Every now and then some statistician with too much liver utters figures showing that the world’s coal supply will last only a few hundreds of years. Make it many, many thousands. China has coal to burn – 40,000 square miles of coal fields, some say. Japan has plenty more. Roumania has enough for the Balkan states if ever they stop burning powder and one another’s houses. America’s bin will be full for centuries on centuries. Great Britain and Germany will not be coalless soon. Let us worry about something else.

50 Years Ago, 1956

Unionized Twin City painters, meeting at Central Labor Union Hall, 30 Lisbon St., voted to accept a management-offered 15-cent hourly wage increase. The offer by painting contractors becomes effective May 12. According to business agent Vilmere Lachance of the painters’ Union, the new wage scale is $1.80 an hour for a 40-hour week based on eight hours a day, time and a half for overtime and Saturdays; double time for Sundays. Six legal holidays are stipulated in the new work contract and $2.50 an hour will be paid for all spray work.

25 Years Ago, 1981

The first fatalities in the U.S. space program in 14 years took place last week. It happened as the trouble-plagued space shuttle Columbia was put through a rehearsal for its initial flight into orbit early next month. The test itself was highly successful but five technicians inadvertently entered an oxygen-purged compartment and one of them died. Officials in Washington said the accident, involving Rockwell International employees, was not the result of any flaw in the shuttle. The long-delayed launching remains scheduled for the week of April 5. The only previous fatality at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad was in 1967, when three Apollo astronauts died in a test.