A Fall Guy Takes Some Time to Roll Out the Barrel

--Two Timex watches were sent tumbling over Niagara Falls, and they kept on ticking. Not impressed? Consider the way they were packaged: in a specially engineered, padded barrel equipped with two-way radios and oxygen tanks--and carried inside by a 22-year-old bartender from Barrington, R.I., who became the first American to go over the Falls in 24 years and only the seventh person to survive the plunge. It was “like an elevator ride without cables,” said Steve Trotter, who had attended the Kahana Stuntman School in Chatsworth, Calif. Evidently, he learned well. Trotter suffered only a cut on his arm in the 176-foot drop. Constable John Clark, the first person to talk with the daredevil after the fall, said: “His stomach went up to his head when he went over.” But the officer said Trotter faces another challenge that may give his stomach one more turn. He has been charged with committing an illegal stunt under the Canadian Niagara Parks Act and must go to court Aug. 28. He faces a maximum fine of $500.

--Another lake monster mystery has been solved, this time in China. For years, villagers had reported huge creatures like “red boats” in a lake in the remote region of Xinjiang, prompting Prof. Xiang Ligai and students to trek up to the site. But the official explanation may be as frightening as some of the legends. Scientists determined the creatures to be huge red salmon, with heads three feet wide and weighing about one ton each.

--Rhonda Lynne Cullison, 18, from Decatur, Ill., won the 14th annual Miss National Teen-Ager Pageant over 51 other contestants in Atlanta. Cullison will receive a $10,000 cash scholarship, a 1985 Mazda 626 GLC and a $3,000 personal appearance contract.

--She was the first Dorothy to take a stroll down the yellow brick road, but the audience back then couldn’t even tell what color it was--all they could see was the silver of the screen. And, because there were no talkies in 1908, they couldn’t hear her call for Toto, either. But 77 years later, Romola Remus Dunlap is still remembered. The screen’s first Oz heroine, dressed in a white sequined gown, led a parade of 500 children who welcomed her back to Emerald City as Mount Holyoke College Summer Theater kicked off its annual adaptation of the Oz stories. In this case, the mythical city was actually South Hadley, Mass., which was renamed for the entire run of “The Patchwork Girl of Oz.” Dunlap, now 85 and a music teacher in Chicago, was almost too moved for words. “I have tears in my eyes, so that all I can say at the moment is God bless you,” she said.