Dead Pool 22nd June 2014

Another week flashes by and the flying monkeys have kept busy, bringing home  another handful of celebrities to be cremated or interred. As you may have heard from the emails, Casey Kasem sadly died, but luckily for Ashley, he managed to guess that his expiration would occur this year, thus garnering 62 points!! Well done Ash!

Also Patsy Byrne, who played Bernard Nurse in Blackadder II passed away, she died on the 17th and her family put a small obituary in the Telegraph, which is only now being picked up by the newspapers. Seems so be a bad month for Blackadder fans 🙁

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Francis Matthews, 86, English film and television actor (Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, The Revenge of Frankenstein, Dracula: Prince of Darkness).
• Casey Kasem, 82, American radio personality (American Top 40) and voice actor (Shaggy Rogers), Lewy body dementia.
• Patsy Byrne, 80, English actress (Blackadder II).
• Stephanie Kwolek, 90, American chemist, inventor of Kevlar.
• Johnny Mann, 85, American composer, Grammy Award-winning arranger (“Up, Up and Away“) and singer (Alvin and the Chipmunks).
• Vladimir Popovkin, 56, Russian military officer, head of the Federal Space Agency (2011–2013).
• Jeffry Wickham, 80, British actor (Ransom, The Remains of the Day, Vera Drake), President of Equity (1992–1994).
• Gerry Goffin, 75, American Hall of Fame lyricist (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow“, “The Loco-Motion“, “Go Away Little Girl“, “Take Good Care of My Baby”).
• Gerry Conlon, 60, Northern Irish author and human rights activist, Guildford Four member wrongfully convicted of the Guildford pub bombings.

In Other News 

As you may have heard, our current cabbage of the pool, Michael Schumacher, is no longer in a coma and has left the hospital in Grenoble that has been his home for the past six months. Reports say that the 45 year old has been moved to Switzerland, hopefully not to the Dignitas Clinic, to continue his recovery. News is very scarce as the family want his rehabilitation to take place away from the public eye, so lets start some rumours shall we?

Tracy Morgan has also been moved out of hospital to a rehab centre where he is expected to remain for a few weeks whilst recovering from a six-car pile-up. Morgan, 45, suffered a broken femur, squished ribs and a broken nose in the accident, which is considered critical in America, over here it’s just a slight inconvenience and you’d be expected back at work on Monday, bringing the cake to the office as an apology for letting your workmates down.

And a contribution form Nickie 😀

As a confirmed planner and stationery addict, I was saddened to hear of the sudden death of Charles Letts this week – the last remaining member of the diary dynasty. He was aged 49.  He and his business partner, Gordon Presley had been involved in various stationery buyouts over the past 15 years or so, acquiring Filofax in 2001. The only worrying aspect of this is that “some form of seizure” is becoming a common form of killer these days. Letts (see what I did there) hope they find a cure for this soon…

On This Day

• 1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe in the form he presented it in, after heated controversy.
• 1906 – The flag of Sweden is adopted.
• 1911 – George V and Mary of Teck are crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
• 1978 – Charon, a satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, is discovered by American astronomer James W. Christy.
• 1984 – Virgin Atlantic Airways launches with its first flight from London Heathrow Airport.
• 1986 The controversial Hand of God goal by Diego Maradona in the quarter-finals of the 1986 FIFA World Cup match between Argentina and England. This was later followed by the Goal of the Century also by Maradona. Argentina would win 2-1 and go on to win the world cup.
• 1990 – Checkpoint Charlie is dismantled in Berlin.
• 2009 – Eastman Kodak Company announces that it will discontinue sales of the Kodachrome Colour Film, concluding its 74-year run as a photography icon.

Deaths

• 1965 – David O. Selznick, American film producer (b. 1902)
• 1969 – Judy Garland, American actress and singer (b. 1922)
• 1987 – Fred Astaire, American actor, singer, and dancer (b. 1899)
• 1993 – Pat Nixon, American economist and educator, 44th First Lady of the United States (b. 1912)
• 1997 – Don Henderson, English actor (b. 1932)
• 2008 – George Carlin, American comedian, actor, and author (b. 1937)

Bizarre Victorian Deaths, Part 1 by KoA

In a new series we shall take a look at life, or in our case, death in Victorian times, which was considerably more dangerous than now, if the newspaper reports of the time are anything to go by.

 1. Killed by a Mouse!

This uneasy tale begins in England, 1875, when a mouse dashed suddenly onto a work table in a south London factory. In the general commotion which followed, a gallant young man stepped forward and seized the rodent. For a glorious moment, he was the saviour of the women who’d scattered. It didn’t last. The mouse slipped out of his grasp, ran up his sleeve and scurried out again at the open neck of his shirt. In his surprise, his mouth was agape. In its surprise, the mouse dashed in. In his continued surprise, the man swallowed. “That a mouse can exist for a considerable time without much air has long been a popular belief and was unfortunately proved to be a fact in the present instance,” noted the Manchester Evening News, “for the mouse began to tear and bite inside the man’s throat and chest, and the result was that the unfortunate fellow died after a little time in horrible agony.”

2. Crushed by His Own Invention 

Sam Wardell couldn’t afford to oversleep. He was the lamplighter in the New York town of Flatbush in the mid-1880s. He lit the streetlights in the evening, and needed to be up early to put them out again at dawn. It wasn’t a job for slobs. And so, with the boundless ingenuity of the age, he hit on a neat failsafe. He took a standard alarm clock and supercharged it, adding a Wallace and Gromit-style embellishment to ensure he woke in time. First he connected the clock by a wire to a catch he fitted to a shelf in his room. Then he placed a 10lb stone on the shelf. When the alarm struck, the shelf fell and the stone crashed to the floor. Ta-da! It worked perfectly, and perhaps would have carried on doing so, if Wardell hadn’t toyed with the configuration. One Christmas Eve he invited some friends round for a party and cleared his room of furniture to make space. When they left, he dragged his bed back into the room. He was tired, and didn’t pay much attention to where he put it. At 05:00 the next morning, the alarm sounded. The shelf fell. The stone dropped straight onto the sleeping Wardell’s head. Ouch!

Last Week’s Birthdays

Paula Abdul (52), Prince William (32), Courtney Cox (50), Kathleen Turner (60), Paul McCartney (72), Neil Patrick Harris (41), Isabella Rossellini (62), Barry Manilow (71), Nicole Kidman (47), Lionel Richie (65), Helen Hunt (51), Juliette Lewis (41), Zoe Saldana (36), Ice Cube (50), Mia Sara (47), Jim Belushi (60), Newt Gingrich (71), John Goodman (62), Lana Del Ray (28), Brian Wilson (72), Martin Landau (86) and Olympia Dukakis (83).

2013 League Table

[confidential]

Next week peeps!