(2 of 2)
Died. Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Borgward, 72, German auto pioneer; of a heart ailment; in Bremen. A compact (5 ft. 4 in.) engineering genius, Borgward first made his mark in 1924 with a three-wheeled delivery truck, after World War II drove his firm to sixth place among West Germany's automakers by pouring millions into the production of mite-sized models such as the Minicar, in 1961, when the bug fad faded, went into bankruptcy.
Died. Major General Patrick Jay Hurley, 80, politician, last surviving member of Hoover's Cabinet, and outspoken U.S. envoy to China; in Santa Fe. The son of Irish immigrants, Hurley was born in Oklahoma Indian territory, worked as a cowboy and miner before making a fortune in oil and real estate, served as Hoover's War Secretary, became F.D.R.'s refreshingly direct envoy to Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek ("You ain't seen nothing yet," he snorted, when Stalin boasted of Russian steel mills. "You oughta see ours"), resigned as Ambassador to China when his demand for more resolute support for the Communist-pressed Kuomintang was ignored, and "retired" to New Mexico to run unsuccessfully for Senator and pile up yet another fortune—in uranium.
Died. Edgar Sengier, 83, Belgian metals magnate, longtime (1932-1950) top executive of the Congo's Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, $198 million mining cartel (copper, cobalt, radium); of a heart attack; in Cannes, France. Sengier scored his most foresighted coup in 1940, when, acting on a tip from a British physicist, he shipped 1,250 tons of uranium ore from Africa to a Staten Island warehouse, later astounded U.S. scientists who came in search of raw material for a top-secret project, with "I have been waiting for you," and sold them the ore that went into Fermi's squash court and Hiroshima's bombs.