Dead Pool 18th June 2017

Welcome all, a quiet week this week, no points scored and a dire lack of celebrity news. However we’ve managed to cobble together a little something worth reading, don’t ask how, we’re just brilliant here at Dead Pool Towers.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Sam Beazley, 101, British actor (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Johnny English).
• John G. Avildsen, 81, American film director (Rocky, The Karate Kid, Save the Tiger), Oscar winner (1977), pancreatic cancer.
• Anita Pallenberg, 75, Italian actress (Barbarella, Performance, A Degree of Murder).
• Helmut Kohl, 87, German politician, Chancellor (1982–1998), Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate (1969–1976).
• Stephen Furst, 63, American actor (Babylon 5, Animal House, St. Elsewhere), complications from diabetes.

In Other News

Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnoea and “other factors”, the Los Angeles  County coroner says. Her death certificate said in January that the 60-year-old, best known for her role as Princess Leia, had suffered a cardiac arrest. But in a statement the LA coroner said the exact cause was unknown. Sleep apnoea is a common condition in which a person stops breathing during sleep, either for a few seconds or minutes. As well as listing sleep apnoea as a cause of death, the coroner’s statement cited other factors, including heart disease and drug use. In a statement released to People magazine after the coroner’s ruling, Fisher’s daughter Lourd said: “My mom battled drug addiction and mental illness her entire life. She ultimately died of it. “She was purposefully open in all of her work about the social stigmas surrounding these diseases.” Her manner of death would be listed as undetermined, the coroner’s statement said. Fisher had been on tour promoting her book The Princess Diarist when she was taken ill on a flight from London to Los Angeles on 23rd December. She never regained consciousness and died on 27 December at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Centre.

A Spanish bullfighter has died after being gored during a festival in southwest France. Ivan Fandino, 36, caught his feet in his cloak and fell to the floor, where he was gored by the bull. He suffered a lung injury and died on his way to hospital from a heart attack on Saturday, French media say. Fandino, who was taking part in the Aire-sur-l’Adour bullfighting festival near Pau, is reportedly the first matador to die in France in a century. The Basque-born matador had already taken part in a competition earlier in the day before he was injured. Photographs showed he was conscious, but bleeding heavily, as he was led away from the ring. Last July, bullfighter Victor Barrio, 29, became the first matador to die in Spain in 30 years after he was gored during an event being aired live on television. Fandino had been injured at least twice in previous events – once in 2015, when thrown into the air by a bull in Pamplona, Spain, but more seriously the year before when he was knocked unconscious in Bayonne, France.

A man who became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls without a protective device has died after apparently trying the stunt again in an inflatable ball, police say. The body of American Kirk Jones was found 12 miles (19km) downriver weeks after the ball was found empty and spinning at the bottom of the falls. In 2003 he suffered only cuts and bruises after plunging over the falls. Mr Jones, 53, said afterwards that he would never try such a thing again. New York State Park Police told the Syracuse Post-Standard that Mr Jones’s body had been found on 2nd June in the Niagara River near the village of Youngstown at the mouth of Lake Ontario. Police confirmed it was the same man who had survived the falls 14 years previously. Det Sgt Brian Nisbet told the newspaper it was believed Mr Jones had tried to go over the falls in a large inflatable ball on 19th April. The ball was recovered, empty, by the Maid of the Mist boat near the foot of the falls. In 2003 Mr Jones was fined by a Canadian court for performing an illegal stunt and banned from the country. Although his family said he had jumped as a daredevil act, Mr Jones later said he had been trying to kill himself. He told reporters afterwards that he felt “very happy to be alive”. “I understand what I did was wrong,” he said at the time. “You will never see an action in Niagara waters with my name written on it again.” In an interview with ABC television he described going over the falls and being “sucked inside… the curtain of the falls and enveloped in it”. He said he remembered spiralling at great speed with “unbelievable” pressure on his head and then feeling pain as he hit a slab of granite at the bottom. He said he briefly lost consciousness but came to under water, swam to the surface and took his first breath.

On This Day

• 1429 – French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeat the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay. This turns the tide of the Hundred Years’ War.
• 1812 – The United States declaration of war upon the United Kingdom is signed by President James Madison, we’ve hated each other since. 
• 1815 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo results in the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher forcing him to abdicate the throne of France for the second and last time.
• 1858 – Charles Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that includes nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own, prompting Darwin to publish his theory.
• 1873 – Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.
• 1900 – Empress Dowager Cixi of China orders all foreigners killed, including foreign diplomats and their families. 117 years later, Theresa May will attempt the same feat. 
• 1928 – Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she is a passenger; Wilmer Stultz is the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic).
• 1940 – “Finest Hour” speech by Winston Churchill.
• 1983 – Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

Deaths

• 1928 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian pilot and explorer (b. 1872)
• 1980 – Terence Fisher, English director and screenwriter (b. 1904)
• 2007 – Bernard Manning, English comedian and actor (b. 1930)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Jason Patric (51), Ken Loach (81), Arnold Vosloo (55), Courteney Cox (53), Ice Cube (48), Helen Hunt (54), Neil Patrick Harris (44), Jim Belushi (63), Yasmine Bleeth (49), Donald J. Trump (71), Boy George (56), Chris Evans (36), Stellan Skarsgård (66), Ally Sheedy (55), Tim Allen (64), Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen (31), Malcolm McDowell (74), Richard Thomas (66), Simon Callow (68), Kathy Burke (53), Steve-O (43), Richard Ayoade (40), Shia LaBeouf (31), Peter Dinklage (48), Hugh Laurie (58), Adrienne Barbeau (72) and Jane Goldman (47).