Milestones

By Melissa August; Elizabeth L. Bland; Jeninne Lee-St. John; Carolina A. Miranda; Julie Rawe

CONFIRMED. ALBERTO GONZALES, 49, as the U.S.'s first Hispanic Attorney General; by a 60 to 36 vote in the Senate, with the opposition coming from Democrats who objected that as White House counsel Gonzales helped write U.S. policies that appeared to permit the torture of some foreign prisoners; in Washington.

DIED. ZURAB ZHVANIA, 41, influential, reform-minded Prime Minister of Georgia and close ally of President Mikhail Saakashvili; of carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently from a space heater in the apartment of a political acquaintance, who also died; in Tbilisi, Georgia. The bizarre event was a shock--but not unheard of in Georgia, where central heating is scarce and 45 others have died from carbon monoxide in the past three years. A key economic adviser to the President, Zhvania was a leader in the 2003 popular uprising that ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze.

DIED. GNASSINGBE EYADEMA, 69, President of Togo; of a heart attack; in Piya, Togo. A former army colonel who came to power in a military coup in 1967, he was Africa's longest-serving ruler. With the threat of turmoil in the wake of his sudden death, Togo's military high command named his son Faure Eyadema to succeed him.

DIED. JOHN VERNON, 72, prolific Canadian-born character actor, best known for his role as the paranoid Dean Wormer, nemesis of John Belushi's Bluto and Bluto's unkempt fraternity brothers in the 1978 John Landis comedy Animal House; in his sleep, at his home in Van Nuys, Calif.

DIED. VICKI LAMOTTA, 75, voluptuous blond whose marriage to boxer Jake LaMotta was portrayed in the Martin Scorsese film Raging Bull; in Boca Raton, Fla. At 26, with three children in tow, she left her husband, who had become agitated adjusting to retirement. At 51, after Raging Bull's release, she posed nude for Playboy, saying she wanted to show that life doesn't stop at 50.

DIED. HORACE HAGEDORN, 89, canny entrepreneur who turned the blue-crystal plant fertilizer Miracle-Gro, a staple of suburban backyards in postwar America, into the world's top-selling plant food; in Sands Point, N.Y.

DIED. MAX SCHMELING, 99, ex-world-heavyweight-boxing champion who became a reluctant symbol of Nazi might in the years leading up to World War II; in Hollenstedt, Germany. Schmeling became the first European to win the world crown when he beat Jack Sharkey on a foul in 1930. In 1936 he launched a famous rivalry when he knocked out U.S. challenger Joe Louis; his loss in a 1938 rematch at Yankee Stadium was hailed as a national triumph over Nazi Germany. But he was miscast by Hitler as an Aryan superhero; he refused to join the Nazi Party, and after the war, it was disclosed that he had saved two Jews from attack in the Kristallnacht violence in 1938. He befriended Louis later in life, quietly giving the impoverished former champ money and paying for his 1981 funeral.

DIED. ERNST MAYR, 100, leading evolutionary biologist of the 20th century; in Bedford, Mass. Born in Germany, he became an avid bird watcher and turned away from a planned medical career to natural history. In the 1930s and '40s, he integrated the newly emerging field of genetics with Darwin's insights on evolution, showing how species arise when groups of similar organisms become separated--often by geography--and then accumulate genetic differences that no longer allow them to interbreed.