Dead Pool 21st July 2019

Yup, we’re really struggling to find anyone you’ve ever heard of this week!   

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Craig Fallon, 36, British judoka, world champion (2005).  
• Marc Batchelor, 49, South African footballer (Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates), shot.  
• Karl Shiels, 47, Irish actor (Fair City, Into the Badlands, Henry IV, Part 1).  
• Pernell Whitaker, 55, American boxer, four-weight world champion, Olympic champion (1984), traffic collision.  
• Richard Carter, 65, Australian actor (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Great Gatsby, Rafferty’s Rules).

In Other News

Hong Kong actor Simon Yam has been stabbed while speaking at an event in southern China. According to his manager, Lester Mo Gee-man, Yam was stabbed in the stomach but police say his injuries are not life-threatening. The 64-year-old actor is currently undergoing “a minor operation” at a hospital in Zhongshan city. “He was stabbed in his stomach and slashed on his arm, but was conscious the entire time,” Lester Mo Gee-man told the South China Morning Post. He added: “A preliminary investigation showed his injuries were not critical but the doctors are still deciding whether to operate on him”. Yam has appeared in more than 125 movies and 40 television series.  His most high-profile Hollywood role came in 2003 Hollywood sequel Lara Croft: Tomb Raider -The Cradle of Life. Yam was attending the opening of new shop in Zhongshan in the southern province of Guangdong on Saturday when a man rushed the stage and attacked Yam. Two videos have surfaced on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. One shows Yam clutching his stomach after the attack. A suspect has been detained, but a motive remains unclear.   

Labour MP Emily Thornberry was taken to hospital after coming off her bicycle in an accident outside Parliament. The shadow foreign secretary was involved in a collision with a vehicle in Parliament Square, Westminster, outside the House of Commons on Friday. The Islington South and Finsbury MP was taken to hospital in an ambulance. spokesperson for Ms Thornberry said she had now been discharged and was “hugely grateful” for the support of the paramedics and A&E staff. “She will be back to work and back on her bike as soon as possible,” the spokesperson added. Looks like she’s not that good at cycling, so we should really keep an eye on her.  

A man choked to death on a piece of meat about five months after his brother died in exactly the same way. An inquest has been opened into the death of Selwyn Francis, 68, who choked on food at a restaurant in Flintshire and died in hospital two days later. He died a day after an inquest heard his brother Gwyn Francis had died after choking on a piece of steak at a pub. Their brother Kenneth Francis had said he and his two brothers ate quickly without chewing their food properly. Kenneth Francis told the inquest into Gwyn’s death that Selwyn had choked on a piece of steak at the same pub 18 months earlier but the obstruction had been cleared by someone performing the Heimlich manoeuvre. “I said it should be a warning to us all,” Kenneth Francis had told the earlier inquest. Let’s hope that Kenneth chews his food from now on. 

On This Day

• 356 BC – The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is destroyed by arson.
• 1865 – In the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what is regarded as the first western showdown.
• 1969 – At 02:56 UTC, astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon.
• 1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Friday: The Provisional IRA detonate 22 bombs in central Belfast in the space of 80 minutes, killing nine and injuring 130.
• 1983 – The world’s lowest temperature in an inhabited location is recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica at −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).
• 2001 – At the conclusion of a fireworks display on Okura Beach in Akashi, Hyōgo, Japan, 11 people are killed and more than 120 are injured when a pedestrian footbridge connecting the beach to JR Asagiri Station becomes overcrowded and people leaving the event fall down in a domino effect.

Deaths

• •1796 – Robert Burns, Scottish poet and songwriter (b. 1759)
• •1967 – Basil Rathbone, South African-American actor and singer (b. 1892)
• •1998 – Alan Shepard, American admiral, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1923)
• •2004 – Jerry Goldsmith, American composer and conductor (b. 1929)
• •2015 – E. L. Doctorow, American novelist, short story writer, and playwright (b. 1931)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Diana Rigg (80), John Francis Daley (33), Gisele Bündchen (38), Benedict Cumberbatch (43), Jared Padalecki (37), Brian May (72), Kristen Bell (39), Vin Diesel (52), Priyanka Chopra (37), Alex Winter (54), Donald Sutherland (84), David Hasselhoff (67), Konnie Huq (44), Phoebe Cates (56), Will Ferrell (52), Corey Feldman (48), Travis Fimmel (40), Diane Kruger (43), Brigitte Nielsen (56), Forest Whitaker (58), Celia Imrie (67), Jesse Ventura (68), Linda Ronstadt (73), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (34), Jackie Earle Haley (58), David Mitchell (45), and Kyle Gass (59).