Dead Pool 28th June 2020

Alas no points this week, but plenty of missed chances to score! Let’s see what next week brings us.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Yet another young ‘inspirational’ online influencer, who became a millionaire at 15, has died. Russian Anastasia Tropitsel, 18, suffered head injuries when she crashed on her Kawasaki on the Indonesian island of Bali. Her bad influence boyfriend Viktor Maydanovich, 30, who was on a bike next to her said she began to ‘wobble’ at around 60 mph and lost control, colliding with a roadside fence. Footage shows her last moments just before she set off on the bike as she filmed herself in the vehicle’s mirror and the surrounding beach views. Anastasia had been a blogger since the age of 12 and bragged about how she ‘became a millionaire at 15’ from her successful internet presence, although her fame and money didn’t bestow upon her enough common sense to not ride a powerful motorbike whilst using a phone. She told her million-plus young followers: ‘I inspire you to do what you can’t.’ Like buy a £10k Superbike and crash it straight away! Tropitsel – whose real name is Anastasia Zubrina – died soon after buying a new Kawasaki Ninja 250 motorbike and immediately following a public row with her doctor father who warned her that her online success story was turning to failure. She had stayed in Bali for lockdown after a trip to the island to boost her Instagram. Everyones a winner!   

Janet Street-Porter has revealed that she’s been diagnosed with a form of skin cancer. The outspoken Loose Women panellist said on the show that she originally thought she’d been bitten on the nose by a mosquito over Christmas when she went to Australia. “I showed this tiny spot on my nose to a dermatologist and he immediately referred me to a consultant and they said I’ve got a basal cell carcinoma, which is a form of skin cancer,” she said. “If untreated it could grow. It has to be removed otherwise it’s going to get bigger and bigger. Also, I could be left with a very big scar. “I was about to have it removed then lockdown happened three days before I was supposed to have it removed.” The 73-year-old added: “I’ve spent the whole of lockdown getting more and more anxious about it. “Although it doesn’t look any bigger on top of my skin, this kind of cancer grows under the skin. You can’t see it and that’s what they’ve got to cut out.”  

Roberto Duran, the Panamanian six-time boxing world champion has been hospitalised after testing positive for coronavirus, his children have said on the same day that Panama hit a new record of daily cases. “Test results have just arrived for my dad, and they confirm he is positive for COVID-19,” the legendary fighter’s son Robin Duran said on Instagram. “Thank God for now he doesn’t have symptoms beyond a cold. He is not in intensive care nor on a respirator, just under observation,” he added. Robin Duran had posted hours before that the 69-year-old had been hospitalised as a precaution for a “respiratory virus,” which turned out to be COVID-19. “We just spoke to the doctor who told us that his lungs are fine and there are no indications of severe (illness),” Robin Duran said. “We continue to have faith that everything will be OK.” Duran fought in 119 bouts between the ages of 16 and 50 — with 103 wins and 16 losses. He was knocked out four times, but did the same to his opponents 70 times, earning him the “Hands of Stone” nickname. Duran is a national hero in Panama as one of the country’s most famous athletes along with former New York Yankees baseball player Mariano Rivera, former Olympic long-jump champion Irving Saladino and former soccer players the late Rommel Fernandez and Julio Dely Valdes.

On This Day

  • 1838 – Coronation of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.  
  • 1846 – Adolphe Sax patents the saxophone.       
  • 1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan.  
  • 1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo; this is the casus belli of World War I.   
  • 1969 – Stonewall riots begin in New York City, marking the start of the Gay Rights Movement.  
  • 1987 – For the first time in military history, a civilian population is targeted for chemical attack when Iraqi warplanes bombed the Iranian town of Sardasht.  
  • 1997 – Holyfield–Tyson II: Mike Tyson is disqualified in the third round for biting a piece off Evander Holyfield‘s ear.

Deaths

Last Meals

It was the great flash point of the 20th century, an act that set off a chain reaction of calamity: two World Wars, 80 million deaths, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the atomic bomb. Yet it might never have happened–we’re now told– had Gavrilo Princip not got hungry for a sandwich. 

We’re talking the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, of course—the murder that set the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire on a collision course with Serbia, and Europe down the slippery slope that led to the outbreak of the First World War a month after Princip pulled the trigger on June 28, 1914. More specifically, though, we’re talking the version of events that’s being taught in many schools today. It’s an account that, while respectful of the significance of Franz Ferdinand’s death, hooks pupils’ attention by stressing a tiny, awe-inspiring detail: that if Princip had not stopped to eat a sandwich where he did, he would never have been in the right place to spot his target. No sandwich, no shooting. No shooting, no war.  

It is the summer of 1914, and Bosnia has just become part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A handful of young Bosnian-born Serbs decide to strike a blow for the integration of their people into a Greater Serbia by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne. Their opportunity comes when it is announced that Franz Ferdinand will be making a state visit to the provincial capital, Sarajevo.  

Armed with bombs and pistols supplied by Serbian military intelligence, seven conspirators position themselves at intervals along the archduke’s route. The first to strike is Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who lobs a hand grenade toward Franz Ferdinand’s open touring car. But the grenade is an old one, with a 10-second fuse. It bounces off the limo and into the road, where it explodes under the next vehicle in the motorcade. Although several officers in that car are hurt, Franz Ferdinand remains uninjured. To avoid capture, Cabrinovic drains a vial of cyanide and throws himself into a nearby river—but his suicide bid fails. The cyanide is past its sell-by date, and the river is just four inches deep.  

The bombing throws the rest of the day’s plans into disarray. The motorcade is abandoned. Franz Ferdinand is hurried off to the town hall, where he is due to meet with state officials. Disconsolate, the remaining assassins disperse, their chance apparently gone. One of them, Gavrilo Princip, heads for Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen, on Franz Joseph Street. It’s one of Sarajevo’s smartest shopping destinations, just a few yards from the bustling through road known as Appel Quay. 

As Princip queues to buy a sandwich, Franz Ferdinand is leaving the town hall. When the heir gets back into his limousine, though, he decides on a change of plan—he’ll call at the hospital to visit the men injured in the grenade blast. There’s just one problem: the archduke’s chauffeur, a stranger to Sarajevo, gets lost. He swings off Appel Quay and into crowded Franz Joseph Street, then drifts to a stop right in front of Schiller’s. 

Princip looks up from his lunch to find his target sitting just a few feet away. He pulls his gun. Two shots ring out, and the first kills Franz Ferdinand’s wife, Sophie. The second hits the heir in the neck, severing his jugular vein. The archduke slumps back, mortally wounded. His security men hustle Princip away. Inside Schiller’s deli, the most important sandwich in the history of the world lies half-eaten on a table. What sort of sandwich the killer ordered? (Consensus answer: cheese.) 

Last Week’s Birthdays

John Cusack (53), Kathy Bates (71), Mel Brooks (93), Alice Krige (65), Felicia Day (40), Elon Musk (48), Courtney Ford (41), Tobey Maguire (44), J.J. Abrams (53), Meera Syal (58), Nick Offerman (49), Ariana Grande (26), Chris Isaak (63), Ricky Gervais (59), Carly Simon (75), Peter Weller (73), Iain Glen (59), Nancy Allen (70), Mick Fleetwood (73), Selma Blair (48), Frances McDormand (63), Joss Whedon (56), Bryan Brown (73), Meryl Streep (71), Bruce Campbell (62), Lindsay Wagner (71), Kris Kristofferson (84), Stephen Chow (58), Tim Russ (64), Prunella Scales (88), and Cyndi Lauper (67).

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