Indonesia: Into Space

On a barnstorming tour of the boondocks aimed at whipping up enthusiasm for his threatened invasion of Nether lands New Guinea, Indonesia's President Sukarno took along a star-studded cast: ten admiring foreign ambassadors, including the U.S.'s Howard Palfrey Jones, Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, a brigade of local beauties. As an unexpected thrill for the crowds along the way, there was even an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

In his fourth brush with violent death, Sukarno was 100 yards away when a grenade exploded near his stalled car in the south Celebes city of Makassar. As always, the escape raised Sukarno's prestige to...

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