The mighty New York Yankees, those bankers of baseball, were giving away 20,000 free tickets--and to New York taxi drivers at that. With each pair of ducats went a letter from General Manager Ralph Houlc, 44, telling how the Yanks ("a great New York institution") wanted to "do something for another great New York institution." The Yanks could use some friends: the Na tional League's happy-go-sloppy Mets were outdrawing them at home 3 to 2.

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Mir Taqui Mir are not exactly U.S. household words. But Minute Rice is, and it is the wish of its inventor, Afghan Immigrant Ataullah K. (Dial-Durrani, that the two little-known 19th century Persian poets roll trippingly off American tongues. Ozai-Durrani's will, probated six weeks after his death at 66 in Denver, leaves more than half of his $1,000,000 estate to Harvard "or some such nonprofit institution" to translate the poets' works into English and underwrite biographies. Ozai-Durrani's lawyers are being besieged by half a dozen nonprofiteers anxious to investigate, but Harvard is ahead by a Yard.

Descending from a Pan American thrift flight in Honolulu, Lynda Bird Johnson, 20, was nearly strangled by a nest of welcoming leis. "I can't see," she said plaintively. They kept coming. "I can't stand another one." So it went, for the eight days of her Hawaiian visit, through speech giving, sightseeing and skindiving: an embarrassment of riches, from feathered gourds to a monkeypod tray, and an even more embarrassing swarm of aloha photographers. She banned one from a luau for snapping her in a bathing suit, wailed at others, "I can't stand up, I'm sinking," when they asked her to pose in spike heels on a soggy lawn. She even tried to elude them when a gift Indian sari was wound about her dress. "It's like taking pictures of me in a bathtub," she chirped. "Y'all wait till I have it on."

Her late husband, New York Senator and Governor Herbert H. Lehman, was a Williams man, class of 1899, and so Edith Altschul Lehman, 75, gave the college $1,250,000 in his memory--largest personal gift in the school's 171-year history.

Perhaps there were a few more casseroles than necessary, and please, everybody, not another silver tray. But duplication in sterling is the sort cf challenge any June bride adores coping with, and it looks like Peggy Goldwater, 20, Barry's younger daughter, will be back to the store in '64. When Peggy marries Richard Arlen Holt, 26, a junior executive with California's Wilshire Oil Co., in Phoenix's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral this week, the Senator will be on hand to give her away, though many of her father's political friends, she says, "will be too busy to attend."

"If you prick me, do I not bleed?" asked Shakespearean Richard Burton, 38, paraphrasing Shylock. Burton does, frighteningly, for as he explained in Manhattan last week, he has suffered all his life from a mild form of "bleeder's disease," or hemophilia. Recently recruited by the National Hemophilia Foundation, he announced the formation of a Richard Burton Hemophilia Fund, with Wife Liz as chairman, to aid research on the disease.

Mary Caroline d'Erlanger, 24, daughter of BOAC's late chief, Sir Gerard d'Erlanger, prefers the nickname Minnie. Her fiance, Winston Spencer Churchill, 23, on the other hand, strenuously resists Winnie, and as anyone who has tangled with his grandfather can testify, Churchills are stubborn. Randolph's Oxford-educated son has other family traits: 1) a fondness for travel and journalism that last year sent him on a four-month tour of 40 African and Middle Eastern countries, will result in a book, First Journey, due in the U.S. in January, 2) freckles; and 3) a hankering eventually to go into politics ("That is what all Churchills do"). Meanwhile, Minnie and Winston are busy choosing a London church and July day for the wedding.

Don't let nobody say Tennessee don't stand by its own. When Memphis radio station WHBQ announced a contest for most popular rock-'n'-roll singer, and some misguided teen-agers sent in a passel of votes for them furrin Beatles, the five-man city commission tabled its budget debate and unanimously adopted a resolution "calling on all citizens of Memphis and elsewhere to support Elvis Presley in this contest." Explained Mayor William B. Ingram Jr., "More than any other person, Elvis has carried abroad with him a fine reputation for Memphis. I hope some day we find an appropriate means of recognizing him, such as naming the new city colosseum for him."

Viking princes have claimed the sea as their domain since the days of Leif Ericson, and Norway's debonair Crown Prince Harold, 27, has salty blue in his veins. A deep-water sailor from the age of eight and Norway's kingpin skipper for the past decade, Harald was named by the Royal Yacht Club to represent his country in the 5.5-meter yacht class at the 1964 Olympics. Sailing the Fram III, designed by U.S. Master Draftsman Bill Luders, Harald is rated a good bet for a medal of some sort, but it had better be gold if he is to maintain status in court circles. Both his father, King Olaf, and his good friend, Greece's King Constantine, hold gold medals for sailing won at the Olympics of 1928 and 1960.

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