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The first woman to fly at the speed of sound, Aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, 54, wanted to be the first to travel at twice the speed of sound. But she had to wangle her chance. Last April, Jackie visited a North American Aviation Inc. plant in Columbus, expressed a hankering to ride in an A3-J Vigilante, a Navy fighter-bomber now being tested. She soon learned that UPI the line of would-be passengers, including several admirals, formed to the right. Last week, after turning her persuasive talents on some top Pentagon brass, Jackie climbed into the rear cockpit of a Vigilante, was off for a 57-minute run during which the plane hit a speed of Mach 2.2. Upon landing, Passenger Cochran allowed: "I think I could fly it myself, after a checkout."
Several years after he won four gold medals in Hitler's Berlin in the 1936 Olympic Games, lightning-legged Track Whiz Jesse Owens lent them to a Harlem exposition that was celebrating the Negroes' advancement in the U.S. He never saw them again; they were either lost or stolen in the return mail, uninsured. Recently Owens, now a 46-year-old grandfather, mentioned his loss to an American Olympic Committee member, who wrote to Karl Ritter von Halt, head of the German National Olympic Committee. Von Halt acted quickly, had four exact duplicate medals struck off, had them relayed to Owens in Chicago, refused to hear of being reimbursed for them. Owens, who works for the Illinois Youth Commission, was touched by Von Halt's gesture: "It's hard to put it into words. I had a hell of a time writing that letter of thanks."
Reported the London Daily Telegraph's Columnist Peter Simple in a real-as-life spoof of a famed Briton just back from a glowingly uncritical trip to Red China: "Field Marshal Lord Montgomery has just returned from a flying visit to Hell. His impressions were as follows: 'I liked Hell very much. It is a good show, a very good show indeed. The Devil is a very sound chap and an able organizer. We had excellent talks. He has everything well under control. Discipline and administration are excellent. All the chaps I met there were warm, happy, fit and well in the picture. I promised the Devil that I would tell everybody what a good show Hell was. This I shall do.' "