Milestones, Jul. 21, 1941

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Birthday. George W. Norris, Senator from Nebraska since 1913: his 80th; in Washington.

Born. To Comedian Bert Lahr, 45; and ex-Showgirl Mildred Schroeder Robinson Lahr, 27; a son: 7 pounds,11 ounces; in Hollywood.

Married. Benson Ford, 22, son of Edsel Ford; and Edith McNaughton, 21, daughter of a retired vice president of the Cadillac Motor Car Co.; in Christ Chapel (Episcopal), Detroit.

Stricken. C.I.O.'s Philip Murray, 55; in Pittsburgh. He collapsed while playing badminton, was rushed to Mercy Hospital, where the illness was described evasively as "some kind of spell."

Died. Frederic John Fisher, 63, philanthropist and automobile pioneer, eldest of the seven famous Fisher Brothers ("Body by Fisher"); of heart disease in Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit. Earning his early dollars as a blacksmith and coach builder, he switched from shop to shop to learn how everyone in the industry built carriages, before he was 30 became general manager of the largest U.S. coach-building company. In 1908, he plunged all his savings and all the money he could borrow to start the Fisher Body Co. which grew to be the biggest auto body manufacturer in the world and one of the major units of General Motors. His six brothers were at his bedside when he died.

Died. Samuel Alexander Scribner, 82, onetime "King of the Burlesque Wheel"; in Bronxville, N.Y. He ran away from home as a boy to join the circus, spent 20 years with tent shows. At the turn of the century he organized the Columbia Amusement Co. and gained control of all the burlesque theaters between Omaha and Boston. He retired in 1916, but seven years ago he came out of retirement briefly to help glorify Gypsy Rose Lee.

Died. Sir Arthur Evans. 90, the British archeologist whose excavations in Cretan pasturelands uncovered the wholly forgotten Minoan civilization and pushed the frontiers of Aegean history back 2,000 years; in Oxford, England. At Knossos he unearthed the labyrinth made famous by Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur; reconstructed the Palace of Minos complete with murals, plumbing and sunken bathtubs; found evidence that the 2,000-year-old kingdom was overthrown suddenly by seaborne invaders who took the city by surprise and burned the palace.

Left. By the late Walter Edmund O'Hara, Rhode Island's once-wealthy race-track tsar, who bet on the ponies himself: $193.86 in Rhode Island, an undetermined amount in Massachusetts.