Milestones

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DIED. PERRY COMO, 87, honey-smoke baritone whose casually masculine, almost sleepy stylings rivaled Bing Crosby's and Frank Sinatra's at the top of pop charts in the 1940s and '50s; in Jupiter Inlet Beach Colony, Fla. The seventh son of a seventh son, Pierino Ronald Como left work as a barber in 1933 for a career of such easy-listening hits as Till the End of Time and It's Impossible. He was also host of a string of popular TV shows. He died six days short of his 88th birthday.

HOSPITALIZED. JANE SWIFT, 36, acting Republican Governor of Massachusetts, eight months into her pregnancy with twins; with early contractions; in Boston. Though Swift plans to continue running the state from bed, the Governor's Council voted 5 to 3 to ask the state supreme court about the constitutionality of her attending official meetings by speaker phone.

RETURNED. RONALD BIGGS, 71, celebrated British fugitive who helped execute "the Great Train Robbery," heisting $7 million (more than $40 million today) from a Glasgow-to-London mail train in 1963; from Rio de Janeiro to the Belmarsh prison in London. Strokes have weakened the once fun-loving outlaw. Though many suspect that he turned himself in to seek medical care in prison, he insists all he wants is a pint in a pub before he dies.

INDICTED. STEPHEN ROACH, 27, white Cincinnati police officer who last month shot and killed Timothy Thomas, 19, an unarmed black man who fled as cops tried to arrest him, sparking riots; on charges of negligent homicide and obstructing official business; in Cincinnati. Thomas' mother has filed a wrongful-death suit against the officer and the city.

DIED. JAMES MYERS, 81, co-writer of Rock Around the Clock (1954), heralded as the granddaddy of all rock-'n'-roll tunes; in Fort Myers, Fla. He estimated that he made $10 million in royalties for that one song, recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets, which stayed at No. 1 for eight weeks and sold 22 million copies.

DIED. CHARLES BLACK JR., 85, eloquent authority on constitutional law who in 1954 helped write the legal brief for 10-year-old Topeka, Kans., student Linda Brown, plaintiff in the watershed case Brown v. Board of Education; in New York City. From 1947 until his death, Black taught law at Columbia and Yale, where his students included Hillary Rodham Clinton; he also wrote more than 20 books, including Impeachment: a Handbook, widely read during Watergate and reissued during the proceedings against Bill Clinton.

DIED. DOUGLAS ADAMS, 49, British-born author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and other philosophical whimsies; of a heart attack; in Santa Barbara, Calif. His 1979 novel about interplanetary travelers, which began as a BBC radio series, sold more than 14 million copies worldwide.

DIED. BOOZOO CHAVIS, 70, Louisiana-born King of Zydeco who helped popularize the genre with his 1954 Paper in My Shoe; in Austin, Texas. He packed dance halls with his rhythmic sounds till the late '50s when he began a long hiatus. But upon hearing about an impersonator in 1984, he returned to launch a renaissance of button-accordion zydeco.