Born. To Phumiphon Adundet (Rama IX), 23, Boston-born, jazz-loving King of Siam, and Queen Sirikit, 18, daughter of a Siamese diplomat: their first child, a daughter; in Lausanne, Switzerland, where His Majesty is studying law at the University of Lausanne. Name, announced after the new princess’ horoscope had been studied: Ubol Ratana (Lotus Precious Stone). Weight: 7 Ibs. Back in Siam, waving flags and clanging Buddhist temple bells announced the news, and the government declared a national holiday.
Divorced. Barbara Bel Geddes, 28, rising Broadway star (TIME, April 9); by Carl Schreuer, 32, electrical engineer; after seven years of marriage, one daughter; in the Virgin Islands.
Died. Klondike Mike (Michael Ambrose Mahoney), 77, who left a Quebec farm to join the Gold Rush of ’97, won fame & fortune (nearly a million), was known as “the greatest musher of the North,” hauling gold, supplies, and once a corpse; in Hollywood (he headed south when the Canadian winters began to seem too cold).
Died. Alberto Caprile, 79, authority on racehorse pedigrees, since December president & publisher of La Natión, leading South American newspaper (founded by his grandfather) and the only free one in Buenos Aires since Argentina’s Dictator Juan Perón silenced La Prensa; of a heart attack, after a night’s work at the paper; in Buenos Aires.
Died. George Albert Smith, 81, eighth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) ; of a respiratory infection; in Salt Lake City (see RELIGION).
Died. Robert Broom, 85, Scottish paleontologist, winner of the Wollaston Medal (one of Britain’s highest scientific honors), who spent most of his life in South Africa searching for the “missing links” between ape and man; in Pretoria, South Africa. In 1938, a boy who worked as guide in the Sterkfontain Caves near Johannesburg showed Broom some teeth he had found; Broom investigated, unearthed enough fragments to form what he regarded as one of the links: Kromdraai ape-man (Paranthropus robustus), a small-brained, apelike being who stalked the desert earth hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Died. William Gwinn Mather, 93, millionaire Cleveland iron magnate, direct descendant of Puritan Richard Mather; in Cleveland. An earnest churchman (Episcopalian) and philanthropist (he gave a million-dollar chapel to his Alma Mater, Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.), as well as tycoon, he succeeded his father in 1890 as president of the Cleveland (later Cleveland-Cliffs) Iron Co., headed the company for the next 42 years.
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