Americana

P: U.S. weather was back to normal. In Portland, Me. the temperature dropped to 8.9DEG below; in Los Angeles it soared to 87DEG.

P: Sighting a "flying saucer" high over Godman Field at Fort Knox, Ky., three National Guard pilots zoomed up in P-51s to investigate. At about 25,000 feet, Capt. Thomas Mantell's plane started to spin, plunged downward, and disintegrated at tree-level. The "saucer" turned out to be a weather balloon.

P: Mrs. Ruth Foster Froemming, 50, a former Ziegfeld Follies girl, filed for mayor of Milwaukee. Her slogan: "Every church your temple, the world your country, and every man your brother." Said she: "I'm not hell bent on winning."

P: The U.S. Treasury struck a new half-dollar, the first since 1916, bearing the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Only other Americans on coins (except for special issues): Lincoln (1909 penny), Washington (1932 quarter), Jefferson (1938 nickel), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1946 dime) and two unidentified Indians (1859 penny and 1913 nickel*).

P: Maryland made the birthday of Abraham Lincoln a legal holiday, reducing to 16 the number of states (mostly in the South) which do not observe it.

P: In Atlanta, four teen-agers went on a spree, released the brakes of some 24 cars just to watch them careen downhill and crash.

P: Well-meaning members of St. Michael's Church in Charleston, S.C. invited Rabbi Lewis A. Weintraub to speak on the Palestine question, then served him a pork dinner. The Rabbi pointedly passed it up.

P: In Lakewood, N. J., Justice Sidney Zweben sentenced a Brooklyn motorist caught passing a school bus to write "I must not pass a school bus in Lakewood" 100 times on the school blackboard.

* Sculptor J. E. Fraser explained that the nickel Indian was a composite portrait of Indians Iron Tail, Two Moons and "a third whose name I have forgotten."

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