Some Recent Events

"I'll put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes," prophesied Puck
in "Midsummer Night's Dream." The boastful fairy did not succeed in
accomplishing this wonder until midnight on the Fourth of July, 1903. On
that day the Pacific cable from the United States to Hawaii, to Midway
Island, to Guam, and to Manila, began operations. The men worked hard
that last day of the cable laying, and by 11 P.M. the President of the
United States sent a message to Governor Taft at Manila. Soon after was
the old prophecy fulfilled, when President Roosevelt, no doubt with Puck
at his elbow, sent a message round the world in twenty minutes, thus
bettering Puck's idea by half.

The saddest year in California's records is that of 1906. On the morning
of April 18, a great and overwhelming calamity overtook the beautiful
region around San Francisco Bay. A movement of the earth's crust which
began in the bottom of the ocean far out from land, reached the coast in
the vicinity of Tomales Bay in Marin County. Wrecking everything that
came in its direct path, it shivered its way in a southeasterly
direction to a point somewhere in the northern part of Monterey County.
The land on the two sides of the fault moved a short distance in
opposite directions. Thus in some straight fences and roads crossing the
fault, one section was found to be shifted as much as sixteen feet to
one side of the other. The severe vibrations set up by this break and
shifting extended a long distance in all directions.

Although the earthquake was by no means so severe in San Francisco as in
the region of Tomales Bay or even in the vicinity of Stanford, Santa
Rosa, San Jose, or Agnews, it caused greater loss of life and property