Americana

P: John Hopley, 48, of San Antonio, won the title of World's Champion Liar, awarded annually by the Burlington, Wis. Liars Club. His story: while he and Charley Skorpea were playing pool for the championship of Boggy Creek Bottoms, a fly lighted on the eightball. "Charley chalked his cue--a 47-ounce, solid-oak Brunswick--and knocked the eight-ball out from under the fly so fast that it fell on the table and broke its back."

P: In snow-clogged Brooklyn, boys built snow booby traps across freshly plowed streets, patiently waited for drivers to get stuck. Then they shoveled the cars out--for $1.

P: On the stroke of New Year's, the Rev. B. R. Minton of Covington, Ind. launched a 74-hour marathon reading of the Bible's 1,189 chapters. The reading was done by some 150 of his Assembly of God Pentecostal parishioners in 30-minute shifts, was broadcast day & night over a public address system. Said Pastor Minton: "We hope the idea catches fire in other communities."

P: Emily Post, doyenne of etiquette, spoke of prunes: "The proper removal of pits [from the mouth] always depends upon their being made as dry and as clean as possible with your tongue. It is horrid to see anyone spit skins or pits into a spoon unless they are really bare and the lips compressed."

P: The Federal Communications Commission quoted an estimate that there were 73 million radios in the U.S.--one for every 1.9 people.

P: Archie Foler, a 70-year-old Negro of New Brunswick, N.J., was shot and killed by his companion, Julius Nuby, 55, because Foler failed to make good his boast that he could spell "psychology."

P: When 30 phone calls--to the oil company, to the police, to the board of health, to the Mayor's office--and two personal trips to the authorities failed to produce oil to heat his Queens Village, N.Y. home, Herman Steinmetz, 78, an architectural sculptor, hanged himself.

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