Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Gilbert Cruz, Andrea Ford, Joe Lertola, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Tiffany Sharples, Alexandra Silver, Kate Stinchfield

DIED

You know the type of '80s rocker--tight pants, bleached hair, long tongue. Though pop metal (or, to some, "hair metal") is often remembered for big-name bands like Twisted Sister and Moetley Cruee, Kevin Dubrow, the front man for Quiet Riot, was a key force in popularizing the genre. His frequent diatribes against other musicians--and his own record company--could grate. But his gravelly vocals on songs like Cum on Feel the Noize helped propel Riot's 1983 album, Metal Health, to No. 1 on Billboard's pop charts, a first for a metal band. Dubrow had just finished a U.S. tour to promote Riot's 2006 album, Rehab. He was 52 and died of unknown causes.

o In 1981, when the first cases of AIDS were emerging, few doctors knew what the disease was, much less how to treat it. But as chief of medicine at San Francisco's General Hospital, infectious-diseases expert Merle Sande recognized the impending epidemic and began putting together a plan for tackling the disease. By 1983 he had successfully lobbied for a dedicated hospital ward for AIDS patients. He also helped develop the "San Francisco model" of treatment, which emphasized infection control and research financing, becoming a blueprint for clinics nationwide. He was 68 and had multiple myeloma.

o When Hall of Fame jockey Bill Hartack won his first Kentucky Derby in 1957, he didn't get all the credit. The 23-year-old was the beneficiary of the most famous slipup in Derby history: opponent Bill Shoemaker's misjudging the finish line and slowing prematurely. Yet Hartack--who rode 4,272 winners in 21,535 mounts--proved it was no fluke by becoming one of only two jockeys (the other was Eddie Arcaro) to win the Derby five times. Luck, he later said, had nothing to do with it: "I rode the right horses, and I rode them very well." He was 74 and apparently died of a heart attack.

o Gatorade now comes in many flavors, but its first may have been best described by its inventor, University of Florida physician J. Robert Cade: repulsive. ("I guzzled it and vomited," he said.) Cade created the drink, today a multibillion-dollar industry, after the school's football coach asked him why players didn't urinate after games. With the help of sugar and lemon, Cade made the concoction more palatable, but its basic function didn't change: to replace the sodium, chloride and plasma volume that players lost during games. The still dominant sports ade, named for the team, earned the Gators a reputation as "second-halfers" who could outlast opponents. Cade was 80.

o He regained his standing in Russia in recent years, becoming a frequent guest of KGB veteran Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Still, Vladimir Kryuchkov will be primarily remembered as the former KGB chief who, disturbed by liberal reforms, engineered the failed three-day coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. The brief takeover by hard-liners helped precipitate the final collapse of the Soviet Union four months later. Kryuchkov was 83.

o When he was 21 and a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps during World War II, Jefferson DeBlanc Sr. protected his fellow aces by shooting down five Japanese warplanes during a mission over the Solomon Islands--even though his own plane was nearly out of gas and he knew he could not make it back to base. He swam eight miles to an island, where one indigenous tribe traded him to another--which helped ferry him to safety--for a 10-lb. sack of rice. DeBlanc was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart and other decorations. He was 86.

o These days, hurricanes are studied in exacting detail, but scientists used to describe the storms in one of two ways: major or minor. In 1969, South Florida structural engineer Herbert Saffir came up with the idea of a five-category scale as part of a project commissioned by the United Nations. Later expanded by National Hurricane Center director Robert Simpson--and dubbed the Saffir-Simpson scale--it is now the standard guide to a hurricane's expected impact. Saffir was 90.

APPRECIATION

Tragedy off the Field

After a few years of growing pains, hard-hitting Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was finding his footing, both as a new father and a team leader. Then on Nov. 26, as his girlfriend and baby daughter slept, an intruder shot him at home; he died the next day. The Pro Bowler was 24.