Dead Pool 29th November 2020

Welcome all, let us begin with dishing out some points! Congratulations to Abigail for  correctly guessing that Darth Vader himself would finally succumb and truly pass to the Dark Side! 65 points!! Which makes it intensely interesting at the top of the table. 

Seeing that we only have a month to go, I decided to do some housekeeping. I went through all of your lists and found that I have missed a few deaths, so here’s some belated points! Trish gets 49 points for the passing of Marge Champion back in October; Iwan gets 57 points for the demise of Geoffrey Palmer in early November and Dave J. gets 50 points for the death of Javier Perez De Cuellar back in March! Well done everyone!!!

You now have just over FOUR weeks to work on your 2021 lists, but knowing you lot, half of you will be rushing to get them done at New Years Eve. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

Remember the chap who lead you all like a Judas Sheep to slaughter to dump a bucket of cold water over your head for charity? Well, his name was Patrick Quinn, he was one of the men responsible for driving the insanely popular Ice Bucket Challenge fundraising campaign, has died on Sunday morning aged 37. Quinn, a New Yorker, was diagnosed with the incurable neurological disease  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2013. His viral campaign raised $220m (£163m) for ALS research. The Ice Bucket Challenge did not begin with Quinn, but he and his family and friends helped it become a global social media phenomenon in the summer of 2014. To complete the challenge, people would dump a bucket of ice water over their heads and post the video to social media, challenging others to do the same or make a donation to ALS research. Most people didn’t get the idea of the challenge, they donated money and did the challenge, that’s how idiotic the genre populace is. The challenge drew high-profile participants like former President George W Bush, Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and even the twunt Donald Trump, although I never saw that video and I wonder how his wig took the punishment, and one wonders how he took part in a charitable event as he hasn’t got one decent charitable atom in his whole blobby body!  

Although not famous enough for our purposes, John Gilbert Getty, grandson of J. Paul Getty and heir to an oil fortune has been found dead. The 52-year-old heir was found dead in a hotel room in Texas, according to reports. Apparently “John was a talented musician who loved rock and roll. He will be deeply missed.” Getty is said to have been found unresponsive in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday. His death was not believed to be suspicious, but the cause is yet to be confirmed. Getty’s death is one of several tragedies to recently befall the family – his mother Ann died in September and his older brother Andrew died of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage in 2015. Andrew was also found to have a toxic level of methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. In the same year, Forbes ranked the Getty family as the 56th richest in America with a $5.4bn (£4bn) fortune. Looks like billions of dollars doesn’t help keep you alive.  

Again, not famous enough for our use, rapper 21 Savage wrote a heartbreaking tribute to his British brother who was stabbed to death on a south London estate. Terrell Davis – a 27-year-old drill rapper known as TM1way – was killed on the Blenheim Gardens estate in Brixton. He had been taking some shopping to his grandmother when he got into an argument with an old friend, who suddenly lunged forward and stabbed him, a family source said. Don’t you wish you had friends like that? Mr Davis and 21 Savage – who was born in Plaistow, east London before emigrating to the US as a child – have the same father, Kevin Emmons. The Grammy-award winning artist wrote on Instagram: ‘Can’t believe somebody took you baby bro. I know I took my anger out on you I wish I could take that shit back.’ He also posted a picture of him and his brother as young boys – as well as a series of more-recent images of Mr Davis. The source said: ‘They are brothers. They used to speak on the phone quite a bit and on WhatsApp. I don’t think Savage has been back to Britain for a while because he’s had some legal problems in the US.’   

A 93-year-old woman who at 88 was the oldest competitor in the 2016 London Marathon has died. Iva Barr, from Bedford, was a member of Bedford Harriers Athletics Club from its early days and ran marathons for “30-odd years”. She took part in the first London Marathon in 1981 and only stopped running a few years ago. The club said she “encouraged and was an inspiration to many of our older and younger runners” and would be missed. The 2016 London run was her 20th marathon and afterwards she confirmed it had been her last. She tackled the first 14 miles before taking the Underground to Westminster, and walked the final part to the finish at The Mall. At the time she said she would “never forget” her final attempt, despite not quite completing the route. “I rather wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,” she said. “That didn’t happen, but I still had a great day.” Ms Barr was not the oldest person to have ever taken part in a London Marathon. Fauja Singh, from Ilford, east London, ran in the event in 2012 at the age of 101 and was believed to be the world’s oldest marathon runner when he completed the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2011. 

On This Day

  • 1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.   
  • 1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time. 
  • 1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.  

Deaths

  • 1872 – Mary Somerville, Scottish astronomer, mathematician, and author (b. 1780)
  • 1924 – Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer and educator (b. 1858)  
  • 1975 – Graham Hill, English race car driver and businessman (b. 1929)  
  • 1981 – Natalie Wood, American actress (b. 1938)  
  • 1986 – Cary Grant, English-American actor (b. 1904)  
  • 2001 – George Harrison, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and former Beatle (b. 1943)  

 Last Meals

Natalie Wood was an American actress who began her career in film as a child actor and successfully transitioned to young adult roles. She was the recipient of four Golden Globes, and received three Academy Award nominations. She starred in a host of well known films in the 60’s & 70’s, including Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, West Side Story and many more. 

During the 1970s, Wood began a hiatus from film and had a child with husband Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. 

Wood famously drowned off Catalina Island on November 29th, 1981, at age 43. She died in mysterious circumstances during the making of Brainstorm while on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island on board Wagner’s yacht Splendour. Outside of drowning, many of the circumstances are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water. 

Wood was with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendour‘s captain Dennis Davern on that evening. Shortly after docking their boat, at Avalon Harbor on Catalina Island, Wood, Wagner and their guest Walken went ashore to do some shopping. Later that evening, the threesome ate dinner together in the dining room of Doug’s Harbor Reef Restaurant. The meal would be Natalie’s last. Although what they ate is a mystery, they did consume two bottles of Soave Bolla wine, Margaritas, a joint and Quaaludes. 

From Davern’s witness statement he stated that the mood was tense when thy returned to the Splendour. A bottle of wine was opened after Wood lit some candles. Shortly after a conversation began between Wood and Walken, Wagner grabbed the open wine bottle and with rage crashed it upon the coffee table and screamed out to Walken, “Do you want to fuck my wife, is that what you want?” The glass shattered throughout the salon. After the bottle smashing, Walken retreated to his cabin and closed the cabin door. He remained there until morning. Wood was mortified and went immediately to the master bedroom. Wagner followed her within minutes, and then a terrible argument proceeded. Davern knocked on their bedroom door from the main salon to try to calm the situation. Wagner answered to tell him to go away and to not interfere. The loud arguing continued and Davern heard things (objects, possibly people) hitting the walls and things being thrown at the ceiling of the master bedroom, directly beneath where he stood.  

Next, Wagner and Wood were on the open back deck arguing loudly. By then it was 11:00p.m. The arguing sounded fast and furious. The only full sentence Davern could completely decipher during the entire argument was “Get off my fucking boat” said by Wagner. Davern was terribly concerned but waited about 15 minutes before going to the deck. When he arrived on the rear open deck, only Wagner was present, and he stood near the far rear wall of the yacht. Wagner appeared sweaty, flushed, anxious, nervous, and disheveled. He told Davern “Natalie is missing” and asked him to search the yacht. He immediately went to Walken’s cabin and opened his door. He appeared to be sound asleep. He then went to the bedroom, but it was empty. He met up with Wagner in the wheelhouse and he informed Davern the dinghy was missing, too. Davern immediately wanted to radio for help and to turn on the searchlight, but Wagner told him, sternly, “We are not going to do that. We will wait and see if she returns.” His choice led Davern to presume that he knew his wife was in the dinghy and had taken off in it. While they waited, Wagner opened a bottle of scotch and discussed with Davern the repercussions of bringing any immediate attention to the situation and Wagner claimed he did not want to tarnish his image. After an hour passed, Wagner began crying and repeated, “She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone” which Davern believed a strange thing to say. Over two hours passed before Davern finally convinced Wagner to make a call for help.

Natalie Wood was found floating facedown at 7:45 a.m., a mile away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The autopsy report revealed that  she had bruises on her body and arms, as well as an abrasion on her left cheek, but no indication as to how or when the injuries occurred. 

In his memoir Pieces of My Heart, Wagner admitted that he had an argument with Wood before she disappeared. The autopsy found that Wood’s blood alcohol content was 1.4% and that there were traces of a motion-sickness pill and a painkiller in her bloodstream, both of which increase the effects of alcohol. 

At the time, Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled the cause of her death to be accidental drowning and hypothermia. According to Noguchi, Wood had been drinking and she may have slipped while trying to re-board the dinghy. Her sister Lana expressed doubts, alleging that Wood could not swim and had been “terrified” of water all her life, and that she would never have left the yacht on her own by dinghy. 

In 2011, the Los Angeles County Chief Coroner amended Wood’s death certificate and changed the cause of death from accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors”. The addendum stated that Wood might have sustained some of the bruises on her body before she went into the water, but that this could not be definitively determined, however the bruises were substantial and fitting for someone who had been thrown out of a boat. 

One thing is for certain, we will never find out what truly happened aboard the Splendour that fateful evening, unless we gat a deathbed confession from Wagner, whom at the age of 90 might be sooner than you think. 

Last Week’s Birthdays

Gemma Chan (38), Diane Ladd (85), Don Cheadle (56), Tom Sizemore (59), Jeff Fahey (68), Gena Lee Nolin (49), Karen Gillan (33), Ed Harris (70), Ryan Kwanten (44), Judd Nelson (61), Martin Clunes (59), Jon Stewart (58), Armando Iannucci (57), Sharlto Copley (47), Robin Givens (56), Bill Nye (65), Kristin Bauer van Straten (54), Mark Margolis (81), Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (32), Rita Ora (30), Tina Turner (81), Christina Applegate (49), John Larroquette (73), Bruno Tonioli (65), Katherine Heigl (42), Sarah Hyland (30), Shirley Henderson (55), Colin Hanks (43), Stephen Merchant (46), Denise Crosby (63), Billy Connolly (78), Dwight Schultz (73), Conleth Hill (56), Ricky Whittle (39), Miley Cyrus (28), and Michelle Gomez (54). 

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