Queen Makes Reagan a Knight, but Still Call Him Mr.

He didn’t have to kneel, and there was none of the tapping with the sword traditionally associated with the conferring of knighthood, but, henceforth, Ronald Reagan shall be known as an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath, an honor bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II on the former President at a Buckingham Palace luncheon also attended by Nancy Reagan. As a foreigner, Reagan will not get the title “Sir,” but he will get to sit closer to the queen at functions than will other, un-knighted presidents. The knighthood ended days of speculation about whether Reagan, whose conservative politics made him a friend of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would receive the highest honor Britain bestows on a non-native. Reagan said the award was “not a personal achievement as much as it is a splendid recognition” of Anglo-American friendship.

--Some passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight, made aware of the presence of Joseph Hazelwood in their midst, jeered and heckled the former Exxon tanker captain during their flight from Anchorage to Seattle. Airport police were called in to meet the flight in Seattle in case of physical retaliation against Hazelwood, who was skipper of the Exxon Valdez at the time of the massive oil spill in Prince William Sound. Hazelwood, 42, was on the first leg of a trip to New York, where he lives, after pleading not guilty in Anchorage to state felony charges of criminal mischief in the March 24 oil spill. A passenger told the Seattle Times he saw a man he believed to be Hazelwood and asked the flight attendants whether they knew they had “a real jerk” on the plane, prompting the heckling and name-calling.

--Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, has accepted a professorship at UC San Diego, where officials said she is expected to become director of the school’s California Space Institute. Ride, 38, will be leaving Stanford University, where she is a fellow in the Center for International Security and Arms Control. Ride’s appointment to the space institute directorship is subject to approval later this week by the UC Board of Regents.