Alaskan Gold Miner Strikes It Rich in Rush for Bride

A 39-year-old gold miner has struck pay dirt--thanks to the U.S. mails. Alaskan Donald (Hindu) Burden, who panned for a bride in a classified “Mail Order Brides Wanted” ad, married a 45-year-old college graduate from Wyoming in a backwoods Hope, Alaska, ceremony reminiscent of another century. With can-can girls, ragtime music, top hats and old gowns as a backdrop, Karen Main promised to “love, honor and obey” Burden. The ad from the handful of bachelors in Paystreke, a 19th-Century replica mining settlement, drew about 6,000 letters from women around the world. “Mom doesn’t approve,” Main, a newspaper proofreader in Gillette, Wyo., said, explaining why her family was not present at the ceremony. The wedding attracted 150 people, including a few who were panning the nearby waters for gold, and a tourist, Kurt Plessner, of Richville, Minn., who said: “We took a wrong turn and ended up here.”

--Maryland Gov. Harry Hughes and Reps. Michael D. Barnes and Barbara A. Mikulski, all Democrats running for the seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr., must be a little red-faced today after doing less than well on a current events quiz, sponsored by WJZ-TV in Baltimore. Hughes got two out of five right, and Barnes and Mikulski had 1 1/2 correct answers. Neither representative could identify the leader of the African National Congress, the South African opposition group (the station would have accepted either Nelson Mandela or exiled President Oliver Tambo), or both the Israeli prime minister and his designated successor (Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir). The candidates also were asked what incident precipitated the U.S. attack on Libya. Mikulski said “it wasn’t a single act,” although the answer was the bombing of a discotheque in West Germany. Barnes, who touts himself as a leader on foreign policy, is subcommittee chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Other questions dealt with where Maryland ranked with respect to federal grants and the definition of a Stinger missile. “I don’t think word-game questions are really the criteria for what determines who’s going to be a U.S. senator,” Mikulski, the only candidate to protest the pop quiz, said.

--No doubt, there will be plenty of tall tales to tell. After all, celebrating Davy Crockett’s 200th birthday is a tall order. But folks in Tennessee have already set the wheels in motion for the Aug. 17 celebration at the Davy Crockett Birthplace State Historic Area near Limestone. The festivities, which start Aug. 15, will include craftsmen, folk and country music, storytelling, dancing and a film festival.