Americana

P: The Federal Alcohol Tax Unit announced that fewer than 3% of New York's 20,000 bars water their whiskey.

P: After years of wrestling his bull fiddle in & out of taxicabs, a Newark musician named Peter Ruggiero invented a collapsible bass viol which folds into a package no bigger than a saxophone case.

Texas Oilman Jack Wrather and some well-heeled friends decided to make a contribution to the local Boy Scouts; they spent $22,000 in drilling a well near Longview, struck oil, turned the operation over to the boys. Expected income: $900 a month, plus $125 for Girl Scouts.

P: Aviator William P. Odom set a new distance record for single-engined light airplanes when he flew a 185-h.p. Beechcraft 2,407 miles* from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif. Said Odom, stepping out of the plane after his 22-hour flight: "I've never been so thirsty in my life. I guess it was looking at all that water."

P: Hayes Landon, founder of the Springfield (Mass.) District Men's Republican Club, went to Washington to see Truman's Inauguration. Said he: "I'm tired of waiting for a Republican one."

P: A pistol-brandishing robber held up the Seaboard Finance Co. in Tacoma, Wash., found there was only $100 in the till, muttered: "It isn't worth it," and stalked out emptyhanded.

P: A Princeton student named James A. Lebenthal turned in his 33,000-word senior thesis on a wire recording. The thesis, a review of Tom Dewey's tactics in capturing the G.O.P. presidential nomination, took five hours to play.

P: Martin J. Monti, a 27-year-old former Air Force lieutenant, pleaded guilty of treason during World War II. In 1944 Monti stole a P-38 fighter in Naples, flew to German-held Milan, surrendered and agreed to make radio broadcasts for the enemy. A federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

*The old record: 2,061 miles, set by two Russians on a flight from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.