American Quickly Makes Pig of Himself With Snails

--His eyes glazed over and his hand shook with the final spoonfuls, but Thomas (Muskrat) Greene broke a world record for gluttony by devouring 2.2 pounds of snails in less than three minutes. “Everybody’s got a gift, and his happens to be his stomach,” observer Sara Burlason said in London. Greene, 45, from Deale, Md., munched the 220 shelled, sauteed delicacies in 2 minutes, 43.95 seconds--more than a minute faster than his English rival’s all-time mark for snail swallowing. The former record-holder, Peter Dowdeswell, 45, of Earls Barton, England, left a fifth of his snails in the bowl. “I had a bad day,” he said.

--Cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh encountered Siberia-like conditions when they arrived at the Salyut-7 space station, but didn’t want to upset television viewers on Earth, the Communist Party paper Pravda reported. So they doffed their fur boots and hats to look warmer during the telecast. A mission control spokesman said that as soon as Dzhanibekov entered the station, he exclaimed in Russian: “It gives me shivers, boys.”

--For $30,000, you can buy a speech edited by President Reagan when he was California governor. If that seems a bit pricey, try the $650 letter written in pencil to a child identified only as Cindy. The items are included in a mail-order catalogue of Reagan letters and notes issued by a Beverly Hills firm, Scriptorium, owned by Charles Sachs. The letters come from the collection of Kathy Randall Davis, Reagan’s private secretary when he was governor. Sachs said he is not “a great fan of his, but I felt a warmth and a sensitivity in reading these letters. His mind, in an ideological way, is quite tidy. After reading these letters, I’m going to sleep with the lights out.”

--Nancy Reagan will belatedly celebrate either her 64th or her 62nd birthday Saturday at the Reagans’ ranch near Santa Barbara, where she and her husband are vacationing. Longtime friends Ambassador William A. Wilson and his wife, Betty, and Earle and Marion Jorgensen will give the affair, which will be more than a month late because the President canceled his July trip to the ranch during the TWA hostage crisis. The First Lady’s birthday is on July 6, but there is confusion as to whether she was born in 1921 or 1923. Asked what birthday would be observed at the festivities, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said: “She has not decided.”