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Dead Pool 2nd August 2020

Let’s start off by awarding the points! With the passing of Olivia De Havilland – Nickie, Laura,  Dave J, Paul G, Paul C, and Sylvia each get 46 points; and not to be outdone – Liz, Mark, Shân, and Doug each get a whopping 146 points for listing her as one of their Big Three. Well done all of you, it’s certainly shook up the leaderboard somewhat. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Elton John has claimed he’d “be dead” if he hadn’t quit drugs and alcohol 30 years ago. The singer celebrated his 30th year of sobriety with a touching Instagram post, in which he showed the many cards sent to him by family and friends to mark his anniversary. “Reflecting on the most magical day having celebrated my 30th Sobriety Birthday,” John wrote in a caption. “So many lovely cards, flowers and chips from my sons, David, friends in the Program, staff at the office and in our homes. I’m truly a blessed man,” he continued. “If I hadn’t finally taken the big step of asking for help 30 years ago, I’d be dead. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the people who have inspired and supported me along the way.” He also uploaded a picture of himself cutting into a cake shaped like the number 30, and one showing off his 30-year sobriety coin. Coincidently, it’s also thirty years since he wrote a good song. So, if you see the little fella one evening in  London town, buy him a drink, set him up a line of coke and see if he helps one of us on the Pool to score some points.  

Tamar Braxton has confirmed that she attempted suicide in early July, while calling out reality television for “toxic exploitation”. The musician, reality TV star and sister of singer Toni, was taken to hospital on 16th July after being found unresponsive in a Los Angeles hotel suite by her boyfriend. In an Instagram post, accompanied by a photograph of her and son Logan, Braxton said that she had tried to take her own life. “Mental illness is real,” she wrote. “We have to normalise acknowledging it and stop associating it with shame and humiliation. The pain that I have experienced over the past 11 years has slowly eaten away at my spirit and my mental health … It was only God’s grace and His mercy on my attempt to end my pain and my life that I am here to utilise my voice.” Braxton also wrote that she had been “betrayed, taken advantage of, overworked and underpaid” throughout her time on reality television. She cited it as the source of her mental illness, and pledged to help “those who suffer from mental illness, including those of us whose mental illness was only a result from the toxic, systematic bondage that dwells in television.” She claimed that attempts to change her work circumstances had been ignored.    

The ongoing car crash known as Katie Price has confirmed she’s broken both her feet and ankles in a post on Instagram. Sharing a photo of both her legs encased in bandaging, Katie said: “Yes it’s true I have broken my ankles and my feet, I have to have both feet operated on and pins put in been told I won’t be able to walk for 3 to 6 months.” The mother-of-five, 42, is currently in Turkey on holiday but is expected to cut her holiday short in order to return home for further treatment. Katie is said to have spent the night in hospital on Wednesday after jumping off a wall at a theme park in Turkey and fracturing both heels in the process. Katie is on holiday with her boyfriend Carl Woods and two of her children, Junior and Princess, as well as Princess’ friend. Katie’s eldest son Harvey, 18, has recently experienced health issues which resulted in him having to miss the holiday to Turkey. So they basically left him in intensive care whilst they all fucked off on a jolly. Daughter Princess, 13, said: “I’m actually having the best holiday ever.”   

Dame Barbara Windsor has been moved into a care home due to the worsening of her Alzheimer’s. Scott Mitchell, who has been married to the former EastEnders star for 20 years, said he made the decision after being advised by her neurologist. He told us: ”I feel I’m on an emotional rollercoaster. I walk around, trying to keep busy, then burst in to tears. It feels like a bereavement.” Mitchell added: ”It’s always been my biggest fear that one day I would have to take her somewhere and she’d be thinking: ‘Why would he do this to me?’” Back in June, he said Windsor, 82, would eventually need full-time care as she regularly feels “unsettled” and had trouble walking around their house. Mitchell revealed he took Windsor to the care home in mid-July, adding: “It feels like another chapter gone.” To occupy his time, Mitchell said he has decorated her room with pictures of their family, as well as the one of her receiving her Damehood from the Queen in 2016. Windsor was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014.  

Although not famous enough for our little game, for those of you who enjoy Deadliest Catch , star Mahlon Reyes has died at the age of 38. Reyes, who was a deckhand on a crab fishing boat featured in the Discovery Channel series, suffered a heart attack on 25th July. His wife confirmed the news, telling us he initially survived and was rushed to hospital. Reyes – real name Joseph – never regained consciousness and died surrounded by his loved ones the following day. Long-running reality series Deadliest Catch began in 2005, and follows fishermen aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and snow crab fishing seasons. Some of Mahlon’s ashes will be placed in the Bering Sea by his fellow members. He is best known by viewers as the deckhand on boats, the Seabrooke and Cape Caution. He was also a part of the fishing team led by Captain ”Wild“ Bill Wichrowski. Mahlon, who last appeared in the series in 2015, is survived by his wife and four children.

On This Day

  • 1870 – Tower Subway, the world’s first underground tube railway, opens in London, England, United Kingdom. Choo choo!
  • 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon. Yay!
  • 1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War. That went well. 

Deaths

Last Meals

Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to 20 victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.

After their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949, they became known as “The Lonely Hearts Killers” for meeting their unsuspecting victims through lonely hearts ads. They both met through a lonely hearts ad themselves, both coming from similar backgrounds of a tragic childhood and a difficult life. 

Fernandez served in Spain’s Merchant Marine corps during WWII where a steel hatch fell on him, fracturing his skull and injuring his frontal lobe. The damage caused by this injury may well have affected his social and sexual behaviour. Beck, allegedly due to a glandular problem was overweight and underwent puberty prematurely. At her trial, she claimed to have been raped by her brother. She went on to claim that, when she had told her mother what happened, her mother had beaten her, claiming that she was responsible. 

Once together she posed as Fernandez’s sister, giving him an air of respectability. Their victims, feeling more secure knowing there was another woman in the house, often agreed to stay with the pair. Beck also convinced some victims that she lived alone and that her “brother” was only a guest. Beck was extremely jealous and went to great lengths to make sure Fernandez and his “intended” never consummated their relationship. When he did have sex with a woman, Beck subjected both to her violent temper. In 1949, the pair committed the three murders for which they later were convicted. Janet Fay, 66, became engaged to Fernandez and went to stay at his Long Island apartment. When Beck caught her in bed with Fernandez, she brutally attacked Fay’s head with a hammer in a murderous rage. Fernandez then strangled Fay. Fay’s family became suspicious when she disappeared, so Fernandez and Beck fled. 

Beck and Fernandez traveled to Byron Center Road in Wyoming Township, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids, where they met and stayed with Delphine Downing, a 28-year-old widow with a two-year-old daughter. On February 28th, Downing became agitated, and Fernandez gave her sleeping pills to calm her. The daughter witnessed Downing’s resulting stupor and began to cry, which enraged Beck. Panicked, Beck choked the child but didn’t kill her. Fernandez thought Downing would become suspicious if she saw her bruised daughter, so he shot the unconscious woman. The couple then stayed for several days in Downing’s house. Again enraged by the daughter’s crying, Beck drowned her in a basin of water. They buried the bodies in the basement, but suspicious neighbours reported the Downings’ disappearances, leading the police to arrive at the door on March 1st, 1949 and arrested Beck and Fernandez.  

Fernandez quickly confessed. The pair vehemently denied committing 17 murders that were attributed to them, and Fernandez tried to retract his confession, saying he made it only to protect Beck. Their trial was sensationalised, with lurid tales of sexual perversity. Newspaper reporters described Beck’s appearance with derision, and she wrote protesting letters to the editors. Fernandez and Beck were convicted of Janet Fay’s murder—the only one for which they were tried—and sentenced to death. They were both executed by electrocution on March 8th, 1951. Prior to their deaths, Beck enjoyed fried chicken, fried potatoes and salad and Fernandez ate an onion omelet, french fries, chocolate candy, and a Cuban cigar.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Sam Worthington (44), Edward Furlong (43), Kevin Smith (50), Joanna Cassidy (75), Jason Momoa (41), Michael Biehn (64), Wesley Snipes (58), Emilia Fox (46), Dean Cain (54), Rico Rodriguez (22), J.K. Rowling (55), Christopher Nolan (50), Arnold Schwarzenegger (73), Hilary Swank (46), Terry Crews (52), Lisa Kudrow (57), Laurence Fishburne (59), Jean Reno (72), Carel Struycken (72), Frances de la Tour (76), Sian Gibson (44), Wil Wheaton (48), Leslie Easterbrook (71), Rachel Miner (40), David Warner (79), Elizabeth Berkley (48), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (50), Donnie Yen (57), and Taylor Schilling (36).

Posted by  |  2nd August 2020 | Categories: 2020 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 26th July 2020

Let’s begin by congratulating Sarai for scoring on what had to be the dullest week of the year until yesterday! She correctly guessed that Regis Philbin would depart this year, so 62 points awarded! Apologies for the lack of interesting content this week, by Thursday I started listing people with silly names, like Dick Bond… Yeah… I know…  

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

RuPaul’s Drag Race star Chi Chi DeVayne has provided an update on his health after being hospitalised with suspected kidney failure. DeVayne – an American drag queen and reality star – said he is “better” but “drugged out” after undergoing a biopsy. Speaking to his fans on Instagram Live, DeVayne said: “I told them I need some of that shit they put me on so I can take it home.” DeVayne spent three hours on dialysis “to see if they can get his kidneys back functioning”. “It went by smooth – they injected me with some stuff before I went in and I didn’t feel a thing,” he said. DeVayne – whose real name is Zavion Davenport – rose to fame in the eighth season of RuPaul Drag Race, and also appeared on the third All Stars outing. He told his fans he is “ready to get back to doing what I love”, adding: ”I’m gonna fight to survive of course but I’ve been fighting too mentally, because this is a new experience for me. But I got it under control. I’m gonna be okay.” Upon being admitted to hospital, DeVayne had said: “I let it go too long without going to the doctor and these are the consequences. Take care of your body.”  

Australian actor Mel Gibson was admitted to hospital in April after contracting coronavirus, it has emerged. A representative for the 64-year-old Braveheart star confirmed that Gibson had been in private hospital care for at least one week. He has since tested negative for the virus several times. “He tested positive in April and spent a week in the hospital,” said Gibson’s rep, who also revealed that Gibson had been treated with the drug Remdesivir while in hospital. “He has tested negative numerous times since then as well as positive for the antibodies,” they continued. Gibson is the latest celebrity to have been reported as contracting the virus, which can be deadly. Gibson was at the centre of a controversy last month, when actor Winona Ryder alleged that Gibson referred to her as an “oven dodger”, in an anti-semitic reference to her Jewish heritage. A representative for Gibson denied the allegations, stating that they were “100 per cent untrue” and accused Ryder of continuously lying about the encounter.   

All Blacks great Andy Haden is battling a cancer relapse and is “gravely ill”. The former lock, who played 117 matches and 41 tests for the All Blacks between 1972 and 1985, is considered one of the greats of the game. He also captained the All Blacks on eight occasions. A spokesperson for the family told us: “Andy is gravely ill and the family would appreciate that their privacy is respected at this difficult time”. In 2003 Haden, now 69, confirmed he had chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and was undergoing treatment. Haden played a part in one the All Blacks’ most controversial wins in the 1978 test against Wales in Cardiff when he dived out of the line-out and gained a penalty for Brian McKechnie to kick the winning goal. After his rugby career he ran a celebrity management service, with clients including Kiwi supermodel Rachel Hunter.

On This Day

  • 1745 – The first recorded women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England.  
  • 1803 – The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London, United Kingdom.  
  • 1989 – A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  

Deaths

  • 1919 – Edward Poynter, English painter and illustrator (b. 1836)
  • 1952 – Eva Perón, Argentinian politician, 25th First Lady of Argentina (b. 1919)  
  • 1984 – Ed Gein, American serial killer (b. 1906)  

A Sad Comic Strip About Death 

Last Week’s Birthdays

Kate Beckinsale (47), Jason Statham (53), Sandra Bullock (56), Helen Mirren (75), Kevin Spacey (61), Nana Visitor (63), Eve Myles (42), Mick Jagger (77), Matt LeBlanc  (53), Iman (64), Elisabeth Moss (38), Anna Paquin (38), Summer Glau (39), Jennifer Lopez (51), Lynda Carter (69), Danny Dyer (43), Daniel Radcliffe (31), Woody Harrelson (59), Charisma Carpenter (50), Ronny Cox (82), Slash (55), Willem Dafoe (65), Danny Glover (74), Rhys Ifans (53), Terence Stamp (82), Louise Fletcher (86), Alex Trebek (80), Paloma Faith (39), Ross Kemp (56), John Woodvine (91), Diana Rigg (82), John Francis Daley (35), and Gisele Bündchen (40).

Posted by  |  26th July 2020 | Categories: 2020 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 19th July 2020

Another exceptionally busy week for the evil flying monkeys, it’s not every week the list of deaths rolls onto two pages; also some very surprising deaths and tragic losses. An interesting expiration was that of Emmerdale’s Paula Tilbrook, who died in December last year but has only just announced last week. That one is a point award quandary for sure, luckily nobody listed her so I dodged a bullet there. But your thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated and probably ignored. So, onto points! With the tragic passing of John Lewis, our Lee scores 70 points, however Louise scores a fantastic 170 points as she listed him as her Cert. Well done both of you!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Katie Price has confirmed her son Harvey is in intensive care, expressing her gratitude for hospital workers who are looking after the 18-year-old. On Sunday evening, Price shared a tweet informing her 1.9m Twitter followers of her son’s condition. Harvey, who was born in May 2002, has partial blindness, autism and Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare genetic condition that can cause physical issues and behavioural difficulties. In her tweet, Price wrote: “I can confirm that Harvey is in intensive care and in the best hands. “I would like to thank the ambulance services and the hospital staff for the quick response and making him stable.” Price did not confirm why her son had been admitted to hospital. Harvey’s father is retired footballer Dwight Yorke, who Price dated in the early 2000s. The former Loose Women panellist has five children in total, of which Harvey is the eldest. The 42-year-old shares two children with ex-husband Peter Andre and two children with ex-spouse Kieran Hyler. Earlier this month, Price announced an upcoming BBC film about her son Harvey which would see her “open up about what it’s really like to be a mum of a disabled child approaching adulthood”. In June, the media personality gave evidence in a parliamentary inquiry about online abuse, speaking about the impact social media abuse has had on Harvey.       

It truly is the end times! A teenager has died after contracting bubonic plague in Mongolia, according to the country’s health ministry. Officials said a 15-year-old boy living in the Govia-Altai province in western Mongolia became unwell on Sunday. He died on the way to hospital in the Tugrug district of the province. Officials suspected he was killed by the Black Death. This was confirmed by lab tests conducted on Monday. “The result of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test revealed on Monday night that bubonic plague caused the death of a 15-year-old boy,” Dorj Narangerel, Mongolia health ministry spokesperson, said at a news conference on Tuesday. Health authorities said the boy had eaten marmot meat with two friends three days before his death. The two friends and 15 others the boy came into contact with have been placed in isolation, officials added. It comes a week after the World Health Organisation said it was monitoring another case of bubonic plague in the Inner Mongolia region, which is part of China. Officials in the city of Bayan Nur issued an early epidemic warning on 5th July, one day after a hospital in the region reported that a man had displayed symptoms of the disease. Health officials later confirmed that the unidentified herdsman had tested positive for the illness and was placed in quarantine, where he recovered. It was not immediately known at the time how the man contracted the disease. The WHO said it was not treating the outbreak as high risk. “We are monitoring the outbreaks in China, we are watching that closely and in partnership with the Chinese authorities and Mongolian authorities,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a UN press briefing in Geneva. The bubonic plague is a highly infectious disease that killed up to 200 million people during the Middle Ages and is spread mostly by rodents infected by fleas. Without prompt and effective treatment, up to 60 per cent of cases of bubonic plague are fatal, while untreated septicaemia and pneumonic plague are invariably fatal, according to the WHO.   

The United States government on Tuesday carried out the first federal execution in 17 years, putting to death a man who killed an Arkansas family in a 1990’s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution came despite the objection of the victims’ family. Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma, died by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. “I didn’t do it,” Lee said before he was executed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer … You’re killing an innocent man.” The decision to move forward with the execution – the first by the Bureau of Prisons since 2003 – drew scrutiny from civil rights groups and the relatives of Lee’s victims, who had sued to try to halt it, citing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Critics argued that the government was creating an unnecessary and manufactured urgency for political gain. “The government has been trying to plough forward with these executions despite many unanswered questions about the legality of its new execution protocol,” said Shawn Nolan, one of the attorneys for the men facing federal execution. Lee’s execution took place after a series of legal volleys that ended when the Supreme Court stepped in early on Tuesday in a 5-4 ruling and allowed it to move forward. Four scheduled federal executions had been suspended by Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US district court in Washington, DC, on Monday to allow for legal challenges to the lethal injection that was to be used. In staying the executions, Chutkan ruled that the use of a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out the executions could cause “extreme pain and needless suffering” and may violate a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Lee became the first federal inmate to be executed in the US since 2003 and the first since President Donald Trump announced plans to resume federal executions. 

On This Day

  • 1545 – The Tudor warship Mary Rose sinks off Portsmouth.  
  • 1843 – Brunel’s steamship the SS Great Britain is launched, becoming the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller, becoming the largest vessel afloat in the world.  
  • 1969 – Chappaquiddick incident: U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy crashes his car into a tidal pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne.

Deaths

Last Meals

Following on from the pervious article, Death Row inmate Daniel Lewis Lee wanted three last meals — but what he ate may remain a mystery. Before his execution, the triple murderer rambled about his first, second and final meal and said his order request “should speak for itself.” But the Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on what the 47-year-old white supremacist chowed down before he died by lethal injection on Tuesday at the federal prison in Terre Haute,  Indiana. “We will not be providing details of Mr. Lee’s last meal,” a BOP spokesperson said. Lee was convicted of killing guns dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, in 1996 in Tilly, Arkansas. He implored the media at his execution to ask the judge about DNA evidence that was left out of the trial. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer. You’re killing an innocent man,” said Lee, who was a member of the Aryan People’s Republic.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Benedict Cumberbatch (43), Jared Padalecki (37), Ramin Djawadi (45), Kristen Bell (39), Vin Diesel (52), Elizabeth McGovern (58), Priyanka Chopra (37), Donald Sutherland (84), Alex Winter (54), Eric Winter (43), David Hasselhoff (67), Will Ferrell (52), Phoebe Cates (56), Corey Feldman (48), Travis Fimmel (41), Diane Kruger (44), Brigitte Nielsen (57), Forest Whitaker (59), Terry O’Quinn (68), Celia Imrie (68), Jesse Ventura (69), Adam Savage (53), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (35), Jackie Earle Haley (59), David Mitchell (46), Simon Merrells (55), Kyle Gass (60), Harrison Ford (78), Patrick Stewart (80), Ken Jeong (51), and Cheech Marin (74).

Posted by  |  19th July 2020 | Categories: 2020 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 12th July 2020

Such a busy week, loads to catch up on, and yet, no points scored. Also having to bring back the newly infected section is rather saddening. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

The Newly Infected

  • Kimberly Guilfoyle, 51,  the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. who also worked on President Donald Trump‘s campaign has tested positive for coronavirus.  
  • Rihanna‘s dad Ronald Fenty, 66, revealed that he contracted the coronavirus and thought he was doing to die.  
  • Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, has said in a television interview that he has tested positive for coronavirus.  
  • Amitabh Bachchan, 77. the Bollywood megastar has been admitted to hospital with coronavirus.

In Other News 

The world’s oldest set of conjoined twins, Ronnie and Donnie Gaylon, 68, died on July 4, in their hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Ronnie and Donnie Galyon have been turning heads since they were born on October 28th 1951 to parents Eileen and Wesley Gaylon, who were not expecting twins, much less conjoined twins. They were born healthy, weighing 11 pounds, 11.5 ounces, but they spent the first two years of their life in the hospital as doctors struggled to figure out a way to safely separate them. When they were told there was no guarantee that both boys would survive the surgery, Wesley and Eileen refused to operate on their sons. For 68 years, the brothers lived face-to-face, fused from the sternum to the groin with one set of lower digestive organs. They were each born with separate hearts and stomachs and had their own set of arms and legs. When the boys turned three, their father made the decision to take them on the carnival circuit as a way to support his growing family of nine children. They were managed by Ward Hall, the legendary carnival impresario, and traveled around Canada and the United States in Hall’s infamous ‘World of Wonders’ sideshow under the marquis: ‘Alive in person – Galyon Siamese twins!’ According to Ward Hall’s biography, the twins mother rejected them when they were born – leaving them primarily to be raised by their father, Wesley and later their stepmother Mary. Burdened by colossal medical bills that racked up from the twins first two years spent in the hospital and pressure to raise his family, Wesley decided to enter Donnie and Ronnie in the carnival where they had a lucrative career until they retired in 1991. Donnie and Ronnie were denied from attending the local school because officials said they would be too distracting to other students. ‘It was a different era,’ said their brother Jim. Their IQs were determined to be in the average range, but according to J. David Smith’s book, Psychological Profiles of Conjoined Twins, they seemed slower due to a lack of formal education. The twins exhibited themselves in an air-conditioned trailer for most of their carnival show careers. They lounged about watching television while spectators paid to peer in the window to observe them conduct daily life. Old advertisements read: ‘Still a sensation! The Gaylon Siamese twins, the U.S.’s most visited attraction on any Midway.’

Chang and Eng Bunker, born in Thailand in 1811, became famous as ‘the Siamese Twins’ were the previous record holders as the longest living conjoined twins. They eventually settled in North Carolina, bought slaves, married local sisters, and fathered 21 children before they died at the age of 62.

Though Donnie and Ronnie mastered the art of compromise over the years, it wasn’t always easy. Some arguments even escalated to fisticuffs, especially when they were teenagers. At the age of 14, one twin broke his foot after kicking a trailer in a fit of anger. The physical blows stopped when the brothers began taking blood thinners and realised that a fight could easily turn fatal. The brothers always insisted they were best friends. They both shared a love for fishing, camping, collecting baseball cards, the Dallas Cowboys and the  Cincinnati Reds. Never married, Donnie did most of the cooking, dishes and laundry while Ronnie cleaned the bathroom and did most of the talking. The brothers cast two votes, had two Social Security numbers but traveled under only one passport. The survival rate for conjoined twins can be anywhere between 5-25%. For the Gaylon twins, the biggest health scare they suffered happened in 2009 and 2010. Ronnie developed blood clots in his lungs as the result of a viral infection. Donnie too was infected and both were left weak. They also began to suffer from debilitating arthritis that made it difficult and  unsafe for them to live alone in their Dayton home. In 2014, Donnie and Ronnie celebrated their longevity when they became the oldest living set of conjoined twins in the Guinness Book of World Records. The prior record holders were Chang and Eng Bunker, Chinese brothers that were born in Thailand in 1811 and lived to the age of 62. Despite their unconventional life, Donnie and Ronnie were clear that they lived their life with no regrets. ‘We had fun when we were growing up,’ said Ronnie. Donnie echoed the sentiment, ‘We’ve had a nice life.’

The ex of former EastEnders star Gillian Taylforth was shot confronting gangsters threatening to burn her house down while he was on bail over a huge £850,000 cannabis factory. Dave Fairbairn, 64, who is stable in hospital after being gunned down in the stomach, had been arrested three months ago over a drugs farm found in Arrington, Cambridgeshire, by police. He was detained by officers at the time on suspicion of cultivation of cannabis and handling stolen goods. Two other man aged 32 and 37 attempted to run off when police arrived but were stopped and arrested on suspicion of cultivation as well as immigration offences. Authorities confirmed to Dead Pool Towers that all three have now been bailed until later this month. Fairbairn was shot on Sunday at close range near a Toby Carvery car park in Enfield, North London, but the bullet missed his major organs. Ms Taylforth, 64, is said to be in shock following news of the shooting. She and Fairbarn have remained close despite calling off their wedding in December. Ms Taylforth split from fiancé Fairbairn after six years together in late 2019 after their relationship came under strain following a ‘string of disagreements’, reports at the time claimed. The pair were together since 2013 and Ms Taylforth, who is best known for playing Kathy Beale in EastEnders, originally parted ways with Dave two years earlier due to ‘fiery rows’ between the pair, but later rekindled their romance. 

The search for Glee actress Naya Rivera continues, after she went missing on a California lake that is known for rip currents and having cold, deep waters that at least eight people have drowned in but that she’d been visiting for years. The Glee star and her son Josey rented a pontoon boat on Lake Piru, which is 60 miles from Rivera’s Los Angeles home and around 20 miles from where she grew up in Valencia, on Wednesday afternoon. They were alone and their car was parked nearby. Three hours after they took the boat out, another boater saw their pontoon drifting. When they approached it,  they found Josey on board, asleep, but there was no sign of Rivera. Josey was wearing his life-vest but an adult life-vest was found on the boat, suggesting Rivera was not wearing hers. The boy later told investigators that he climbed back on the boat and his mother did not, but the circumstances are unclear and cops say it is ‘challenging’ to interrogate a toddler. According to the boy, his mother ‘jumped in the water and didn’t come back up’. Ventura County Deputy Sheriff Chris Dyer said on Thursday that Lake Piru was a ‘sanctuary’ for Naya, she was familiar with the lake and has been going there for years. He added: ‘We’re not presuming her dead and right now it’s still a search and rescue operation, we’re searching not only the water but the shoreline. We hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’

Alex Zanardi has had a third operation to treat severe head injuries sustained in a hand cycle accident last month. The 53-year-old Italian, a former Formula 1 driver turned four-time Paralympic gold medallist, had a five-hour operation to reconstruct and stabilise his injuries. Zanardi collided with a lorry during a race in Pienza, Italy, on 19th June. His neurological condition remained “severe” and he is sedated and ventilated in intensive care. Zanardi’s cardio-respiratory and metabolic condition is “stable”, a hospital statement said. The statement described the cranial and facial fractures Zanardi had suffered as “complex”. The operation “required careful programming that made use of computerised, digital and three-dimensional technologies, made to measure for the patient,” according to Professor Paolo Gennaro, director of maxillofacial surgery at Siena University Hospital. The statement added that the next update on Zanardi would be “issued as soon as there are significant changes in the athlete’s clinical picture”. Zanardi has become a global sporting icon for the strength of will and determination he has shown in overcoming adversity in his career, after he lost both legs in an accident while racing in a Champ Car event in Germany in 2001.    

A 30-year-old man died of coronavirus in Texas this week after attending a “Covid party”. Dr Jane Appleby, chief medical officer for Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, said that the unidentified man’s last words were: “I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not.” In a recorded statement, Dr Appleby said that the patient told nurses about the party which she said was hosted by someone diagnosed with coronavirus. “The thought is people get together to see if the virus is real and if anyone gets infected,” she said. Dr Appleby decided to share the story with other stupid Americans to get the message across that the virus can affect anyone. Dr Appleby said that while some patients can be treated and discharged, others become seriously ill and she wants everyone, especially young people, to realise that they are not invincible. 

On This Day

  • 1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.  
  • 1961 – Indian city Pune floods due to failure of the Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, killing at least two thousand people.
  • 1963 – Pauline Reade, 16, disappears in Gorton, England, the first victim in the Moors murders.  

Deaths

  • 1910 – Charles Rolls, English engineer, co-founded Rolls-Royce Limited (b. 1887)  
  • 1973 – Lon Chaney, Jr., American actor (b. 1906)  
  • 2013 – Alan Whicker, Egyptian-English journalist (b. 1925)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Anna Friel (43), Michelle Rodriguez (41), Cheryl Ladd (68), Tamsin Greig (53), Bill Cosby (82), Stephen Lang (67), Caroline Quentin (59), Craig Charles (55), Sofía Vergara (47), Chiwetel Ejiofor (42), Peter Serafinowicz (47), Tom Hanks (63), Pamela Adlon (53), Kelly McGillis (62), Fred Savage (43), Scott Grimes (48), Courtney Love (55), Richard Roundtree (77), O.J. Simpson (72), Richard Wilson (83), Kevin Bacon (61), Billy Crudup (51), Anjelica Huston (68), Jaden Smith (21), Jeffrey Tambor (75), Pauline Quirke (60), Shelley Duvall (71), Jack Whitehall (32), Ringo Starr (80), Eva Green (40), Sylvester Stallone (74), Kevin Hart (41), Geoffrey Rush (69), Jennifer Saunders (62), Ned Beatty (83), 50 Cent (45), and Burt Ward (75).

Posted by  |  12th July 2020 | Categories: 2020 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 5th Jul 2020

A good mix of celebrities kicking the bucket over the last week, strangely I believed some of you had Carl Reiner, but it turns out none of you did. Must have been a leftover from a list or two from years past. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Robbie Williams and his wife Ayda Field were threatened with being beheaded while doing charity work in Haiti. The entitled “Rock DJ” singer visited Haiti with children’s charity Unicef in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, which left an estimated 250,000 dead and 1.5 million without homes. Speaking about the trip on Field’s Postcards from the Edge podcast, Williams recalled the incident, saying: “I got threatened to be beheaded in Haiti. We were going out there to help! “I was like, ‘Should we go to the next street then?’, and looking back, it was scary.” Not to be outdone, Field, who has four children with Williams, added: “I was with you. I too was being threatened to be beheaded as well.” In an interview at the time, Williams discussed seeing the magnitude of the earthquake, saying: “As we walked around Jacmel on the first day, it’s hard to explain in words the massive and devastating impact that the earthquake clearly had – it’s a whole different league from what I had imagined I would see. “It was almost unbelievable, like a movie set. Cars completely crushed – some still poking out from underneath the buildings that have fallen on top of them.”  

Thanks to Nickie for bringing this one into my radar, as you might have noticed above, a Twitch streamer called Byron ‘Reckful’ Berstein committed suicide this week at the age of 31. Apparently he was a legend in the World of Warcraft Twitch community. As an avid WoW player since its inception in 2004 myself, I’d never heard of the chap. Which now begs the question of how loosely do we consider someone to be a ‘celebrity’? I think we have a good rule that they have to have a Wiki page to be considered for point scoring, but does someone who records himself playing a computer game that barely 100,000 people worldwide follow, make a celebrity that is worthy of a Wiki page? Most murderers on Death Row don’t make it and their actions will have made them national, if not international news stories! I believe we have reached peak media saturation, or maybe I’m wistfully dreaming of times when we only had three TV channels and the cinema to choose from.  

Bradley Walsh was warned that he was at risk of dying from heart disease, which has made him a ‘ticking time bomb’. The Chase host, who has just turned 60, is at high risk of getting the deadly condition as his own father Daniel died of it when he was just 59-years-old. After getting the dire warning from his cardiologist he was shocked into quitting booze and carbs, which has helped him lose 10 lbs. He told us: “I was a time bomb. I produce too much cholesterol. It;s a silent killer. My heart guy said, ‘Look, Brad, you need to get fit.’” Bradley revealed that he gets his heart tested every couple of years. He has a carotid artery test which he says tell you how much furring you’ve got in the artery. This is an “accurate predictor” of whether you’ll then have furring in your heart. Tests found that he had too much cholesterol in his blood and he was motivated to get healthy. Bradley added: “I had a hang-up because my father, Daniel, died at the age of 59. “I had it in the back of my mind that I just had to get past my dad’s age. So turning 60 was a bit of milestone.”    

On This Day

  • 1687 – Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.  
  • 1841 – Thomas Cook organises the first package excursion, from Leicester to Loughborough.  
  • 1937 – Spam, the luncheon meat, is introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation.  
  • 1946 – The bikini goes on sale after debuting during an outdoor fashion show at the Molitor Pool in Paris, France.  
  • 1954 – Elvis Presley records his first single, “That’s All Right,” at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.  
  • 1975 – Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.  
  • 1996 – Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.  

Deaths

Thank You NHS!

Robert Liston was a pioneering Scottish surgeon. Liston was noted for his skill in an era prior to anaesthetics, when speed made a difference in terms of pain and survival. Liston’s legacy comprises both that which has made its way into the popular culture, and that found primarily within the medical fraternity and related disciplines. His biographer Richard Gordon describes Liston as “the fastest knife in the West End. He could amputate a leg in 2 1⁄2 minutes”. Indeed, he is reputed to have been able to complete operations in a matter of seconds, at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient; he is said to have been able to perform the removal of a limb in an amputation in 28 seconds. Gordon described the scene thus:

He was six foot two, and operated in a bottle-green coat with wellington boots. He sprung across the blood-stained boards upon his swooning, sweating, strapped-down patient like a duelist, calling, ‘Time me gentlemen, time me!’ to students craning with pocket watches from the iron-railinged galleries. Everyone swore that the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous. To free both hands, he would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth. 

Although Richard Gordon’s 1983 book pays tribute to other aspects of Liston’s legacy, it is his description of some of Liston’s most famous cases which has primarily made its way into what is known of Liston in popular culture. Gordon describes Liston’s four most famous cases in his book, as quoted verbatim below. 

  • Removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow. 
  • Argument with his house-surgeon. Was the red, pulsating tumour in a small boy’s neck a straightforward abscess of the skin, or a dangerous aneurism of the carotid artery? ‘Pooh!’ Liston exclaimed impatiently. ‘Whoever heard of an aneurism in one so young?’ Flashing a knife from his waistcoat pocket, he lanced it. Houseman’s note – ‘Out leaped arterial blood, and the boy fell.’ The patient died but the artery lives, in University College Hospital pathology museum, specimen No. 1256. 
  • Amputated the leg in 2 1⁄2 minutes, but in his enthusiasm the patient’s testicles as well. 
  • Amputated the leg in under 2 1⁄2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he died from fright. To this day the only surgical operation with a 300% fatality rate! 

Last Weeks Birthdays

Edie Falco (56), Huey Lewis (69), Blu Mankuma (71), Eva Marie Saint (95), Post Malone  (24), Gina Lollobrigida (92), Neil Morrissey (57), Ronni Ancona (51), Tom Cruise (57), Connie Nielsen (54), Patrick Wilson (46), Kurtwood Smith (76),  Yeardley Smith (55), Margot Robbie (30), Lindsay Lohan (34), Saul Rubinek (72), Larry David (73), Jerry Hall (64), Peter Kay (47), Liv Tyler (43), Pamela Anderson (53), Olivia de Havilland (104), Dan Aykroyd (68), Jean Marsh (86), Geneviève Bujold (78), David Prowse (85), Jamie Farr (86), Debbie Harry (75), Marton Csokas (54), Vincent D’Onofrio (61), Mike Tyson (54), Katherine Ryan (37), Cheryl Cole/Tweedy/Fernandez-Versini?(37), Gary Busey (76), Amanda Donohoe (58), Aleks Paunovic (51), and Katherine Jenkins (40).

Posted by  |  5th July 2020 | Categories: 2020 | Leave A Comment »