"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

In Lake Placid, N. Y., at a celebration of his 97th birthday, Negro Lyman Epps stood up, quavered "Blow Ye the Trumpets, Blow.'' Nonagenarian Epps remembered that he had sung the same song at John Brown's funeral in 1859.

On a muggy London day, Sir Patrick Hastings, distinguished British barrister, was arguing a case before a House of Lords committee. Urged by the chairman to remove his uncomfortable wig, he declined with dignity, explained: "It gives me confidence."

Helen ("Piddle") and Cornelia ("Tobe") Storm, believed oldest spinster twins in the East, descendants (7th generation) of Dutch Immigrant Dirck Storm (1653), gave their 84th birthday party at Fishkill, N. Y. To their 50-odd guests the sisters proudly displayed a letter of congratulations sent by Dutch-descended Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Princeton University appointed Great Writer Thomas Mann to its faculty, announced he would lecture next fall on world literature.

In Shanghai, when she did not reply to a challenge she did not understand, a Japanese sentry slapped the face of Mrs. Florence Massie, second wife of Lieutenant Thomas H. Massie who in 1932 served a one hour sentence for killing an Hawaiian accused of rape by his first wife (Mrs. Thalia Fortescue Massie, who divorced him in 1934).

Still refusing to admit that Charlie Chaplin and she are man & wife, Paulette Goddard announced she was leaving for Reno "to establish a ski club."

At a waxworks exhibition, in Paris, an Italian expatriate named Epiphani Dante, 40, walked up to the figure of Mussolini, contemplated it with hatred, shot himself.

Before her first appearance in Jones Beach operetta, pretty June Havoc (real name: Evangeline June Hovick), sister of Louise Hovick (Gypsy Rose Lee), announced: "My sister always was the beauty of the family. All of a sudden people tell me I'm beautiful. Maybe the pills I've been taking have done it."

Midget Billy Curtis, 29, 3 ft. 6 in., 79 lb., last January married onetime Manhattan nightclub Bouncer Lois De Fee, 19, 6 ft. 4 in., 190 lb. Last week little Billy Curtis, suing his big bride for divorce, complained: "She treated me like a doll."

Day later Midget Joe Scott, 22, 3 ft. 4 in., 40 lb., applied for a license to wed Torch-Singer Mae Britt, 24, 5 ft. 5 in., 118 lb.

Elected to the French Academy at 53 was Andre Maurois (real name: Emile Herzog), journalist, critic, biographer, historian, lecturer, professional Anglophile and the New York Times's eminent French trained seal. A onetime textile manufacturer, Andre Maurois went into the more elegant business of writing and became a parlor philosopher with the glibness of an Emil Ludwig and the precious outlook of an H. L. Mencken. Last week he followed into the Academy arch-Royalist Charles Maurras, also elected within the month (TIME, June 27).

Temporarily unphotographed, Lovers Greta Garbo (real name: Greta Louvisa Gustafsson) and Leopold Anton Stanislaw Stokowski were bowling along in an automobile near Stockholm. Stoky, driving, cut a corner too sharply: the car turned over, shook them up good & proper.

In Los Angeles Superior Court. Sandra Martin, ex-secretary of pert, pouty Cinemactress Simone Simon, pleaded guilty to forging Miss Simon's name to three checks, cashing them. Chief result of Miss Martin's plea: disappointment in Hollywood, whose curious citizenry had hoped Miss Martin would give in court the name of Miss Simon's male friend to whom she had presented, last Christmas, gold keys to her house. Snapped Pleader Martin: "You'll never know who got them, now."

Interned as a dangerous non-Aryan in a Nazi concentration camp was mild little Felix Salten, 68-year-old Viennese author (Bambi, The Hound of Florence) of mild little books about animals, who once said: "If you would keep men from becoming as animals, strive ever to see animals as men."

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