Newport weekly independent., 1904-01-08

e4iuo GIL IuiOpC VIII OC- come involved in the Russian and Japanese trouble.
 Gen. James Longstreet, soldier, statesman and diplomat, and the last lieutenant-general of the Con- federate army, with the exception of Gen. Gordon, died in Gainesville, Ga, on the 2nd inst, from an at tack of acute pneumonia. Gen. Longstreet was born in Edgefeld district, South Carolina, January 8, 1891. His family removed to Ala bama in 1881, and from that state he was appointed to the military academy at West Point, where he graduated in 1842. Early in his career he served in the Mexican war, participating in eight important bat ties. For gallant conduct in that service he was breveted captain and major successively. He was severe ly wounded at the storming of Che pultepec in 1S47. He joined the Confederate army in 1861, and was immediately made brigadier general, and won distinction at the battle of Bull Run.
 The Iroquois theater disaster in Chicago was vastly more destruct- i've to human life than any other play house fire ill the history of the world. The fire next to it in point of lives lost occurred December 5, 1876, in Conway's Brooklyn thea ter, Brooklyn, N. Y. Here 295 of the audience perished inA fierce flames. The day after Christmas in 1911, while the play The Bleed ing Nun, was being performed in theater at Richmond, Va, a fire started that burned seventy per sons to death, among them the governor of the state, George W. Smith. The old world supplies no instance of fires in theaters that may be classed with the three men, toned The most recent theater fire in Chicago before this was the one that destroyed the Columbia theater in Monroe street four years ago and which did its work in practically twenty minutes. This fire occurred during a Rogers brothers rehearsal and the players on the stage were protected by the fire curtain. While there was no loss of life, more property damage was done than will probably result from the Iroquois fire, and the re- suits if the house had been filled, as the Iroquois was, can only be imagined Occasionally pan ics have occurred from time to time in Chicago theaters, started by false alarms in the theater by fires near by, but they have caused no loss of life. In the great Chica- go fire of 1871, the largest conhag- ration of modern times, in which 2,124 acres were devastated, but 200 lives were lost, so far as the most reliable information showed. Among the historical fires in which there has been heavy loss of life the following are the most important: 1210, London destroyed by fire and thousands burned; 1866, London again destroyed with similar loss of life; 1729, confagration in Con- stantinople burned 1000 persons; 1925, forest fires in New Bruns- wick killed 160 persons; 1888, scores burned at Charleston, s. C.. 1842, fire burned 100 people at Hamburg, Germany; 1S45, forty five killed by fire in business part of New York; 1915, fire destroyed seventy in Quebec; 1850, thirty lives lost in Philadelphia; 1851, twenty-five hundred buildings burned at San Francisco with scores of people killed; 1862, Troy, N. Y, destroyed with large loss of life; 1863, two thousand persons perished by fire at Santia- go, South America; 1866, Port land, Me, partly destroyed with scores burned; 1871, forest fires in Wisconsin and Michigan killed 1000; 1882, Newhall house fire in Milwaukee, 14o killed; 1900, Wind sor hotel fire in New York burned eighty persons; 1900, fire at Hobo ken, N. J., killed 300 persons.
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