At a retreat in suburban Taipei, the Republic of China's venerable President Chiang Kai-shek passed his 75th birthday in quiet seclusion. The still spry Gimo requested that there be no public celebrations, but 30,000 Formosans jammed into the Presidential Mansion grounds to sign traditional congratulatory scrolls; across the island there were youth rallies, mass choral concerts and, with an eye to the Reds across the strait, mass bayonet exercises. In lieu of birthday cake, all the guests at restaurants, public luncheons and dinner parties were served long, flat noodles, a Chinese symbol of longevity.
Where was Chester Bowles when the Cuban crisis broke? At the Nigerian International Trade Fair in Lagos.
In spite of a dreary London drizzle, a pale but smiling Sir Winston Churchill, 87, showed up at the Savoy for his first social engagement since he broke his left thighbone last June. The occasion: the annual dinner of The Other Club, a meeting and eating society of politicians, lawyers, soldiers and wits that Winnie helped found 51 years ago.
She was once a leader of Rome society and her husband was an Italian-Brazilian count. But last year Count Marco Fabio Crespi, slipped off to Mexico and got himself a divorce so that he could marry a Brazilian banker's daughter. Insisting that she is still the real countess, statuesque Vivian Stokes Taylor Crespi, 39, whose son, Marc Antonio, 10, is a Newport playmate of Caroline Kennedy, finally managed to get her case to court. Docketed for trial in Manhattan this month is her suit to have herself declared the count's legal wife on the grounds that his divorce was illegal and his relations with his new wife, who just gave birth to a daughter, are "adulterous."
If Brother Nelson ever gets into the White House, Arkansas Farmer Winthrop Rockefeller, 50, does not expect to get on the federal payroll. "It's never been an aspiration of the Rockefellers," said Winthrop, "to outnumber the Kennedys."
"He has finished his work with us." said a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, announcing that U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers, 33, resigned last month. His new job: testing overhauled U-2s for Lockheed Aircraft. His salary? "Same as any other test pilot," said a Lockheed official. "They make from $10,000 to $20,000 a year, depending on experience." Powers, feels Lockheed, has plenty of experience.
In the first act of Broadway's bedroom romp Come On Strong, Actress Carroll Baker, 31, was lying on her back near the footlights pedaling air in a setting-up exercise. Suddenly a man in the first row stood up and whispered wickedly, "I have something for you," then heaved the something on the stage and scooted out a side exit. Carroll shrieked in terror, thinking maybe it was a bomb. But it was only paper—a summons ordering her to appear in Manhattan Supreme Court to answer a $66,377.50 lawsuit filed by Warner Brothers over a contract squabble. "I feel this is one of the most insensitive things I've ever heard of done to an actress," huffed Carroll, reading the document to her enthralled audience (wild applause).