Born. To Sir Edmund Hillary, 35, New Zealand beekeeper knighted for his successful 1953 conquest (with Tenzing, the Sherpa guide) of Mt. Everest, and Lady Louise Hillary, 24: their first child, a son; in Auckland, New Zealand. Name: Edmund. Weight: 8 lbs. 7 oz.

Born. To Jose ("Pepe") Figueres, 47, crusading liberal President of Costa Rica, who overthrew the country's dictatorial rightist-Communist coalition in 1948 and became the constitutionally elected President in July 1953, and blonde Karen Olsen Figueres, 24, formerly of New York City: their first child, a son. Name: Jose Maria Figueres. Weight: 8 1/2 lbs.

Died. Alexis Thompson, 40, wealthy (an estimated $5,000,000 Inland Steel Co. fortune) sportsman and cafe socialite, former owner of the National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles, onetime Olympic bobsledder; of a heart attack; in Englewood, NJ.

Died. James Hilton, 54, smoothly sentimental, bestselling, British-born novelist; of cancer; in Long Beach, Calif. A published novelist at 20, Hilton supported himself for eleven years as a lecturer at Cambridge, free-lance newspaper feature writer and book reviewer while he perfected his seamless style, finally scored in 1934 with Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The success of Chips led readers and reviewers back to Lost Horizon, written several months earlier, and soon "Shangri-La," the novel's Tibetan Utopia, became an international byword for any man's place of retreat from the world, including Franklin Roosevelt's wartime Maryland hideaway. (Ironically, it was also the name announced by Roosevelt as the place of origin of General Jimmy Doolittle's 1942 Tokyo raid.) Both Lost Horizon and Chips sold more than 3,000,000 copies, became movie classics. In the more than 20 novels that followed, Millionaire Novelist Hilton served up a mellow blend of worldly wisdom and well-bred British morality that delighted the book clubs, Hollywood producers and the general public, but alienated first-line critics. "The novelist who sells the reader a good time," Hilton once said, "tends to do so furtively, hoping that certain critics will not notice the offense, since they could not possibly pardon it."

Died. Dr. Francisco Castillo Najera, 68, Mexican career diplomat, onetime (1935-45) ambassador to the U.S., chairman of the U.N. Security Council in 1946, general in the Mexican Army, surgeon, poet and musician; after long illness; in Mexico City. As ambassador to the U.S., Najera worked to implement the Good Neighbor Policy, was instrumental in setting up the 1942 settlement of $40 million in U.S. claims against the Mexican government, including those for American-owned oil lands seized by Mexico in 1938.

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