Milestones

Undaunted Defender

UPDATE

SHIRIN EBADI, who in 2003 became the first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, said she will defy a ban on her human-rights organization that Tehran imposed last week. The government declared the Center for Defense of Human Rights illegal--on grounds that it was functioning without a proper permit--and threatened to prosecute members who continue to offer pro bono legal counsel to Iranian dissidents.

Founded in 2001, the group has repeatedly applied for a permit, which is not required by law. Ebadi says the center received assurances from authorities that it could continue to operate. But it has irritated the government with attention-grabbing aid to victims of abuse, including Iran's most prominent dissident, journalist Akbar Ganji. Ebadi suspects that publication of her memoirs earlier this year may be what provoked the unexpected ban. "It may be difficult, but we will continue our activities," she said. "We are doing nothing illegal."

ARRESTED. Al Unser Sr., 67, and Bobby Unser Sr., 72, car-racing legends; after the brothers separately drove through a roadblock abutting a street named after the Unser family, where a SWAT team had cornered a violent carjacking suspect who ended up fatally shooting himself; in Albuquerque, N.M. Police said they repeatedly warned the Indy 500 champs to leave before arresting them. The Unsers, who were trying to drive to their property, said they did not know the area was a crime scene, denied any wrongdoing and decried the use of unnecessary force. The incident, said Al, was "embarrassing on both sides."

DIED. Robert McCullough, 64, who changed the civil rights movement in 1961 when he refused to pay a $100 fine for requesting service, along with eight other black students, at a whites-only lunch counter in South Carolina and instead opted to do 30 days of hard labor in prison; of unknown causes; in Rock Hill, S.C. What was dubbed the "jail, no bail" tactic relieved activists of a financial burden and inspired similar protests. In 2001, McCullough, the leader of the nine, told fellow protester and journalist David Williamson, "I guess if we had to do it today ... we'd do it again."

DIED. Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, 79, former Fidel Castro loyalist who became disillusioned with Castro's totalitarianism and founded the illegal but influential Cuban Committee for Human Rights; in Havana. The world-renowned dissident, known as the dean of the opposition, spent years in prison for being, in Castro's words, a "counterrevolutionary mercenary in the pay of the U.S."

DIED. Mike Douglas, 81, ever polite, even-keeled--and hugely successful--early TV talk-show host, whose 90-min. Mike Douglas Show aired from 1961 to 1982; in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. As a big-band singer, he made the pop charts with the soapy 1966 hit The Men in My Little Girl's Life. For two decades he was host to guests ranging from a string of sitting and former U.S. Presidents to a preschooler named Tiger Woods (whose golf skills prompted fellow guest Bob Hope to joke, "I don't know what kind of drugs they've got this kid on, but I want some"). The show was, Douglas insisted, "really a music show, with a whole lot of talk and laughter in between numbers."

DIED. Bob Thaves, 81, award-winning creator of Frank & Ernest, the nationally syndicated comic strip that chronicles the oddball adventures of two geeky middle-aged punsters; in Torrance, Calif. The first to use block lettering, according to its syndicate, the 34-year-old strip sometimes featured the two pals traveling through time and morphing into different beings. As aliens who have landed on a tony golf course, they observed that a set of clubs appeared to be "some kind of instruments of self-torture."

DIED. Melissa Hayden, 83, lyrical, vibrant ballerina who became an early international standout in George Balanchine's famously starless New York City Ballet; in Winston-Salem, N.C. Such was her status in a company known for downplaying individual performers that after she announced her retirement in 1973, Balanchine created a work in her honor, Cortege Hongrois, which remains in the company's repertoire. Blunt, generous and emotional, Hayden, who taught until her death, dazzled in diverse ballets like the bouncy, light-hearted Stars and Stripes, with music by John Philip Sousa, and Illuminations, an allegorical meditation on the life of Arthur Rimbaud.

DIED. James Van Allen , 91, venerated physicist who discovered that Earth is surrounded by two belts of radiation, which were later named for him; in Iowa City, Iowa. In 1958 Van Allen, below center, with rocket designers William Pickering and Wernher von Braun, posed for one of the iconic photographs of the space age: the three men held a model of Explorer 1 over their heads the night the satellite--the U.S.'s first--went into orbit, four months after Sputnik. In a belated effort to add an element of scientific pursuit to the space race, Van Allen had been asked to design a ride-along experiment to hunt for charged particles, or cosmic rays. Finding the radiation belts, he later said, "was like going hunting for rabbits and encountering an elephant instead."

With reporting by Harriet Barovick, Hillary Batchelder, Clayton Neuman, Elisabeth Salemme, Nina Vizcarrondo