Milestones, Feb. 26, 1940

Born. To Princess Caroline Mathilde, 27, and Second Son Prince Knud of Denmark. 39: their second child, a son, thus securing the line of succession to the throne, there being no other male heir in the royal family.*

Birthday. Heiress Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt, 16, onetime centre of a custody battle between Mother Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, widow of Reginald Vanderbilt, and Aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who won.

Married. Abdicatedt† “King of Swing” Artie Shaw, 30; and film Starlet Lana Turner, 20 (he for the third time, she for the first); at 4 a.m., in Las Vegas, Nev. Surprised were Los Angeles Attorney Gregson Bautzer, who was engaged to Starlet Turner and Musicomedienne Betty Grable. who was gossiped to be waiting for her divorce from Jackie Coogan to marry Artie Shaw. Said she: “It must have come on him very suddenly.”

Died. Rudy Wiedoeft, 46, idolized saxophonist of the ‘205, whose pupil, Hubert Prior Vallee, adopted his teacher’s first name to express admiration of his teaching; of a stomach ailment; in Flushing, N. Y.

Died. Frederick E. Murphy, 67, farm-minded publisher of the Minneapolis Times-Tribune; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan.

Died. Music Hall Comedian Harry Tate (real name: Ronald Macdonald Hutchison), 67, Britain’s W. C. Fields; of heart trouble, after being struck in the head by anti-aircraft shell splinters; in Surrey, England.

Died. Elizabeth Corbett Yeats, 71, artist sister of the late great Poet William Butler Yeats; after brief illness; in Dublin. (News of her death reached the U. S. a month late, in a censor-delayed letter from her painter-brother Jack Butler Yeats.)

Died. Colonel Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton, 94, father of the British electrical industry, who installed electricity in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, famed as “the man who was slapped by Queen Victoria”; in London. His version of the royal slap: “The Queen never slapped me at all. She only punched me on the shoulder to emphasize the fact that she disagreed with everything I was doing about the electric lighting at the time. But the very next day she agreed to everything. She was a wonderful woman.”

Died. William Eberle Thompson, 104, “the nation’s oldest practicing physician”; in Bethel, Ohio.

— Princess Ingrid, wife of the Prince Royal, is expecting a child in May.

†Because “jitterbugs are morons.”