People and Events

No need to remind Virginia Argue that diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

When Argue underwent ovarian surgery in the Northern California town of Roseville, her family feared that she had cancer. But doctors found that her problem was a cyst that had grown around a diamond that measured one-eighth of an inch across.

Afterward, she theorized that a doctor or nurse in Covina accidentally dropped the gem into her reproductive tract 52 years ago during the Caesarean birth there of her daughter, Sharon.

“That’s the only way it could happen,” said her husband Rollo, who plans to mount the diamond on a necklace for his wife.

He added that when he told his daughter the news, “She laughed and said a lot of people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths but she was born with a diamond.”

The recent announcement that Birchtree Ltd. plans to sell rights to the musical works it owns, including “Happy Birthday to You,” hasn’t caused any panic at Frederick’s of Hollywood.

“Happy Birthday,” of course, ranks consistently among the top three most requested musical panties that Fredericks sells.

“I remember there was talk about us being sued years ago,” said Frederick’s spokeswoman Ellen Appel, “but our supplier took care of the situation. I’m sure there’ll be no problem this time either.”

Other top-rated panty tunes, which are played by tiny battery-operated music boxes, include a Christmas medley and, of course, “The Wedding March.”

It seems an injustice of sorts that San Jose was the site of the first annual Pumpkin Patch Presidential Preference Plop on Wednesday. A 432-pound pumpkin dropped from a helicopter fell on a baseball outfield just inches from a George Bush placard in what promoters described as a boost for the Bush campaign.

The San Fernando Valley community of Calabasas has better qualifications for such an event than San Jose. Alas, a spokesman for the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce said civic interest in the traditional Halloween fare is so low that the town’s once annual Halloween Pumpkin Festival is no longer held.

Calabasas means pumpkin in Spanish.

There’s one local case that the currently popular crime-solver television shows, “America’s Most Wanted,” and “Unsolved Mysteries,” have not dared tackle yet.

The George C. Page Museum on Wilshire Boulevard has on exhibit the reconstructed skeleton of a 9,000-year-old female known as La Brea Woman. Her skull and other bones were excavated from La Brea Tar Pit No. 10. Anthropologists believe she died from a blow to the head, according to George Jefferson, the museum’s assistant curator.

“It’s the oldest recorded homicide in the county,” Jefferson added.

Coming soon: The Chrysler Corp. Court of Champions in Pasadena.

And who will the Chrysler Court honor? Great car salesmen? Motorists? No, football stars of the Rose Bowl game. The marble monument will be located at the south end of the stadium, with the auto company footing the bill.

Chrysler is the latest donor to attach its name to a local sports edifice. For instance, The Johnny Carson Scoreboard, which is not a laugh meter, is located at UCLA’s tennis stadium.