He Laid Out Washington but Lost Face With George

--Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant forever left his stamp on the United States with his design for the nation’s capital, but now District of Columbia officials are stumped trying to honor him with a U.S. postage stamp for Washington’s bicentennial: Nobody is sure what he looked like. L’Enfant, who arrived in 1791, turned out to be arrogant and stubborn and President George Washington fired him less than a year later. The two likenesses found so far are just silhouettes, said Philip Ogilvie of the D.C. Office of Public Records, and they bear little resemblance to each other. They are believed to date from 1785 and 1801. Ogilvie and Donald Hawkins, secretary of L’Enfant Forum, are continuing the search for a likeness of L’Enfant to become part of the stamp for the bicentennial celebration beginning in 1991. Ogilvie said he contacted French historical societies and archives. Many people assume that “sooner or later you’ll find a picture of everybody,” said Ellen Miles, a curator at the National Portrait Gallery, “but before the age of photography, there were few people who had their portraits made.”

--A one-time British fighter pilot says that Austrian President Kurt Waldheim saved his life after he was captured by Germans in World War II. Bruce Ogilvie told the Sunday Times in London that the SS could have shot him for a spy because he was wearing civilian clothes and carrying a stolen German pistol when he was taken prisoner in 1943. He said Waldheim helped him and other prisoners establish their identities as soldiers, rather than commandos or spies, by giving them tags from men killed in uniform. The British are investigating allegations that Waldheim, a former intelligence officer in Hitler’s army, was involved in the deaths of six British prisoners in 1944. He has been pressured to resign since an international commission this year concluded that he knew of war crimes but did nothing to stop them.

--”I am just screaming with history,” television’s original anchorman said in a CBS interview on his last day at work. “I’ve got the outline of a book and some stories for the book spinning around in my brain,” said Douglas Edwards, 70, who retired Friday. Edwards, who pioneered daily national TV newscasts in 1948, said he plans to write after he and his wife, May, move to Florida. He preceded Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather as anchorman of the “CBS Evening News” and covered some of the century’s biggest stories, including World War II in Europe.