Milestones: Jan. 2, 1961

Married. Edwina Sandys, 22, daughter of Britain's Commonwealth Relation Secretary Duncan Sandys and granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill; and Piers Dixon, 31, son of Sir Pierson Dixon, British Ambassador to France and former U.N. delegate; both for the first time; in a diplomat-studded London ceremony missed by convalescent Sir Winston (who was visited by the newlyweds immediately after the reception).

Married. Virginia Warren, 32, vivacious daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren; and John Charles Daly, 46, recently resigned ABC-TV newscaster and veteran logomachist of CBS's What's My Line?; she for the first time, he for the second; in a small family ceremony in San Francisco.

Divorced. By Ethel Merman, 51, trumpet-toned musicomedy star (Gypsy) who once boasted that she could hold a note "as long as the Chase National Bank": her third husband, Robert F. Six, 53, oilman and president of Continental Air Lines; after seven years of marriage, no children (she has two by a previous marriage); in Juarez, Mexico.

Died. Dr. Karl Lehmann, 66, German-born U.S. archaeologist who spent 22 years digging in the marble-littered Aegean isle of Samothrace, turned up a host of notable finds, including the missing right hand of the Louvre's famed Winged Victory; of cancer; in Basel, Switzerland.

Died. Arthur Nehf, 68, mild-mannered lefthander who helped pitch John McGraw's New York Giants to four National League pennants in a row (1921-24); of cancer; in Phoenix, Ariz.

Died. Eric Temple Bell, 77, eminent Caltech mathematician (his specialty: the theory of numbers) and science fiction writer (under the name John Taine), whose works ranged from Algebraic Arithmetic to The Cosmic Geoids; of a heart attack; in Watsonville, Calif.

Died. John Walter Ruskin, 82, second cousin of Victorian Tastemaker John Ruskin, who became an explorer to meet a stipulation in his father's will that he must spend a substantial inheritance entirely on world travel; of cerebral arteriosclerosis; in Charlottesville, Va. Among Dr. Ruskin's involuntary travels: a 4½-year investigation of Baffin Island's "white Eskimos," whom he decided were descendants of marooned Norwegian explorers.

Died. George Washington Earp, 96, former cowboy and last of "the Fighting Earps;" in a Joplin, Mo. nursing home. First cousin to gunman, gambler and sometime cop Wyatt now sanctified by TV, George Earp rose above his Dodge City relatives to become a U.S. Marshal and Internal Revenue agent.