Word: levitts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. GENE LEVITT, 79, Brooklyn-born TV writer-director who created the 1970s series Fantasy Island; of prostate cancer; in Los Angeles. Levitt produced cop shows like Barnaby Jones and Hawaii Five-0, but it was his success with the Ricardo Montalban-Herve Villechaize vehicle Fantasy Island ("Da plane! Da plane!") that allowed him to take a few years off to live on his sailboat in Hawaii...
...legalization of abortion in the early '70s prevented a significant number of would-be criminals from coming of age in the 1990s, according to a controversial study, "Legalized Abortion and Crime," by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and Stanford University law professor John Donohue III. They suggest that the rise in abortions after the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade may explain as much as half the overall decrease in crime from 1991 to 1997. Says Donohue: "In 1981 a third of all pregnancies ended in abortion. That social phenomenon will have a large repercussion...
Fewer offenses, Donohue and Levitt point out, are being perpetrated by people ages 24 and younger--those born after abortion was legalized. Increased abortions, they add, reduced the number of "unwanted" children born to teenage, unmarried and poor women--children considered most likely to commit crimes as adults...
Some criminologists, including Alfred Blumstein, director of the National Consortium on Violence Research, say Donohue and Levitt don't adequately factor in other variables, including the strong economy and crime-prevention measures. But if their research is proved correct, the duo say, crime stats should slide further over the next 20 years...
...construction magnate --Leo Burnett, advertising genius --Willis Carrier, maker of air-conditioning systems --Walt Disney, creator of animation and multimedia empire --Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co. --Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft --A.P. Giannini, architect of nationwide banking --Ray Kroc, hamburger meister --Estee Lauder, cosmetics tycoon --William Levitt, creator of suburbia --Lucky Luciano, criminal mastermind --Louis B. Mayer, Hollywood mogul --Charles Merrill, advocate of the small investor --Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony --Walter Reuther, labor leader --Pete Rozelle, football-league commissioner --David Sarnoff, father of broadcasting --Juan Trippe, aviation entrepreneur --Sam Walton, Wal-Mart dynamo --Thomas Watson...