Milestones, Nov. 12, 1979

DIVORCED. Pyrotechnic Rock Star Mick Jagger, 35, leader of the Rolling Stones; and Bianca Jagger, 34, Nicaragua-born actress and disco habitue; after eight years of marriage, one daughter; in London. After 18 months of transatlantic legal fireworks and a failed attempt to move the case to Los Angeles, jet-setting Bianca was granted a divorce in 18 minutes on uncontested grounds of adultery.

DIED. Robert Boulin, 59, French Minister of Labor recently implicated by the press in a 1974 real estate scandal; after swallowing an overdose of barbiturates and drowning in a pond in the Rambouillet Forest, southwest of Paris. Boulin was the minister of longest record, having served all three governments of the Fifth Republic in nine different Cabinet posts in 15 years. A respected labor negotiator, he was rumored to have been a likely successor to the unpopular French Prime Minister, Raymond Barre. Initial speculation that Boulin was driven to suicide by published accounts of his alleged misconduct triggered a flurry of attacks on the nation's press, but the minister's own suicide note reviled a judicial system gone wrong.

DIED. Mamie Doud Eisenhower, 82, widow of President Dwight D. Eisenhower; following a stroke; in Washington, D.C. (see NATION).

DIED. Rachele Mussolini, 89, shy, fiercely loyal widow of Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini; of a heart attack; in Carpena di Forli, Italy. Rachele Guidi met Mussolini in 1906 while working in the kitchen at his father's inn. He threatened to commit suicide if she would not marry him, but they lived together five years before the union was made legal in 1915. During Il Duce's rise and reign from 1922 to 1943, Donna Rachele remained at home, keeping house and rearing their five children. After the dictator was shot by partisans and hanged by the heels along with Claretta Petacci, his best-known mistress, his destitute widow returned to her native Forli. There she battled successfully for her right to a government pension, the Christian burial of Mussolini's remains and the return of many former possessions. She also ran a restaurant-inn for the past 15 years. Said she: "With all the troubles in my life, if I couldn't make a plate of tortellini or bring somebody a glass of wine, I'd have jumped out the window long ago."

DIED. Sir Barnes Neville Wallis, 92, British wizard of aircraft design who invented the "bouncing bombs" used to destroy German dams along the Ruhr, a World War II exploit celebrated in a book and the film The Dam Busters; in Leatherhead, England. Sir Barnes' career began with his World War I work on a British counterpart to the German zeppelin, included his development of the first swing-wing jet aircraft and hollow aerofoil design, and ended in 1971 with his efforts to improve upon the supersonic Concorde, a machine he considered rather primitive.