The Way Things Are

"When I see you on the street," President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked his Columbia University students, "will you please say 'hello'--because some people who don't belong to the university occasionally pass me on 116th Street and they think I'm crazy when I say hello."

Shapely Dancer Ruth St. Denis, whose hair has been snow-white for the last 49 years, let the Chicago Sun-Times in on the secret of her youth. For five minutes every morning she stands on her head, which "relieves the inner organs from the continual pressure of gravity and gives the blood a chance to circulate from bottom to top, instead of top to bottom." For another fifteen minutes she sits crosslegged, yogi fashion, with her spine straight and her hands in her lap.

Asked to comment on Red atrocities in the Korean war, General Jonathan Wainwright, retired, hero of Bataan and veteran of three years of beatings and semi-starvation in Japanese P.W. camps, declared: "I will say unequivocally that were I commanding in Korea, I would meet the situation by giving captives the same treatment."

After a tour of New York City Police Headquarters, Princess Gabriela Pacelli, 36, niece-in-law of Pope Pius XII, reported that one thing amazed her: "You cannot distinguish detectives in civilian clothes from other citizens. In Italy you can tell a policeman no matter how he is dressed."

"No one knows anything about architecture," America's Frank Lloyd Wright, 81, told students at a London school of architecture. "For 500 years the thing has been going downhill until no one knows a good building from a bad one." Then, as he handed out the year-end prizes, Architect Wright assured the winners that their achievements meant nothing: "The judges throw out the best and the worst, and prizes as a result of competition go to the average of the average of the averages."

All in Good Time

At an agricultural show in Cornwall, King George VI halted before a stall marked "Infestation Division." "What's that name they call ratcatchers now?" asked the King. "Rodent operator, that's it! I suppose Whitehall thought that one up." It did.

Before an awesome bonfire in the South Dakota buffalo-grass country, Ben American Horse, Head Chief of the Sioux, presented Cinemactor Van (Act of Violence) Heflin with a feathered warbonnet and the title of Looking Horse, formally adopted him into the tribe.

Soprano Margaret Truman signed a contract with CBS to do a weekly television show starting this October.

For the dedication of a towering, star-shaped memorial to the 76,890 G.I. casualties-of the Battle of the Bulge, Major General Anthony McAuliffe was back in Bastogne to say "nuts" to would-be aggressors. "There can only be one answer to aggression," said he, "the answer Hitler received."

While Cartoonist Milton Caniff looked proudly on and P-51 Mustangs circled overhead, Colorado's Governor Walter Johnson unveiled a ten-foot, 7 1/2-ton limestone statue of comic-strip Aviator Steve Canyon at the junction of U.S. highways 6 and 40.

The Little Things That Count

At a swank Kensington garden party, Frankie Sinatra met Princess Margaret, sang a bang-up rendition of If I Loved You, at her request. During their 15-minute chat that followed, the Princess told the crooner not to work too hard. Said The Voice: "She floored me by knowing so much about music."

Named by the American Alumni Council as the "American Alumnus of the Year": Herbert Hoover, Stanford '95.

Booked on charges of "giving an indecent performance" for the umpteenth time since she took up fandangling, Sally Rand protested, "I'm sorry, I just don't tell my age." (Milwaukee Policewoman Geraldine Sampon, who had found Sally "nude as could be" in a lakefront carnival show, finally got her to admit to 46.)

Gratwicke Beatrice II, a roan dairy shorthorn cow belonging to Winston Churchill, won first prize (-L-10) at the Kent county agricultural show. Later in the week Winnie proved his luck again when the express train he was riding in plowed into a loaded hay elevator at 76 m.p.h., gave him and the other passengers only a momentary jolt.

At Rome's open-air opera in the Baths of Caracalla, two well-lighted Hollywood stars attended a performance of Verdi's Aida. At the end of the first act, the audience spotted Princess Aly (Rita Hayworth) Khan sitting in the first row, excitedly howled "Viva Bellissima Rita!" The Princess, wearing a plain white evening gown embellished with white flowers, rose, smiled and bowed to her admirers. No one seemed to notice Signora Roberto (Ingrid Bergman) Rossellini, who kept quietly to herself in the tenth row.

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