Latest addition to the heartwarming legend growing up around Pope John XXIII: at a recent audience for a group of Italian bishops. His Holiness, who served as an NCO with an Italian medical unit during World War I, spied the Rt. Rev. Arrigo Pintonello, chief chaplain of the Italian army, wearing a general's insignia. As the bishop prepared to genuflect and kiss the papal ring, the Pope stepped up smiling, saluted, reported in: ''Sir, Sergeant Roncalli, at your command."
As Brooklyn's Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz, a hot-tempered scourge of the underworld during the day, slumbered peacefully in his seaside home, a sneak thief lifted His Honor's pants from a bedroom chair, made off with $72.
Taking a routine item over the phone about a Masonic lodge meeting in Louisburg, Kans. (pop. 677). a Kansas City Starman perked up slightly when told that a jut-chinned visitor named Harry S. Truman had been present. "You know,'' said the caller, thoughtfully clarifying his report, ''he is the former Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge in Missouri.''
By ancient custom, a Japanese fiance seals the engagement by buying the bride. Last week Crown Prince Akihito made a small investment (two fish, five rolls of white silk, six bottles of sake), officially sealed his troth to Michiko Shoda, who then knuckled down to the weary task of studying the archaic imperial wedding lore under Palace Ritualist Osanaga Kanroji. His bride in hand, the prince was free to join his parents. Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagoko, at a heady gala: the annual poetry-reading contest. Fired by this year's contemporary topic (windows), an astounding 22,427 waka fanciers had submitted the stirrings of their muses. Eleven of the 15 winners were able to join the imperial family in the palace's drafty West Room to hear professional chanters drone the formal. 31-syllable verselets. The Emperor, who is above the burly of competition, had again delighted all by submitting a waka himself. Five times, a chanter intoned the tiny poem:
'Tis spring at last
As by the window I stand
Watching the pheasants playing happily.
Turning guest for a change, chirrupy Washington Hostess Perle Mesta showed up towing a "friend from Newport," Sportsman Cornelius Vanderbilt, at a convivial "victory"' party honoring the new Congress, was soon chuckling brow-to-brow with the first Democratic table-hopper to arrive for the jollity. Rhode Island's venerable (91) Senator Theodore F. Green.
Sharing the lot of her snow-plagued subjects. Queen Elizabeth II plowed her station wagon into a drift near the royal homestead at Sandringham. had to mush 200 yds. down the road with Prince Charles to find a phone, call for help.
For the grand finale of a BBC-TV series on how he did it (official title: Command in Battle), foxy Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein first showed a film of the 1945 German capitulation at Luneburg Heath, then whipped out the rarely seen original surrender document--a plain little piece of regulation army foolscap which Monty has hoarded carefully in his files. Eyes atwinkle. Old (71) Soldier Montgomery defied anyone to take it away as long as he lives. "The question of my right to possess the document was raised by a Labor member in the House of Commons some years ago. Winston Churchill very rightly said that anybody who takes the surrender of 2,000,000 of the enemy in battle is entitled to keep the receipt."
Weary of waiting for his due, a Florida photographer sued jaded, penny-foolish Millionheir Playboy Horace Dodge Jr. and his blonde showgirl-wife Gregg Sherwood for an unpaid bill of $855.93, thereby made the artful Dodges defendants in Palm Beach County circuit court for the 35th time in the past five years.
In the midst of preparations for another religious crusade (in Australia) tireless Evangelist Billy Graham finally let Mayo doctors look at his bothersome left eye. Diagnosis: a contraction of the blood vessels (technically, angio-spastic edema of the macula) which has cut normal vision in the eye to almost half and was possibly brought on by nervous strain and overwork. Billy promised to follow doctors' orders and rest a little.
Totting up some inheritance-tax receipts, a Wisconsin taxman reckoned that the late Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy left to his widow and sole heir, Jean Kerr McCarthy, an estate of about $114,000.
The late Novelist-Screenwriter Octavus Roy Cohen (TIME, Jan. 19) left the bulk of his estate (at least $50,000) to a friend, Mrs. Margaret Brigham, $1 to his only child, Writer Octavus Roy Jr., 42.
Hearing the rattle of gunfire on the marshy Georgia estate of Ambassador to the Court of St. James's John Hay Whitney, two federal game management agents skulked low until the huntsmen popped from their blinds, ambushed a high-ranking catch: four retired Air Force officers--General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz, Lieut. General Ira C. Eaker, Major Generals E. P. Curtis and Frank O'D. Hunter --each overloaded (two beyond the limit) with dead ducks. Result: four $25 fines. Said one of the ambushers afterward: "They were all very agreeable about it."
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