At a retreat in suburban Taipei, the Republic of China's venerable President Chiang Kai-shek passed his 75th birthday in quiet seclusion. The still spry Gimo requested that there be no public celebrations, but 30,000 Formosans jammed into the Presidential Mansion grounds to sign traditional congratulatory scrolls; across the island there were youth rallies, mass choral concerts and, with an eye to the Reds across the strait, mass bayonet exercises. In lieu of birthday cake, all the guests at restaurants, public luncheons and dinner parties were served long, flat noodles, a Chinese symbol of longevity.

Where was Chester Bowles when the Cuban crisis broke? At the Nigerian International Trade Fair in Lagos.

In spite of a dreary London drizzle, a pale but smiling Sir Winston Churchill, 87, showed up at the Savoy for his first social engagement since he broke his left thighbone last June. The occasion: the annual dinner of The Other Club, a meeting and eating society of politicians, lawyers, soldiers and wits that Winnie helped found 51 years ago.

She was once a leader of Rome society and her husband was an Italian-Brazilian count. But last year Count Marco Fabio Crespi, slipped off to Mexico and got himself a divorce so that he could marry a Brazilian banker's daughter. Insisting that she is still the real countess, statuesque Vivian Stokes Taylor Crespi, 39, whose son, Marc Antonio, 10, is a Newport playmate of Caroline Kennedy, finally managed to get her case to court. Docketed for trial in Manhattan this month is her suit to have herself declared the count's legal wife on the grounds that his divorce was illegal and his relations with his new wife, who just gave birth to a daughter, are "adulterous."

If Brother Nelson ever gets into the White House, Arkansas Farmer Winthrop Rockefeller, 50, does not expect to get on the federal payroll. "It's never been an aspiration of the Rockefellers," said Winthrop, "to outnumber the Kennedys."

"He has finished his work with us." said a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, announcing that U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers, 33, resigned last month. His new job: testing overhauled U-2s for Lockheed Aircraft. His salary? "Same as any other test pilot," said a Lockheed official. "They make from $10,000 to $20,000 a year, depending on experience." Powers, feels Lockheed, has plenty of experience.

In the first act of Broadway's bedroom romp Come On Strong, Actress Carroll Baker, 31, was lying on her back near the footlights pedaling air in a setting-up exercise. Suddenly a man in the first row stood up and whispered wickedly, "I have something for you," then heaved the something on the stage and scooted out a side exit. Carroll shrieked in terror, thinking maybe it was a bomb. But it was only paper--a summons ordering her to appear in Manhattan Supreme Court to answer a $66,377.50 lawsuit filed by Warner Brothers over a contract squabble. "I feel this is one of the most insensitive things I've ever heard of done to an actress," huffed Carroll, reading the document to her enthralled audience (wild applause).

Unanimously upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals: the conviction of William F. Rickenbacker, 34, an editor of the conservative National Review and son of Eastern Air Lines Board Chairman Eddie Rickenbacker, for refusing to fill out the 1960 census questionnaire. Contending that the form was "snoopy" and "an unnecessary invasion of my privacy" (because it asked such things as salary, manner of sewage disposal), Rickenbacker vows to take the case to the Supreme Court. At stake: a $100 fine and suspended 60-day jail sentence.

"This is a radical step in what I hope is the right direction," explained Crooner Pat Boone, 28, heretofore always the Mr. Clean of the movie business. Hoping to do right by doing wrong, Boone plays the heavy in 7 Arts' The Main Attraction. He is knocked silly in a barroom brawl and revived by Chianti spilled over his head by a circus floozy. He sleeps in her wagon ("Won't there be talk?"), later stabs her husband, runs away, is seduced by a bareback rider. Where on earth went all of Pat's on-screen morality? "I have stepped out of the groove," he said. "In my first six movies I played myself. From now on I don't care if I play a derelict or a drug addict, just so long as the movie has a worthwhile message."

Nearly 500 friends, followers, and just plain curious crammed into the Left Bank studio-gallery-theater of America's pioneer Beatnik Raymond Duncan for his 88th birthday blowout. The bespectacled old expatriate, whose pad is almost a photographic shrine to his late sister, Dancer Isadora Duncan, gave them a weirdly nostalgic show. In a quavering saloon tenor he sang My Old Kentucky Home; then, unshorn silver locks and hand-woven toga flying, he launched into a frantic soft-sandal jig. The Dior-dressed segment of the crowd dug it deep. But the modern beats, obviously distressed that no food and no smoking were allowed, did not get the scene at all. Said one bewildered beard to another: "I don't know what this cat is laying down, but I don't pick it up."

In black boots, canary yellow britches, dark blue melton coat and velvet hunting cap, Jackie Kennedy, astride a calico hunting horse named Rufus, plunged into the fox-hunting season with gleeful energy. So caught up was Jackie in her favorite sport that she missed a White House meeting with the patrons of Washington's Gallery of Modern Art (the President pinch-hit), and daily chased the hounds across the misty Virginia fields near Upperville, where the Kennedys are building a ranch house costing approximately $90,000. During one three-hour hunt, the First Lady chivalrously dismounted to open a gate for her fellow riders. Said one weary young horseman: "It was nice of her to open that gate, but I sure did feel funny going through it."

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