Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Gilbert Cruz, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Tiffany Sharples, Alexandra Silver, Kate Stinchfield, Lon Tweeten

DIED

He was the first modern track-and-field athlete to win gold in four consecutive Olympics--only Carl Lewis has since accomplished that feat--but Al Oerter, the discus-throwing sensation of the 1950s and '60s, was decidedly low-tech. (A favorite training tool was a flip book that showed the movements of a hurler.) He won first place in the Games of 1956, '60, '64 and '68, in each case competing and setting Olympic records despite injuries. "These are the Olympics," he said. "You die before you quit." Oerter was 71 and died of heart failure.

The part that made Canadian actress Lois Maxwell famous--Miss Moneypenny, the down-to-earth British intelligence secretary in the first 14 James Bond films--required fewer than 200 words and less than 60 minutes onscreen over 23 years. But she made the role unforgettable. Starting in 1962's Dr. No, she was the definitive un-Bond girl: the smart, cute assistant who spurned Bond's advances, knowing he would break her heart, yet lit up when he entered the room. Many "hoped [Bond] would end up with her," said Maxwell, "because all the other women were so two-dimensional. She was real." Maxwell was 80.

He was a familiar face to contemporary audiences from his roles on TV (Law & Order) and in film (Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks), but the critically acclaimed actor George Grizzard made his name onstage with complex, emotionally demanding roles in plays by Neil Simon, Clifford Odets and, most famously, Edward Albee. As the assaulted Nick in the original 1962 production of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Grizzard, wrote a critic, "shifted from geniality to intensity with shattering rightness." Fittingly, when he took home the Best Actor Tony in 1996, it was for his insightful portrayal of patriarch Tobias in the revival of Albee's A Delicate Balance. Grizzard was 79.

Before male feminists were groovy, Richard Graham, onetime deputy to Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver and founding member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, waged an uphill battle for women's equality. In Washington, where members of Congress joked about sex discrimination and the eeoc ignored it, the ex-Air Force engineer insisted women should be hired for hard labor posts and mothers were "the most stable workers in the labor market." Graham later helped found the National Organization for Women. He was 86.

Got allergies? if so, you know the relief of Benadryl, since 1946 the cure for everything from rashes to runny noses. Its inventor, George Rieveschl, became a chemical engineer after failing to get a job as a commercial artist. In the 1940s, while researching muscle relaxants, he found that his two-part compound blocked itch-causing histamines. Unlike predecessors, Benadryl did not cause severe drowsiness. It made him millions. "It seemed like bad luck at the time," he said of the nosedive he took as an artist, "but it ended up working out pretty well." He was 91.

For years after his 10-year term as Israel's chief rabbi, Avraham Shapira was considered a sage by the religious right. Yet for many Israelis, the Talmudic scholar was a hard-line zealot whose theology--that Israel was land given by God to the Jews--anchored the settlers' movement and helped bring about the assassination of peace advocate Yitzhak Rabin. In 2005, despite his call for soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate disputed land or else risk disaster, the "disengagement" succeeded with little violence. He was 94.

LIABLE Since 2003 the New York Knicks have had five coaches, signed myriad unsuccessful free agents and made just one playoff. Now, another snag: a jury found head coach Isiah Thomas, 46, liable in a sexual-harassment case brought by former team marketing executive Anucha Browne Sanders. The jury found that Thomas created a hostile environment and that Sanders was fired by team owners for complaining; it decided Sanders was entitled to $11.6 million in punitive damages from owners Madison Square Garden and James Dolan of Cablevision. Thomas will not have to pay damages. He told reporters he was innocent and vowed to appeal, saying "the jury did not see the facts."