Those few Italians within earshot were somewhat nonplused when an American Indian named Lucky Eagle stepped off a Boeing 747 at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Intercontinental Airport and declared: "In the name of the Indian people, I claim the right of discovery and take possession of this land."

Lucky Eagle, who under the paleface name Adam Nordwall teaches sociology at California State University at Hayward, was simply trying to score a point:

that for an Indian to claim the discovery of Italy would be as logical as Christopher Columbus' claim to have discovered America. After all, argues Lucky Eagle, America was there all along.

Meanwhile, Columbus was back, after a fashion, in the New World. Two small crystal lockets containing some of the dust from his Spanish grave were up for auction at Manhattan's Sotheby Parke-Bernet. The pair is expected to bring $20,000 to $30,000.

-"Which one of you am I going to be engaged to tomorrow?" teased Britain's Prince Charles as a gaggle of giggling housewives greeted him at the start of a day's grouse shooting in Scotland. Obviously, like the housewives, the bachelor heir to the British throne had been reading the latest spate of speculation about his marital plans. Currently supposed to be the leading choice as his future Queen: Lady Jane Wellesley, 22, daughter of the seventh Duke of Wellington. But then, Bonnie Prince Charlie is also rumored to be fond of Rose Clifton, 21, whose father is a retired army officer. Maybe Charles will be beaten to the altar by Europe's youngest and newest monarch, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. It seems that wavy-haired Carl Gustaf, 27, may be smitten with Silvia de Toledo-Sommerlath, 25, the daughter of a wealthy, retired German businessman. They met last year at the Olympic Games in Munich, where the pretty, multilingual Silvia was the chief VIP hostess. A series of dates since, including an invitation to a royal family party, has some Swedes convinced that the King is planning to make Silvia his own hostess.

On her way from Hollywood for a European vacation with her new friend Jacqueline Susann, invincible Actress Doris Day, 49, stopped over in New York and had a chat with the man who will write her biography, A.E. Hotchner. Doris impressed the writer with her lack of pretentiousness. During her brief Manhattan visit, she rode a rented bike around Central Park; back at her hotel, the only thing she ordered from room service was an ironing board. How did she make friends with Novelist Susann, 48, who after all specializes in the kind of sex scenes Doris refuses to play? They both love strays. Dogs, that is.

"Bette's idea of a bed companion is a good book." So complained Bandleader Harmon Nelson Jr., first husband of Unabashable Actress Bette Davis. Last week, three husbands later, Davis, 65, gave away much of her bedtime reading to Boston University's Mugar Library. Changing homes in Westport, Conn., she donated more than 4,000 books covering four decades of theater and the arts. True to style, she overwhelmed the competition. Even though Movie Queens Myrna Loy and Joan Fontaine have given their personal papers to the same library, Special Collections Curator Howard Gotlieb will house the Davis booty in separate quarters to be known as the Bette Davis Library.

To celebrate the centennial of Winston Churchill's birth, London's Independent Television is planning a seven-part series for next year on the life of his mother, Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome.

Based on her previously unopened private papers, the show will presumably focus on how and why the independent-minded American beauty often clashed with her husband, Lord Randolph, and other members of the Churchill family.

Lady Randolph was once graphically described by a contemporary (Prime Minister Asquith's wife Margot) as having "a forehead like a panther's and great wild eyes." So whom has I.T.V.

chosen to play her? Gentle-browed, soft-eyed Lee Remick. At least she is American-born.

With savings of $75,000, Civil Rights Activist Father James Groppi can hardly be called broke. Then why is he driving a Yellow Cab in Milwaukee every other weekend? The way Groppi tells it, he needs his savings to build a storefront church. He is hacking (and also working as a night watchman on weekdays) to pay his way through his second year at Antioch Law School in Washington, D.C. Groppi cannot help proselytizing about his experiences as a cabby: "Everybody ought to take off some time and get where it really is. It clears up a lot of that elitism that many people, especially professional and other middle-class types, have."

"Rather than have some stumblebum on the bench," Wilt Chamberlain once proclaimed, "I would consider coaching." Money seemed to be the main motive, however, when Giant Wilt signed a three-year contract last week to coach and play for the hapless San Diego Conquistadors of the American Basketball Association. Wilt will earn an estimated $600,000 a year -- which should help him pay for the upkeep on his $1.5 million mountain top pad in Bel Air and his stable of cars. The Lakers, of the rival National Basketball Association, who held an option on Wilt's talents for this season, threatened to cry foul in court.

He continues to wander round the world, returning periodically to his home near Nice, where he indulges his fondness for wine and a weakness for Irish coffee. And British Novelist Graham Greene, who turns 69 this week, is still writing and reminiscing. His private life, it seems, has been colored with the sort of irony that has suffused his work. For example, there is another Graham Greene. Not a Doppelgdnger, but an actual person who has crossed the writer's tracks for years without confrontation. Once a girl friend of the other Greene phoned him for a date, which he broke after sending an intermediary to see what she looked like. Then there was the time that Greene entered a London weekly's competition for parodies of his style and won only second prize. Nearly fifty years after the publication of his first work, the Grand Old Man of British letters acknowledges that he finds writing increasingly difficult. Although he considers his last novel, The Honorary Consul (TIME, Sept. 17), his best, he notes: "It certainly gave me the most trouble. There were moments when I realized perfectly why Hemingway shot himself one day."

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