From the archive - dated May 11, 1965

New Soviet rocket to moon

Russia’s latest moon shot, Luna-5, launched yesterday [May 9] from an orbit around the earth where it was placed by a multistage rocket, was moving on a trajectory close to the planned one. It is expected to reach earth’s nearest neighbour sometime tomorrow [May 11] or Tuesday [May 12]. Official secrecy still surrounds the exact purpose of the shot, and several possible objectives were put forward here [Moscow] to-day [May 10]. The unmanned, 3,252-lb space station, that was launched yesterday [May 9] could fly around the moon, transmitting close-up pictures back to earth, and later go into permanent orbit around the sun or earth itself. It could make a hard landing on the moon, depositing the specially protected instrument package. The instruments might be contained in a hard shell which would break on impact but leave the instruments intact. They could then send back to earth seismic measurements and information on the moon’s soil structure.

Buffer stock

Mr. C. Subramaniam, Food Minister, told the Rajya Sabha to-day [May 10] that it was proposed to build a buffer stock of two million tons of rice and four million tons of wheat. Rice procurement on the whole was satisfactory he said. In Punjab and Madhya Pradesh the targets had been breached already while in Orissa it was just now picking up. In Andhra out of 800,000 tons of rice set as target four lakhs had been already procured. The Minister said that when the second crop was harvested the entire quantity would be procured. He admitted in reply to a question that there was wastage of foodgrains in storage. That was why the Government had taken steps to improve the storage facilities. A member from Kerala complained that rice was being sold at Rs. two per kilo in the State. The Minister said that there was rationing for everyone in Kerala and if somebody chose to pay a high price for a particular variety of rice, it should not bother them.

Library gifted to University

Nearly 6,000 rare volumes in Portuguese and other languages microfilms and photostats belonging to the personal library of the eminent historian from Goa, Dr. Pandurang Pissurelenkar, have been donated by him to the Bombay University.

The microfilms were obtained from archives in France, Portugal and the Vatican. The library contains 16 and 17 century Marathi works in Roman script, including a biography of Shivaji, written 40 years after his death and Portuguese-Konkani dictionaries of 17 century. A large collection of precious maps and other historical materials are also included in the collection.