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

The skies opened up and drenched Monaco one morning last week, portending in Riviera folklore the prospect of prosperity, health and character to all children born during rainstorms. In Monaco's pink-walled palace, Princess Caroline Louise Marguerite, 8 lbs. 3 oz., uttered her first wail, set off a chain reaction including a radio broadcast by her nervous father, Prince Rainier III, 33, a 21-gun salute from two ancient cannon, harbor whistles, bonfires, street dancing and a torrent of free champagne. No longer would Monacans worry that Rainier would die without an heir, a catastrophe that might have eventually subjected them to France's high taxes and military draft as the prizes of a French annexation. After the easy birth, Princess Grace, 27, was soon nursing healthy Caroline, drinking beer at each meal on her doctor's orders.

Japan's Emperor Hirohito, a sometime poet (TIME, Jan. 14) and marine biologist, was hailed for a pioneer bit of research in his scientific pursuits. A clam shell sent to him last fall from the Amami-Orshima Islands (between Japan and Okinawa) was painstakingly identified by the Emperor as none other than a Benishibori-Minomushi bivalve. Significance: never before, claimed the Imperial Palace, had this clam been found so far north. Japan's news agency gave an unrestrained banzai: "Through his personal keen interest in marine biology, His Majesty turned up a new discovery on the living habits of the rare clam."

Baseball's Hall-of-Fameman Frankie Frisch, 59, onetime (1933-38) pilot light of the St. Louis Cardinals' Gas House

Gang and lately a TV sportscaster, sniffed at the plush-lined genteelness of today's game. As ex-Manager Frisch sees it, baseball training camps nowadays "are no more than country clubs without dues." Other evidence of baseball's decline from its rigors of yore: "In my day there were no rides to and from the park. You walked--and if you were caught riding it cost you 25 bucks . . . When they wanted a new manager, you were told simply to 'get outa here--you're fired!' Owners are more polite nowadays; they announce you have resigned."

In the surf off the Mexican resort of Acapulco swam a typical Hollywood twosome, dashing Cinemactor Michael Wilding and jet-powered Cinemagnate Michael Todd. After splashing about, the two Mikes reportedly had a drink together. Then twice-married Mike Wilding ex ited after freeing his ailing wife, Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, 24, who had a relapse after a shopping tour with him, to get a divorce and marry twice-married Mike Todd, twice her age.

Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art elected Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Sr., 75, widow of the art-amassing publisher, as a benefactress, announced the simultaneous receipt of donations from the Hearst Foundation: three 17th century British interiors, some old chunks of European architecture, a Roman copy in marble of a 5th century B.C. statue of Hermes.

Massachusetts High School Teacher George Metalious, husband of No. 1 best-selling Novelist Grace (Peyton Place) Metalious, 32, father of her three children, told newshounds that he and Grace have split. He was mum on his reasons. though Grace had once explained that while she was grinding out her libido-loaded book George "cooked, fed the kids, ran the school and never once objected." Their impending divorce was perhaps based on the same grounds that inspired Grace to dedicate her novel obliquely: "To George--For All the Reasons He Knows So Well . . ."

A man of strong (Roman Catholic) faith and often violent (anti-U.S.) prejudice, Britain's Novelist Graham (The Quiet American) Greene, let one get the better of the other in a crass commercial assessment of the prospects of his new play, a psychological mystery drama due to open this week on Broadway. "Wouldn't it be a marvelous thing for The Potting Shed if only Cardinal Spellman could be persuaded to ban it!"

Acknowledging that he was the pleased catcher of the bride's bouquet, Chicago Grass Widower Adlai Stevenson, 56, a guest at the recent marriage of his distant cousin Helen Stevenson to New Jersey's Democratic Governor Robert B. Meyner (TIME, Jan. 28), seemed bleakly bereft of romance, though confessing that he would like to rate as eligible: "I hope the bouquet portends something, but I'm inured to disappointments."

In a rare foray beyond the Vatican's walls, Pope Pius XII journeyed a short distance in Rome, appeared at the sooth anniversary celebration of the Collegio Capranica, a small but distinguished seminary (world's oldest) where he was a young student 62 years ago. His Holiness kissed the feet of an old familiar crucifix, inspected the tiny room he once occupied, presented the college with a pearl-encrust ed chalice as a quincentennial present.

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