ITEMS OF NEWS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 15, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 47.

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ITEMS OF NEWS.

-A Latin Bible bearing date of 1642, was recently sold in London for £1,600.

-Michigan University is to have a new museum building which will cost $60,000.

-Ex-Senator Conkling has resumed the practice of law, and opened an office in New York.

-During the month of November there were 2,032 arrests made by the San Francisco police.

-Colonel John W. Forney, the veteran journalist died in Philadelphia, Dec. 9, aged 64 years.

-The Brooklyn suspension bridge has already cost $13,323,000 and $3,000,000 are required to complete it.

-Dr. H. J. Glenn has sown 30,000 acres of wheat on his farm in Colusa county, and expects to sow 25,000 more.

-The daughter of Governor Newell of Washington Territory has been nominated and confirmed as Territorial librarian.

-Land near Colton, San Bernardino county, Cal., that was offered for $60 per acre six months ago, now commands $200.

-The Me Foo, the first of a regular line of steamers under the Chinese flag, lately arrived at London with 3,000 tons of tea.

-General Judson Kilpatrick of the United States Army, and Minister to Chili for the second time, died at Santiago, December 4.

-The population of New York is 1,206,577, and the number of dwellings, 73,684, making the average number of inhabitants to each dwelling, 16.37.

-The propeller Jane Miller with twenty-five persons on board recently foundered in the vicinity of White Cloud Islands, Lake Huron. All were lost.

-It is said that an experienced Boston engineer has been offered $100,000 to go to China for five years and aid in the establishment of industrial enterprises.

-Herr Krupp has over 30,000 men employed in making cannon, and yet we are constantly talking about the approaching millennium when nations shall learn war no more.—Alta.

-Four persons, a gentleman, two ladies, and a little girl, while attempting to cross a swollen stream near Centerville, W. T., December 11, were carried down by the current, and drowned.

-Since 1860, 789,063 original pension claims have been filed in the U. S. Pension Office, and 450,949 of these have been allowed and inscribed on the pension roll. There are 266,575 claims now pending.

-On the evening of the 7th inst., Eureka, Nevada, was severely shaken by an earthquake shock. Several buildings are reported as nearly taken down. It was the severest shock ever experienced in that place.

-The Mayor of Chicago has vetoed the ordinance allowing the Mutual Union Telegraph Company to string wires on poles through the streets, and the Council, by a vote of 22 noes to 14 ayes, refused to pass it over the veto.

-A dispatch from St. Petersburg says: There have been two Mussulman revolts in the last four months against the Chinese garrison at Gang Hesian. Two hundred Chinese were massacred and 400 rebels were subsequently beheaded.

-Of forty railroad hands who were sleeping in the loft of a building near Pittsburg, Pa., sixteen were burned to death in the building, and many more were seriously injured, Dec. 10. There was only a small opening for escape, and the flames spread so rapidly that all could not make use of it.

-As a freight train on the Wabash Railroad was crossing the Missouri river at St. Charles, Mo., Dec. 8, one span of the bridge gave way, and the entire train was precipitated into the river, eighty feet below. The engineer only is missing, but several were hurt severely. Thirteen of the cars contained live-stock.

-Twenty years ago a Philadelphia dry goods firm failed in business, and compromised with their creditors for seventy-five cents on the dollar. The firm went on with its business as usual. A few days ago they sent to each of their old creditors a letter, inclosing a sum equal to the amount abated in the former settlement, with interest. The whole amount thus paid was about $125,000. This case is almost without a parallel.

-The burning of the Ring theater at Vienna, December 8, was the occasion of a wholesale destruction of human life. Nearly 2,000 persons were in the building when the fire broke out on the stage. A panic immediately ensued. The employes at once fled for their lives, taking no precautions against the spread of the fire. The passages were very narrow, and but few could escape. About six hundred persons are known to have perished, and as several hundred more are missing, it is feared that this is not nearly the whole number. The fire company was very inefficient.

-A Philadelphia father recently discovered that his children were required by their teacher in the public school to learn the rules of arithmetic after this fashion: "Rule for short division, rule, dash, one, write the divisor at the left of the dividend, semicolon, begin at the left hand, comma, and divide the number denoted by each figure of the dividend by the divisor, comma, and write the quotient beneath, period. Paragraph." If a pupil failed to place a comma correctly, he lost as many marks as if he had really made a serious blunder. It is not stated what other methods the teachers use, in case this shall fail to reduce the children to a state of idiocy.

-A prominent Irish agitator said in regard to the man who attempted to blow up the Montreal Court House: "Six months ago he shot a landlord in Ireland and came to this country. In Ireland he was a gentleman and kept a pack of hounds, but he was in full sympathy with the poor peasantry. His intention was to blow up the Court House in Montreal, the House of Parliament in Ottawa and the Arsenal in Quebec. This will yet be done."

Of O'Donovan Rossa, the agitator, it was said: "He is the head of the movement, and to-day he has 10,000 men at his command. The combined societies hold meetings in this city, and direct the work in this country and aid it on the other side. A skirmish fund of $5,000,000 can be raised. The city of Chicago has contributed $25,000 to the general fund. There are branches in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Providence, which contribute from $5,000 to $7,000 a week. Two of Rossa's men burned the town of Woodstock, N. B., and the English insurance companies sustained an aggregate loss of nearly $200,000. The nihilists never had such perfect arrangements. The very man who made the bomb that was thrown at the feet of the Czar is in New York and in the employ of the Irishman. Everything that chemistry can do will be done to carry on the work. We don't lack for funds." It is evident that there will be no peaceful settlement of the difficulties. That is the last thing desired by the agitators.

-The Alta thus describes Ericsson's new torpedo boat, which has lately been completed and tested: It has been named The Destroyer, and the name is appropriate if it is claimed confidently for it be justified by its performances. It is a submarine boat containing a powerful gun, from which a heavy projectile is discharged. The speed of the boat and the size and initial velocity of the projectile are matters for determination by the government that secures the right to make and use them. Many private experiments with the new appliance, supplemented by a public one recently, have seemed to thoroughly demonstrate the success of the invention—so much so, indeed, that the Army and Navy Journal thinks that it sounds the knell of many an existing ironclad, and promises to revolutionize submarine warfare as its great predecessor, the Monitor, revolutionized ordinary combat on the seas. In the public exhibition referred to, the muzzle of the gun was six and a half feet below the surface of the water. The charge was twelve pounds of giant powder. The projectile was 25½ feet long. The object aimed at was a target of manilla rope and wooden slats, three hundred feet distant. The gun is aimed and charged by electricity, operated by the wheelsman. The projectile traversed the net at a depth of five feet below the surface of the water, appeared on the surface about one hundred feet beyond, and continued its course with considerable velocity for two hundred feet more. The submarine distance of four hundred feet was made in three seconds, although the gun charge was but twelve pounds. The torpedo can strike the vessel at any angle up to forty-five degrees or more and still explode. It is so constructed that it can force its way through intervening obstacles without exploding, a smart blow from a sledge hammer being insufficient to explode the cap. Thus submarine cannonading is shown to be entirely practicable.