On this day in 1968

That was indeed great info to share.

a reply to: TomMurdock
Thank you, and credit goes also to the other members who have contributed.

At the beginning of December, Donald Crowhurst, the last-departing entrant in the Sunday Times round-the-world single-handed yacht race, began racing faudulently.

In the middle of November, he had conducted a careful analysis of the faults in his yacht, partly the result of bad planning and bad management and the rushed departure. One serious potential problem, for example, was that the mechanical pump could not be used to bail out water from the leaky hull, because a vital length of hose had been left behind. His late departure and impaired speed meant that he would not reach Cape Horn on the return leg before the onset of the southern winter, while the condition of his yacht meant that he had a less than 50% chance of surviving a winter passage of Cape Horn. Simply giving up at Cape Town was also a tricky option because of the debts he had incurred.

On the 21st, he had a radio-telephone chat with his friend and chief sponsor at home, Stanley Best. He had prepared notes for a discussion of retirement from the race, but did not use them. He did give a warning that radio contact would probably diminish, blaming problems with his generator.

From the 6th of December, he was apparently running two navigational logbooks at the same time. One, which he allowed to survive, continues the genuine navigational record, which he would need for sailing purposes. This shows clearly that he never left the South Atlantic. He would reach the Falklands in March, after a covert repair-stop in Brazil, and would then sail north again. Meanwhile he was allowing the world to assume that he was engaged in the expected circumnavigation of Antarctica, and presumably this fictitious journey would have been recorded in the missing logbook.

More direct evidence of fraud has been allowed to survive. He left behind two large plotting sheets covering the period from the 7th to the 11th. One of them shows the genuine navigational details, with sun-sights etc., of his modest progress past the Cape Verde Islands. On the other sheet, he has carefully calculated what his daily positions, sun-sight-readings, and so on, would have been on a slightly different route. "His forgery is, in many ways, the most impressive bit of technical expertise in the entire voyage. To calcukate backwards from an imagined distance to a series of daily positions, and from them via declination and other tables to the correct sun-sightings is a formidable and unfamiliar job, much harder than honest navigation."

The point of this exercise was to set up an imaginary "record" single-handed run (243 miles) for the 9th, a record which was duly announced to the world by radio-telegram a couple of days later.

Source; "The strange voyage of Donald Crowhurst", (ch9), by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall

the guy was a cheat but one can't help but admire him
what he did was still quite an achievement

that's not the sort of thing one should enter into underfunded!

Apollo 8 was launched and became the first manned space-craft to leave Earth's orbit and head in the direction of the Moon.
Frank Borman, James Lovell, William Anders.

At this season, the musical world was celebrating the saviour of the human race.
That is, Lily the Pink.

Obscure messages from travellers- part1

Apollo 8 was moving towards the Moon and began entering the Moon's gravity field.
Looking ahead (since I'm going to be offline over Christmas), they would orbit the Moon several times over the couple of days, getting the first direct view of the "dark side" not visible from the Earth.
On first emerging from the dark side, James Lovell put his tongue in his cheek and advised the Earth to "be informed there is a Santa Claus."
This cryptic message would later spawn conspiracy theories. One rebuttal may be found in this thread from Ignorant Ape- www.abovetopsecret.com...
On Christmas Day there would be a more formal broadcast, including the reading of the first ten verses of Genesis.

Obscure messages from travellers- part2

Donald Crowhurst, the final entrant in the Sunday Times round-the-world single-handed yacht race, was giving away little information about his location in the South Atlantic.
On the 20th, he had described the position of Teignmouth Electron by the very ambiguous term "off Brazil".
He now sent another telegram to his publicist in Devon;
"Enjoyed round the horn sailing towards Trinidad with last Southeast Trade and Brazil current".

Presumably he meant "round-the Horn-type sailing, since even his fictitious route would not bring him to Cape Horn itself for many months. He would not have been sailing towards Trinidad in the West Indies, and probably meant to indicate the smaller island of Trinidade in the South Atlantic. Not having detailed maps of the South Atlantic, his friends at home were briefing the press about his progress towards Tristan da Cunha. Tristan da Cunha is 1800 miles further south than Trinidade, which was 350 miles south of the position Crowhurst had marked on the fake chart of his progress, which was in turn 350 miles south of his real position.

In Crowhurst's nominal home port of Teignmouth, there was a large notice board on The Den to display his progress round the world.
When we visited my grandparents at Easter (the beginning of April), this board showed him somewhere at the bottom of the South Pacific, approaching Cape Horn. I was naively checking the board every day for updates. In reality, the marked position was an optimistic projection of previous reports and claims, to cover his long radio silence. The truth emerged later that he had only reached the Falklands a couple of weeks prevously, as the southernmost point in his voyage, and he was then working his way northwards again.

"New Year" meant "Scotland", for BBC purposes.
It was well understood that the Scots ignored Christmas and made much of Hogmanay, while the English did things the other way round.
So the celebratory programme for New Year's Eve was, once again, the White Heather Club, presented by Andy Stewart. Moira Anderson might have been there as well.


So the toast for tonight is "Auld Lang Syne", and "Here's the skin off your Christmas!"

Anyone wanting to learn more about the events of that remarkable year 1968 could do worse than read through the rest of this thread. My grateful thanks to everyone else who has been contributing.

a reply to: Jansy

The Ambassador Hotel. Demolished in 2005-06. Good catch.

www.laconservancy.org...

originally posted by: DISRAELI

The conversation included Nixon's explanation of Spiro Agnew;

You know why we needed Agnew. I gave a lot of thought to Lindsay- surprised?- but what the hell, he'd cut you up. Big gains up North, but Lindsay would lose us Florida, Texas, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Tennessee. Hatfield?- light. Percy?- Boy Scout. Baker?- too new. Agnew's a tough shrewd Greek. We've got to figure out a way to sell him. He can't give a speech worth a damn, but he's not going to fall apart.
"Agnew wears well?"
That's it. He wears well. He wears well. Get him on press conferences, panel shows, talking about the cities, answering questions, but no set speeches. He's no speechmaker.

William Safire, "Before the Fall", pp53-56

Great thead.

If Agnew "can't give a speech worth a damn..." according to Nixon then why is Agnew later used to go on the offensive against the Eastern establishment and TV news opinions? Des Moines is the perfect example of Agnew's speech making and he nailed it. November 13, 1969 Des Moines www.youtube.com...


When Nixon said "He's no speechmaker" well, it is obvious that the President had changed his attitude toward the Vice President by November '69.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter
Don't know.
Perhaps he was judging Agnew without having heard him much.
P.S. Perhaps, also, the later Agnew was getting assistance from the Nixon team of speechwriters. It comes to mind that somebody earlier in the thread was crediting Pat Buchanan as the author of one of Agnew's most famous phrases.