626     December 6, 1965 (Taped November 29)
Betsy, Bill, Bess, Henry

Edward Littig from Bellville, New Jersey and Charlie Logan from Cedar Grove, New Jersey: “We race bicycles on these rollers…we can go over 60 miles per hour”                 
The men race without moving.  Each rides his racing bike atop a set of 18” wide rollers.  As Steve explains, balancing is tricky in this offshoot, because a typical cyclist maintains his balance with forward momentum.  Both are national champion cyclists.   

Colonel X: “I was the first pilot to fly over the South Pole (1929)”                 
Bernt Balchen is a highly decorated aviator who flew the plane for Admiral Richard Byrd, though today his name is not as well known as that of the famous polar explorer.  Balchen was recently aboard the first airplane to circle the globe pole to pole.  From November 14 to 17, a heavily modified Boeing 707 nicknamed “Polecat” carried five pilots and various scientists, along with Balchen.  The plane was fitted with two 2000 gallon fuel tanks to cover the distances over water and polar ice.  The flight took over 57 hours.   

Special guest George Maharis challenges the panel to guess certain qualities of the studio audience, all of whom filled out questionnaires before the show.  Questions include how many doctors are in the audience (2, out of 458), how many audience members own a color television (45) and how many have never flown on an airplane (94).  A UNIVAC computer on stage sorts the data after every question, but the answers could easily have been sorted by hand.  Maharis had gained fame for his role as Buz Murdock in the TV series Route 66 (1960-64), but had left the series before the end of its third season.  He is focusing on his recording career and is singing in the Persian Room at the New York Plaza Hotel.