Milestones Dec. 25, 2000

CHARGED. ROBERT DOWNEY JR., 35, actor; with two felony counts of drug possession and a misdemeanor connected to his arrest last month; in Los Angeles. If convicted, Downey, who will plead innocent, faces up to seven years in prison.

RETIRING. THE OLDSMOBILE, 103, the first mass-produced American car and a longtime staple of upper-middle-class garages everywhere. After years of efforts at retooling the long-sputtering brand, General Motors announced it would pull the Olds off the road in 2003.

DIED. WILLARD NIXON, 72, 1950s Boston Red Sox pitcher who never won more than 12 games in a season but who routinely trounced the indomitable Yankees; after a battle with Alzheimer's; in Rome, Ga. "I have no earthly way of explaining my mastery over them," Nixon said.

DIED. MARIE WINDSOR, 80, longtime Screen Actors Guild activist and film-noir starlet famous for portraying independent if not always angelic women; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Best known for the noir classics Force of Evil and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, Windsor also starred in a string of films in the 1950s, such as Cat Women of the Moon, that earned her the moniker Queen of the Bs.

DIED. GEORGE MONTGOMERY, 84, film and TV actor known for cowboy roles in westerns such as The Cisco Kid and the Lady and Dakota Lil; of heart failure; in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Married for 19 years to Dinah Shore, Montgomery appeared in more than 85 films.

DIED. KENNETH BRINKHOUS, 92, University of North Carolina medical researcher who developed the first effective treatment for hemophilia; in Chapel Hill, N.C. Brinkhous' early research showed that some hemophiliacs could not produce a bloodclotting protein that was later dubbed Factor VIII. One of his seminal discoveries was a way to use blood plasma to aid in replacing the missing protein.