Friday, Jun. 07, 1968
Born. To Princess Margrethe, 28, heiress to the Danish throne, and Prince Henrik, 33, the French-born former Count Henri de Monpezat: their first child, a son; in Copenhagen.
Died. William R. McAndrew, 53, director of NBC News since 1951, who devised the hugely successful concept of team news coverage (Huntley-Brinkley) and organized a 1,000-man army of network newsmen; of injuries received in a fall; in Bronxville, N.Y.
Died. C. Douglass Welch, 61, portly good-humor man, whose nationally syndicated column, "The Squirrel Cage," appeared in 32 newspapers around the country; of a heart attack; in Seattle. With a combination of humor and an acid pen, Welch attacked the wrongs of the world, created "Happy" Digby, whose bouts with small-town authority were followed by Saturday Evening Post readers for more than 14 years.
Died. Altaf Husain, 68, editor from 1945 to 1965 of Dawn, Pakistan's biggest English-language daily; of a heart attack; in Karachi. A longtime friend of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, Husain was a neutralist in foreign affairs, in recent years had much to do with Pakistan's shift from the West towards stronger ties with Communist China and the Soviet Union.
Died. Jack Harding, 71, aviation pioneer whose single-engined Douglas biplane in 1924 was one of two to complete history's first round-the-world flight; of cancer; in La Jolla, Calif. "Magellans of the air" was what they called Harding and seven other Army aviators who took off from Seattle on April 6, 1924. Only Harding's plane and one other finished the trip after buzzing 26,345 miles in 363 flight hours.
Died. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Vian, 73, British naval hero, whose rescue of 300 seamen from the German prison ship Altmark in February 1940 was one of the few things Britons could cheer about that year; of a heart attack; in Newbury, England. After taking the destroyer Cossack into a Norwegian fiord at night, Vian put her alongside the Altmark, then led his men aboard, crying "The navy is here!"
Died. Lenox R. Lohr, 76, president of NBC from 1936 to 1940, who then took over the faltering Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in 1940, and made it one of the world's most popular halls of science; of a heart attack; in Chicago. "A tragedy has occurred in our city," lamented a Chicago physicist on learning that the freewheeling radioman was to head the museum. Yet Lohr gave the public everything from a working German U-boat to a pulsing 16-ft. model of the human heart--all of which drew a record 3,300,000 visitors to the museum last year.
Died. Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, 78, who ran Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (M.I.6) from 1939 to 1951; in London. Said to be a model for "M," the spy chief of James Bond novels, Menzies is conceded to have outwitted his Nazi counterparts--but not the Russians, who planted Turncoat Kim Philby in M.I.6's counter-intelligence section and compromised Britain's secrets until 1963, when Philby escaped to the Soviet Union.
Died. Helen Keller, 87, whose courageous struggle against blindness and deafness gave new hope to the handicapped (see THE NATION).
Died. Kees van Dongen, 91, Dutch-born painter, one of the earliest and wildest of Paris' turn-of-the-century Fauves (wild beasts); of pneumonia; in Monte Carlo. Along with his friends Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, Van Dongen rebelled against 19th century impressionism, filling his canvases with slashing brush strokes and raucous colors that enraged critics but fascinated gallery goers; and while some of the other Fauves went on to cubism, Van Dongen settled for becoming court painter ("I paint the women slimmer and their jewels fatter") for the international set, turning out glittering portraits of such luminaries as the Aga Khan and King Leopold of Belgium.
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