Milestones: Sep. 9, 1985

DIED. Samantha Smith, 13, Maine student whose 1982 letter to Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov asking how he would "help to not have a war" brought her international celebrity as a peace envoy; with her father and six other people in the crash of a commuter plane; in Auburn, Me. Andropov's unexpected reply included an invitation to come and see for herself how much the Soviet people wanted peace. She did, on a much publicized two-week tour of the U.S.S.R. in the summer of 1983. That trip led to TV talk-show appearances, interviews with adults on a children's cable TV program and, finally, to a part in an upcoming series, Lime Street, starring Robert Wagner. Smith was eulogized in Moscow as a champion of peace, and her funeral drew 1,000 mourners, including Wagner and Vladimir Kulagin, a Soviet diplomat who read a personal message of condolence from Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.