Departing Sydney for Calcutta, Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand's cliff-hanger extraordinary, labeled his upcoming nine-month expedition "the most important of its kind ever to go to the Himalayas." Its prime purpose: to conduct physiological tests atop the world's fifth-highest peak, Mount Makalu, which the party of 18 hopes to mount without oxygen tanks. But getting most of the headlines so far was an expedition sideline: Hillary's quest for the Abominable Snowman. Although he suspects that the abomination is just a snow job, Hillary is toting a special, hypodermic-firing blunderbuss with a so-yd. kayo range to make sure that he is ready for yeti.

Into a new career--or at least so he hoped--went pixy Pugilist Archie Moore. In San Diego, Calif., Democrat Moore announced his candidacy for the State Assembly in November's election. Although sometimes chary about defending his light-heavyweight boxing championship, Archie promised if elected he "will be a fighting assemblyman."

Despite offers of up to $1,000,000, General George C. Marshall steadfastly refused to publish his memoirs during his lifetime. But he did leave 500,000 personal papers and more than 50 hours of recorded interviews to a research founda tion headed by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley. Last week Bradley announced that the first of three volumes of an authorized biography of Marshall, written by ex-Army Historian Forrest C. Pogue, will be published in 1963. Royalties will help establish a Marshall Library at his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington.

Two classic comics arrived ashore safely last week under different circumstances. While Harold Lloyd, 66, disembarked from the United States--natty and refreshed--after a four-month European junket with the family, Bert Wheeler, 65, had to be fished--saturated and exhausted--from Long Island Sound 40 minutes after his boat capsized.

During the past months. Adlai Stevenson has caught Mort Sahl's act more than a dozen times in Chicago, and the two have become fast-tongued friends. Last week, Sahl recalled a recent visit to the gentleman farmer's diggings at Libertyville. "He doesn't stand on ceremony or have any protocol, and yet the dignity is indigenous. Only trouble is he's so charming he usually steals your girl."

Replying to reports that she is on chilly terms with her imperial sister-in-law, ex-Princess Suga, an emperor's daughter who six months ago married a bank clerk, insisted that she has never felt closer to Crown Princess Michiko, a mill owner's daughter who married the heir to an empire. Suga, who is delighted with the freedom she has found outside the palace as plain Mrs. Hisanaga Shimazu, sympathizes with Michiko in her struggle to observe palace protocol, feels that Michiko is "working too hard" in her efforts to live up to her role. Suga advises Michiko to "relax," helps her in her many tasks. Most recently, Suga has been buzzing all over Tokyo in her Datsun Bluebird, a Japanese compact, to shop for Michiko's forthcoming U.S. trip. One of last week's purchases: a pair of shoes.

Now on a European concert tour that will last until Christmas, America's missing lynx, Eartha Kitt, swung into England last week with Husband Bill McDonald. While her real-estate-dealing spouse of three months shuffled his feet, Eartha announced that she was looking forward to eventually having a larger family. "A boy and a girl would be fine. I think children are the major concern of an interracial marriage, but if you bring them up correctly, they will learn to live with the rest of the world."

After many a summer came the swan song of Wyoming's Democratic Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, 75. Retiring after 25 years in the Senate, conscientious Joe O'Mahoney, who suffered a stroke last year, came onto the floor in a wheelchair to introduce a bill regulating insurance rates. Speaking at the length that had earned him the title of "the most de liberative member of the world's most deliberative body," O'Mahoney referred only once to his leavetaking: "I regret that I shall not be a member of the Senate next year when this work will be done."

Since the end of her 50-year reign as Queen of The Netherlands in 1948, the birthday of Wilhelmina has no longer been celebrated as a national holiday. But as she reached 80, a burst of nostalgia swept through the flag-bedecked land. Begged an Amsterdam newspaper: "Give us back that Aug. 31st. Let us always celebrate the Queen's birthday on that day." Strong-willed as ever, Wilhelmina insisted on a simple family gathering, and her daughter made a radio request for privacy. Said Queen Juliana (whose own April birthday has never quite assumed the same significance): "When mother does something, she wants to do it wholeheartedly . . . She holds the view that her time is gone, her time is past . . . This is the freedom of her last days."

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