Milestones May 23, 2005

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DIED. ZHANG CHUNQIAO, 88, the last surviving member of China's notorious Gang of Four, the influential ring of radical Maoists, including Mao's wife Jiang Qing, behind the excesses of Mao's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution; of cancer; in an undisclosed location, although he lived in Shanghai. When a politically threatened Mao started the revolution to cleanse the nation of "bourgeois remnants," his trusted propagandist and deputy led the effort. The ensuing terror, including the assault and imprisonment of legions of perceived enemies, ended in October 1976, a month after Mao's death, when Zhang and his comrades were arrested. He was later tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.

DIED. JOE GRANT, 96, one of Disney's most influential early artists and story developers, whose credits over a seven-decade career included co-writing Dumbo, helping devise the story for Fantasia and creating the queen-witch character in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; of a heart attack, while working in his studio; in Glendale, Calif. In the late 1980s, 40 years after leaving Disney to start his own businesses, he was called back to consult on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King.

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Carolina A. Miranda and Julie Rawe