Good Grief! Snoopy and the ‘Peanuts’ Gang Turn 35

--Snoopy flapped his paws, with an “Oh, joy!” expression on his face and helped his creator, cartoonist Charles Schulz, cut a white cake in the San Francisco mayor’s office in celebration of the 35th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip. “It was my life’s ambition to be doing exactly what I’m doing,” said Schulz, who was given a hug and the key to the city by Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Flanked by Schulz and a costumed black-and-white beagle, Feinstein proclaimed “Snoopy Day” in the city and said the coveted key was being given to the cartoonist with “warmth, friendship and respect. This really is a pleasure for me.” She added: “My favorite comic strip character has always been Snoopy.” Schulz, in return, gave the mayor a stuffed toy Snoopy clad in metallic gold and silver--Snoopy’s “flash beagle” attire. “This is a great treat for me,” Schulz said. “Charlie Brown really fits into the San Francisco scene, and we all know Snoopy really fits in anywhere he goes”--and that includes 2,058 newspapers.

--Actress Peggy Cass won $460,000 in damages from a doctor who operated in 1980 on her healthy right knee rather than her injured left one, which suffered from an arthritic condition. “I’ll never play a nun again,” she said. Why? “I can’t kneel,” said Cass, who had played a nun in three productions.

--Dr. Benjamin Spock says children shouldn’t be allowed to watch violence on television but says the medium can be useful. “Television should be used to teach how people in other parts of the world live,” he said at a forum at Harvard Law School. “It should be used to help us overcome ignorance. Then a president couldn’t get away with telling us the government in El Salvador is doing the best job it can.

--Gerhard Knoell reported for army duty in Landeck, Austria, with an escort of eight cows. There was nothing he could do about the cows, the 25-year-old farmer explained. There was no one else at home to tend them. The Austria Press Agency reported that Knoell told military officers at the camp in the Tyrols that his wife had to take care of a small child and could not tend the family farm. Knoell and cows were sent home for a week while military authorities decided whether to exempt him from the compulsory six months’s service, the news agency said.