Milestones

By Melissa August, Daniel Eisenberg, Tam Gray, Anita Hamilton, Janice Horowitz, Michele Orecklin, Gabriel Snyder

MARRIED. KEVIN SORBO, 39, pectorally perfect star of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and inspiration for a thousand devotional Websites; and Chicago Hope actress Sam Jenkins; in Pacific Palisades.

INAUGURATED. CHUCK BURRIS, 46, first African-American mayor of Stone Mountain, Ga., longtime headquarters of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

DIED. OWEN BRADLEY, 82, country-music impresario and creator of the "Nashville sound," which helped push the genre into the mainstream; in Nashville, Tenn. In 1955 Bradley opened the first recording studio in Nashville, where he later crafted some of country music's most enduring tunes, including I Fall to Pieces with Patsy Cline and Coal Miner's Daughter with Loretta Lynn.

DIED. ROBERT A. HOUGHTON, 84, dogged former Los Angeles assistant police chief who led swift and successful investigations into two of the city's most notorious crimes, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the Manson family murders; in Los Angeles.

DIED. MAE QUESTEL, 89, helium-toned actress who gave voice to the coyly sexy Betty Boop and the coarsely sexless Olive Oyl; in New York City. Over the years, Questel displayed vocal versatility as the voice of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Winky Dink and Swee'Pea. Though she was featured in over 1,900 films, Questel once complained that she could walk down a New York City street without being recognized. In one of her last film roles, she played a caricature of a different sort, Woody Allen's mother in the movie New York Stories.

DIED. RAYMOND-LEOPOLD BRUCKBERGER, 90, Swiss Roman Catholic chaplain and spiritual leader of the French Resistance during World War II who greeted Charles de Gaulle at the portals of Notre Dame when the general reclaimed a liberated Paris in 1944; in Switzerland.