dated September 3, 1951: Jesse Owens revisits Berlin

From the Editorials: ``The whirligig of time brings many changes like the visit again to Berlin of Jesse Owens, famous American athlete, who set up new world records and won four firsts in the Olympic Games in 1936. Those Games were held in a stadium advertised as a masterpiece of Nazi work by Dr. Goebbels. They were staged in an atmosphere scarcely suitable for international sport. Recently, an English politician denounced sporting contests as breeders of enmity; this statement would have been justified at Berlin in 1936. Hitler's sense of Nordic superiority was so outraged by the dark Jesse Owens outpacing and outleaping the best blonde giants, that he would not shake hands with the great Negro star. Next morning, the German Press, obeying the dictates of Goebbels, made fun of `coloured barbarians'. The wheel, however, has come full circle. Last week, in that same Olympic Stadium, miraculously salvaged from the effects of war, 75,000 Germans rose to applaud Owens, who played in a specially- arranged basketball match. `Hitler would not shake your hand. I give you both hands', said the Mayor of West Berlin to Owens. The true value and significance of sport was brought out even more forcefully in Owens's reply. He dismissed the Nazis' studied insolence and said he remembered the good things that happened in the stadium, the fighting spirit and sportsmanship shown by German athletes, especially by Lutz Long of Germany (whom Owens defeated in the long jump). `Hitler stood right up there in the box. But I believe the real spirit of Germany, a great nation, was exemplified down here on the field by athletes like Long. It is the spirit underlying words like these that promote friendly rivalry and international cooperation'.''

Press-button weather forecasts

Noted Norwegian meteorologist, Prof. Halvor Skappel Solberg, said in Brussels that soon he could press a button, ``and out will pop tomorrow's weather chart.'' He told delegates to the Geodesic and the Geophysic International Congress that he was working out a mathematical means of forecasting which he termed ``numerical prediction.'' Such complicated formulae for tabulating weather forecasts had to be worked out by special computing machines, the Professor said, and hoped to have a computer ready within a year to solve them and come up with pop-out solutions.

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