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On the Haugwitz-Reventlow Danish country estate "Rosenlund" (see p. 22) parishioners built bonfires in celebration of becoming the richest parish in Denmark, hoped for a 10% tax reduction.*
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, arriving overland from Manhattan, made his entrance into Boston in false mustache, dark spectacles and cap. At the Charlestown Navy Yard he slouched up the gangplank of the Jacob Ruppert, donned his white uniform, marched resplendently down again for an official reception.
To 95 oldsters in small Horicon, Wis., postmen delivered 95 identical pairs of envelopes, one white, one brown. All the oldsters were men or widows of men who had spent their lives making grain drills and seeders for the Van Brunt Manufacturing Co. In each white envelope was a letter from their oldtime employer Willard Van Brunt, now 88 and retired to California. Read the letter: "In all my recollections one of the unhappiest mileposts passed during my life occurred on that winter morning in 1918 when I left my old home in Horicon. . . . The registered Government bonds, in your name, which I expect you to receive about the time this reaches you, is part of our earnings while we were all on the job." Each oldster opened the brown envelope, found three U. S. baby bonds, current value $2,154, ultimate value (1960) $3,000. Horicon mathematicians calculated that Willard Van Brunt had remembered Auld Lang Syne to the tune of $205,000.
*The Hope, owned by Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, is famed not for its size (44 carats) but for its peculiar blue color. *Danes calculated that the Countess' fortune was 225,000,000 kroner, not quite twice the gold reserve of the Kingdom of Denmark.