The greatest living hero of the sea, 70-year-old Sir Francis Chichester sailed slowly back toward England under foresails and mizzen, his mainsail furled --out of the 54-ship transatlantic race that began June 17. So weak from a blood disease that he had been virtually carried on board the 57-ft. Gipsy Moth V, Sir Francis was out of radio contact for several days. An R.A.F. search plane, which finally spotted him off the Spanish coast some 600 miles south of England, queried by blinker light if he needed help, and the old sailor flashed back: "I have been ill. No rescue. I am O.K."

Before she turns into Don Quixote's virginal Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha, Aldonza, the scullery maid, gets a rather rough going-over from a rabble of lustful admirers. So much the worse for Sophia Loren that Director Arthur (Love Story) Hiller, currently making the movie in Rome, is a perfectionist. After umpteen retakes of the strenuous scene, Sophia was pleading sotto voce with the extras: "Take it easy, boys. I'm black and blue all over."

"I could conk out any minute," says 77-year-old Thinker R. Buckminster Fuller, "and there are a number of people who would like to see this work carried on." To carry on Fuller's work of formulating fresh and sometimes dazzling solutions to the problems of Man on Earth, a nonprofit Design Science Institute has just been set up in Washington, D.C. It will be headed by Dr. Glenn A. Olds, president of Kent State University, with an advisory council including such notables as Polio Fighter Jonas E. Salk, and former U.N. Secretary-General U Thant. As for his latest solutions, the cryptic creator of the geodesic dome called for a new "world accounting system," democracy by "continual electronic referendum," and an "educational revolution" in which each child would program his own computer to answer such questions as "Why is the sky blue?"

Hair transplants have not quite restored the blond locks that gave Canadian Bobby Hull the nickname of "Golden Jet" shortly after he started playing hockey for the Chicago Black Hawks 15 years ago. But 33-year-old Bobby is more golden than he ever was--the new World Hockey Association has just signed him to abandon Chicago and become a player-coach for the Winnipeg Jets for a staggering $2.75 million over the next ten years, including an immediate cash bonus of $1 million. The W.H.A., which calls the deal the fattest contract ever signed by a professional athlete, hopes that the superstar left-wing will give the new league instant luster in its rivalry with the 54-year-old National Hockey League. The N.H.L. responded with rumblings about the possibilities of a lawsuit.

Washington had the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass at the John F. Kennedy Center last September, but New York has just had itself three openings at Lincoln Center--a "first New York performance" (Monday), a "final preview" (Tuesday), and an "opening night" (Wednesday). Each had its quota of public appearances: Comedian Woody Allen, Hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, Professional Amateur George Plimpton and Mayor John V. Lindsay. ("One of the best things about Mass" said Mary Lindsay, "is that it doesn't have an intermission.") Splendid in a burgundy dinner jacket and a large blue and gold brocade tie, Impresario Sol Hurok happily surveyed it all. "I love this show very much," he said, "but I know some who don't agree with me. That's the way it goes."

A sobering solution to the problem of drunken driving was put forward by Britain's royal consort, Prince Philip. Speaking to the annual congress of the International Federation of Automobile Engineering Societies, he made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that someone invent an ignition system that would not function unless the driver pronounced in faultless diction: "The Leith police dismisseth us."

The case of Martha Mitchell began to seem like something more serious than just an Alka-Seltzer story. After phoning from Newport Beach, Calif., to tell a reporter that she had given Nixon Campaign Manager John Mitchell "an ultimatum" to get out of politics (TIME, July 3), Martha surfaced at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y., a deeply unhappy woman. "I'm leaving him until he decides to leave the campaign," she said. "I'm not going to stand for all those dirty things that go on." Later, Martha told a reporter from the New York Daily News that one of the security men provided by Mitchell's Committee for the Re-Election of the President had come into her bedroom while she was phoning from California and ripped the telephone out of the wall. Displaying bandages on her left hand and bruises on her arms, she insisted that the guards "threw me down on a bed--five men did it--and stuck a needle in my behind. I've never been treated like this, ever. They're afraid of my honesty. I doubt seriously if I want any of the current candidates in the White House." No reporter saw or heard from her at the country club after that. Nor did any reporter manage to see John Mitchell when he arrived and took Martha back home to Washington.

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