Is the Sexual Revolution Over? Hef Will Tie the Knot

--An unsigned article in the August issue of Playboy describes founder Hugh Hefner’s view of marriage as akin to Woody Allen’s law: “Marriage is the death of hope.” Yet the ultimate bachelor, whose roster of live-in girlfriends would fill several decades’ worth of pinup calendars, apparently has succumbed to the charms of Miss January 1988, Kimberley Conrad, 24, who also appears on the magazine’s August cover. According to Playboy Communications Director Bill Farley, Hef, 62, “popped the question in a romantic moment” over the weekend, near the wishing well at his Holmby Hills mansion. Hefner is quoted in Playboy’s August issue as saying: “I’ve always felt that my life was rather like a movie, but my relationship with Kimberley is better than any script. . . .” Hefner, whose life style for the last 30 years has exemplified the Playboy philosophy, was divorced in 1959 from Mildred Williams, who still works for Playboy in the personnel department in Chicago. They have a daughter, Christie, who now oversees the Playboy businesses, and a son, David.

--A Gallup survey commissioned by National Geographic Society found that three out of four Americans questioned could not locate the Persian Gulf on a map, and a quarter of them failed to find the Pacific Ocean. National Geographic Society President Gilbert M. Grosvenor called the findings “most alarming. In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, he said: “It’s a good thing our ancestors found their way to America, because today, 24 million American adults--one in seven--can’t even find the United States on a map of the world.” In the nine-nation survey, U.S. participants’ scores were far below those from Sweden, West Germany, Japan, France and Canada. Americans were on a par with those surveyed in Britain, and respondents in Italy and Mexico ranked at the bottom.

--David Horning of Berkeley, Calif., celebrated his 40th birthday with a splash--in Moscow, New York and San Francisco. Horning, a sports events organizer, swam four miles along the Moscow River, from Lenin Stadium to the bank opposite the Kremlin, accompanied by a Soviet patrol boat. Then he hopped on a plane for New York, where he planned to swim the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge, then fly to San Francisco for a dip under the Golden Gate Bridge--all on the same day.