Milestones Aug. 16, 1999

MARRIED. RORY KENNEDY, 30, filmmaker and youngest child of Robert F. Kennedy, to writer MARK BAILEY, 30; in Athens, Greece. The wedding, originally planned for July 17 in Hyannis Port, Mass., was postponed after the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister, Lauren Bessette.

ARRAIGNED. LAURIE HIETT, 36, wife of the U.S. Army colonel leading the antidrug war in Colombia; on charges of conspiring to ship cocaine to the U.S.; in New York City. She denies the allegations.

AILING. RAISA GORBACHEV, 67, former First Lady of the Soviet Union; with leukemia; in Munster, Germany, where she is receiving chemotherapy.

SENTENCED. CHARLES BUTLER JR., 21, and STEVEN MULLINS, 25; to life in prison without parole, for the murder of gay computer operator Billy Jack Gaither; in Rockford, Ala.

SENTENCED. ROBERT DOWNEY JR., 34, trouble-prone actor; to three years in jail, for violating terms of his probation for a 1996 drug conviction; in Malibu, Calif.

DIED. JOE DIMAGGIO JR., 57, the reclusive and penurious only son of the baseball legend; apparently of natural causes; in Antioch, Calif. A sometime junkyard worker, he was estranged from Joe Sr. A cousin said, "He lived in the shadow of his father and could not rise above that."

DIED. WILLIE MORRIS, 64, hard-living, softhearted author; of a heart attack; in Jackson, Miss. (see EULOGY, below).

DIED. NIRAD CHAUDHURI, 101, Indian-born author critical of the New India promoted by Gandhi and Nehru; in Oxford, England. The Autobiography of the Unknown Indian (1951) cemented his reputation as an astute chronicler of the knotty relationship between England and India. Born into the Bengal Hindu aristocracy, he rued the decline of the Bengal Renaissance, a movement he hoped would establish India as the Western country of his dreams.