Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

Argentina's booted ex-Dictator Juan Peron was about to be booted again, this time from his refugee quarters in Panama's Hotel Washington. Official reason: his landlord is the U.S. Government, which runs the hotel for transients, not permanent guests, as Peron seems to be.

With the House of Commons already on record for abolition of capital punishment (TIME, Feb. 27), Britain's Chief Hangman Albert Pierrepoint, 45, whose family has monopolized Britain's gallows trade for 85 years, quit his $42-a-job sideline. Although three murderers now await execution, Nooseman Pierrepoint prefers henceforth to work full time in The Rose and Crown, his three-century-old pub near Blackpool.

Italy's government published its annual honors list, elevated several prominent U.S. citizens to its five-year-old Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Among them: New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman, named to the order's highest rank, Knight of the Grand Cross; Tammany Boss Carmine De Sapio, made a Commander. Last week Cardinal Spellman also got a U.S. accolade: the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute's Gold Award for 1955, for his "outstanding contribution to the betterment of race relations and human welfare."

In London, aging (64) Comedian Charlie Chaplin, now living in Swiss exile (where, he claims, U.S. persecution drove him because of his leftist beliefs), announced plans for a new movie, "the funniest ever.'' Title: The King in New York. Synopsis: A Ruritanian monarch (Chaplin), booted off his throne because he tried to divert his country's atomic research to purely peaceful ends, flees to New York, falls in love with a Madison Avenue huckstress, is persecuted as a Communist, returns to Europe and lives happily ever after.

At Washington's American Newspaper Women's Club, the Democrats' most eligible spinster, Mary Margaret Truman, 32, got tea and congratulations from her old capital cronies over the serialized publication of her memoirs, Souvenir. A newshen asked whether Margaret and her memoir-penning father had exchanged views on each other's works. Said Margaret: "He does his writing. I do mine." Meanwhile, two Hollywood studios were wooing Margaret with propositions to play herself in film versions of her short young life and high old times.

On the 100th birthday of the Republican National Committee, top Presidential Aide Sherman Adams and G.O.P. National Chairman Leonard Hall celebrated at a Washington party, munched morsels of cake, in their high spirits apparently forgot to remove the candles from their goodies.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas got a painful lesson in the British laws of libel, learned that reflections upon the character and ability of a British official can be dangerous. The defamed Briton: Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith, Britain's onetime (1941-46) governor of Burma, whom Douglas accused of general bungling in office in his travelogue North from Malaya. In a court-approved settlement, Lawyer Douglas and his British publisher last week offered "sincere apologies and regrets" to Sir

Reginald, conceded that Douglas "had no personal knowledge as to the true facts." Said aggrieved Sir Reginald: "This chap goes around and collects bazaar gossip and puts it in his books as the truth."

A pretty California housewife, Mrs. Charles A. Black, 27, once widely known as Cinemoppet Shirley (Little Miss Marker) Temple, took two of her three kiddies--Linda Susan, 7, and Charles, 3 --on a Dumbo ride, one of Disneyland's abundant delights for children.

One of the loudest champions of Britain's workingman, Dr. Hewlett Johnson, "Red Dean" of Canterbury Cathedral, was in the embarrassing predicament of a big employer with a wage dispute on his hands. Early this year Party-Liner Johnson's choristers, restricted to part-time outside jobs because they must warble Evensong at 3:15 p.m. five days a week, asked for a pay hike from $675 a year to $1,000. No strike was threatened, but Dr. Johnson and his chapter cohorts thumbed down the raise, summarily suspended the choristers' spokesman on a handy pretext. Last week, with the suspended singer toying with the idea of lorming a choristers' union, Dr. Johnson chortled: "A storm in a teacup! They're all there, singing away."

California's Multimillionaire Howard Hughes got an eviction notice from the City of Long Beach. As of April, Plane Builder Hughes's huge (200-ton) experimental flying boat, the Hercules, 14 years abuilding at an estimated cost of $25 million, will be viewed as a squatter on city real estate. Actually, the Hercules has done nothing but squat since 1947, when in its maiden (and only) test flight, with intrepid Airman Hughes at the controls, it briefly lumbered 70 feet up into the air. If Hughes decides not to fight the eviction, the Hercules will probably be towed away in final ignominy.

Britain's leading sexpert and birth controller, Dr. Marie (Married Love) Stopes, 73, had the tight little isle atwitter over a recently published tome titled Sleep. In their present-day sleeping practices, declares twice-married Dr. Stopes, mother of two, Britons are going from bed to worse. One of the doctor's prescriptions for greater nocturnal bliss: "The wife [should] have a room with a double bed and the husband . . . a bedroom to himself for general use, keeping the wife's bedroom a romantic place." On bed alignment: "The head of the bed should be north or south . . . It is comparatively unimportant whether the head or the feet are at the north end of the bed, but it is very important that . . . the body should lie . . . south-north or north-south." On what to wear: "A very long, pure silkworm silk nightgown, sleeveless with a lace top, wide, and so long that it trails for about eight inches on the ground when one stands up . . . no horrid draughts anywhere." On twin beds: "An invention of the devil, jealous of married bliss."

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