Born. To Paul Newman, 40, ingratiating stage and cinema heel (The Hustler, Hud), and Joanne Woodward, 35, Georgia-bred actress, his frequent costar, who won an Oscar in 1957 for her smoldering performance in The Three Faces of Eve: their third child, third daughter (he has one son, two other daughters by a previous marriage); by natural childbirth, which left mother able to enjoy two peanut-butter sandwiches half an hour after delivery; in Manhattan.
Died. Gretchen Merrill, 39, six-time (1943-48) U.S. women's figure-skating champion, a pretty blonde perfectionist who lost her chance to win a world title when the Olympics were suspended for twelve years during and after World War II and, when they resumed in 1948, finished a disappointing eighth, after which she retired from competition; in Windsor, Conn., where she had been under treatment for emotional problems for the last three years.
Died. Sir Pierson Dixon, 60, donnish, unflappable diplomat, spare-time belle-lettrist and novelist, who as Britain's permanent representative to the U.N. (1954-60) coolly defended his nation in the furious 1956 debate over Suez, thereafter served as Ambassador to France (until February), playing a major role in the abortive negotiations for Britain's entry into the Common Market, after which he remarked sadly that reasoning with De Gaulle was "like trying to get through to a man wearing a suit of armor"; at Egham, Surrey.
Died. Paul Jung, 65, one of the most creative circus clowns in the business, who in 31 years as a performer-producer with Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey originated many of its now standard routines, notably the burning house which explodes a midget high into the air while 30 other clowns fool around with two fire engines; of head wounds suffered in an unsolved murder; in his hotel room, half a block from Manhattan's Madison Square Garden.
Died. Johnny Dundee, 71, onetime world featherweight boxing champion, the crowd-pleasing "Scotch Wop" (he grew up as Giuseppe Carrora in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen) who danced and jabbed his way through 321 professional bouts in 22 years, outpointing France's Eugene Criqui for the title in 1923, only to resign it one year later when he could no longer stay within the 126-lb. weight limit, finishing his career as a lightweight in 1932; of pneumonia; in East Orange, N.J.
Died. Sir Edward Victor Appleton, 72, renowned British physicist and principal of Edinburgh University, who in 1924 proved that there were ionized layers in the upper atmosphere by bouncing short-length radio waves off them, a technique that made worldwide radio communication practicable, led directly to Britain's development of radar (thus giving the R.A.F. a crucial advantage over the numerically superior Luftwaffe), and won for the pioneering scientist the 1947 Nobel Prize in physics; of a stroke; in Edinburgh.