The big news stories on November 22, 1963 - Early Edition

We all know what the afternoon papers were printing, but this is somewhat interesting. The headline in our local morning paper was the story of a U-2 crash that I’ll go out on a limb and say that most people have never heard of.

Not Francis Gary Powers! That was three years earlier.

Not Rudolph Anderson. That was a year earlier.

On November 20th, a U-2 piloted by one Capt. Joe G. Hyde, crashed into the Gulf of Mexico northwest of Key West, almost certainly having returned from a patrol over or near Cuba. Information on this crash is. . rather thin, considering that it was probably a classified mission. It’s thought that Capt. Hyde probably ejected, since he was not found in the fuselage wreckage (in only 100 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico), but his body was never [officially] recovered. The cause of the crash, if known, was never publicly disclosed.

The other stories ‘above the fold’ were about a questionable stock deal by Wisconsin Congressman John W. Byrnes, and Soviets messing around in Iran and ‘The Congo’. Also a small note on Page 3 which mentions JFK would meet Sunday afternoon with Vietnam ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to ‘assess developments in Vietnam,’ a meeting that he would obviously never make.

Other stories of the day:

Below the fold was an article on the death of Robert Stroud, the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz.’

On Page 8, is an article about Karl Silberbauer, the Nazi captor of Anne Frank’s family.

Agents seized $52K dollars worth of weed from a farm in Greenville GA.

A British stripper was arrested for attempting to buy clothes (on someone else’s credit).

A local woman was charged with smuggling hacksaw blades to her jailed husband. (No indication a cake was involved.)

Going back the the U-2 story, here’s an article about the incident by the Hyde’s son:

https://sanangelolive.com/.../sky-still-burns-your-memory

I’m not sure I’m remembering all the details correctly, but I recall there was a front page newspaper story about a criminal, probably a murderer, who after he was caught, said something to the effect of “at least my name will be on the front page of the newspapers for weeks.” This was on September 10th, 2001.

This URL was truncated at some point and now no longer works.

I am surprisingly interested to read more about law enforcement discovering a large quantity of weed in what appears to be bumfuck, Georgia. In 1963. Who knew?

First, weed has been a Public Health Concern since the 1920s. It didn’t magically poof into existence in a cloud of subversion in 1967.

Second, you’re relying on the law enforcement officials to set the price. I’m sure they’d swear that a few feet of green rope was worth a new car if it got them headlines.

Eh, it’s fairly near Warm Springs, which leads me to believe that it may not have been the water that had those magical healing properties…

Corrected link.

Robert Stroud…the Birdman of Alcatraz…died Nov 21, 1963.

He once bragged his death would make Front Page headlines.