Mick Jagger had promised to celebrate his 29th birthday--and the end of a U.S. tour that grossed the Rolling Stones $3 million--by tearing off his clothes on the stage of Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. As it turned out, that was one of the few things that didn't happen. At the Garden itself, packed with 20,000 screaming fans, the Stones presented their Pied Piper with a huge birthday cake, then cannonaded him with custard pies that splattered over the front-row customers. Then on to the birthday party at the normally staid St. Regis Roof, where Count Basie alternated with Muddy Waters to provide music, and Andy Warhol fluttered around aiming a Polaroid camera at a mob that included Dick Cavett, Lee Radziwill, Truman Capote, George Plimpton, Woody Allen and tie-dyed Zsa Zsa Gabor. Out of another giant cake popped Warhol Protege Gerry Williams outfitted in two black pasties and one black garter, her costume for an unusually explicit erotic dance. Then came more gifts for Jagger: a silver cross, a photo of a naked lady and a silver snuffbox for cocaine. Someone asked Bob Dylan whether the Stones phenomenon marked the end of rock 'n' roll or the beginning of something new. Resplendent in aviator glasses, checked shirt and a white fedora, Dylan answered with a grin: "It's the beginning of cosmic consciousness."

Terrible-tempered Chicago Cubs Manager Leo ("Nice guys finish last") Durocher, now 66, may be mellowing. At any rate, his baseball team has performed disappointingly. And when his club is losing, there seems to be only one thing for a big-league owner to do. So Cubs Owner Philip K. Wrigley followed tradition; he fired Leo and hired a new manager: Whitey Lockman. Wrigley did try to soften the blow by blaming most of the team's failures on the players. "I don't think they've been earning their pay," he said. "They don't have the spark of determination. They're prima donnas, stars, sensations. [But] it's easier to replace the manager than 25 players."

Apollo 15 Astronaut Colonel James B. Irwin announced, somewhat mysteriously, that he had had "a spiritual encounter with God on the moon." That, said Irwin, was the reason he changed his mind about profiting from the sale of stamped envelopes he and fellow astronauts Colonel David R. Scott and Lieut. Colonel Alfred M. Worden had smuggled into lunar orbit. (All three were reprimanded, and Worden and Scott are being reassigned from astronautical duty.) Irwin retires from the service this month to concentrate on High Flight, Inc., a nonprofit religious organization. "I don't think my mistake will damage my ministry," Irwin said. "It portrays me as a human, subject to human frailty."

Winston Churchill's account of his own derring-do in the Boer War may have made dashing reading, but to General Sir Hubert Gough, who was there at the time, it was all dashed nonsense. Gough, who died in 1963, left a copy of Churchill's autobiography heavily annotated with corrections. Published by the London Times as a sort of footnote to the opening of a new movie called Young Winston, Cough's comments bristle with such words as "Bunk . . . pure fabrication . . . totally inaccurate." After Churchill asserted that he had galloped into battle with two squadrons of the South African Light Horse, Gough noted: "Our last advance was at a somewhat majestic walk." -

When Lieut. William L Calley Jr. was prosecuted last year in the killing of 102 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, an important defense witness could not be found: the Army claimed it had lost contact with former Pfc. Charles Dean ("Butch") Gruver in March 1970. The Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman found Gruver, who said that the Army knew perfectly well where he was and that it had been in contact with him during the trial. Furthermore, said Gruver, Captain Ernest Medina, who was acquitted, had told Calley and his men "that we were to kill everything that walked." Charging that the Army had suppressed evidence, Calley's counsel petitioned for a new trial. Since Calley's conviction is currently under appeal, said an Army spokesman, any comment would be "inappropriate."

Adding a new adventure to a life that has included such shenanigans as smuggling a horse into the White House, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 88, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, appeared in a criminal court to testify against a burglar. When she went to New York in 1966 to attend Truman Capote's party for Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham, said Mrs. Longworth, she left her bedroom "as much in order as it ever is--it's not very orderly." When she got back to Washington, the room was even less orderly: she had been robbed of two diamond-studded bracelets given her by Kaiser Wilhelm II, her father's Rough Riders' insignia, and other "ridiculous trinkets." After Mrs. Longworth's testimony, the burglar changed his plea to guilty. As for her court appearance, the doyenne of Washington society had only one comment: "I didn't bellow enough."

All was camaraderie when the Indians gave a farewell lunch for U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Keating, returning to the U.S. to work for President Nixon's reelection campaign. After his three years of dealing with the regime of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Keating offered a capsule definition of his profession: "Diplomacy is remembering a lady's birthday but forgetting her age."

The 28-room mansion in elegant East Hampton, L.I., was occupied by Jacqueline Onassis' aunt, Mrs. Edith Bouvier Beale, 76. But it was something less than chic. Plaster was missing from the ceiling, some of the plumbing didn't work, and there was so much debris from so many cats that neither Mrs. Beale nor her daughter Edith was sure just how many cats there actually were. As for the litter of empty cans on the dining room floor, Edith explained: "I used to keep bags full of coal by the stove, and when I used up the coal, I put empty cans in them. But the raccoons ate through the walls and got into the cans. I'm mad about raccoons. I just love them." When the health authorities finally looked the place over and threatened eviction, Jackie and her sister Princess Lee Radziwill offered to help. Workmen began putting on a new roof, renovating seven rooms, and installing appliances. Said the pleased younger Edith, "I can be happy anywhere just as long as I can sing and dance."

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