During the past calendar year a record 81,807 letters to TIME crossed the desk of Letters Chief Maria Luisa Cisneros. Letters about Nation stories led the lists, as always, and our Watergate stories attracted the most attention. A January 1973 profile of a little-known former CIA agent named E. Howard Hunt attracted a trickle of mail from seven readers. In subsequent months G. Gordon Liddy, L. Patrick Gray, John Dean and James McCord would all appear on TIME covers, and the response to Watergate would grow to a flood of 23,000 letters. Wrote one critic of the President, "When the whole bushel of apples is rotten, we had better find a new picker." The Administration had its defenders as well, of course, nearly 4,500 of whom raced for their pens after TIME'S editorial in the Nov. 12 issue calling for the President's resignation.

Though the Watergate serial dominated our mail, our Jan. 22 cover on Marlon Brando's controversial film, Last Tango in Paris, elicited an unprecedented 12,000 letters for a single story, surpassing the number received for the previous record holder, the cover story Is God Dead?, in 1966. A story need not be cover-length, however, to stir up a big response. A short item in People [April 2] on Billy Graham drew scores of letters, most of which criticized the evangelist's suggestion that rapists be castrated. "Bless Billy Graham for making virtue secure," wrote one subscriber, adding, "Christ was so namby-pamby about things."

We received some 1,150 suggestions for Man of the Year, for everyone from Super-horse Secretariat to Watergate Watchman Frank Wills. Judge John Sirica, who headed the list of reader nominations, was also the first choice of the editors. "I plan to keep it," wrote one reader when the Man of the Year cover appeared, "as a reminder for my family and myself that there can be hope in the midst of despair."

--Last year U.N. membership jumped to 135 nations with the admission of the two Germanys and the island nation of (choose one): A) Barbados, B) Sri Lanka, C) the Bahamas, D) Guadeloupe. This question, and 99 others, are all part of the 41st annual TIME Current Affairs Test, which has been distributed during the past month to high school classrooms across the U.S.

TIME is weekly reading for 150,000 high school students, thanks to the TIME Education Program. These students receive TIME at reduced rates, and their teachers are provided with monthly study guides, news quizzes and other materials. For a free copy of the annual quiz, write to TIME Test, 211 West 61st Street, New York, N.Y., 10023.

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