Milestones

By Camille Agon, David Bjerklie, Bruce Crumley, Kristina Dell, Joe Lertola, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre

DIED

The Blue Angels, the Navy's flashy flight-exhibition team, have thrilled spectators since 1946. Their high-speed, tight-formation flying routines, however, can exact a dear price. Some two dozen Blue Angel pilots have died in air shows or training accidents. The latest casualty is Lieut. Commander Kevin Davis, whose F/A-18 Hornet clipped a stand of pine trees before crashing into a Beaufort, S.C., residential neighborhood. The cause of the crash is unknown, but as former Blue Angels pilots have noted, such aerial acrobatics leave no room for human or mechanical error. Davis was 32.

o Heaving a 16-lb. metal ball farther than anyone else in the world takes prodigious strength. It also takes grace, balance and technique. Parry O'Brien was a shot-put champion whose great innovation was a 180-o spin that built momentum for his toss. He broke the shot-put world record 17 times between 1953 and 1959 and in four Olympic Games took home two gold medals plus a silver. O'Brien, 75, had a fatal heart attack while competing in a Santa Clarita, Calif., swim meet.

o It's a well-worn jazz riff: superb player, been around forever but known mostly to musicians and insiders. Andrew Hill almost fit the bill. Over his 50-year career, he was lauded as a groundbreaking pianist and composer. And yet he was often overlooked by mainstream audiences, which focused on contemporaries like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. But Hill refused to fade. His 2006 album, Time Lines, earned him album-of-the-year honors from Down Beat magazine. Hill, who performed just three weeks before his death, was 75.

o "We try harder" was the corporate motto, an adroit marketing hook so successful it became part of pop culture. The company, Avis Rent A Car, was founded in 1946 by Warren Avis with two employees and fewer than 200 cars. Its first two locations were airports in Miami and Ypsilanti, Mich. A decorated WW II pilot, Avis said his entrepreneurial idea was inspired by his flying experience and the growing need for ground transportation at airports. He was 92.

o She was a throwback, an astronomer who studied the features of "bright stars," those visible to the naked eye. Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit was born in Florence, Ala., on March 12, 1907, 23 years before the discovery of Pluto. At Yale, she compiled The Bright Star Catalogue, which described the positions of stars as well as their color, brightness and motion. In 1957 she became director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory at Nantucket, Mass., where she mentored a generation of women who pursued astronomy careers. Hoffleit was 100.

CONVICTED

A federal district court jury in Denver deliberated six days before finding Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications, guilty of 19 counts of insider trading. Nacchio, 57, made millions selling Qwest stock, touting the company's bright prospects even while its fortunes were tanking. Sentencing is set for July. The fallen corporate star could face a decade in prison and millions in fines.

RELEASED

Cuba howled, but anti-Castro exile, former CIA operative and alleged terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was freed on bail pending his trial on immigration fraud. Even the U.S. Justice Department objected to the release of Posada, who some believe was linked to a 1976 airline bombing that killed 73 people, including 24 members of the Cuban fencing team, and who escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985. Posada, 79, who denies any involvement in the bombing, has been ordered to remain under house detention at his wife's apartment in the Miami area, where reaction was a mix of support and embarrassment.