Milestones May 1, 2006

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DIED. Ellen Kuzwayo, 91, prize-winning South African author and a founder of the antiapartheid movement; in Soweto. Imprisoned in 1977, she was later an advocate for the rights of women and helped launch the Urban Foundation to pressure the government to allow blacks to own homes. With her 1985 autobiography, Call Me Woman, she became the first black writer to win South Africa's prestigious CNA literary prize. In the country's first all-race elections in 1994, the African National Congress member won a seat in Parliament, where she served five years.

DIED. Scott Crossfield, 84, civilian aircraft designer and cold war test pilot who in 1953 became the first man to fly at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound--a record that spurred his rival, U.S. Air Force ace Chuck Yeager, to surpass it a month later; in a crash of Crossfield's single-engine Cessna in the mountains north of Atlanta. One of the post--World War II supersonic-jet aviators whom author Tom Wolfe said had "the right stuff," Crossfield dismissed the macho image of his field, saying that for most pilots he knew, the "main interest outside of work was raising apricots."