Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Carole Buia, Mitch Frank, Sean Gregory, Janice M. Horowitz and Lisa McLaughlin

EXECUTED. AILEEN WUORNOS, 46, hitchhiking prostitute who murdered seven men along Florida's highways in 1989 and 1990; by lethal injection; in Starke, Fla. The 10th woman executed in the U.S. since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976, Wuornos halted all appeals after a decade in prison, saying, "If I have to spend life in prison, I will kill. I will kill again."

DIED. CLAUS VON AMSBERG, 76, popular German-born Dutch prince and husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands; of pneumonia; in Amsterdam. Once vilified for his brief involvement with Hitler Youth as a teenager, he changed public opinion by denouncing Nazism, learning Dutch and working to preserve environmental resources.

DIED. CHARLES GUGGENHEIM, 78, four-time Oscar-winning filmmaker and pioneering producer of the televised campaign commercial; in Washington. One of the nation's most prolific documentarians, Guggenheim took aim at social injustice with such works as The Johnstown Flood (1989) and Nine from Little Rock (1964) and saluted America in D-Day Remembered (1994) and Robert Kennedy Remembered (1968). He made his first campaign ads for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. But by the mid-'80s, he had quit political campaigning, saying it was "sick."

DIED. MIA SLAVENSKA, 86, prima ballerina of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo; in Los Angeles. The classically trained, red-haired virtuoso was celebrated for her range, beauty and theatrical flair in such works as Giselle, Coppelia and a dance adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire.

DIED. BUDDY LESTER, 86, character actor and stand-up comedian who often worked as Frank Sinatra's opening act in Las Vegas and appeared with the Rat Pack in the films Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Sergeants 3 (1962); in Los Angeles. His first acting role was as himself--in the 1959 movie The Gene Krupa Story--and he later made guest appearances in such TV series as Barney Miller and Starsky and Hutch.

DIED. MARY MAXINE REED, believed to be 93, winner of the landmark 1971 Supreme Court sex-discrimination case that struck down an Idaho state law that automatically favored her husband as the administrator of their dead son's estate; in Boise. The unanimous decision was the court's first to extend equal protection to women.