Happy announcements were cropping up all over, and from her Long Island estate society's First Lady Mrs. Winston Guest, 43, confirmed reports that she too is expecting an heir--or an heiress--some time next October. "I guess I'd like a girl," mused Ceezee, who already has an eight-year-old son and nearly everything else her heart desires.

The stunt had been done before, in 1785, but getting there was half the fun for Donald Placard, 37, and Paul E. Yost, 39, both of Sioux Falls, S. Dak. Engaged in ballyhoo for a French travel magazine, the two rising young Americans rose to about 13,000 ft., sailing a 72-ft. hot-air balloon across the English Channel in 3 hr. 45 min. Climbing out of the gondola, young Piccard, son of Balloonist Jean Felix Piccard, who died this year, and nephew of the late air-sea Explorer Auguste Piccard (inventor of the deep-diving bathyscaph), seemed to the manner born. Said he: "It was a perfect trip."

"These two women, because they are aging, cannot stand anybody young. If you would have a private detective on them, you would be surprised what a life they lead! Why should these women be allowed to write a daily column and poison our children's minds?" For those kiddies who follow the gossip columns, Zsa

Zsa Gabor, doing a TV guest shot with Johnny Carson, was zeroing in on her targets for Tonight: Hollywood Chronicler Sheilah Graham and Hearst Society Scribe Suzy, who often give Zsa Zsa the benefit of a clout. Sheilah pretended she hadn't heard. But not Suzy. "Hungarian blabbermouth," "Fatty," "Miss Tank Town," she wrote. "Zsa Zsa has an age complex, and in her case she has a right to one. I'll spot her ten years. My nose is the one I was born with, and I've never had my face lifted." As for Zsa Zsa's defending children's morals: "It may be the biggest laugh of the last 50 years."

At a distinguished luncheon in Manhattan, Columbia College announced a $500,000 endowment for a General Douglas MacArthur Chair in History. An appropriate honor, said New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, "for a man who has created so much history."

Platinum-haired Rene Carpenter, 35, wife of Triple Orbiter Malcolm Scott Carpenter, lunching with a Rotary Club group in Austin, Texas, admitted some drawbacks to being a highly publicized astronaut's lady whose husband is "sealed up in that paperweight." However, added Rene, "we do no more than the wives of helicopter crews in Viet Nam or the women the Thresher left behind. They risked just as much and lost a great deal more. Don't feel sorry for us. It's great to whisper at liftoff, 'Don't look back--we're with you.' "

Whatever happened to Chopsticks'? In Tokyo, Japanese jazzmen fell in line to jam with Vibraharpist Lionel Hampton, 49, packing them in on a five-week barnstorm tour of Japan. His regular cats augmented with local talent--including a belting new gal vocalist, Mayumi Kuroda, 21--Hamp gave the customers "integrated music" stomped out by an "Asiatic Harlem" band. "The more I travel," says he, "the more I'm convinced that jazz isn't native to the States. These boys can read the flyspecks off wallpaper."

His "esteem and affection" and a mere $25,000 were the total bequest to Socialite Actress Dina Merrill, 37, from the estimated $3,800,000 estate of her father, Edward F. Hutton, founder of Wall Street's E. F. Hutton & Co. brokerage concern. Considering his daughter "amply provided for" (Dina's husband is Colgate Heir Stanley M. Rumbough, her mother, Mrs. Marjorie Post May, heiress to the Post Toasties millions), the stockbroker left the greater share of his fortune to Third Wife Dorothy Dear Hutton, the remainder to be divided between Stepdaughter Joan Metzger Patterson and the three Rumbough children. But Dina, crisply unhappy about the division, filed suit in a Nassau County court. "My father's will disinherited my children--his only grandchildren," said she enigmatically. "I am taking action as any mother would."

Speaking at the Congressional Club in Washington, Australian Ambassador Sir Howard Beale, 64, sought to explain the inexplicable--British titles: "British Ambassador Sir David Ormsby Gore is a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George, neither of whom ever existed. I am a Knight Commander of the British Empire, which has ceased to exist. And our two recent colleagues from Jamaica and Trinidad are Knights Bachelor, with wives and families." Concluded Sir Howard: "Such an illogical people--no wonder the French didn't want them in the Common Market."

Uncle Sam stands to become principal beneficiary of a $43,954,062 estate left by Mrs. Lillian Timken, widow of a co-founder of the Timken Roller Bearing Co. Sequestered among art treasures in her Fifth Avenue apartment until she died in 1959 at the age of 78, the wealthy recluse gave her paintings (among them a Goya, two Rembrandts, two Titians and a Rubens) to three U.S. museums, intended her principal assets (stocks and bonds) for her heirs. But she failed to set up the proper trusts and other tax-reducing gimmicks, and so an appraisal filed in Manhattan Surrogate's Court indicates a bite of $28,175,009 to the Federal Government, $7,481,504 in state taxes.

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