MILESTONES

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, CHRISTINE GORMAN, LINA LOFARO, MICHAEL QUINN, ALAIN L. SANDERS AND SIDNEY URQUHART

DIED. YISRAEL GALILI, 72, Israeli weapons designer who invented the Galil automatic rifle and assisted in the development of Israel's most notorious export, the Uzi; following a collapse; in Givatayim, Israel.

DIED. LIEUT. COLONEL MATT URBAN, 75, World War II hero; in Holland, Michigan. Urban's World War II exploits across the European theater ultimately earned him more combat decorations than any other soldier in American history, including the Medal of Honor and seven Purple Hearts for wounds received in combat, like the bullet that tore out a vocal cord and left him raspy-voiced to the end of his days. He led a milder civilian life as a recreation director.

DIED. MORRIS BERNARD ZALE, 93, retailer; in Dallas. Born into poverty in Russia, Zale grew prosperous mass-marketing jewelry in America through his string of 1,200 Zale's stores, where credit lines and other come-ons sold luxury to the less affluent.

DIED. EDWARD L. BERNAYS, 103, public relations pioneer; in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bernays, the Thomas Edison of American p.r., actually promoted Thomas Edison in the course of a long career that began in earnest when Bernays set up shop in 1919. Now regarded as the virtual inventor of modern public relations, he promoted Enrico Caruso, Ivory soap, Henry Ford, World War I, hairnets, various projects for every President from Coolidge to Eisenhower, the color green (at the request of Lucky Strike cigarettes, concerned that women were resisting the green packaging because it clashed with their clothes) and Time Inc. Along the way, Bernays developed many now commonplace opinion-shaping strategies, including celebrity endorsements and the use of surveys and polling data, both for research and as selling points in their own right. As his reputation grew, so did his opinion of his profession, which he referred to, in a slightly Orwellian coinage, as "the engineering of consent."