DECEMBER 25, 2000 - JANUARY 1 2001 VOL. 156 NO. 25/26

Milestones
BY BRIAN BENNETT

DIED. KNUD W. JENSEN, 84, former cheese salesman and founder of Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; in Copenhagen. Jensen sold the family cheese business to finance what would become one of Denmark's most important museums. He dedicated the majority of his life to the institution, and at his death still lived in one of its wings, surrounded by the works of such iconoclasts as Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst.

DIED. LU YOUQING, 37, Internet author whose online diary of his bout with cancer reached millions of people; in Shanghai. A former advertising executive diagnosed with a tumor on his neck and given 100 days to live, Lu's musings on his deteriorating condition made cancer a daily topic in the Chinese media.

DIED. JACK LIEBOWITZ, 100, American comic-book publisher and promoter of superhero icons; in Great Neck, New York. Born in Proskurov, Ukraine, Liebowitz emigrated to the Lower East Side of New York City when he was 10. By the mid-'40s his DC Comics had already ushered the fantastic likes of Superman, Batman and Flash Gordon into our collective imagination.

DIED. NDABANINGI SITHOLE, 80, prominent Zimbabwe opposition politician and one-time leader of the black nationalist movement of the 1960s and '70s; in Darby, Pennsylvania. Sithole founded the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union, in 1963. But after spending 10 years in prison under charges of attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Ian Smith, the hotheaded Sithole lost an interparty power struggle to current President Robert Mugabe. Sithole saw a political comeback squashed in the mid-'90s when he was convicted of conspiring to kill Mugabe.

DIED. LIBERTAD LAMARQUE, 92, Argentine actress and perhaps the most famous female tango singer of all time; in Mexico City. Early on in her career, screen rival and First Lady Eva Peron blackballed Lamarque from Argentina's radio stations and film studios. The indefatigable siren continued her skyward career in Mexico, where she was still acting just weeks before her death.

DIED. GEORGE MONTGOMERY, 84, brawny Western star and close friend of Ronald Reagan; in Rancho Mirage, California. During his six-decade-long career, the actor was a cardboard-cactus mainstay, appearing in 87 films and thrilling after-school cowboys as the hero of the television series Cimarron City.

DIED. ZHAO XIN, 32, a woman who sustained paralyzing neck injuries while in police custody for being a member of the banned Falun Gong sect; in Beijing. The business-college lecturer refused to cooperate with police when arrested for meditating in a Beijing park and was hospitalized with three fractured vertebrae allegedly broken while she was under interrogation. Beijing police contend that Zhao injured herself by banging her head against a wall.

DIED. KENNETH BRINKHOUS, 92, developer of the first effective treatment for hemophilia; in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 1932 the pathology professor changed the lives of millions when, along with his colleagues at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, he discovered how to use blood plasma to help replace a blood-clotting protein some hemophiliacs do not produce.