Geraldine Page, the screen and theatre star whose many honours included a 1986 Oscar for best actress, was found dead of an apparent heart attack in her apartment. She was 62. Police said Page was found by her son, Anthony, in her lower Manhattan apartment. Page’s latest role was in Noel Coward’s play Blithe Spirit, opposite Richard Chamberlain on Broadway, in a performance that won her a Tony nomination. Page was born on November 22, 1924, in Kirksville, Missouri. She grew up in Chicago, and began her stage career aged 17 in an amateur production of Excuse my Dust. Page, considered one of the greatest American stage actresses of the last 30 years, finally won a Hollywood Oscar in 1986 after seven frustrating trips to the Academy awards as a nominee who was passed over. “If you don’t tell anybody,” the actress told reporters as she clasped the best actress Oscar, “I thought I should have won every time. I’m my biggest fan.”
Other important events
1839 Milos Obrenovic, the king of Serbia, abdicates and is succeeded by his son Milan.
1886 Bavaria’s King Louis II drowns himself.
1944 Germany launches first V-1 missiles against London.
1946 A transcontinental round-trip flight is completed in one day, from California to Maryland and back for the first time.
1953 A military coup led by Colombia’s General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla overthrows Laureano Gomez.
1955 Mir Mine, the first diamond mine in the USSR, is discovered.
1956 The last British troops leave Suez Canal base, turning the waterway over to Egypt after operating it for 74 years.
1958 China’s first atomic reactor begins operating.
1971 Francois Mitterrand is named head of the French Socialist Party.
1973 US, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and Viet Cong sign new pact in Paris designed to reinforce Vietnam ceasefire.
1974 Army in Republic of Yemen seizes power in bloodless coup.
1982 King Khalid of Saudi Arabia dies and Crown Prince Fahd becomes the new king.
1993 Kim Campbell becomes Canada’s first female prime minister.
1994 Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela sign a free trade pact.
1997 A disastrous fire in a packed Uphaar cinema hall in Delhi’s posh Green Park area kills more than 60.
1998 Nigeria soccer team pulled off a stunning World Cup victory over Spain in Lagos.
2000 Ras Al Khaimah opens a free-trade zone to boost regional commerce.
2001 One of Mexico’s most-wanted alleged drug traffickers, Ramon Alcides Magana, is arrested.
2002 Hamid Karzai wins Afghanistan’s presidential election in a landslide vote.
2008 Three armed robbers steal two Pablo Picasso prints from a Sao Paulo art museum.
2009 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is officially declared the president of Iran as opposition supporters protest in Tehran.
2010 More than a million are evacuated and 147 killed in China as a deadly storm strikes.
2012 A military court in Tunisia sentences ousted president Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali to 20 years imprisonment in absentia.
2014 Venice’s mayor Giorgio Orsoni resigns over corruption scam.
2015 A 103-year-old man and a 91-year-old woman held their wedding in Britain, becoming the oldest couple to get married in the world.
