The King had changed, and everyone in Brussels noticed it; he seemed sportier, more dashing--but he kept blinking. Tired of looking owlish, Belgium's myopic King Baudouin, 35, had doffed his familiar bottle-bottom glasses after 20 years, got himself fitted for contact lenses. MORE GLAMOUR FOR BAUDOUIN, cheered the Flemish weekly Zondag Morgen. There were no cheers from Treasury officials, who had to figure out what would become of those millions of stamps and 20-franc notes featuring the King's bespectacled old image.

Auctioning off the documentary remains of her son--baptismal certificate, a few letters--brought in $7,165. Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, 58, then announced that she would use the money to fly to Russia to pursue the will-o'-the-wisp of the innocence of her son, Lee Harvey. "The Russians haven't turned over everything to the U.S." about her son's stay in the Soviet Union, she said. "I thought that, being his mother, I might build up enough evidence to ask that this case be reopened." By some morbid twist, one Oswald letter from Russia expressing bitterness against the U.S. sold for $3,000 at the Manhattan autograph hawker's auction. Three letters from Jackie Kennedy to Actor Basil Rathbone went for $1,600.

Fingering a 105-year-old rosary that "once belonged to my grandmother," the defendant wept while his lawyer summed up before U.S. District Judge Peirson Hall in Los Angeles. "Oh, thank you, your honor!" cried old Movie Mobster George Raft, 70, as the judge fined him a mere $2,500 on one count of filing a false income tax return but dismissed five other charges amounting to $50,000 in back taxes--and a possible $25,000 in fines and 15 years in prison. "I told you not to thank the judge," said Judge Hall. So George proceeded to thank Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Jimmy Durante and all the other old friends who'd sent in letters of character reference to the court. "I'm not that tough," allowed lachrymose George. Finally straightened out with the Feds, he flew off to Rome to play a movie role as "a patriotic gangster."

Wafting out of Sikkim to settle her three stepchildren in English schools, Her fragile Highness Queen Hope Namgyal, 25, was in London when she learned of the Red Chinese threat to her tiny Himalayan kingdom. Hope was brave. "There is an old Tibetan prophecy which says that trouble in Sikkim would be as rare as a comet at midday," she said, "and also would be like the shadow of an eagle's wing." Besides, she added, "there is the Sikkim national guard to protect us"--fierce Sikkimese all, to be sure, but only 280 of them. The Queen flew to New York for a medical checkup, visited with friends who used to know her as Hope Cooke, a debutante majoring in Oriental studies at Sarah Lawrence. Then she hurried back to the side of her husband, King Palden Thondup Namgyal, in their high capital city of Gangtok.

When Elizabeth K. Lane, 60, became Britain's first woman High Court judge, the Lord Chancellor's office squinted through tradition, found no precedent, and nervously made the "least absurd" decision--to dub her "His Lordship, Mr. Justice Lane." Last week, having convulsed the realm, the Lord Chancellor's office sheepishly reversed itself, redubbed the judge "Her Ladyship, Mrs. Justice Lane."

They were, after all, only kids, so fleet-footed, football-wise Eunice Shriver, 44, didn't pull her famous pine-tree maneuver (grab the. pass, duck behind the tree--CRUNCH! goes the defender if he's not watching out). Besides, Eunice was smartly suited up in a blue flowered dress and white sweater, and there were those 500 paying guests on the sidelines at the Sargent Shriver estate in Rockville, Md., during a benefit party for their parish church. Although her most brilliant end run was brought up short by her son Robert, 11, Quarterback Eunice stuck as close as possible to the haphazard rules of "Kennedy touch." Donning her social spikes to rejoin the party, she reported happily: "Our team won once."

His doctor had decided that what made Sammy run down was all that frenetic hoofing every night in Broadway's Golden Boy, along with the promotion parties for his autobiography, Yes I Can, and taping a television special with 27 children. So frantic Showman Sammy Davis Jr., 39, was packed off for a week's mandatory "rest" in Honolulu to clear up his headaches and steady his hands. No sooner had he arrived than a minor Rat Pack began forming--including Old Pal Peter Lawford--and Davis was out furiously churning up the surf and tearing around the golf course. But at least, gasped Sammy, "I've gotten to bed every night before 11:30."

George Murphy was already cast as the Republican U.S. Senator from California. Ronald Reagan was hoping for a part as the state's G.O.P. Governor. Entertainer Steve Allen has been hanging around the wings looking for work as James Roosevelt's replacement in the U.S. House of Representatives from his Los Angeles district. And so, what with all that talent on the West Coast, Actor Gary Merrill, 50, decided to get in on the act on the other side of the U.S., announced that he will try for a bit part as a Democrat in the Maine house of representatives next year. Eventually, of course, he is hoping to take over the lead as Governor.

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