Milestones

By Kathleen Adams, Ann Marie Bonardi, Mitch Frank, Randy Hartwell, Benjamin Nugent, Joseph Pierro and Sora Song

RETURNED. The KILSHAW TWINS, 8-month-old adopted daughters of Alan and Judith Kilshaw of Wales; to a Missouri court that will examine their claim on the girls, who were brokered over the Internet.

GUILTY PLEA ENTERED. By JAY SCOTT BALLINGER, to setting five Georgia church fires in 1998 and 1999; in Gainesville, Ga. He is already serving time for similar fires in other states.

DIED. WILLIE (POPS) STARGELL, 61, Pittsburgh Pirate captain who led the team to a surprise World Series win over Baltimore in 1979; of a stroke following years of heart disease and kidney trouble; in Wilmington, N.C. One of the few major leaguers to stick with a single ball club for at least 20 years, Stargell hit 475 home runs, a Pittsburgh record, and had more homers than anyone else in the '70s.

DIED. HARVEY BALL, 79, commercial artist and adman who invented the now ubiquitous and much parodied Smiley Face in 1963; in Worcester, Mass. The goal of the yellow symbol was to put smiley faces on frowny workers at two newly merged insurance companies. Ball was paid $45 for his design and never trademarked it.

DIED. ARTHUR CANTOR, 81, Broadway producer whose wife thought he was "nuts" for investing $2,000 in 1957 in a show called The Music Man and who championed the comic playwrights Paddy Chayefsky and Herb Gardner; in Manhattan. Cantor, a publicist before becoming a producer, hoisted signs for his marquees as humorous as the plays they pushed. One read, "'I laughed my head off'--Marie Antoinette."

DIED. ROBERT AURAND MOON, 83, former postal inspector who was one of the inventors of the ZIP code; in Leesburg, Fla. Moon began working for the post office in the 1940s in Philadelphia and Chicago, where his idea was born for what became the Zoning Improvement Plan in 1963.

DIED. RICHARD SCHULTES, 86, pith helmet-sporting father of the field of ethnobotany, which examines the medicinal and hallucinogenic uses of plants among indigenous peoples; in Boston. While his research inadvertently contributed to the 1960s drug culture, Schultes rejected the Timothy Leary and William Burroughs brand of "mind expansion." He collected more than 24,000 dried plant specimens, mostly from the Amazon. Some of the 120 plant species named for him treat ulcers, tuberculosis and conjunctivitis.

DIED. BEATRICE STRAIGHT, 86, spirited performer who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her 1977 role in Network as the scorned wife of William Holden; in Los Angeles. She also won a Tony in 1953 for playing Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a role she originated.

DIED. NYREE DAWN PORTER, 61, British actress who won fame in the late 1960s as Irene in the 26-part BBC adaptation of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga; in London. Born in New Zealand, she was given the Maori name Ngaire ("heart-shaped flower"), pronounced Ny-ree.