Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland and Rebecca Winters

SENTENCED. Richard Reid, 29, would-be shoe bomber and self-proclaimed al-Qaeda member; to life in prison, for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001; in Boston. He pleaded guilty to the charges last year and at his sentencing shouted at the judge, "Your flag will come down and so will your country."

RELEASED. AYATULLAH HOSSEIN ALI MONTAZERI, 80, Iran's most prominent dissident cleric; from five years of house arrest imposed after he challenged the institution of supreme clerical rule; by the Supreme Council of National Security; in Qum. Montazeri was once in line to lead the country but was stripped of that status by Ayatullah Khomeini in 1989 after he accused the judiciary of "murdering" political opponents, among other criticisms of the government. He has vowed to "continue to talk about issues and to act."

DISQUALIFIED. LEBRON JAMES, 18, nationally celebrated basketball star from Akron, Ohio; from playing out the season; for accepting $845 worth of free sports jerseys from a clothing store; by the Ohio High School Athletic Association. Despite the ruling, the 6-ft. 9-in. player, who led his team to no. 1 this season, is expected to declare his eligibility for pro ball and be first choice in the 2003 NBA draft in june.

DIED. Astronauts MICHAEL ANDERSON, 43, DAVID BROWN, 46, KALPANA CHAWLA, 41, LAUREL CLARK, 41, RICK HUSBAND, 45, WILLIAM MCCOOL, 41, and ILAN RAMON, 48--the first Israeli in space; when the space shuttle Columbia broke up as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere; over Texas. (See story page 30.)

DIED. ALFRED KANTOR, 79, artist who rendered rare scenes of daily life in concentration camps; of complications from Parkinson's disease; in Yarmouth, Maine. As a prisoner at Auschwitz and other camps, Kantor destroyed many of his pieces just after painting or drawing them for fear of retribution. He then re-created scenes--of corpses, crematoriums, and guards--from memory at the end of the war.

DIED. LESLIE FIEDLER, 85, provocative literary and cultural critic, best known for the 1960 book Love and Death in the American Novel, which examined the psychological undercurrents, including the powerful, even homoerotic, bonds between male characters, and the exclusion of women, in the works of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain and others; in Buffalo, N.Y. Fiedler wrote hundreds of essays, short stories and poems and helped inspire acceptance of American--as opposed to mostly British--literature in university English departments.

DIED. HUGH TREVOR-ROPER, 89, brilliant, cranky British historian; of cancer; in Oxford, England. The Last Days of Hitler, his 1947 best seller, which described a confused, deluded hitler, was based on Trevor-Roper's investigation as a wartime member of the BRITISH Secret Intelligence Service. In 1983 his reputation was tarnished after he authenticated 60 volumes of what turned out to be forged Hitler "diaries."

DIED. EVELYN TROUT, 97, daredevil pilot of the 1920s and '30s; in La Jolla, CALIF. The first woman to fly an all-night route, trout was the last surviving member of the inaugural All-Women's Transcontinental Air Race, from Santa Monica, Calif., to Cleveland, Ohio, IN 1929--an event Will Rogers dubbed "the Powder Puff Derby."