Notebook: Mar. 17, 1997

WINNERS & LOSERS

AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

[WINNERS]

MACAULAY CULKIN The real-life Richie Rich. The 16-year-old wins access to his $17 million bank account

PRINCESS DIANA Spared a court ordeal, she settles with fired housemaid for secret cash amount

HENRY ESPY The former Agriculture Secretary's brother cleared of charges of lying to get a bank loan

[& LOSERS]

JEREMY ANDERSON For scrawling his name in a sidewalk's wet concrete, the Las Vegas third-grader faces trial

THREE-STRIKES LAW Crime rates have declined more in states without the law than in those with it

DALLAS MORNING NEWS Publish and be damned? Yes, for running a dubious confession by Timothy McVeigh

THE IDES HAS IT

Julius Caesar had good reason to beware the day he was assassinated in 44 B.C. But despite the oft repeated admonition for the rest of us, history records no special reason to lie low on March 15. In fact, some pretty darn good things have happened on the fateful day. (See the birth of Fabio, 3/15/61.) So as the Ides of March approaches, take a backward glance, seize fate and go forth!

1493 Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage to the New World

1767 Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the U.S., is born

1820 Maine enters the Union as the 23rd state

1875 John McCloskey is named the first U.S. Roman Catholic Cardinal

1919 The American Legion is founded in Paris

1933 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is born

1956 The musical My Fair Lady opens on Broadway

1964 Elizabeth Taylor marries Richard Burton

1965 President Johnson proposes the Voting Rights Act

1997 Deadline for the start of talks on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace

THOSE OBSCURE OBJECTS OF CURATORIAL DESIRE

From the mountains to the prairies and the oceans white with foam, ours is a nation of small, odd museums. Mostly they honor the stuff of everyday life, showcasing curiosities of the past along with obsessions of the present. A sampling:

A STITCH IN TIME When Elias Howe finally patented the first practical sewing machine in 1846, he revolutionized the way clothing was made. Among the 155 exemplars displayed at the Antique Sewing Machine Museum in Arlington, Texas, Howe's early, ingenious appliances get pride of place.

NOT COVERED BY ANY H.M.O. Snake oil salesmen, beware. The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis features 200 years of scientific chicanery, including a male "corset'' that generated a small shock to enhance the wearer's love life and the Nemectron, right, a gadget that supposedly overcame age's ravages, cured acne and lifted fallen arches.

A WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN' GOIN' ON Uh-oh, it's Jell-O. This year the gelatin dessert has its 100th birthday, and so in June its hometown of LeRoy, New York, opens an exhibit that will be part of a permanent museum. Trivia fact: an electroencephalogram shows that a human brain and a bowl of quivering lime Jell-O have the same waves.