News In Brief

HIDDEN ASSETS Talk about cold cash! From Conway, Ark., comes word that workers renovating a motel happened upon a wooden box inside an air-conditioning duct. They opened it and - surprise! - found money: $38,000 worth. The dates on the bills suggest the box may have been put there in the 1950s, perhaps after a robbery. For the time being, the stash is in a local bank, pending a determination of ownership. The motel owner and Conway's police aren't alone in their curiosity; the Internal Revenue Service is interested in knowing too.

BUT ASK AGAIN SOMETIME Speaking of finding things, young John Baker, while exploring his back yard in Stonington, Conn., picked up a small rock and asked his father to make it into a hatchet for him. Dad had to say no, because imbedded in the rock was the full fossil of a sea creature. Scientists estimate the specimen, a trilobite, may date back 570 million years. Fossil finds are rare in eastern Connecticut.

15 most important people of the century - historians' poll

Based on a survey of professors of history at American colleges and universities, the United States Historical Society has published lists of the 15 most important people of the 20th century and of the second millennium. The society's list of millennium greats will be published in this space on Tuesday. The people - all men - named as the most important since 1900 (in alphabetical order):

Winston Churchill

Thomas Edison

Albert Einstein

Henry Ford

Sigmund Freud

Mohandas Gandhi

Adolph Hitler

Martin Luther King

Nelson Mandela

Mao Zedong

Pablo Picasso

Pope John XXIII

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Joseph Stalin

Orville and Wilbur Wright

- PR Newswire