Ring, owner reunited 54 years later

A woman who lost her class ring in Lake Michigan in 1954 has it back, thanks to a metal-detector hobbyist. Robert Savage found the ring about 12 years ago but only recently began looking for its owner. He did a bit of detective work by looking at the initials and the year on the ring. He found a Ludington (Mich.) High yearbook for 1955 and found that Jan Pedersen was the only person in the class with the right initials. Now Jan Zacharda, she says she had forgotten about the ring she lost at Ludington State Park. And she's even more puzzled that Savage found it in a lake about a dozen miles away.

Sold!

Life, for what it's worth

A man who auctioned his life — his house, his car, his job, even his friends — on eBay said today he is disappointed with the selling price: almost $384,000. Ian Usher, a British immigrant to Australia, put everything he owned as well as introductions to his friends on the online auction site after a painful breakup with his wife prompted him to seek a fresh start. Usher had hoped to get at least $480,000 for his life — his house and all its contents, car and a motorcycle, a personal watercraft, sky-diving gear, an introduction to friends and a trial period in his sales job — but said the final bid was enough for him to make a new start in life.

Hello, dolly

Something for grannies

Purimopueru is a knee-high Japanese doll with soft, apple-spotted cheeks and big black button eyes. It comes in green and pink. When you cuddle it or talk to it, it talks back. It's for grandmothers. The doll, an award-winner at the recent Tokyo Toy Show, is generating new sales among the elderly as the birthrate drops. Japan is the first developed country to register more annual deaths than births and the elderly will outnumber children two to one within five years, according to the Health Ministry.

Passages

Basil Rifkind, 73, a physician who was a national leader in the 1980s effort to persuade Americans to lower their cholesterol level, died of Parkinson's disease June 22 in Washington.

Today in History

1859: French acrobat Blondin (born Jean Francois Gravelet) walked a tightrope above the gorge of Niagara Falls as thousands of spectators watched.

1934: Adolf Hitler carried out his "blood purge" of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as "The Night of the Long Knives."

1971: A Soviet space mission ended in tragedy when three cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 11 were found dead inside their spacecraft after it had returned to Earth.

1998: Officials confirmed that the previously unidentified remains of a Vietnam War serviceman buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were those of Air Force pilot Michael J. Blassie.

Today's Birthdays

Singer Lena Horne, 91. Jazz musician Stanley Clarke, 57. Actor-comedian David Alan Grier, 53. Actor Vincent D'Onofrio, 49. Boxer Mike Tyson, 42. Actress Monica Potter, 37.

Seattle Times news services