Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, Jeff Chu, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Elspeth Reeve

SENTENCED. EARL KRUGEL, 62, Jewish Defense League member who admitted to participating in a 2001 plot, with the group's now deceased leader Irv Rubin, to bomb a Los Angeles--area mosque along with the field office of Arab-American U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa, saying Arabs needed a "wake-up call"; to the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, after the judge decided that Krugel's expressions of regret were not sincere; in Los Angeles.

FREED. RUBEN ROMANO, 47, coach of the popular Mexican soccer team Cruz Azul, who in July was seized from his car in broad daylight by five gunmen and held for $5 million ransom; in a raid by police east of Mexico City. The case raised the profile of a surge in abductions in Mexico, which saw 194 kidnappings in the first three months of this year, more than in any other country.

DIED. HONEY BRUCE FRIEDMAN, 78, ex-stripper who in 1951 married the soon-to-be-famous comedian Lenny Bruce; in Honolulu. Though the drug-addled pair split in 1957 (they had a daughter, Kitty), the sometime actress who called herself "Lenny's Shady Lady" helped successfully lobby New York Governor George Pataki to pardon Bruce posthumously for an obscenity charge relating to his act at Greenwich Village's Cafe-au-Go-Go in 1964.

DIED. JOE BAUMAN, 83, modest, little-hailed star of the minor-league Roswell Rockets who held the professional baseball record for home runs in a season--72 in 1954--until Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001; in Roswell, N.M. The hulking first baseman was as sanguine about his successor as he was passionate about playing in the minors. Among the perks, he said, was a free ham from a local merchant for every homer: "We had the best-fed ball club in the country."

DIED. GORDON GOULD, 85, an inventor of laser technology who coined the term laser but lost out on much of the glory; in New York City. In 1957, struck in the middle of the night with the idea for a gadget that would emit a potent stream of light that could cut and weld, he jotted down notes, then had them notarized. But the following year, before he filed for a patent (he mistakenly thought he had to build a prototype first), Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow published a paper on lasers, which led to Townes and two others winning the Nobel Prize. After decades of lawsuits against various companies, Gould won several patents--and, because by then the laser was in common use, some $30 million in royalties.

DIED. JAY GOULD, 90, controversial statistician who became an antinuclear hero for warning of the risks of low radiation levels from nuclear reactors on local populations; in New York City. His findings that rates of cancer and infant mortality spiked near nuclear plants--most notably near a reactor in Suffolk County, N.Y., with its eerily high incidence of breast cancer--enraged critics who said scientific data flatly contradicted his work.

DIED. MOLLY YARD, 93, Shanghai-born civil rights agitator best known for her in-your-face leadership of the National Organization for Women, which she took over in 1987 at age 75, dramatically upping its membership, budget and visibility; in Pittsburgh, Pa. Fond of saying she was born a feminist--Chinese friends brought her missionary parents a bowl to soothe their "tragedy" of having another girl--Yard was known for cowing politicians, as she did famously in 1987 with her vocal opposition to Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, whom she called a Neanderthal.