Milestones

ACQUITTED. Don King, 54, boxing promoter of fights like the 1975 Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier "Thrilla in Manila"; on charges of evading income taxes by taking unreported cash advances from a gambling casino that booked his fights; in New York City. King admitted receiving some of the money but claimed that others handled his finances and that they were responsible for failing to report the income. His associate Constance Harper was convicted of three counts of attempted tax evasion. Said King after being acquitted: "Only in America!"

DIED. Leif Stenberg, 53, reputed (but never convicted) Swedish crime boss of the 1970s, who received Europe's first mechanical-heart transplant seven months ago; of respiratory and circulatory ailments; in Stockholm.

DIED. Lon Nol, 72, President of Cambodia from 1972 to 1975; of heart disease; in Fullerton, Calif. A former military Chief of Staff, Defense Minister and Premier, Lon Nol ended the 1,000-year-old Khmer monarchy by overthrowing Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 while he was out of the country. Although Lon Nol's republic was propped up by American military aid, it proved unpopular, corrupt and too weak to resist the forces of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who after seizing power killed an estimated one million Cambodians (out of 7.3 million). Shortly before Lon Nol fled to asylum in the U.S., he said, accurately, "If the other side took over, they would kill all the educated people--the teachers, the artists, the intellectuals--and that would be a step toward barbarism."

DIED. Lincoln Theodore Perry (stage name: Stepin Fetchit), 83, black comedian who, adopting the name of a horse he had won money on, played a gentle, shuffling, eye-rolling subservient in movies of the 1920s and '30s (Show Boat, Stand Up and Cheer); of congestive heart failure and pneumonia; in Woodland Hills, Calif. When a 1968 TV documentary accused Stepin Fetchit of popularizing the stereotype of the lazy Negro, Perry brought an unsuccessful $3 million defamation suit. "I had to defy a law that said Negroes were supposed to be inferior," he said. "I was a star--the first Negro movie star--when the black man couldn't get work in the movies except playing shoeshine boys."

DIED. John Sparkman, 85, former Democratic Senator from Alabama and Adlai Stevenson's 1952 vice-presidential running mate; of a heart attack; in Huntsville, Ala. Son of a tenant farmer, Sparkman spent 42 years in Congress, serving ten years in the House and 32 years in the Senate, even though he was sometimes accused back home of "going North and turning left." A powerful housing advocate as chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee (1967-74), he also supported the Panama Canal treaties while chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1975 until his retirement four years later.