On this date ...
1970: SPACE CENTER, Houston (UPI) — The stricken Apollo 13 spaceship is slightly off course and its astronauts will miss the Earth by 80 miles and soar off into a distant, fatal orbit if a steering correction is not made tonight or Thursday, controllers reported today. “If the descent engine does not burn, we cannot bring them back,” said retro officer Thomas Weichel. (Editor’s note: The astronauts returned home safely. The saga became the Oscar-winning film “Apollo 13” in 1995.)
• The Tucumcari school board approved these salaries for the coming school year: superintendent, $16,000; assistant superintendent, $13,636; high school superintendent, $12,142; junior high principal, $11,833; and elementary school principal, $11,525. The base salary for teachers was set at $6,100.
• A tire blowout caused a one-car rollover wreck near the Royal George Inn on West Tucumcari Boulevard in Tucumcari. Two people from Kansas City, Missouri, were in the car at the time. One suffered a minor elbow injury.