Dead Pool 26th January 2020

Welcome Poolers, to a slightly tardy edition this week, my apologies, I was away for the weekend at a school reunion. However, as we all know from the emails last week, there are points to be awarded. With the tragic demise of Terry Jones, I can fork out 73 points to Paul C, Abi FB, & Lee U, and a whopping 173 points to Neil G for listing him as his Cert. So! The game is certainly afoot! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

 In Other News

Nashville singer-songwriter David Olney has died during a performance on stage. The Americana artist, whose music was recorded by Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Steve Young and others, died of an apparent heart attack while performing at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. According to fellow singer-songwriter Scott Miller, who was performing with Olney, the 71-year-old stopped in the middle of a song, said “I’m sorry”, and “put his chin to his chest”. “He never dropped his guitar or fell [off] his stool,” Miller wrote on Facebook. “It was as easy and gentle as he was.” Amy Rigby, who was also on stage with Olney at the time, wrote a separate Facebook post with her own moving account of what happened. “He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket… I just want the picture to be as graceful and dignified as it was, because it at first looked like he was just taking a moment,” she wrote. Olney became a key member of Nashville’s music scene after moving from his native Rhode Island in 1973. Regarded as an “Americana pioneer”, he produced more than 20 albums, including 2018’s This Side or the Other.  

Serial sock sex pest James Arthur has had to cancel another gig as his health has deteriorated due to an unknown illness. The 31-year-old singer is currently on his world tour, and has had to pull out of his Zurich gig tonight after dropping his Barcelona show on Wednesday. Middlesbrough-born James admitted he was “gutted” on Wednesday after doctors urgently advised him to rest, but his health has not improved since. The cause of James’ illness is unknown, but he told followers on social media “I’ve become really unwell”. An Instagram post on the singer’s account stated: “Unfortunately James’ health has not improved in the past couple of days and therefore we are sad to say that he will not be able to perform in Zurich this evening.” The post continued: “James is very sorry for any disappointment this may cause and really hopes to get to see you all again soon.” The star, who became famous from his X Factor appearance in 2012, is set to perform in Vienna on Monday and Czechia on Tuesday if his illness gets better or if it gets worse, our ears will be saved and he might die.  

Formula One legend Michael Schumacher is likely “very altered and deteriorated” six years on from suffering serious head injuries after a skiing accident in 2013 and will be a “very different person from who we remember”, according to a leading neurosurgeon. Schumacher, 51, has not been seen in public since suffering a traumatic brain injury while skiing off-piste in the French Alps. He was placed in a medically induced coma for six months until June 2014 and has since been treated privately at his home in Switzerland. Little is known about his recovery. However, leading surgeon Nicola Acciari, who is based in Bologna, has told an Italian newspaper that the seven-time Formula One world champion will now be a completely different man and is unlikely to truly recover from his injuries. “We must imagine a person very different from the one we remember on the track, with a very altered and deteriorated organic, muscular and skeletal structure,” she told Contro Copertina. “All as a result of the brain trauma he suffered.”  The neurosurgeon’s warning comes after Jean Todt, his former manager at Ferrari, last year assured fans that Schumacher was “still fighting”. “I’m always careful with such statements, but it’s true. Michael is in the best hands and is well looked after in his house. He does not give up and keeps fighting. His family is fighting just as much and of course our friendship cannot be the same as it once was just because there’s no longer the same communication as before.”    

On This Day

  • 1905 – The world’s largest diamond ever, the Cullinan weighing 3,106.75 carats, is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.
  • 1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.
  • 1972 – JAT Fight 367 is destroyed by a terrorist bomb, killing 27 of the 28 people on board the DC-9. Flight attendant Vesna Vulović survives with critical injuries.
  • 1998 – On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Deaths

Last Meals? No, Something Else… 

I thought we’d try something a little different this week, since we have Vesna Vulović mentioned above. As you saw, she’s quite a survivor, she holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160m (33,330ft; 6.31mi)!!! 

Vulović was born in Belgrade on 3rd January 1950. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a fitness instructor. Driven by her love of the Beatles, Vulović travelled to the United Kingdom after completing her first year of university, hoping to improve her English-language skills. “I initially stayed with my parents’ friends in Newbury,” she recalled, “but wanted to move to London. It was there that I met up with a friend who suggested we go to Stockholm. When I told my parents I was living in the Swedish capital, they thought of the drugs and the sex and told me to come home at once.” Upon returning to Belgrade, Vulović decided to become a flight attendant after seeing one of her friends in a flight attendant’s uniform. “She looked so nice and had just been to London for the day,” Vulović recalled. “I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I be an air hostess? I could go to London once a month’.” She joined JAT, Yugoslavia’s national flag carrier and largest airline, in 1971.

The fateful Flight 367 departed from Stockholm Arlanda Airport at 1:30p.m. on 26th January. The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, landed at Copenhagen Airport at 2:30p.m., whereupon Vulović and her colleagues boarded the plane. “As it was late, we were in the terminal and saw it park,” Vulović said. “I saw all the passengers and crew deplane. One man seemed terribly annoyed. It was not only me that noticed him either. Other crew members saw him, as did the station manager in Copenhagen. I think it was the man who put the bomb in the baggage. I think he had checked in a bag in Stockholm, got off in Copenhagen and never re-boarded the flight.”

Flight 367 departed from Copenhagen Airport at 3:15p.m. At 4:01p.m., an explosion tore through the DC-9’s baggage compartment. The explosion caused the aircraft to break apart over the Czechoslovak village of Srbská Kamenice.  Vulović was the only survivor of the 28 passengers and crew.  

She was discovered by villager Bruno Honke, who heard her screaming amid the wreckage. Her turquoise uniform was covered in blood and her 3-inch stiletto heels had been torn off by the force of the impact. Honke had been a medic during World War II and was able to keep her alive until rescuers arrived. Air safety investigators attributed Vulović’s survival to her being trapped by a food cart in the DC-9’s fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurised, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact. Vulović’s physicians concluded that her history of low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly after the cabin depressurised and kept her heart from bursting on impact. Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted. Following the crash, Vulović spent days in a coma, having fractured her skull which then haemorrhaged. She also suffered two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed completely. Her pelvis was fractured and several ribs broken. Her injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralysed below the waist. She had total amnesia from the hour preceding her fall until one month afterwards. Vulović’s parents told her that she first learned of the crash about two weeks after it occurred. She fainted upon being shown a newspaper headline by her doctor and then had to be tranquillised. The last thing that Vulović could remember from before the crash was greeting passengers as they boarded. The next thing she remembered was seeing her parents in her hospital room about one month later. Within ten months of her fall, Vulović had regained the ability to walk, but limped for the rest of her life, her spine permanently twisted. In total, she spent 16 months recuperating. “Nobody ever expected me to live this long,” she recounted in 2008. Vulović attributed her recovery to her “Serbian stubbornness” and “a childhood diet that included chocolate, spinach, and fish oil”. Sadly she died in anonymity and rather poor in 2016.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Scott Glenn (80), Ellen DeGeneres (61), Eddie Van Halen (64), Kristen Schaal (41), Nastassja Kinski (58), Ade Edmondson (62), Neil Diamond (78), Gil Gerard (76), Linda Blair (61), Piper Laurie (88), Rainn Wilson (54), David Lynch (74), Tom Baker (86), Bill Maher (64), Katey Sagal (66), Dolly Parton (74), Tippi Hedren (90), and Michael Crawford (78).

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