Milestones Jan. 17, 2005

OVERTURNED. The murder convictions of ANDREA YATES, 40, Texas mother who in 2001 drowned her five children in the family bathtub; by a Texas appeals court, because of false testimony from a witness for the prosecution; in Houston. In testifying that Yates knew right from wrong, psychiatrist Park Dietz referred to a Law & Order episode concerning a depressed woman who drowns her kids, which prosecutors suggested influenced Yates’ actions. The court subsequently learned that no such episode exists. Although Yates’ lawyer said he would not seek her immediate release from prison, her mother is pushing for hospitalization instead of a new trial.

DIED. MAKGATHO MANDELA, 54, eldest son of former South African President Nelson Mandela; of AIDS-related complications; in Johannesburg. Mandela announced the cause of death at a news conference, saying AIDS, which kills 600 South Africans daily, requires public discussion–an African taboo, yet “the only way of making it appear to be a normal illness.”

DIED. BOB MATSUI, 63, long-serving Democratic Congressman from Sacramento, Calif., whose humanity and level-headedness won him fans on both sides of the aisle; of pneumonia brought on by a rare, recently diagnosed bone-marrow disease; in Bethesda, Md. Confined at a California internment camp with his family and other Japanese Americans at the start of World War II, he fought for war reparations and had been expected to help lead the campaign against the President’s proposed revamping of Social Security.

DIED. SHIRLEY CHISHOLM, 80, trailblazing Congresswoman and candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination; in Ormond Beach, Fla. The first black woman to sit in Congress, she championed such concerns of her underprivileged Brooklyn constituency as day-care funding and minimum wages for domestic workers. Describing herself as “unbought and unbossed,” she criticized Congress as being run by “a small group of old men” and protested the “petrified” seniority system that initially placed her on the Agriculture Committee.

CDIED. FRANK KELLY FREAS, 82, artist whose career included designing posters for NASA, illustrating Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction books and creating the definitive portraits of Mad magazine’s grinning mascot, Alfred E. Newman, originally drawn by Norman Mingo; in West Hills, Calif.

DIED. ROSEMARY KENNEDY, 86, oldest sister of President John F. Kennedy and the inspiration for the Special Olympics; in Fort Atkinson, Wis. Born mildly retarded, she was 23 when her father Joseph Kennedy, afraid of a scandal that could damage the family’s reputation, arranged for her to have a lobotomy. The operation reduced her to an infantlike state, and she spent most of the rest of her life in an institution. In 1968 her younger sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, created the Special Olympics in her honor.

DIED. H. DAVID DALQUIST, 86, inventor of the Bundt pan, the world’s top-selling baking pan; in Edina, Minn. In 1950 at the request of a women’s group unhappy with their ceramic bakeware, he made an aluminum pan with folds for easy cutting. It rose to popularity in 1966 when a Texas woman used one to win second place in a Pillsbury Bake-Off.

DIED. WILL EISNER, 87, comic-book pioneer; in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The person after whom comics’ most prestigious award is named, Eisner helped launch a company in 1937 that created Dollman and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Later he created the Spirit, a witty antihero with no superpowers who roamed back alleys in search of bad guys, and wrote one of the first graphic novels, about a Bronx, N.Y., slumlord, A Contract with God. “My interest is not the superhero,” he said, “but the little man who struggles to survive in the city.”