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1930 - Joseph Crater, 41 years old and a New York Supreme Court Justice, mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. His wife, Estelle, declared Judge Crater to be legally dead in 1937.

1996 - NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin announced the possibility that a primitive form of microscopic life may have existed on Mars more than three billion years ago.
So, has the Martian microscopic life been declared legally dead?

Currently reading: Best American Mystery Stories edited by Lee Child and Otto Penzler. AARGH!