Milestones

DIED

Few are so literally born into a life of activism, but Yolanda King, the eldest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, arrived in Montgomery, Ala., just two weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus there. A social activist, motivational speaker and actress--she played Parks in the 1978 mini-series King--Yolanda was the most visible family member during this year's Martin Luther King Day--the first since her mother's death last year. She collapsed, of a suspected heart problem, after giving a speech in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 51.

o She called herself a "softie," but Kate Webb's coverage of conflicts in Asia over the past 35 years, from Vietnam to the first Gulf War to Russia's withdrawal from Afghanistan, proved she was anything but tame. Starting in 1967, when she arrived in Saigon, the enterprising reporter earned acclaim for her coolheaded front-line chronicles of the carnage, plus her empathic portraits of innocent victims. In 1971 the raspy-voiced New Zealander was captured by the North Vietnamese while covering a battle in Cambodia. Before she and her five colleagues were released from their 23-day ordeal, a media report suggested that her body may have been found. The resulting attention --including a family memorial service and an obit in the New York Times--was awkward for the modest Webb, who recently referred to the trauma as causing "a bit of a stir at home." She was 64 and had cancer.

o Televangelist turned political innovator Jerry Falwell changed Washington by bringing politics to the pulpit. He was 73. (See page 72.)

o Now they can read CDs, remove tattoos and repair detached retinas. But in 1960, when physicist Theodore Maiman unveiled the first working laser at a New York City news conference, only a few grasped the device's potential. The trick to creating the tiny, potent pink force that won him world fame: selecting as his medium synthetic rubies, which had been dismissed by many scientists, and using pulsing, rather than continuous, light. He was 79.

o As an American soccer player, Gino Pariani just wasn't supposed to embarrass the Europeans. But as the U.S.'s starting inside right forward, Pariani, who grew up in the soccer-obsessed St. Louis, Mo., neighborhood, "the Hill," was part of one of the most famous upsets in the sport's history. The U.S.'s stinging defeat of England in the 1950 World Cup tournament inspired the 2005 film The Game of Their Lives. He was 79.

o An unpleasant road trip from California to his family's farm in New York was enough to convince William Becker that there was a market for cheap, clean road lodging. In 1962 he and his contractor-partner Paul Greene introduced Motel 6, named for the $6 nightly rate they determined would cover such amenities as coin-operated TVs and foam cups. The chain, which made the pair multimillionaires, now has 880 sites across the U.S. and Canada. Becker was 85.

o His influence as a business historian was such that some analysts refer to the period before Alfred Chandler published his works as "B.C." The "dean of management theory" was known for his accounts of how General Motors and other giant corporations were developed. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 book, The Visible Hand, which posited that very visible managers had replaced invisible market forces as the key factor shaping corporations. He was 88.

KILLED

In a major setback for the Taliban, which has been fighting to regain power, its lead military commander, Mullah Dadullah, was fatally shot in a joint operation by U.S., NATO and Afghan forces. He is the third top Taliban leader to be killed in the past six months.

RESIGNING

His boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, called the resignation of Deputy A.G. Paul McNulty, 49, "a loss"--then told reporters his No. 2 was the one who directly oversaw the U.S. Attorneys and "signed off" on the allegedly political firings that have rocked the Justice Department. (McNulty, who in e-mails expressed some reservations about the firings, did not comment.) The G.O.P. loyalist is the highest-ranking casualty of the Attorneys scandal.