U.S. moon pictures show hard surface
America soft landed its Surveyor spacecraft on the moon to-day [June 2] and the television robot was flashing pictures to earth at the rate of one every few seconds. The still television pictures, taken from various angles in response to radioed commands were flashed on to a screen at ground control here [Cape Kennedy]. A total of 144 pictures were received before transmission was halted on orders from the earth. Viewers saw pictures of the spacecraft’s legs on which it landed gently on to the lunar surface at 11-47 I.S.T. after retro-rockets had slowed it to a trotting pace from a speed of nearly 6,000 m.p.h. The first television pictures were sent back to earth only half an hour after the perfect landing. Later pictures were so clear that a one-inch (about 3 cms) strap was seen perfectly in closeup. Pictures of the moon’s surface showed rocks, shadows and an apparently hard smooth terrain. More than 50 pictures had been transmitted a little over four hours after Surveyor’s landing. The area in the Ocean of Storms appeared from the pictures to be flat and almost featureless. The pictures were excellent — at least as good as those sent back by Russia’s Luna 9 and showed the mottled surface of the moon in the background. Officials said even higher quality pictures would be received later. Surveyor started sending back radio-telemetry signals as soon as its tripod legs settled on the lunar surface.
How NY Times did save U.S. from ‘colossal mistake’
The late President Kennedy told a New York Times executive that if the Times had printed all it knew about the pending Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the United States would have been saved from a “colossal mistake”, a Times editor disclosed here [St. Paul (Minnesota)] to-day [June 2]. Speaking at the MacAlester College World Press Institute Forum meeting to honour the 1966 Pulitzer Prize winners and foreign journalists studying at the College, Mr. Clifton Daniel, Managing Editor of the Times, revealed, for the first time, what he called some painful decision-making at the paper office, before the Bay of Pigs invasion and the later Cuban missile crisis. In a later meeting with the editors, Mr. Kennedy, while “scolding” the New York Times for premature disclosures of security information, said in an aside to Mr. Turner Catledge, then Managing Editor and now Executive Editor of the Times, “If you had printed more about the operation you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.” Mr. Daniel spoke of detailed and heated exchanges among top Times executives before the decision was made to give the controversial dispatch a lesser headline and eliminate references to an “imminent” invasion, and participation of the Central Intelligence Agency in the invasion preparations. Describing the tense scene at the Times after the “tone-down” was ordered on the April 7, 1961 report on the Cuban invasion, Mr. Daniel said the Assistant Managing Editor on night duty and the News Editor, who thought a mistake was being made, protested to Mr. Catledge that never before had the front-page play in the New York Times been changed for reasons of policy. They wanted the publisher himself to explain the reasons for the change. Mr. Catledge was “flaming mad” at this, but, however, called in the Publisher, Mr. Dryfoos, who explained to the News Editor his reasons for wanting the story played down. “His reasons were those of national security, national interest and, above all, concern for the safety of the men who were preparing to offer their lives on the beaches of Cuba,” Mr. Daniel said.
Kamaraj to stick to dhoti
Mr. K. Kamaraj, Congress President, to-day [June 2, Madras] placed orders for four woollen shirts with elbow sleeves for his proposed visit to the Soviet Union. The woollen shirts are of the same pattern as the khadi one Mr. Kamaraj is wearing.
He visited the Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan on Mount Road and gave the order this morning. He rejected the use of woollen pants to protect himself from the severe Russian cold and said that if necessary he would use a good shawl in hundred per cent wool. Mr. Kamaraj is also persistent in his resolve to visit Russia only dressed in Khadi dhoti.
