Dead Pool 11th September 2016

Bit thin on the ground again this week. So I wont warble on too much. But if any of you amazing readers would like a go at guest editing or supplying a few articles, please do have a go!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Leslie H. Martinson, 101, American film and television director (Batman: The Movie, CHiPs, Fantasy Island).
• Richard Neville, 74, Australian writer and editor (Oz).
• Hugh O’Brian, 91, American actor (The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The Shootist, Twins).
• Darren Seals, 29, American activist (Black Lives Matter), shot.
• Prince Buster, 78, Jamaican ska musician (“One Step Beyond“, “Al Capone”).
• Lord Littlebrook, 87, British midget wrestler. 
• Greta Friedman, 92, American nurse, subject of V-J Day in Times Square.

In Other News

The Princess Royal has cancelled her public engagements next week as she  recovers from a bad chest infection, Buckingham Palace has said. A spokesman said: “On doctors’ orders she has cancelled her engagements for the coming week. She is resting privately at home.” Anne was treated at Aberdeen Royal infirmary on Wednesday before being discharged and returning to Balmoral. Last weekend, she joined the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales at the Braemar Highland Games, which are held a short distance from the royal family’s summer retreat in Aberdeenshire. The 66-year-old also spent time in Brazil at the Olympic Games as a member of the International Olympic Committee. Could it be some kind of Zika virus variant??

A death we all missed back in April was that of the first-ever person to have a face transplant, Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire. In 2005, surgeons  gave her a new nose and mouth after she was disfigured by her pet dog. But heavy use of immunosuppressant drugs weakened her and she succumbed to cancer in April at the age of 49. News of her death, announced by a hospital in Amiens, was delayed to respect her family’s privacy. She told the BBC in 2009 that when she looked in the mirror she saw a mixture of herself and the donor. “The donor is always with me,” she said. Figaro newspaper said she had suffered another transplant rejection. The strong anti-rejection treatment she was receiving led to two cancers, it added. In her BBC interview she said her disfigurement by her dog had come as a result of an attempt to end her life. After taking an overdose of sleeping pills, she awoke lying beside a pool of blood, with her pet Labrador at her side. The dog had apparently found her unconscious, and desperate to rouse her, had gnawed away at her face. The injuries to her mouth, nose and chin were so extreme that doctors ruled out a routine face reconstruction. Instead they proposed a ground-breaking face transplant. She was happy with the surgery but expressed distress at the attention from the media and passers-by that the operation brought her.

Look out all potential presidential candidates because the man who shot US President Ronald Reagan in 1981 has been released from a psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC, 35 years after his assassination attempt stunned the world. John Hinckley Jr, who is now 61, was released from St Elizabeth’s hospital on Saturday morning and returned to his mother’s home in Virginia. Mr Reagan and three others were injured in the shooting outside a Washington hotel on 30 March 1981, weeks into his first White House term. Mr Hinckley, who was obsessed with the movie Taxi Driver and its young star Jodie Foster, is thought to have been trying to impress the actress. He was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. In July, after several decades of treatment at St Elizabeth’s, a judge ruled that Mr Hinckley posed no further danger to himself or to the public. In recent years, he had been spending 17 days a month at his 90-year-old mother’s home, on a golf course in the gated community of Kingsmill, where his bedroom is reportedly decorated with his paintings of houses and cats. Under the conditions of his release, Mr Hinckley will be forbidden to speak to the media and from having any social media accounts. He is banned from contacting Ms Foster or any of his other victims and their families. He must see a psychiatrist regularly and will be permitted to drive no further than 30 miles from the home unaccompanied – or 50 miles if accompanied.

On This Day

• 1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.
• 1978 – Janet Parker is the last person to die of smallpox, in a laboratory-associated outbreak.
• 1982 – The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel‘s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
• 2001 – Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda. In total 2,996 people are killed.
• 2007 – Russia tests the largest conventional weapon ever, the Father of All Bombs.

Deaths

• 1972 – Max Fleischer, American animator, director, and producer (b. 1883)
• 1987 – Lorne Greene, Canadian-American actor (b. 1915)
• 1988 – Roger Hargreaves, English author and illustrator (b. 1935) 
• 1994 – Jessica Tandy, English-American actress (b. 1909) 
• 2002 – Kim Hunter, American actress (b. 1922) 
• 2003 – John Ritter, American actor and producer (b. 1948) 
• 2014 – Donald Sinden, English actor (b. 1923)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Beyonce (35), Bob Newhart (88), Raquel Welch (76), Michael Keaton (65), Rose McGowan (43), Roger Waters (73), Delores O’Riordan (45), Pippa Middleton (33), Idris Elba (44), Gloria Gaynor (67), Chrissie Hynde (65), Julie Kavner (66), Shannon Elizabeth (43), Evan Rachel Wood (29), Heather Thomas (59), Martin Freeman (45), Hugh Grant (56), Adam Sandler (50), Eric Stonestreet (45), Michael Buble (41), Joe Perry (66), Colin Firth (56), Guy Richie (48) and Karl Lagerfeld (83).

The Last Word

“I cannot.” – Louis Pasteur – His response when he was offered a cup of milk.

Next week peeps!