National Affairs: Coolidge Carvings

Illustrated by big-chiseling Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, laconic Calvin Coolidge’s 500-word history of the U. S. to be carved on the face of Mt. Rushmore, S. Dak., will be legible from three miles away (TIME, Jan. 27). Last week the design committee announced the names and events which would be hewn and gilded in live granite.

Names: possibly George Washington, Abraham Lincoln; probably Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt; certainly Calvin Coolidge, Gutzon Borglum.

Events: 1776, Declaration of Independence; 1787, framing of the Constitution; 1803, Louisiana Purchase; 1845, admission of Texas as a state; 1846, Oregon boundary settlement (U. S.-Canadian northwest border set at 49° north latitude); 1850, admission of California to the Union; 1865, end of Civil War; 1908, the Panama Canal.