Engaged. James ("Big Jim") Thompson, 40, towering (6 ft. 6 in.) Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois; and Jayne Ann Carr, 30, an Illinois assistant attorney general. Before he resigned last July after four years as U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois, Thompson had successfully prosecuted several big wheels--and many smaller ones--in Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's Democratic machine, plus former Governor Otto Kerner (see below).

Died. Ulrike Meinhof, 41, fanatical founding mother of West Germany's Baader-Meinhof band of left-wing terrorists; in an apparent suicide by hanging; in Stuttgart (see THE WORLD).

Died. Otto Kerner, 67, two-term former Democratic Governor of Illinois (1961-68) and federal judge, who was considered to be a paragon of political integrity until 1973, when he was convicted of conspiracy, mail fraud, income-tax evasion and lying to a grand jury; in Chicago. Kerner was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals by President Johnson in 1968. He had gained national attention that year as chairman of the President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which concluded that the U.S. was becoming an increasingly dichotomized society--one part prospering white, the other poor and black. Kerner's reputation as Illinois' Mr. Clean collapsed when a federal jury decided that, while in the Statehouse, he had pushed for legislation favorable to Track-Owner Marjorie Lindheimer Everett in return for below-market-value stock in her Chicago Thoroughbred Enterprises. He was sentenced to three years in a federal prison, but was paroled after seven months when he was found to be terminally ill.

Died. Alvar Aalto, 78, Finnish architect whose people-oriented, evocative structures ranked him among the great innovators of 20th century architecture; in Helsinki (see ART).

Died. Samuel Eliot Morison, 88, master of the historical narrative, who wrote more than 50 books chronicling American and maritime history; after a stroke; in Boston. A skilled yachtsman and popular Harvard teacher since 1915, he sailed 10,000 miles retracing the course of Columbus for his 1943 Admiral of the Ocean Sea, which won the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes; in World War II he served on a dozen ships (he retired a rear admiral), collecting information for his 15-volume account of U.S. naval operations in that conflict. Critics also acclaimed his two-volume The European Discovery of America, a work he had yearned to do all his life but did not complete until 1974.

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