Hans Remembers- News Headlines from Monday August 4 and Tuesday August 5, 1969- 50 years ago.

• Monday August 4, 1969- President Richard Milhous Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger [who is still alive today at 96} met secretly in Paris with North Vietnam’s former Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy to discuss settling the Vietnam War- in the Paris Peace Talks. The Tricky One had sent a personal letter to North Vietnam’s President Ho Chi Minh by way of Jean Sainteny, France’s diplomatic representative to Hanoi. Uncle Ho would be dead within a month and at this point was out of the loop.

• Tuesday August 5, 1969- the summer of space continues as Mariner 7 transmitted the closest pictures taken- up to that point in time of Mars. Mariner 7 was within 2000 miles of the planet. 31 images were received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena- the pictures took five minutes to travel the distance from Mars to Earth- 58 million miles.