Milestones Feb. 16, 2004

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CHARGED. JOSEPH SMITH, 37, auto mechanic; with the abduction and first-degree murder of Carlie Brucia, 11; in Sarasota, Fla. Brucia's body was found in a church parking lot four days after a security camera recorded her kidnapping at a nearby car wash.

ACQUITTED. ABDELGHANI MZOUDI, 31, Moroccan electrical-engineering student and the second suspect to stand trial for helping the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers; of charges of accessory to murder and membership in al-Qaeda; in Hamburg, Germany. Mzoudi's former roommate was convicted of the same charges last year, but German prosecutors attributed their failure in this case to Washington's refusal to allow testimony from captured terrorist suspects.

DIED. JAMES JORDAN JR., 73, advertising executive who created some of the catchiest product slogans in Madison Avenue history; of an apparent heart attack; in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1968 he came up with the line "Wisk beats ring around the collar," reportedly after research found shirt-collar dirt to be among homemakers' peskiest wash problems. He also drummed into Americans' heads the notions that Tareyton smokers "would rather fight than switch" and that "Delta is ready when you are."

DIED. THOMAS H. MOORER, 91, Chief of Naval Operations during the Vietnam War (1967-70) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-74); in Bethesda, Md. In a 1998 CNN documentary and an accompanying TIME story, he was quoted as confirming that U.S. forces had used nerve gas in Laos during the Vietnam War. Moorer denied he ever said that, and both CNN and TIME retracted the charges and apologized to him.

DIED. ALAN BULLOCK, 89, Oxford historian and author of the first major postwar biography of Adolf Hitler; in Oxfordshire, England. Soon after World War II, he began an examination of the minutes of the Nuremberg trials, and in 1952 he published Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Unlike some later biographies, Bullock's book, which sold some 3 million copies, portrayed Hitler as pathologically evil but lacking in ideological convictions.

DIED. ELEANOR HOLM WHALEN, 90, saucy Olympic swimming champion; in Miami. After winning the gold medal in the 100-m backstroke at the 1932 Games, she was favored to win again in 1936 in Berlin. But before the Games, she was thrown off the U.S. team for drinking and throwing dice with sportswriters. Her bad behavior, ahead of its time, propelled her to celebrity. She appeared in the movie Tarzan's Revenge and swam in Billy Rose's Aquacade at the 1939-40 World's Fair, a spectacle that landed her on the cover of TIME.

DIED. M.M. KAYE, 95, author whose 1978 masterwork, The Far Pavilions, was sometimes likened to Gone With the Wind; in Lavenham, England. Born Mary Margaret Kaye to British parents in pre-independence India, she dabbled in painting (and amateur theater, left) but earned worldwide fame as a novelist. Her richly detailed story of a British orphan who is raised as a Hindu and falls for an Indian princess became a best seller and, in 1984, an HBO mini-series.