PEOPLE

Among 80,000 Thais who streamed into a Bangkok park to see John Glenn's Friendship 7 space capsule, going round the world this time at eye level, was Thailand's Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn (means "Possessor of the Thunderbolt"), 10. The short-pants prince's first question: "Can I get it?"

"The Supreme Court has just deconsecrated the nation," declared California's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, 49, adding that the court's decision against a New York State law requiring a daily prayer in public schools was tantamount to setting up a secular state religion--of "time and history, but not eternity." Moreover, it perverted the spirit and intent of the Constitution's First Amendment, and nothing short of another Amendment would right the wrong.

A man who has launched myriad ships, Greek Shipowner Stavros Niarchos knew precisely what he wanted for the 55-mile watery commute from his island villa to his port city office in Piraeus. From British shipyards came the world's fastest 102-ft. yacht, capable of 54 knots at top speed. But Mercury gobbled gas at the rate of 115 gallons an hour, the radar went snafu, and two of the three 3,500-h.p. gas turbine engines had to be replaced. "Teething troubles," said the British builder. Feeling the bite himself, the thrifty Greek docked his hot yacht and looked for a buyer.

Looking like a seal and feeling mighty seasick, U.S. Frogman Fred Baldasare, 38, lumbered from the Dover surf into the arms of his frisky German fiancee with a new record of sorts: he was the first man to swim the English Channel underwater. For 18 hr. 1 min. the former U.S. Army film director submarined along 15 feet beneath the surface, accompanied by a launch and encased in a steel cage that kept the aqualunged swimmer from drifting off course. Said the feisty Floridian, who prepped for his 22-mile swim by traversing the Straits of Messina's Scylla and Charybdis: "I've given up two years of my life. I'm broke."

A onetime bunny in the buff for Playboy, Hollywood Starlet Jill St. John, 21, tried terribly hard to keep up with her auto-racing husband, Five & Dime Heir Lance Reventlow, 26, only issue of Barbara Hutton's six marriages. Lance's bride even rode a motorcycle to get the feel of a wheel, but when it hit 25 m.p.h., Jill came tumbling after. Finally their two-year marriage went all aflivver and Jill sued for separate maintenance, demanding all of their communal property. Definitely not for her: the 1961 Porsche, Mercedes 3005L, 1936 Rolls-Royce, slinky Scarab racer and Cadillac hearse (for toting around skis and surfboards) that Lance quarters in the garage back of their $250,000 Beverly Hills, Calif, honeymoon cottage.

To the rumbling of a 41-gun salute and glowering dark clouds in the London skies, Liberia's President William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman, 66, was greeted by Queen Elizabeth II--marking 114 years of Anglo-Liberian friendship. As they boarded an open landau for the 40-minute trot to Buckingham Palace along with squads of Household Cavalry, the rains came. The Queen balanced a royal bumbershoot, but President Tubman had only his black topper to ward off the downpour as he waved to the smattering of onlookers along their route. At the palace, the Queen gave a very wet Tubman a well-earned honor--the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

Dousing her star for any future comeback in films, Princess Grace, 32, told Jours de France and France-Soir, "I would like to act, but it is not possible." Her Serene Highness explained that she bowed out of her role in Alfred Hitchcock's projected Mamie because it all seemed too common to her 20,000 Monegasque subjects. "The return to acting did not set well with the public," said Grace. "They thought it was not in keeping with my place as a princess." Did the Vatican have any say? And did the souring relations between Paris and the principality over taxation play a part in her decision to stay at home? "Yes," she assented, "it certainly was a bad moment, but as far as that goes, I think it will never be good."

With deep regret, NASA Project Mercury Boss Robert Gilruth announced that he was clipping the wings of one of his astronauts. Because of an "erratic heartbeat," Air Force Captain Donald ("Deke") Slayton, 38, was no longer eligible for a solo ride into space. The doughty Deke will be reassigned to "operational and planning" duties on the ground, though he might take a ride on a rocket as second or third man in future Gemini and Apollo shots.

Confirmed as the new U.S. Ambassador to Ireland was Millionaire Contractor Matthew H. McCloskey, 69, a twinkly old brogan from Philadelphia who, as longtime Democratic National Committee treasurer, demonstrated his fund-raising legerdemain by staging the first $100-a-plate dinner in 1934. His potluck for politics held good when the Senate rejected a Republican attempt, 62-30, to return the nomination over some alleged finagling in the 1946 purchase of a Government-surplus shipyard by Entrepreneur Louis Wolfson. But a regular Irish stew may await McCloskey on the Quid Sod. Demonstrating his Gaelic at a Washington dinner, he bellowed: "Fag a bealach!" Rudely reverberating in Tara's halls, it loosely means "Get out of my way!"

A scant hour after winging into Washington from South Dakota, Lawyer Joseph H. Botfum, 58-was sworn in on the Senate floor, replacing the late Republican Senator Francis Case. The diligent Dakotan helped found his state's first Young Republicans' chapter in 1934 and got Governor Archie Gubbrud's endorsement after rising to the lieutenant-governorship in 1960. No sooner was he in his seat than Bottum cast his first vote against a Democratic amendment to the NASA appropriations bill. Chuckled South Dakota's Senior Senator Karl Mundt: "It was a good start for a Republican."

Full of beans a top a San Francisco podium, Boston Pops Conductor Arthur Fiedler, 67, unwound a 96-piece orchestra in his own three-minute baroque version of The Twist. The white-maned maestro played the score "tempo a la Chubby Checker" after listening to one of the tubby twister's records and checking it with a metronome. Afterward, at a local nightclub to gyre and gimbal a bit himself, Fiedler adjudged the dance craze: "It's authentic primitive Americana, not from Siberia or Laos, I don't think it's physically unattractive either."

While her daddy is a summer bachelor next month, 4 1/2-year-old Caroline Kennedy will join the jet set, gosling league, by making her first trip abroad. Accompanied by her mother and a brace of Secret Service agents, the President's pixyish daughter will fly via commercial jetliner to Italy for a two-week vacation with her aunt, Princess Lee Radziwill, in a Neapolitan duke's lofty villa on the cliffs of ancient Ravello.

A panoply of pikemen stood stiff at attention in the Mansion House, seat of London's square-mile ancient center, as 360 dignitaries gathered for the opening of the first City of London festival. Diamond tiaras twinkled in the well-Established audience on hand to see an "entertainment" on the City's history by Poet John Betjeman, assisted by Sir John Gielgud and 74-year-old Comedian Randolph Sutton. Toward the end, Sutton broke out in an old, faintly scabrous music-hall ditty, and invited the audience to sing along. High sheriffs shuffled, bankers balked, field marshals fidgeted. Then a strong, clear voice rose from the austere assemblage. And as Queen Elizabeth was heard, all joined in:

On Mother Kelly's doorstep, down paradise row I sit along of Nelly, she sits along of Joe. She's got a little hole in her frock, A hole in her shoe, a hole in her sock, Where her toe peeps through.

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