Died. Richard Morland Tollemache Bethell, the 4th Baron Westbury, 46. unemployed ex-soldier heir of the legendary "Curse of the Pharaohs," which purportedly killed three kinsmen and numerous members of the 1922 archaeological team that excavated the more than 3,000-year-old tomb of King Tut-Ankh-Amen; of a heart attack; in Geneva. Secretary to the Egyptian expedition that uncovered the hieroglyphic anathema--"Death shall come on swift wings to him that toucheth the tomb of the Pharaoh"--Lord Westbury 's father died six years after the discovery (also at 46), while his grandfather (who kept the Tut relics) and mother subsequently committed suicide.

Died. George Vanderbilt III, 47, adventurer-ichthyologist brother of Horseman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt with whom he shared part of a massive railroad fortune founded by Great-Great-Grandfather Cornelius ("Commodore") Vanderbilt; of a fall from his tenth-floor suite in San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Died. Kenneth Flexner Fearing, 59, minor Kipling of the asphalt jungle, a Chicago corporation lawyer's son who became a proletarian poet during the Depression, a pseudonymous pulp-primer and novelist of such high-voltage thrillers as The Big Clock; of cancer; in Manhattan.

Died. Rear Admiral Ellis Mark Zacharias, 71, brash, bristly intelligence and psychological warfare expert, a self-styled World War II Cassandra who claimed to have predicted Pearl Harbor nine months in advance, and to have ferreted out a Japanese surrender feeler 13 days before Hiroshima, yet never convinced the Navy's topside of either story; of a heart attack; in West Springfield, N.H.

Died. Henry Doorly, 81, dour, conservative, longtime boss of the Omaha World-Herald, which was the city's third-ranking paper when he was hired as a reporter in 1903, became its only daily and the most powerful paper in Nebraska during his tenure as publisher from 1934 to 1950; of a heart attack; in Omaha.

Died. Dr. Lee de Forest, 87, indefatigable father of modern electronics, whose invention of the three-element vacuum tube in 1906 led to the development of radio, long-distance telephony, sound movies and television; following a long illness; in Hollywood. In the process of piling up more than 300 patents, the Yale-educated minister's son lost four fortunes, almost came to regret the product of his genius. Wrote he to the National Association of Broadcasters on the 40th anniversary of his audion tube: "You have debased [ my] child . . . You have made him a laughingstock of intelligence . . . a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere."

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