By E. Graydon Carter

It was billed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who seems to be guided by the Gospel according to Guinness, as the "largest mass marriage in history." A total of 4,150 members of the Unification Church were united in 2,075 marriages performed at Madison Square Garden. Moon, something of a spiritual Dolly Levi to his flock, personally matched up the couples--many had met for the first time only days before--and some, of different nationalities, were able to converse with their new mates only through interpreters. The newlyweds will now return home until Moon gives the go-ahead for them to move in with each other and consummate their nuptials--possibly not before 40 days.

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The sweeping saga of unrequited love in the Outback was considered by some to be the Australian Gone With the Wind, and for the filmed version, yet another fair Englishwoman walked off with the lead. Rachel Ward, 24 (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid), is cast as Meggie in The Thorn Birds, a nine-hour ABC-TV "novel for television" based on Colleen McCullough's 1977 bestseller. Richard Chamberlain, 47, plays Meggie's paramour, Man of the Cloth Ralph de Bricassart. Jean Simmons, 53, has the role of her mother Fee, and Barbara Stanwyck, 74, is cast as her Aunt Mary Carson. Only one major part, that of Meggie's husband Luke, is being played by an Australian, Bryan Brown (Breaker Morant). Brown may have his Down Under accent down pat, but the rest will have to fake it. Rachel, who was raised on an Oxfordshire farm, hopes a mid-Atlantic cadence will carry her through. Besides, says she, "Americans can't tell the difference between Australian and English accents anyway." Cheeky lass, ain't she?

He was a 6-ft. 8-in. giant whose ability to whip a ball 98 m.p.h. had given him a 107-71 career mark, a 3.15 earned run average and 1,493 strikeouts in 1,606 innings. After more than nine seasons, Houston Astros Pitcher J.R. Richard was the best righthander in baseball. Then he was felled by a stroke in July 1980. Now 32, Richard, after months of therapy and workouts, is making a comeback. Last week a standing ovation greeted him as he ambled to the mound at tiny City Island Park in Florida to start his first game since the stroke. His team: the Daytona Beach Astros, a Houston Class A farm club. Richard had a rocky beginning, allowing the St. Petersburg Cardinals two earned runs and three hits in the first inning. Then he set tled down, retiring nine of the next eleven batters and throwing three shutout innings. "It took a lot of hard work to get to here, and it's going to take a lot more hard work to get back into the majors," he says. "It's like learning how to pitch again. I'm starting all over."

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Abbie Hoffman, 45, is a convicted cocaine peddler on parole; Jerry Rubin, 43, a former Wall Street stockbroker, now runs seminars for business people; Rennie Davis, 42, became an insurance salesman; Bobby Seale, 45, is researching a cookbook on barbecuing; and Tom Hayden, 41, married to a movie actress, is running for the California state assembly. If there was any doubt as to the demise of the tumultuous era that the Chicago Seven (plus Seale) symbolized, one further career note settles it: Judge Julius Hoffman, the righteous ringmaster of the Seven's celebrated 1969 courtroom circus, is being retired. Reluctantly, mind you. He has been a senior judge with a lightened load for the past ten years, but now his fellow benchmembers have decided that Hoffman, who will turn 87 this week, should be, in court terminology, "taken off the wheel." Hoffman insists, "There's been no change officially. As far as I'm concerned, I am still a senior judge." True enough, says Perry Moses, chief deputy clerk of the northern district of Illinois. "The only thing is, he gets no new cases."

--By E. Graydon Carter

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