At 1:20 p.m. the jetliner touched down at New York's Kennedy International Airport, and the whole place went up for grabs. Some 2,000 hooky-playing, caterwauling teen-agers stomped, whistled, screamed, sang or just plain fainted while the plane slowly disgorged 105 passengers, eleven crew members and four British Beetles. Oops, Beatles. On their first U.S. tour, the mop-topped, top pop waiters, John Lennon, 23, George Harrison, 21, Paul McCartney, 21, and Ringo Starr, 23, grinned amiably at the whole mad display. What was their secret? "A good pressagent," chirped Ringo. (They have 17.) And how about the Detroit movement to stamp out Beatles? "Oh, we have a campaign of our own to stamp out Detroit," said McCartney reasonably.

"There was James, Margaret, a nun in New Zealand, Stanislaus, who died in 1955, Charles, who died five days after James, George, who died at 14, Eileen, who died last year, myself, Eva, who died in 1957, I think, Florence, who is still living, and Mabel, the youngest, who died at 17. James loved her." The James who so dominates the fam ily is James Joyce, and his sister, May Joyce Monaghan, 74, was talking about him during a visit to New York on the 82nd anniversary of his birth. "Jim, as we used to call him, was very gentle and quiet. He wasn't a fighter, you know. He used to say everybody recognized he was a genius except his six sisters." At that, May has managed better than most readers. "I've read the Portrait and Dubliners over and over. I've read Ulysses," she boasted. But even sisterly love falters. "I've read Finnegans Wake as far as I can get," she admitted. "I like to hear it read."

Between now and May, no fewer than four little noble bundles will be dropped on the doorsteps of Princess Alexandra, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and the Duchess of Kent. With Britons as crazy about betting as they are, it was only a matter of time before a Royal Stork Stakes was organized. Now in Portsmouth two enterprising bookmakers have announced that they are accepting bets on the sex and names of the royal tots-to-be. George, Mary and Philip are 10-to-l favorites for Elizabeth's baby, but the odds makers are covering all angles. For example, says Bookie Harry Garcia, "we're ready to lay 50,000 to 1 against the Queen--Her Majesty, that is--having a boy and calling him Prince Nikita."

In December, 1962, on an icy highway outside Moscow, a light car crashed into a truck, and Russia's leading physicist was pulled from the wreckage all but dead. His body was crushed from head to thigh; he was in a deep coma for seven weeks and clinically "died" four times in a single week. Miraculously he survived. And last week word came from Moscow that Lev Davidovich Landau, 56, had finally been released from the Neurosurgery Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. But the Nobel Prizewinner (it was awarded to him ten months after the accident) still appears unable to think in the A-then-B-then-C sequence necessary to scientific theorizing, and his colleagues fear that despite his physical recovery, he will never return to his work.

The telephone company has bagged its biggest trophy. At 12:01 last Saturday, President Lyndon Johnson's NAtional 8-1414 phone number at the White House was changed clickety-zip to 456-1414. Said an anti-digit dialing partisan bitterly: "Prestigewise, we've had it."

Of all the gall. Some punk just walked up and stole this 1963 Ford station wagon, not even considering who the owner was. So Mickey Spillane, 45, had to report the theft to the Sarasota, Fla., cops. Moped he defensively: "I know what you're going to say: 'Go find it yourself.' " Gone with the car were his wife's engagement and wedding rings, his wallet, and the only manuscript of his new book, The Body Lovers. The manuscript he didn't mind. "That just means I've got to sit down and do three more days' work."

"I am weary of intellectualism," Princeton Professor Eric Goldman, 48, once said. And coming from the president of the Society of American Historians, the remark was something of a surprise. But Goldman is likely to be full of surprises in the months to come. He has just been appointed to be a sort of super ideaman for channeling "the nation's best thinking to the White House." The respected author (Rendezvous with Destiny, The Crucial Decade) plans first to recruit 40 experts on domestic and foreign affairs from across the U.S. and start pumping them for ideas. Said he in a half jest he may wish he had never uttered: "If someone in Kansas City has an idea on anything, he should write me."

Just a minor traffic violation, and could he please see the license and registration? The Roman traffic cop's eyebrows lifted, and he pointed out to the signora that her six-month tourist auto permit had expired a few days ago. And that meant Anna Moffo's air-conditioned Lincoln Continental, with built-in bar, had to be impounded by Italian customs. She can get it back any time--by paying a $5,000 fine, a $5,000 import duty and a $10,000 redemption fee. But since the car cost only $9,800 new, the American operatic soprano is having none of it. "I'm planning not to pay one lira of that fine," she told reporters. "I've got lawyers working on it. I'll take this as high as I have to." Meanwhile, sighed Anna conlamenti, "I've bought a bicycle."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.