He Broke Jail, Guinness Record

It wasn’t a great escape, but it may be the longest. In fact, police in the Australian state of Victoria had given up on ever finding George Mulholland, 23 years old when he escaped from a Melbourne jail after his conviction for stealing a policeman’s baton during a waterfront riot. But, 58 years later, Mulholland, now 80, strolled into the Melbourne City Watchhouse and gave himself up. In celebration, authorities, who had dropped the case several years previously, gave Mulholland his original 1928 mug shots and fingerprints. Mulholland also appears headed into the Guinness Book of World Records. The previous record for the longest escape was held by police killer Leonard Fristoe, who broke out of a Nevada state prison in 1923. His son turned him in 46 years later. Mulholland was arrested during one of many violent union strikes on Melbourne’s waterfront during the Depression. The elderly fugitive said he escaped from jail by using a nail to pick the lock of his cell door and climbing down a spiked gate to the street.

--Something’s rotten in Denmark? Not so, says a University of Pennsylvania survey, which rates Denmark as the best place in the world to live. The survey, by professor Richard Estes, also calls the African nation of Angola the worst place to live, and gives the United States a relatively poor rating of 27th among the 124 nations. The study measured the nations’ ability to provide for their citizens and analyzed social and political conditions as well as economic development. All of the top 10 nations were European, with those countries able to progress socially because they were “under the United States’ nuclear umbrella,” Estes said. Nine of the worst 10 nations are in Africa, he said. The lower U.S. ranking was largely due to the nation’s lack of “a concerted effort to remedy inequality,” Estes said. Despite an economic recession, Denmark was able to maintain its social services, he said.

--It’s no joke. A group of political experts is taking its two-day symposium “Humor in the Presidency” seriously. Peter Secchia, chairman of the Ford Foundation, which is sponsoring the event that begins Thursday, said the topic was chosen to examine the role of political comedy and cartoons and their impact on national strategy. Among those in attendance at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Ann Arbor, Mich., will be syndicated columnist Art Buchwald, comedian Chevy Chase, who made a career of lampooning then-President Gerald R. Ford, and Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. Not interested in the topic: former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard M. Nixon. What? No sense of humor?