Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Victoria Rainert, Sora Song

RESIGNED. GEORGE O'LEARY, 55, head coach at the University of Notre Dame, just five days after taking the job; in Notre Dame, Ind. Hired to revive the university's storied team, which has failed to finish in the Top 10 nationally since 1993, O'Leary quit after he was found to have falsified his resume. Among other things, his biography touted him as a letter-winning football player at the University of New Hampshire, where, in fact, he never played a game.

DIED. W.G. SEBALD, 57, German-born writer and literary critic; in a car accident; in Norwich, England. The author of such novels as The Emigrants and the just published Austerlitz, about a boy raised by Christians during World War II who later discovers that he is Jewish, Sebald wove intricate, shifting narratives often described as historic metaphors. In praising his work, Los Angeles Times critic Michael Andre Bernstein wrote, "History is a nightmare into which Sebald's characters and his books as a whole are trying to awaken."

DIED. DAVE GRAUE, 75, cartoonist who drew the syndicated strip Alley Oop, about a cheerful time-traveling Neanderthal; in a car accident; near Flat Rock, N.C. Graue attended high school with the daughter of V.T. Hamlin, who launched Alley Oop in 1933 and turned the strip over to Graue when he retired in 1973.

DIED. DON TENNANT, 79, advertising jack-of-all-trades who helped create Tony the Tiger, Kellogg's venerable Frosted Flakes pitchman; of heart failure; in Los Angeles. Tennant worked for 20 years at Chicago's Leo Burnett agency, serving as copywriter, artist, TV-commercial director, jingle writer and creative director. Among his creations: the catchy Pillsbury slogan "Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven."

DIED. DAVID ASTOR, 89, liberal editor, from 1948 to 1975, of the Observer, his family's Sunday paper and Britain's oldest; in London. He used the paper to champion his friend Nelson Mandela, condemn Britain's attempt to take the Suez Canal from Egypt, and print, without advertisements, Nikita Khrushchev's 26,000-word denunciation of Stalin.

DIED. ASHOK KUMAR, 90, Indian actor who appeared in some 250 films over 60 years; in Bombay. A law school graduate, Kumar rose to stardom in the megahit Achhut Kanya (1936) playing a young Brahmin who falls in love with a low-caste woman.