Milestones

(2 of 2)
DIED. PIERRE SALINGER, 79, debonair press secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; of a heart attack; in the south of France. The loyal Kennedy family friend and longtime TV correspondent is known to younger generations for espousing the theory, later discredited, that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by friendly fire in 1996. One of the few archliberals who lived up to a pledge of going into exile if George W. Bush was elected President, Salinger had been running a B&B with his wife in Le Thor, Provence.

DIED. MAXIME FAGET, 83, whose design of the Mercury space capsule made it possible for men to return from space; in Houston. Early needle-nosed spaceships, designed to create as little resistance as possible, were almost impossible to protect from the heat of re-entry. Faget was the NASA engineer who designed a blunt nose for the Mercury, which created a shock wave that deflected the heat, a design feature that was continued on the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft as well as the Soviet Soyuz.