Dame Judith Anderson, the Australian-born actress who stalked the world’s stages and films in potent portrayals of complex and tormented women, died. The quintessential Medea, Lady Macbeth and the obsessively deranged Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca was 93. The tragedienne, whose gifts vastly exceeded the handy Hollywood label of “character actress,” had been living in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara, for more than 20 years. It was one of her last roles as the camp, imperiously dotty matriarch on the soap opera Santa Barbara that brought her dominating presence and luxuriantly marbled voice to a generation who had never seen her command the stage in the ardent, demanding roles she adored, from the works of Eugene O’Neill and Euripides to Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare. She died at home, no cause of death was disclosed. She performed in only two plays in London, but that was enough to earn her the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II. She was born on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia.
Other important events
1795 - Secret treaty takes place between Russia and Austria for third partition of Poland.
1815 - Austria, Britain and France form defensive alliance against Prussia and Russia.
1833 - Great Britain retakes control of the Falkland Islands following diplomatic and military conflicts with Spain and other claimants.
1915 - Rebellion breaks out in Albania.
1921 - First Indian Parliament meets.
1925 - Benito Mussolini dissolves Italian parliament, becomes dictator.
1938 - The March of Dimes campaign to fight polio is organised in the United States.
1941 - Italian forces surrender at Bardia, Libya, during Second World War.
1945 - Nikolaos Plastiras becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
1947 - US Congressional proceedings are televised for the first time
1958 - Edmund Hillary reaches South Pole overland.
1959 - Alaska is admitted as 49th US state.
1961 - United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.
1967 - Edward Brooke of Massachusetts takes office as the first African American
Senator to be popularly elected.
1977 - Apple Computer, Inc. is incorporated.
1988 - Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s longest-serving Prime Minister of the century.
1990 - Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega surrenders to US forces.
1993 - US President George H. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign arms control treaty.
1999 - Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif escapes an assassination attempt when a bomb explodes on a bridge as he is about to pass.
2001 - Former US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first female Senator from New York.
2003 - A passenger train collides with a freight train in western India, killing 18 people.
2004 - A charter plane carrying 148 people, most of them French tourists, crashes into the Red Sea close to the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh.
2007 - A National Express coach crashes near Heathrow Airport, killing two people.
2009 - Israeli tanks rolls into Gaza and engaged in night-time battles with Hamas forces.
2011 - Arnold Schwarzenegger steps down as governor of California.
2013 - US drone strikes kills a prominent warlord Mullah Nazir along with nine other militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
2016 - The Saudi Arabia diplomatic missions attacked in Tehren during the protest for the execution of Shiite cleric Nimar Al Nimr.
