Milestones Aug. 21, 2006

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DIED. Bob Thaves, 81, award-winning creator of Frank & Ernest, the nationally syndicated comic strip that chronicles the oddball adventures of two geeky middle-aged punsters; in Torrance, Calif. The first to use block lettering, according to its syndicate, the 34-year-old strip sometimes featured the two pals traveling through time and morphing into different beings. As aliens who have landed on a tony golf course, they observed that a set of clubs appeared to be "some kind of instruments of self-torture."

DIED. Melissa Hayden, 83, lyrical, vibrant ballerina who became an early international standout in George Balanchine's famously starless New York City Ballet; in Winston-Salem, N.C. Such was her status in a company known for downplaying individual performers that after she announced her retirement in 1973, Balanchine created a work in her honor, Cortège Hongrois, which remains in the company's repertoire. Blunt, generous and emotional, Hayden, who taught until her death, dazzled in diverse ballets like the bouncy, light-hearted Stars and Stripes, with music by John Philip Sousa, and Illuminations, an allegorical meditation on the life of Arthur Rimbaud.

DIED. James Van Allen , 91, venerated physicist who discovered that Earth is surrounded by two belts of radiation, which were later named for him; in Iowa City, Iowa. In 1958 Van Allen, below center, with rocket designers William Pickering and Wernher von Braun, posed for one of the iconic photographs of the space age: the three men held a model of Explorer 1 over their heads the night the satellite--the U.S.'s first--went into orbit, four months after Sputnik. In a belated effort to add an element of scientific pursuit to the space race, Van Allen had been asked to design a ride-along experiment to hunt for charged particles, or cosmic rays. Finding the radiation belts, he later said, "was like going hunting for rabbits and encountering an elephant instead."