Dead Pool 20th May 2018

Points!!! Both Trish and Dave had the UK’s oldest living/now dead person listed as their Cert, so 137 points each to them; which also propels Dave to the number one spot on the table, but he has now used up both his Woman and his Cert. Interesting times ahead! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Bessie Camm, 113, British supercentenarian, oldest verified person in the United Kingdom.  
• Ulla Sallert, 95, Swedish actress and singer.  
• Margot Kidder, 69, Canadian-American actress (Superman, Black Christmas, The Amityville Horror) and activist.  
• Tom Wolfe, 88, American author (The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and journalist.  
• Ray Wilson, 83, English footballer (Huddersfield Town, Everton, national team), world champion (1966), Alzheimer’s disease.

 In Other News

Melania Trump returned to the White House on Saturday from a week-long hospitalisation after treatment for a kidney condition, a lengthy stay that raised questions about whether the first lady’s condition may have been more complicated than initially revealed. Her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, has declined to release additional details, citing Trump’s right to privacy. Donald Trump heralded his wife’s arrival home with a tweet in which her name was spelled incorrectly. “Great to have our incredible First Lady back home in the White House,” Trump wrote. “Melanie is feeling and doing really well. Thank you for all of your prayers and best wishes!” The first lady had been at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre near Washington since Monday, when she underwent an embolisation procedure to treat an unspecified kidney condition the White House described as benign. Word of the hospitalisation came as a surprise because there was no indication in numerous public appearances in recent weeks that Trump had been ailing.  

New Zealand’s “first bloke”, Clarke Gayford, has posted a picture of himself fending off an aggressive shark with a pole. Mr Gayford, a television host, is the partner of New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern. “A childhood myth is ruined,” he lamented in a tweet after spotting a dolphin in the background while he was protecting himself from the shark, a bronze whaler, also known as a copper shark. In the 1963 film Flipper, the titular dolphin saves his friend, a boy named Sandy, from a shark by ramming it with its snout. “So it turns out that not only do dolphins not help, they actually quite like watching,” Mr Gayford added. The encounter took place  while he was helping a cameraman film bottle-nosed dolphins off Great Barrier Island, near Auckland. “I had to fend the large one pictured off with a pole several times, as it was getting quite agitated,” the fishing programme host added. “We got out not long after.” It was not Mr Gayford’s first close encounter with a shark. In March he posted an image of himself with an “overly amorous” whale shark that pinned him against a boat.  

NBA Hall of Fame player Bill Russell is in the hospital in Washington state dealing with some apparent heart issues. Law enforcement sources tell us … an ambulance was called to Russell’s home in the Seattle area Friday night, and the 84-year-old Celtics legend was rushed to a nearby hospital. We’re told Bill was having heart trouble and shortness of breath … and is still hospitalised. We’ve reached out to get an update on his condition. The 11-time NBA champion centre was also hospitalised in 2014 after collapsing at a speaking gig in Lake Tahoe, but recovered quickly. Bill’s considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, and recently attended Game 1 of the Celtics playoff round vs. the 76ers. Obviously, the crowd went wild.

On This Day

• 325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church. The world becomes a worse place. 
• 1645 – Yangzhou massacre: the 10-day massacre of 800,000 residents of the city of Yangzhou, part of the Transition from Ming to Qing.  
• 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.  
• 1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.  
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.  
• 1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

Deaths

• 1506 – Christopher Columbus, Italian explorer, discovered the Americas (b. 1451)  
• 1996 – Jon Pertwee, English actor, portrayed the Third Doctor (b. 1919)  
• 2011 – Randy Savage, American wrestler and actor (b. 1952)  
• 2012 – Robin Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1949)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Peter Mayhew (74), Grace Jones (70), Amanda De Cadenet (46), Sam Smith (26), Pete Townshend (73), Tina Fey (48), Miriam Margolyes (77), Yun-Fat Chow (63), Paul Whitehouse (60), Andrea Corr (44), Megan Fox (32), Pierce Brosnan (65), Debra Winger (63), Danny Trejo (74), David Boreanaz (49), Stephen Mangan (50), Janet Jackson (52), Cate Blanchett (49), Tim Roth (57), Sofia Coppola (47), George Lucas (74), Danny Huston (56), Robert Zemeckis (67), Francesca Annis (73), Greg Davies (50), Siân Phillips (85), Martine McCutcheon (42), Robert Pattinson (32), Harvey Keitel (79), Samantha Morton (41), Iwan Rheon (33), Mark Heap (61), Zoë Wanamaker (69), Stephen Colbert (54), Dennis Rodman (57) and Stevie Wonder (68).