VESUVIUS ACTIVE

Hokitika Guardian, 2 May 1922, Page 3

VESUVIUS ACTIVE

NAPLES, March 7. I After a prolonged period of. inactivi- j tir Vesuvius has again became active. ■ The new activity began with two 1 slight earthquake shocks, which were i followed by the blowing off of an ernp- ! tive cone over 200 feet high. Ashes. incandescent stones, and streams of molten lava, ejected from | the latter covered an area of 100.OCX) | square feet round the crater. Professor Mnillndna, director of; Vesuvius Observatory, descended into ; the crater during the early stages of j the eruption and bad the skin of his ■ face scorched by the heat. He met a ' young American novelist, who also de- ! scended in order to gather impressions ! for a novel of Borne at the time of Spartieus. MURDERER'S FATE. j HEREIN, March 7. I Peter Gruppen, who was under sentence of dQnth for the murder of his niece Dorothea Rothbeck, the young chatelaine of Keppelsdorf Castle, Silesia, and of her girl-cousin, hanged himself in the prison cell yesterday. At 4 p.m. a gaoler looked through the spy-hole and saw Gruppen sitting on the bed. Half an hour later he returned and found some paper fastened over the hole. On the door being burst open the body of Gruppen was found hanging from a pipe of the beating apparatus. He had used his braces as a rope. He always maintained his innocence and looked forward to a. new trial on the charge of murdering his wife, whose mysterious disappearance has never been explained. He recently escaped from prison, but gave himself up the Bivaie day, explaining that his escape lynn to proyo hi* !l inneeencp, , i