Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/457

 1899.] CHEONICLE. 33

9. At Samoa, King Malietoa Tanu having been formally confirmed by the International Commission, voluntarily abdicated the kingly office, which was abolished by the commission, and appointed a pro- visional Government composed of the consuls of the three Powers.

10. A great fire occurred at the Elswick works, Newcastle-on-Tyne, belonging to Messrs. Armstrong & Co., by which three large workshops were destroyed, involving a loss of nearly 150,000/.

— The plasterers' strike ended by the men returning to work under new conditions, the ballot showing 4,559 votes in favour and 368 against accepting the terms offered.

— Lord George Hamilton, M.P., unveiled at Canterbury a handsome monumental cross erected in memory of forty-one Kentish martyrs who were burned in the reign of Queen Mary.

— A mass meeting, attended by 5,000 persons, held at Johannesburg, to support Sir A. Milner's proposals as the irreducible minimum of the Uit landers' demands.

11. President Loubet attended the races at Longchamps, and owing to an imposing display of military and police order was not disturbed. The Grand Prix de Paris was won by the favourite, M. Caillault's Perth (T. Lane). Fifteen ran.

12. In the French Chamber a debate raised with regard to the alleged brutality of the police on the previous day. The Government thereupon demanded a vote of confidence, which was refused, and a colourless order of the day voted by 321 to 173. M. Dupuy thereupon tendered the resignation of the Ministry, which was accepted.

— The western shores of the White Sea continued to be blocked with ice, and all communication interrupted with the shore. For more than a fortnight a temperature below freezing prevailed in northern and north-eastern Russia.

— Earthquakes reported from South-eastern Austria and Western Hungary, the area affected extending from Mttdling to the Leitha Mountains.

13. A terrific storm swept along the Upper Mississippi River and its tributaries in Wisconsin and Minnesota, the town of New Richmond being destroyed, and 200 lives lost.

— Baron F. de Christiani sentenced to four years' imprisonment for assaulting President Loubet at the Auteuil races, and seven other Royalist gentlemen were subsequently sentenced to fines and periods of imprisonment of from fourteen days to three months for riotous conduct.

— Mr. R. P. Paranjpye (St John's College), a native of India (Bombay), bracketed equal with Mr. G. Birt whistle (Pembroke College) for the senior wranglership at Cambridge University.

— The Indictment Chamber in Paris dismissed all the charges against Colonel Picquart as insufficient to indicate his guilt.

14. The governors of the principal southern and south-western pro- vinces of Russia informed the Minister of the Interior that the harvests were lost, and the peasantry starving.

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