to keep the incident secret (including plans to dump the damaged nerve gas containers into the ocean), The Wall Street Journal exposed the story ten days later in an article headlined "Nerve gas accident— Okinawa mishap bears overseas deployment of chemical weapons". Arthur Nathaniel Aiken and Antonio Nathaniel Wheat were both spared execution only three days before they were scheduled to be hanged at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The double hanging had been set for 12:01 on the morning of Friday, July 11, and the two former airmen would have been the first prisoners to be put to death since Luis Monge in 1967. Warden Robert Rhay told reporters that Wheat and Aiken would be given the option to decide which one would be executed first and that if they were unable to agree on the sequence, Rhay would "flip a coin". Aiken was granted a stay of execution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (who happened to be vacationing at his summer home in Goose Prairie, Washington) less than 72 hours before his trip to the gallows; Wheat had been given a temporary reprieve by Potter Stewart the day before. The United States Supreme Court would void all pending death sentences in 1972, and the two inmates, convicted of a triple homicide, would serve consecutive life sentences instead. West German millionaire Hannsheinz Porst, arrested on October 23, 1967 for passing West German documents to the Communist government of East Germany from his chain of photography supply stores, was convicted of espionage by a court in Bonn. He was sentenced by a court in Karlsruhe to 2½ years in prison. The International Ice Hockey Federation ended its ban against professional players playing in the annual world championship competition, starting in 1970. Meeting at the alpine resort town of Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland, the IIHF delegates voted 26-25 in favor of allowing each nation to have as many as nine professional or former pros on its squad, provided that the player had not played actively in the National Hockey League during its 1969-1970 season prior to the start of the tournament. Born: Chucky Mullins, American football player for Ole Miss; in Russellville, Alabama (d. 1991) July 9, 1969 (Wednesday) Pitcher Tom Seaver of the New York Mets kept 25 consecutive Chicago Cubs batters from reaching base and needed just two more to record what would have been