Only one year ago, when designers began gingerly experimenting with hemlines lowered to midcalf (midi) or ankle (maxi). British Mod Designer Mary Quant, 34, who hiked up the first miniskirts, declared: "The miniskirt is here to stay." She says she still thinks so--although nearly half the 80 dresses she showed in London for next fall and winter were either midi or maxi. Quoth Quant: "It's not that the mini is out. It has such freedom of movement that I'll always use it. But why should I get hung up on one particular hemline? I had hoped that by now people understood that we can have the mini, the midi and the maxi." . . .

"You've been asking me that question every day since Dec. 10," protested Lynda Bird Robb, 24. She refused to answer, but her ladylike blushes only gave added credence to the rumors that L.B.J. will welcome his second grandchild come November. . . .

Astronauts call their lunar landing trainer "the Flying Bedstead"--it is a wingless tangle of tanks, tubes and rockets that stays aloft solely on the thrust of its engines. One day last week at Ellington Air Force Base, Astronaut Neil Armstrong, 37, was hovering the contraption a few feet off the ground when it suddenly shot up to 200 ft., pitched sharply down, and rolled to the right. "Better get out of there, Neil," barked Flight Control. Armstrong needed no prompting. He had already yanked the ejection ring and he parachuted to safety as the $2,100,000 craft dived straight into the ground. It was Armstrong's second close call. Two years ago he coolly jockeyed a malfunctioning Gemini 8 spacecraft to an emergency splashdown in the Pacific. . . .

On a cool spring night at Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle, 36, leaned into a high fastball and belted it into the rightfield stands. The Yankees went on to lose the game to the Cleveland Indians, 3-2, but The Mick's blast was a victory of its own. It was his 522nd homer in 17 years as a Yankee, and it moved him past Ted Williams into fourth place on the alltime list, behind Babe Ruth (714), Willie Mays (569) and Jimmy Foxx (534). . . .

Improbable as it may seem, no reigning monarch of Norway has ever visited the U.S. But now King Olav V, 64, is setting things right with a 17-day jaunt from coast to coast and back again. He met with L.B.J. in the White House, flew on to Florida, Texas and California, to Wisconsin's Scandinavian dairylands, to Chicago, and finally to Manhattan. There, he lunched with Nelson and Happy Rockefeller and the Governor's Norwegian-born daughter-in-law, Anne-Marie, in the Governor's apartment overlooking Central Park. He took in the big town's other sights and, feeling the salt rising in his veins, even headed into New York harbor to inspect the Coast Guard's ocean rescue facilities on Governors Island before catching a jet back to Oslo.

. . .

All the other five candidates for president of the Stanford University student body were taking noisy positions on the CIA, sit-ins and such. Not Vicky Drake. When they asked her what her platform was, the 21-year-old blonde breathed: "38-22-36." And that was about the size of it. A third-year language student, Vicky works between academic quarters as a topless dancer at various clubs around the San Francisco Bay area. For her campaign, she simply passed out posters of her nude self with the legend "Vicky for Pres." It was obviously the right approach for Stanford's heavily male (5-to-2 ratio) student population, which gave her 1,575 votes and made her a heavy favorite to win this week's runoff election.

. . .

"An apostle on the move," was the way Pope Paul VI referred to himself when he ascended the papal throne five years ago. Since then he has been as good as his word, logging five trips abroad, including visits to the Holy Land, Bombay and New York City. This August he will undertake his longest voyage yet--to Bogota, Colombia, more than 11,000 miles round trip from the Vatican, to attend the 39th International Eucharistic Congress. One result of his journey will be to scotch rumors that he's been in fragile health. But the Pontiff's deepest hope is to show the Latin American church, beset by declining prestige and a drastic shortage of priests, that he has not forgotten it. "All the roads of the world," said he, "are open to the ministry of the Pope."

. . .

Some movie fans just won't settle for sitting through endless reruns of their idol's films or collecting faded photographs. San Francisco Restaurateur Frederick Reeve has always had a passion for Humphrey Bogart, and when he heard of plans to scrap Bogie's African Queen, the grand old tub in which he and Katharine Hepburn chugged down the Ulanga in their 1951 movie, well, something had to be done. So Reeve flew to Nairobi, bought the old girl for $750, now plans to refurbish her for $10,000 more and haul the craft around the country to help raise money for the East African Cancer Fund. "It's a fun thing to do," explains Reeve, "and I've bought a legend."

. . .

Browsing through the stacks of cards and telegrams that poured in from round the world, Harry S Truman quietly passed his 84th birthday at home with Bess in Independence, Mo.

. . .

The last attempt to do him honor in England's Westminster Abbey ended in 1924 when the then dean, Dr. Herbert E. Ryle, snorted that "his openly dissolute life and licentious verse earned him a worldwide reputation for immorality." Yet in today's easygoing society, George Gordon Lord Byron seems less of a satyr than a swinger; so a group of Byron buffs led by Derek Parker, editor of the Poetry Review, and Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis have petitioned that he receive his proper niche in the abbey's Poets' Corner. Their word was good enough for the Very Rev. Eric Abbott, present Dean of Westminster, who ordered that an appropriate plaque be placed in Poets' Corner next April, on the 145th anniversary of Byron's death.

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