Milestones Jul. 29, 2002

JAILED. NOELLE BUSH, 24, daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush; for two days; for violating the terms of a court-mandated drug-treatment program; in Tallahassee. Bush, who was found with a prescription drug in her possession, was arrested in January for trying to use a fake prescription for the antianxiety drug Xanax.

ARRAIGNED. JEREMY MORSE, 24, Inglewood, Calif., police officer caught punching a black teenager on videotape during an arrest earlier this month; on an assault charge; in Los Angeles. Morse and a colleague, Bijan Darvish, who was charged with filing a false police report, pleaded not guilty.

DIED. CHARLES BURTON, 59, one of a small band of British explorers who took part in the world’s first pole-to-pole expedition, a 52,000-mile trip; of a heart attack; in Framfield, England. Burton and friends set off from London in September 1979. Before arriving at the North Pole and returning home in August 1982, Burton, the son of a Royal Navy commander, battled the Sahara sun and a polar bear, survived on an ice floe for three months and married his fiance during a brief stop in Sydney, Australia.

DIED. COLONEL FLOYD J. THOMPSON, 69, the longest-serving prisoner of war in American history; of unknown causes; in Key West, Fla. After his plane was shot down in northern South Vietnam in 1964, Thompson endured physical and mental torture, including being hung by his thumbs, and five years in solitary. He stayed sane, he said, by building an imaginary house he and his wife would live in once he was freed by the Viet Cong–which he finally was, after nine years.

DIED. ALAN LOMAX, 87, folk-music collector who helped discover Woodie Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton, Muddy Waters and others; in Sarasota, Fla. Described as “a missionary” by Bob Dylan, Lomax brought American folk music to the rest of the world, influencing the British skiffle craze of the 1950s, which gave rise to the Quarrymen, led by a young John Lennon.

DIED. JOAQUIN BALAGUER, 95, fedora-donning six-term President of the Dominican Republic; in Santo Domingo. Balaguer succeeded his boss, dictator Rafael Trujillo, winning the presidency in U.S.-controlled elections in 1966. One of Latin America’s last caudillos–or benevolent dictators–he maintained power for 22 years despite repressive tactics, establishing a loyal power base, largely through his paternal devotion to the country’s poor.