He’s Delving Deep to Solve Old Space Travel Mystery

--Space buff Robert Fuller would like, once and for all, to clear the name of Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom, and he hopes to do that by recovering Grissom’s space capsule from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean--thereby answering a 27-year-old question about whether the astronaut was to blame for the only unrecovered loss of an aircraft in the history of the U. S. space program. Fuller, 44, a specialist in oil exploration, said he has asked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for permission to salvage the capsule, which sank off Florida in 1961, following a 16-minute suborbital flight. Space experts have argued for years about what caused an emergency hatch to spring open, causing Liberty Bell 7 to take on water and sink. Some believe Grissom panicked and released the explosive bolts that blew open the hatch. Grissom, who was killed in a launching-pad fire while training for the first Apollo flight in 1967, told investigators that the bolts malfunctioned. Even with today’s technology, Fuller said he expects locating the capsule, believed to lie more than 18,000 feet below the surface, to be like “finding a needle in the proverbial haystack.”

--For a golden 80 minutes, the man who has spent more than 26 years in prison had a Christmas like everyone else’s, opening presents and eating cake. But the gathering of Nelson Mandela, 70, the black nationalist jailed in South Africa for plotting to overthrow white rule, his wife, Winnie Mandela, daughter Zindzi and Mandela’s three grandchildren was deliberately kept brief. The family has spurned a government offer of extended visiting rights because it is a privilege not granted other political prisoners. Still, Winnie Mandela said, her husband seems to suffer from isolation since he contracted tuberculosis and was moved from Pollsmoor Prison to a heavily guarded bungalow. “Mr. Mandela has over the years never shown any emotions about his situation because it is a national situation, but that day, I saw decades of solitude welling up on his face,” the Johannesburg Times quoted her as saying after an earlier visit.

--Once, and only once a year, Mollie Williford gets to show off her 30-years-long passion--for Santa Claus. Every November, she brings down from the attic the 75 or so boxes that are filled with the hundreds of images of the bearded character that will fill the shelves and decorate eight trees throughout her Tulsa, Okla., home. Williford’s first Santa--a tree ornament--was bought 30 years ago, and now, more than 100 Santas are added to the collection every year.