Milestones, Apr. 18, 1932

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Died. Joseph Leiter, 63, capitalist, sportsman, famed wheat speculator; of pneumonia; in Chicago. Son of the late Tycoon Levi Zeigler Leiter (cofounder of Chicago's Marshall Field & Co.), at 29 he blazed upon the financial skies when, with $1,000,000 given him by his father as a graduation present, he cornered the wheat market, only to lose everything— including a paper profit of some $7,000,000 and $12,000,000 of his father's fortune—after being "double crossed" by some of his associates in the pit. In 1923 his sister, the Countess of Suffolk and Bershire (another sister, who died in 1906, was the wife of the late great Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, onetime Viceroy of India) brought suit to have him removed as trustee of the family's estate. She charged mismanagement and incompetency. After eight years' litigation, the suit was decided in Joseph Leiter's favor. Famed were his wine cellars, his race horses. Once he wrote a cook book, had it privately printed.

Died. Archduchess Maria Dorothea Amelia of Austria, 65, relict of the late pretender to the French throne, Louis Philippe Robert, Duke of Orleans; after long illness; in Budapest.

Died. Bill Picket, 65, oldtime bulldozer on the famed 101 Ranch of Col. Zachary Taylor Miller (TIME, April 4); in Noble County, Okla. A towering Negro, Picket "threw steers with his teeth." To advertise the 101 Ranch show in Mexico City. Col. Joseph C. Miller (brother of Col Zack) once bet that Picket could down a bull as quickly as a toreador. Mexicans whooped with derision, brought a great, black bull down from the mountains, posted $5,000 and the gate receipts. So sure were the Mexicans that Picket would be gored to death that they provided a coffin and burial squad. Entering the arena on a cayuse, Picket jumped on the back of the charging bull, sank his teeth in the bull's nose,, within seven minutes was sitting on its head. To avert a brawl between side-betting Mexican sports and Col. Miller's show hands, President Porfirio Diaz gave Picket a military escort, guaranteed the prize money.

Died. Whilhelm Ostwald, 78, German chemist, 1909 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry, the "Monist Pope," founder of the influential Zeitschrift fur Physikalische Chemie; at Grossbothen, Germany, whither he had retired (1906) from the University of Leipzig.

Died, Lord William Henry John North, 95, foxhunter. oldest British peer, great-grandson of George Ill's Prime Minister during the American Revolution; of old age; in his home, Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire, England. Last surviving godchild of Queen Adelaide, consort to William IV, Lord North branched from the same stem as Theodore Roosevelt, who once, on a ranch in North Dakota, rescued Lord North's son when his horse fell into a gully.

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