal of the men to use dynamite in the drill-holes, for fear of a premature explosion."

— The Russian government has barred the Salvation Army from the Russian empire.

— The people of Sweden have subscribed $3,360,000 for a battle-ship to be given to the nation.

— The dust collected from numerous vacuum cleaners has proved to be a valuable fertilizer, and its sale has become a regular business in Paris.

— An Italian inventor, following in the path of his famous compatriot Marconi, has, it is announced, successfully completed an instrument called the "wireless iconograph," by means of which autographs and sketches may be sent by wireless telegraphy just as verbal messages are now sent.

— A woman in a typewriting contest in Paris recently won a victory over more than 150 competitors by writing 16,500 words in four hours. A man wrote 17,000 words, but he made so many mistakes that he was ruled out. An American woman has surpassed the French woman's record, for in the ordinary course of business she once wrote 10,500 words in two and one-half hours, and made three copies as she went along.

— High hopes of solving the mystery that has shrouded the birthplace of England's first historian, Venerable Bede, are centered on the proposed excavation of the foundations of the ancient monastery of St. Peter's, Wearmouth. This monastery was founded in the seventh century, and is now part of the fabric of Monkwearmouth parish church. The foundations of the building, believed to have been part of the monastery, are situated near the west side of the tower, and they have never been explored.

— Sixty-seven per cent of all the telephones in the world are in the United States. Canada has only a little over 2 per cent of all the telephones in the world. Europe has 25 per cent. In all the world 12,453,000 telephones and 29,566,000 miles of telephone wire are in use, and $1,729,000 is invested in telephones. The annual number of telephone conversations in the world is 22,000,000,000. And it is only thirty-five years since the telephone was invented. The following figures show the number of telephones in use in different parts of the world: North America, 8,729,000; South America, 120,000; Europe, 3,239,000; Asia, 166,000; Africa, 41,000; Australasia, 124,000; Oceanica, 17,000; West Indies, 17,000.

— The transmission and receipt of telegrams in the Chinese empire is not so easy as in Western countries, because the Chinese language lacks an alphabet and expresses itself by characters and signs that represent words. In consequence, for purposes of telegraphing, an exact list has been made of signs in quantity sufficient for ordinary correspondence, and to each one of the signs a different number is given, which is transmitted by the Morse telegraphic system. The code consists of 9,800 ciphers, the whole forming a pamphlet of forty-nine pages, each one of which contains ten series of twenty characters with their corresponding numbers. On receipt of a telegram, the operator looks up in his books the characters represented by the numbers transmitted by the apparatus, and transcribes them into legible Chinese.