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.

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