Some 50,000 U.S. citizens, attending 66 celebrations across the nation (top tariff: $100 a plate), paid high tribute to Harry Truman on his 75th birthday. The No. 1 dinner, linked up with 15 other parties by a closed-circuit TV network, took place at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria, where about 2,000 Democratic Party faithful—plus a smattering of G.O.P. well-wishers —heard their jaunty birthday boy josh and rejoin in top form. From Detroit, Eleanor Roosevelt declared that "the character of my friend was proved on that terrible day [when F.D.R. died] . . . Later I thrilled to watch him grow to greatness." Monsignor L. Curtis Tiernan, chaplain of Artillery Captain Truman's regiment in France in World War I, told how Harry had averted panic, when his men were caught in crossfire, with some "good, plain Missouri talk." Had the chaplain rebuked Harry for his ear-scorching remarks? Replied Tiernan: "Oh, hell no!—sorry." On a pickup from the Chicago wingding, Adlai Stevenson defined hell-giving Harry as "an irrepressible member of the non-Beat Generation." When the long love feast ended, the guest of honor was moved as seldom before: "I can't express what I feel because, if I did, I would be unable to talk." Next day, with wife Bess at his side, Harry Truman took a train back to Independence.
In semi-retirement and self-exile in Switzerland, Comedian Charlie Chaplin, 70 last month, let it be known that he and wife Oona, 34, expect their seventh child in November.
A "former West Point cadet" named Dwight Eisenhower sent congratulations to a Dickinson College freshman in Carlisle, Pa. Ike was tickled to learn that Colin P. Kelly III, 19, son of the World War II hero killed on a Philippines bombing mission three days after Pearl Harbor, had won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, strictly on his own. The surefire way for "Corky" Kelly to enter the Point: accept an appointment by Ike, pursuant to a request made in 1941 by Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter addressed "to the President of the U.S. in 1956." Young Kelly instead passed a competitive examination last March, will become a plebe in July.
On a field recently waterlogged by spring rains, Britain's polo season got into full swing with Prince Philip leading the Windsor Park team to a 4-to-3½-goal victory over Ascot. Philip scored a goal, also took a tumble from his mount in the fray. Among the royal onlookers were Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Greece, and bonny Prince Charles, 10, a husky broth of a lad in zipper jacket and boots.
Almost seven years after he was booted off Egypt's throne, ex-King Farouk, a puffy and myopic 39, moved a step farther from ever returning to Cairo in royal style. By special decree of Monaco's sympathetic Prince Rainier III, stateless Playboy Farouk, now a Monte Carlo sport, became a Monacan citizen.