Milestones

DIED "I am not a number. I am a free man," said No. 6 on the 1960s CBS program The Prisoner. Patrick McGoohan, 80, played the former spy who had resigned his position only to be mysteriously imprisoned. McGoohan also wrote and directed some episodes.

• The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than 30 books of poetry and criticism, W.D. Snodgrass, 83, taught for nearly half his life. "If you can be happy doing something else, do it," he would tell his students about the love of poetry, "but if you've got to do [poetry], you're a life termer."

• One of television's most famous odd couples appeared on the ABC show Fantasy Island: Hervé Villechaize as Tattoo and Ricardo Montalbán, 88, as Mr. Roarke--two dream makers at a remote resort in the Pacific. Montalbán, a champion of Latinos in the entertainment industry, founded the advocacy group Nosotros in 1971.

• At age 7 she began keeping notebooks that she filled with the events in her life. Hortense Calisher, 97, later wove those memories into works of fiction that explored the theme of isolation within families.

ANNOUNCED Beijing declared March 28--the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet--a new holiday: Serfs' Emancipation Day, to mark the end of the "system of feudal oppression" China cites in defense of its invasion of Tibet in 1959.

SENTENCED Australian writer Harry Nicolaides, 41, received three years in prison in Thailand for breaking strict lèse-majesté laws after insulting the Thai King in a self-published novel.