ALL-STARS TO JAPAN 10/29/51
As JOE DIMAGGIO stepped from the plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, a full-throated roar rose from the waiting crowd. "Banzai, DiMaggio!" they shouted. Joe and 16 other players--the first U.S. All-Star major league team to visit Japan since 1934--had come to make a goodwill tour, during which they will play beisu-boru against Japan's best teams.

I LOVE THE PIANO ... 7/12/68
Music lovers gasped when they arrived at the Peking Opera. The only instrument in view was a piano--that capitalist contraption condemned by Red Guards and smashed into kindling. The mystery was solved when CHIANG CH'ING, 53, custodian of the Cultural Revolution, announced that the piano had been deemed "a new type of proletarian art." Besides, she had been studying it for two years. Wrote the Peking Press: "A flower of revolutionary art shining with the brilliance of Mao Tse-tung's thought."


BLOOD SACRIFICE 1/21/46
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU, 56 [with Gandhi], drew a rebuke from followers for donating to a blood bank. His health, they protested, is "national wealth, which should be preserved." He should really "abstain from such destructive sacrifices."

S E E N & H E A R D

5/19/52
Sightseeing in New York City, Princeton-educated Prince Suksawat of Thailand paid a dressing-room visit to actor Yul Brynner, who plays the prince's grandfather in The King and I. How was the prince addressed? The correct title, he said, was "Your Serene Highness," but his friends call him Ned.

9/28/92
Former Indian actress Jayalalitha Jayaram, head of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, owns a silver throne. Everything about her is fancy and flamboyant. She travels in convoys of 500 autos; sycophantic ministers grovel full-length before her; some even have her visage tattooed on their forearms. "No force on earth can shake me," she boasts. No one would even think of standing up to her.

1/24/69
When his wife told a Tokyo reporter last month that he used to consort with geishas and beat her, Japan's Premier Eisaku Sato kept a discreet silence. The Premier was more talkative at his year-end bash for the press. "Mr. Prime Minister," asked a reporter, "did you beat your wife?" Certainly, Sato answered. Do you still beat her? "No, I don't," he replied. When Sato asked the group, "Do you?" half the newsmen answered yes.

2/27/56
Madame Chiang Kai-shek suffers from a nerve ailment that causes skin rashes. Recently, her friends noted an improvement in her condition, Madame reportedly explained it was "due to a soup made of white doves. It is simply wonderful as a tonic." The secret: drink the broth of a stewed pure-white dove. Expect no results for six weeks, maybe never.

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