Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/433

 1899.] CHBONICLE. 9

societies connected with art and education, and another addres9 from the Vice-Chancel lor of Oxford and the heads of colleges.

8. An attempt made by the Chief Commissioner of Police to deal with the obstruction of the chief thoroughfares of the metropolis, by prohibiting cabs to ply for hire in the streets.

— The brothers Dravid, through whose instrumentality the mur- derers of Mr. Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst had been arrested, assassi- nated at Poona by a gang of men.

9. The report of the committee of the French Chamber on the Government Procedure Bill issued. It declared unanimously that no advantage could result from the proposed bill, which would shatter the whole judicial system.

— The warehouses of the Cork Company in the Minories (London) completely destroyed by fire. The junction of the Tilbury and South- Eastern Railways being in close proximity, the local traffic inwards and outwards was stopped for some hours.

10. In the French Chamber the Government bill for transferring revision cases to the whole Court of Cassation, after a short and tame debate carried by 332 to 216 votes.

— President M'Kinley signed the treaty of peace with Spain.

— Serious fighting again took place round Manilla, the American troops eventually carrying by storm the strongly-defended Filippino position at Calooran.

— Memorial services for Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha held at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and in the chapel at Osborne.

— At the Chinese embassy in Paris, the First Secretary shot by one of the attaches, who then shot himself.

11. A strong south-westerly gale, accompanied by heavy rain, blew over the British Isles, causing much disaster round the coasts. A steamer arrived with twenty-five passengers of the Hamburg-American liner Bulgaria, which was found drifting helplessly in the Atlantic, 800 miles from the Azores. The Cunard steamer, Pavonia, also disabled, was towed to within 300 miles of the Azores, where in a hurricane the cable parted, and she was lost sight of.

— The Duke of Connaught at Assouan laid the foundation-stone of the embankment for the Nile reservoirs.

— Iloilo, the chief town held by the Philippine insurgents, taken by the United States troops after a naval bombardment. The insur- gents fired the town before leaving it, but the flames were extinguished by the Americans on entering.

13. A wave of extremely cold weather, accompanied by heavy falls of snow, and lasting nearly a week, passed over the whole North American continent from Savannah to Boston. From 30 to 38 degrees of frost— more in several places— were registered daily. The harbours were blocked, the railroads impeded, and large cities like New York and Washington cut off from the outside, and almost reduced to starvation.