Whicker was best known for the award-winning "Whicker's World" globe-trotting documentary series which ran on the publicly funded BBC and ITV networks between 1959 and 1988.

One of his programs featured the Haitian dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The hit BBC satirical program Monty Python parodied Whicker's military-style demeanor in a sketch set on a tropical island where everyone acted and dressed like Whicker.

Whicker had been suffering from bronchial pneumonia and died on Jersey in the Channel Islands, his home since the 1970s, his spokeswoman said.

Valerie Kleeman, his partner of 40 years, said Whicker had always loved his work.

"He said that he didn't know where work ended and private life began. Quoting Noel Coward, he would say, 'Work is more fun than fun'," she said in a statement.

A captain in the British Army during World War Two, the Egypt-born Whicker was one of the first Allied soldiers to enter Milan and filmed footage of the body of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

He became a journalist after the war and joined the BBC in 1957 and worked on the current affairs show "Tonight" but it was "Whicker's World" that made the journalist with his trademark blazer and moustache into a household name.

He retired from full-time broadcasting in 1998 but returned in 2009 with a BBC series, "Alan Whicker's Journey of a Lifetime", in which he returned to many of the locations and people he had encountered during his career.

In 2005 he received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from the queen for services to broadcasting.

(Reporting by Max de Haldevang; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith and Michael Roddy)

The findings indicate that as the ancestors to modernevolved, anatomical changes significantly lagged behind habitat and behavioral adaptations, said Adrian Lister, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, England.

"It only makes sense that behavior is a powerful driver of evolution, and that by taking the behavioral step to eat grass, it imposes the selection pressure for the right kind of teeth," Lister told LiveScience. "The idea has been around for around 100 years, but there have been few demonstrated examples. This is the first example from the fossil record."

About 10 million years ago, during a time period known as the Miocene epoch, the east African climate became dryer and cooler, prompting the gradual spread of grasslands over areas that were once heavily forested. []

"What we find with a lot of mammal groups is that some species switched their diets," Lister said. "During this time, the earliest true elephants went from what we describe as 'browsers,' which eat mostly leaves from trees and shrubs, to what we call 'grazers,' which mostly eat grass."

Lister used data that looked for specificof ancient elephants in east Africa. As animals' teeth grow and form, chemical traces of food and water become locked into the enamel, which enable paleontologists to determine the diets of extinct animals.

By studying these fossilized teeth, Lister noticed that the change in feeding behavior occurred about 7 million years ago, which is about 3 million years before corresponding anatomical changes evident in the structure and shape of the teeth can be found in the fossil record.

Since grass is tougher to eat than leafy greens,tend to have higher-crowned teeth with more enamel ridges, Lister said. This is because grazers tend to pick up more grit from the soil, which can wear teeth down

"We don't see this change in crown height until about 4 million years ago, so there's a lag of several million years," Lister said. "Even with the wrong teeth for it, by starting to eat grass as food, these animals were imposing a lot of selective pressure. But, it required the behavioral change first."

While Lister is still unsure why the gap between the behavioral and anatomical changes is so great, he hopes future studies will be able to unearth more clues.

"The reason for the lag is not completely and satisfactorily explained," Lister said. "What I was hoping to do with this paper is show the kind of data that we can put together to answer these types of questions. We can see whether behaviors drive the , which, in my opinion, has been sidelined in evolutionary biology. Now, because we have the means to look at it directly in the fossil record, we can try looking for it."

Detailed results of the study were published online today (June 26) in the journal Nature.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter . Follow LiveScience , & . Original article on.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With time running out, U.S. officials are struggling to cope with the task of launching the new online health insurance exchanges at the heart of President Barack Obama's signature health reforms by an October 1 deadline.

The White House, and federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), must ensure that working marketplaces open for enrollment in all 50 states in less than 80 days, and are responding to mounting pressure by concentrating on three essential areas that will determine whether the most critical phase of Obamacare succeeds or fails.

"The administration right now is in a triage mode. Seriously, they do not have the resources to implement all of the provisions on time," Washington and Lee University professor Timothy Jost, a healthcare reform expert and advocate, told an oversight panel in the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

Current and former administration officials, independent experts and business representatives say the three priorities are the creation of an online portal that will make it easy for consumers to compare insurance plans and enroll in coverage; the capacity to effectively process and deliver government subsidies that help consumers pay for the insurance; and retention of the law's individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans to have health insurance when Obama's healthcare reform law comes into full force in 2014.

Measures deemed less essential, such as making larger employers provide health insurance to their full-time workers next year or face fines, and requiring exchanges to verify the health insurance and income status of applicants, have already been postponed or scaled back.

"The closer you get to the actual launch, the more you focus on what is essential versus what could be second-order issues," said a former administration official. "That concentrates the mind in a different kind of way, and that's what's happening here."

But the risk of failure in the form of major delays is palpable, given the administration's limited staff and financial resources, as well as the stubborn political opposition of Republicans, who have denied new money for the effort in Congress and prevented dozens of states from cooperating with initiatives that offer subsidized health coverage to millions of lower income uninsured people.

Any further delay could help Republicans make Obamacare's troubles a focus of their campaign in next year's congressional midterm elections and in the 2016 presidential race.

HHS denies that its strategy has changed and insists that implementation continues to meet the milestones laid out by planners 18 months ago.

"All of the systems are exactly where we want them to be today. They will be ready to perform fully on October 1," said Mike Hash, director of the HHS Office of Health Reform.

White House officials acknowledge the approach of the open enrollment deadline has put a greater emphasis on priorities. They describe the strategy as a "smart, adaptive policy" and assert that delayed or scaled-back regulations demonstrate better policy decisions or flexibility with stakeholders, rather than a need to minimize distractions.

NO MARGIN FOR ERROR

Advocates point out that the reform, formally titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and informally known as Obamacare, constitutes the most sweeping healthcare legislation since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, large successful government programs for the elderly and the low income that also faced fierce political opposition when they were created in 1965. Both required years of work after their launch to refine implementation.

The administration has already delayed or scaled back at least half a dozen health reform measures since last year. These include regulations involving star quality ratings for insurance company plans, the choice of insurance plans for small-business employees and a requirement that state Medicaid agencies notify individuals of their eligibility for federal assistance.

Other efforts that could still be delayed include deadlines for some health insurers to get their plans certified by HHS as well as requirements for how the insurance exchanges provide customer service.

House Speaker John Boehner and other House Republican leaders, warning of a "train wreck", have called on Obama to defer an essential task: the individual mandate, which requires people to have insurance coverage in 2014 or face penalties that begin modestly, but rise sharply by 2016.

But experts say it is the other essential tasks - establishing the high-tech capabilities necessary to process government insurance subsidies and create online shopping and enrollment for consumers - that could be most vulnerable with such a compressed timetable.

"The biggest hurdle is to get the systems up and running," said one health insurance official. "Nothing's happened so far that prevents you from being up and running on October 1. But there's virtually no margin for error."

The administration is working according to an ambitious schedule for testing a technology hub and its ability to transfer consumer data on health coverage, income, tax credits and other topics between federal agencies, insurance companies and states. The hub is already exchanging data between the necessary agencies.

A report from Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms says state-run exchanges are on track for a successful October 1 launch and have exceeded federal minimum requirements in some cases.

Failure to have adequate systems in place by September 4, when HHS is due to give insurers final notice about which health plans are qualified to be sold on 34 state exchanges run by the federal government, could delay open enrollment by days or weeks but still allow the law's core reform provisions to take effect on January 1, experts said.

Insurers will have several days in August to review plan data as it would be presented to prospective enrollees in side-by-side comparisons online. The administration also needs to test the system with a wider audience than the IT experts working on the exchanges to make sure they are consumer-friendly.

Michael Marchand, spokesman for Washington's Health Benefit Exchange, said the state's online marketplace had conducted frequent tests with the federal data hub, which had worked well so far. But any last-minute changes to the government's requirements to its operations could throw a wrench into the IT system, he said.

"If you start adding or removing lines of code it could bring the whole thing down," he said. "As you add or take away pieces, you have to re-test from the beginning."

(Additional reporting by Patrick Temple-West in Washington and Sharon Begley in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Martin Howell)

Here are some key quotes from Sunday:

"There is a difference between the law and what people think is fundamentally justice."

Barbara Arnwine, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington-based civil rights group.

-------------------------------------

"I'm sure jurors did what they felt was right in accordance with the law but maybe the law is wrong, maybe society is wrong; there's a lot that needs fixing."

Jessica Nacinovich, congregant of the Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

---------------------------------------

"The Justice Department would face significant challenges in bringing a federal civil rights case against Mr. Zimmerman."

Alan Vinegrad, the former U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

----------------------------------------

"He killed a human being and he walked away from that courthouse scot free. It's just terrible."

Tara Banks, a 46-year-old black woman from Gainesville, Fla., who said the verdict was causing her to lose faith in the courts.

------------------------------------------

"We're going to raise our voices against the root causes of this kind of tragedy. We'll aim our fight for justice against the ease with which people can get firearms in this country."

Excerpt of a sermon by the Rev. Jacqueline Lewis at Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

I just want to be Tiffany, she says matter-of-factly.

Her sedentary routine is her biggest obstacle to a healthy life, says Bailey, a 29-year-old Illinois resident and mom to three. Her job as a freelance writer means she sits five to 10 hours a day and, while shes cut back significantly on her 12-cans-a-day Coke and Pepsi habit, shes not in the best shape.

I live in a rural town roughly 80 miles southwest of Chicago, . There is not much to do out here, so getting enough exercise throughout the day is a challenge. I walk with my children around the community, but even that isn't enough.

Sitting while working, she says, has affected my ability to get up and move.

After her pregnancies, her body didnt slim back down; instead, she became 150 pounds overweight. Shes eating better now, she says, and shes noticed a difference in her appearance from just two months ago.

Tiffany Bailey with one of her sons. My insecurities about my weight have caused me to miss out on things I shouldn't have, she says. My kids deserve better, and so do I. I lost my own mother when I was only 8, and I don't want my babies to suffer the same heartbreak I did.

Baileys story is representative of a significant finding in a study released Wednesday in the : While Americans are living longer 78.2 years for the average citizen in 2010, up from 75.2 in 1990 the country is not necessarily healthier.

Morbidity and chronic disability now account for nearly half of the U.S. health burden, the AMA concluded, and improvements in population health in the United States have not kept pace with advances in population health in other wealthy nations.

Americans lag behind other developed countries in key metrics: premature mortality, years lived with disabilities and a healthy life expectancy.

The United States, the AMA noted, has improved internally against those gauges in the past two decades, but that progress belies increased challenges on a variety of other health hurdles for which Americans are at higher risk: obesity, poor diets, high blood pressure, lack of exercise and alcohol use.

Those particular health concerns surfaced frequently this week in first-person accounts Yahoo News readers shared. We asked them: What is one health challenge you battle daily? How is that obstacle keeping you from being well? How are you fighting it? Do you expect to live a long and, importantly, healthy life?

Here are some more of their stories.

If its Saturday night in Peoria, Ill., James McClister has two choices: head to the movies or drink.

James McClister Unfortunately, I find both activities equally enjoyable, so whenever I'm not simply drinking, I'm drinking at a movie theater, McClister says. Of course, you're probably thinking, Well, that sounds pretty awesome; and it is. But such awesomeness sadly comes with a consequence: bad health.

McClister, 25, says hes challenged by a lack of self-control.

Greasy pizza, chocolate bars, those long strings of cherry-flavored taffy, doughnuts and pretty much every flavor and brand of small cheesy crackers my mouth is actually watering if any of these foods are placed in front of me, or within a reasonable radius, I will devour them in the most literal sense of the word, he says. I will eat every crumb, empty every package. No junk food is beyond me so long as it's not actually beyond me.

In his teens, McClister says, hed sneak out of bed at night to find where his mom had stashed these tube-like chocolate cakes filled with swirls of pure white cream, and hed bolt them down. His high-octane metabolism, he says, would assuage any worries of weight gain.

But now, as an adult, his piling the junk food atop the booze is taking a toll: Alcohol is unarguably bad for you. It fattens you up, riddles your organs with all kinds of nasty things, hinders your memory I think increases your chances for a whole host of terrible diseases. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering how the stuff is legal. It's really just a bad substance.

Hes noticed the unhealthy effects in his midsection, so he picked up running and became a vegetarian. Still, he says, I fear it's only a matter of time before it all catches up with me.

When Kimberly Morgans husband is deployed overseas with the U.S. Navy Reserves or through his civilian job with the Defense Department, her poor sleeping habits emerge. Soon, shell notice the wrinkles deepening in her face and the thickening in her waistline.

Kimberly Morgan, self-medicating with copious amounts of caffeine and sugar. It's always worst when my husband is deployed, the 42-year-old Florida mom says. There's no one else around to help out, and once you lose a good sleep pattern, it's very hard to find it again.

In her words, heres how Morgan sees her own health hurdles:

Husband deploys in January. Kim immediately launches into a flurry of activity to keep herself mentally and physically occupied. This includes doing things like playing Words With Friends until she passes out from exhaustion or reading way beyond that. She reads in bed, so this helps.

By February, she's all funned out.

She makes a fresh pot of coffee at daybreak that's 10 cups of high-octane awake by most folks' standards, but just barely makes our intrepid mom lucid. Should she have a headache or not sleep well the night before, she heads to Starbucks where she gets the sweetest, largest, most bad-for-her pick-me-up on the menu (venti white mocha, and sometimes with whipped cream, because, as she tells the barista, "You only live once, honey"). Six bazillion calories later, she's functioning on a normal level, able to do things like speak coherently and drive a car. By dinner, she's crashing, but Kim cannot afford to do this, because she has three kids and a whole night of homework, baths, jammies and bedtime stories to deal with, plus the laundry that didn't get folded when she crashed last night at 2 a.m.

Four months later, when her husband returns from Afghanistan, shell have gained 15 pounds, but wont have recovered any lost sleep.

Work is killing Justin Schmid. Well, sort of.

The 39-year-old Arizona resident says his job is too routine to be healthy: He sits, he eats, he commutes.

My office job is, by far, the biggest challenge to living a healthy life, says Schmid, who works as an editor at a Phoenix-area nonprofit. Because sitting all day (not to mention the sugary snacks his work provides) zaps his energy level, hes sometimes too tired to exercise after work.

I arrive at home with barely any desire to move, he says, mourning all the workouts hes forsaken that couldve helped him shed those pesky 10 extra pounds.

Still, hes trying, and because he does manage some exercise (the gym, yoga, mountain biking and running comprise his workouts), hes stayed reasonably healthy. He uses his vacation to combat his sit-all-day lifestyle, opting to hike, walk and run while away from the office. And hed like to work out more with barbells and kettlebells, and do more pull-ups and yoga. (Better yet, he notes: Commute via bicycle. But, he says, theres that damn Arizona heat )

Schmid doesnt see himself as an optimist I'm not a glass-half-full guy about my kind-of-healthy life, he says and believes the deck is stacked against office workers: Every day, I wish American corporate culture relied less on the 40-hour work week and better valued the benefits of a physically fit workforce. But that's not likely.

Read more stories from readers about their health challenges:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama stepped into the fray in the U.S. Congress over immigration on Saturday, urging Americans to press the Republican-led House of Representatives to approve a plan that is at risk of stalling.

Obama used his weekly address to make his case for an immigration overhaul that was approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate and would create a pathway to citizenship for as many as 11 million people living illegally in the United States.

The president has been treading carefully on the issue so as not to antagonize Republicans who adamantly oppose the immigration plan but may find it politically necessary to help attract Hispanic voters in future elections.

"Now the House needs to act so I can sign common-sense immigration reform into law," Obama said. "And if you agree, tell your Representatives that now is the time. Call or email or post on their Facebook walls and ask them to get this done."

In his address, Obama seized on comments from his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, who this week threw his support behind the overhaul effort. Obama has often criticized Bush in the past but the two men are in agreement on this issue.

"If Democrats and Republicans - including President Bush and I - can agree on something, that's a pretty good place to start," Obama said.

The White House says immigration reform would boost the U.S. economy, contending in a report this week that it would help the economy grow by 3.3 percent by 2023 and reduce the budget deficit by $850 billion over 20 years.

"If we don't do anything to fix our broken system, our workforce will continue to shrink as baby boomers retire," Obama said.

Republicans in the House have vowed not to take up the Senate bill approved two weeks ago but instead want to work on immigration in a piecemeal fashion, with a priority on improved security along the U.S.-Mexican border.

House Speaker John Boehner has the tough job of convincing conservatives that the Senate approach is anything but amnesty for people who have broken the law after entering the United States illegally or overstaying their visas.

While the conservative opposition has put the legislation in doubt, proponents still see a chance that an immigration overhaul can be approved in the weeks and months ahead.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

A mixed batch of U.S. earnings kept the buying in check as did a weaker than anticipated consumer sentiment survey from the University of Michigan.

This week has been largely positive in stock markets, especially after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that the U.S. needs "highly accommodative monetary policy" or low interest rates "for the foreseeable future."

The S&P 500 index closed Thursday at an all-time high as investor fears that the central bank will pull back on its economic stimulus too quickly were eased. The Fed is buying $85 billion a month in bonds to keep interest rates low and to encourage spending and hiring.

"Equities are still subject to the positive bias established by Bernanke's comments," said David White, a trader at Spreadex.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading 100 shares was broadly unchanged Friday, up 0.02 percent, at 6,544 while Germany's DAX rose 0.6 percent to 8,212. The CAC-40 in France, underperformed, trading 0.3 percent lower at 3,856.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was off 0.2 percent at 15,422 while the broader S&P 500 index dropped 0.1 percent to 1,673.

U.S. traders had a raft of earnings news to digest. While profits at big banks Wells Fargo and JP Morgan came in better than expected, UPS cut its profit outlook and said it's seeing a slowdown in U.S. industry.

Meanwhile, the University of Michigan's main consumer confidence index fell slightly, to 83.9 points in July from 84.1 in June. The median forecast in the markets was for a modest rise to 84.7.

The dollar continued to recoup some of the losses it posted in the wake of Bernanke's pledge, with the euro trading 0.08 percent lower at $1.3084 and the dollar 0.32 percent higher at 99.29 yen. The dollar suffered widespread selling after Bernanke's comments as investors priced in a growing likelihood that the Fed's monetary policy will remain loose for the time being. Looser monetary policy tends to weaken a country's currency.

While the main focus in markets during the latter part of the week has been on the Fed, investors have a number of other issues to contend with, notably the state of the Chinese economy, the world's second-largest.

Surprisingly weak trade figures earlier this week raised the prospect that China's slowdown will be sharper than anticipated as China's central bank tightens credit to reduce financial distortions. China announces April-June growth figures on Monday morning and the mood ahead of the release was nervous the main index in Shanghai fell 1.6 percent to 2,134.50.

"China could be a cloud on the horizon after the finance minister suggested that growth could come in at 7 percent for this year, which is below the government's official forecast as well as a whole host of others," said Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at CMC Markets.

Europe's debt crisis also remains in the spotlight amid ongoing concerns over the Portuguese government and whether the country may need another bailout.

However, the overall European concerns have been contained somewhat this week by the news that Greece has managed to get its next batch of bailout cash without too much trouble.

Investors got some further relief Friday with a broadly positive assessment of Ireland's public finances by the Standard & Poor's ratings agency. S&P said there is "more than one-in-three probability that Ireland could over-achieve its fiscal targets and reduce its government debt faster than we currently expect." As a result, it revised its outlook on Ireland's BBB+ rating to positive.

Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 index closed up 0.2 percent at 14,506.25 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.8 percent to 21,277.28. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2 percent at 4,973.0.

(Reuters) - New French Open champion Graeme McDowell believes Le Golf National will deliver a thrilling Ryder Cup when it hosts the biennial team event in 2018.

The Northern Irishman romped to a four-stroke victory on Sunday after chalking up only four bogeys all week at the demanding 7,331-yard, par-71 venue on the outskirts of Paris.

"To me this is one of the best courses on the European Tour, it's tough, well set-up, but fair," McDowell told reporters after climbing from ninth to sixth in the world rankings.

"It's going to be a phenomenal venue come 2018. This course has got better and better every year and I think we are in for one of the greatest Ryder Cups of all time."

McDowell's triumph was his third of the year, following the World Match Play Championship in Bulgaria and the RBC Heritage in South Carolina, but he described his French Open success as "very special".

"This is a beautiful trophy with a lot of great names. I look down and I see Byron Nelson in 1955 - that's a pretty good start - Peter Oosterhuis, Henry Cotton," said the 33-year-old.

"It is one of the most prestigious events on the tour. To win a national open is very special," he added after the first prize of 500,000 euros ($641,700) lifted him to second in the Race to Dubai money list behind U.S. Open champion Justin Rose.

"The reception I received this week was amazing. The people here this week really blew me away with the way they treated me."

McDowell has won nine European Tour events and five have come in national opens - he also triumphed in the 2004 Italian Open, 2008 Scottish Open, 2010 Wales Open and 2010 U.S. Open.

The Northern Irishman went into Sunday's final round in a tie for the lead with Richard Sterne and he said the two players shared plenty of banter over the closing 18 holes.

"Richard's a good kid," said McDowell of the runner-up. "I've known him a long time and I like to interact with the crowd and my playing partners.

"He gave me a little bit of stick for a putt I made on 15 and then he gave me a little bit of a shoulder budge as I walked off the 16th tee as if to say, you lucky soandso, after I got a nice bounce.

"Richard is a great competitor and he pushed me all the way."

($1 = 0.7792 euros)

(Editing by Patrick Johnston)

Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 30 cents to $106.82 at early afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The last time oil was above $107 was in March last year.

The contract vaulted $2.99 to $106.52 on Wednesday after the Energy Department said U.S. crude supplies fell by 9.9 million barrels in the week ended July 5. Gasoline supplies fell by 2.6 million barrels. The price of oil has shot up $11 a barrel in two weeks on rising demand in the U.S. and political upheaval in the Middle East.

In the past two weeks, oil supplies have dropped 20.2 million barrels, which is slightly more than one day's consumption for the U.S., while gasoline supplies have fallen 4.3 million barrels.

Over the same time, demand in the U.S., the world's largest consumer of gasoline, rose sharply after months of weakness. Demand rose 4 percent compared with the same period last year, to 9.3 million barrels per day.

Brent crude was up 28 cents to $107.95 a barrel on the ICE exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on Nymex:

Wholesale gasoline dropped 0.1 cent to $3.014 a gallon.

Natural gas fell 1 cent to $3.67 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Heating oil rose 1.2 cents to $3.014 a gallon.

Charles "Chuck" Foley died July 1 at a care facility in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. His son, Mark Foley, said Thursday that his father had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Foley and a collaborator, Neil Rabens, were hired in the mid-1960s by a St. Paul manufacturing firm that wanted to expand into games and toys. They came up with a game to be played on a mat on the floor, using a spinner to direct players to place their hands and feet on different colored circles.

"Dad wanted to make a game that could light up a party," Mark Foley said. "They originally called it 'Pretzel.' But they sold it to Milton Bradley, which came up with the 'Twister' name."

The game became a sensation after Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it on "The Tonight Show" in 1966.

Hasbro Inc., which now manufacturers the game, said it continues to be a top seller.

"What makes the Twister game timeless is the fact that it's always been about showing off your free spirit and just having some laugh-out-loud, out of your seat fun," Hasbro Inc. said in a statement noting Foley's death.

Mark Foley said his father made little money from Twister, but that it never seemed to bother him much. The game was not his first invention, and far from his last.

Born in Lafayette, Ind., Foley's first invention came at the age of 8 a locking system for the cattle pen at his grandfather's farm. As a young man he worked as a salesman, but his interest in games and toys led him to apply for a job at a toy company in the Minneapolis area. He moved his family to Minnesota in 1962.

Over the years, Foley invented dozens of other toys and games. He also invented a product called un-du, a liquid adhesive remover.

Mark Foley is now president of un-du Products Inc., based in St. Louis Park. Chuck Foley had lived in North Carolina for a number of years, but his son said he returned to Minnesota six years ago when his health began to decline, to be closer to his family. Foley and his wife, Kathleen, had nine children. She died of breast cancer in 1975, and Foley never remarried.

"He never stopped having fun," Mark Foley said. "He tried to think like young people thought. He never wanted to grow up, and he always maintained his enthusiasm for seeing things through the eyes of a child."