Born. To Celia Johnson, 38, chosen by New York film critics as 1946's best cinemactress (in J. Arthur Rank's Brief Encounter), and Author-Explorer Peter (Brazilian Adventure) Fleming, 39: their third child, a girl; in Oxfordshire.

Died. Captain Martin L. Smith, 27, one of the Army Air Forces' top jet pilots, holder of the unofficial U.S. speed record (619 m.p.h.), veteran of 78 wartime fighter missions; when his jet-propelled P-80 Lockheed Shooting Star hurtled into the ground; near Xenia, Ohio.

Died. Vance Smith, 31, whose 34-inch height prompted him to claim the title "America's Smallest Man" at the New York World's Fair and many a sideshow in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; of a heart attack; in New Albany, Ind.

Died. John Ray Sinnock, 58, chief engraver of the U.S. Mint, designer of the Roosevelt dime and the Purple Heart Medal; of a brain tumor; in Staten Island. Wags have peddled the rumor that the artist's initials, a microscopic "JS" on the new 10-c- piece, stood for Joseph Stalin.

Died. Hal ("Prince Hal") Chase, 64, one of the greatest first basemen (New York Giants and Yankees) in baseball History until 1919, when unproved charges of gambling began to crowd him out of major-league baseball; of heart and kidney ailments; in Coluso, Calif.

Died. The Most Rev. Michael Joseph Curley, 67, Irish-born Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore and Washington, outspoken foe of movies, Nazis and Communists (he caused a 1941 press furor when he said: "We of the U.S. are fighting side by side with Stalin, the greatest murderer of men the world has ever known"); of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Baltimore.

Died. Field Marshal Sir Cyril John Deverell, 72, hard-bitten onetime chief of the British Imperial General Staff, outstanding tactician of World War I, a great believer in mechanized, mobile warfare; in Lymington, Hants, England.

Died. Harry Bacharach, 73, five times mayor (1911-20, 1930-35) and longtime "No. 1 Booster" of Atlantic City; in Atlantic City. An ardent publicity-grabber (he once carried on the city's business in an amusement-pier office flanked by an educated chimpanzee and a half-man-half-woman), he nonetheless worked noisily at keeping his resort free of known thugs and "undesirables."

Died. Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, 86, retired Nobel Prizewinning biochemist credited with the discovery of vitamins (1906); in Cambridge.

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