Milestones Dec. 7, 1998

SEPARATING. DENNIS RODMAN, 37, attention-starved, cross-dressing basketball player, and former Baywatch star CARMEN ELECTRA, 26; after nine days of marriage; in Los Angeles. Rodman, who was intoxicated during the ceremony, filed to annul the union.

AILING. MICHAEL J. FOX, 37, film and TV actor; of Parkinson's disease. Fox, who stars in ABC's Spin City, disclosed to PEOPLE that the disease was diagnosed in 1991 after he noticed a twitch in his finger during the filming of Doc Hollywood. Fox underwent brain surgery last March for the illness--a progressive degeneration of the central nervous system with no known cure. "I think I can help people by talking," he said.

DIED. STU UNGAR, 45, professional poker player; of as yet undetermined causes; in Las Vegas. Ungar, a legend on the gambling circuit, won poker's World Series for the third time in 1997.

DIED. HENRY HAMPTON, 58, Emmy-winning documentary producer; from a bone-marrow ailment brought on by lung cancer; in Boston. Hampton produced 60 films, many chronicling the lives of the poor, but he was best known for the 1987 civil rights opus Eyes on the Prize. Of the series, which won a Peabody Award for excellence in journalism, he said, "A hundred civil rights stories had been told, but it was always black people being saved by whites. In Eyes, we brought our people up in history."

DIED. FLIP WILSON, 64, caricaturist; of liver cancer; in Malibu, Calif. Creator of such pop cultural icons as Geraldine--the proud, sassy black woman who warned admirers that "What you see is what you get!"--Wilson was the first African-American entertainer to host a variety show. His goofy, outlandish style of humor was defiantly nonpolitical. "Funny is not a color," he said. "My main point is to be funny. If I can slip a message in there, fine."

DIED. VLADIMIR DEMIKHOV, 82, pioneering transplant surgeon; in an undisclosed location in Russia. Demikhov performed the world's first heart transplant, on a dog, in 1946.