We have points to give! Unbelievably, Dave guessed that Ilie Ciocan would be a wiki notable death, so 38 points!!! Obviously none of would have heard of him, but in todays celebrity culture, not dying for a long time makes you famous.
Look Who You Could Have Had:
- Robin Hurlstone, 68, British actor (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel).
- Sonny Rollins, 95, American jazz saxophonist (“Airegin“, “Doxy“, “St. Thomas“).
- Howard Storm, 94, American actor (Take the Money and Run) and director (Mork & Mindy).
- Ilie Ciocan, 112, Romanian supercentenarian and World War II veteran.
- Marcia Lucas, 80, American film editor (Star Wars, Taxi Driver, American Graffiti), Oscar winner, cancer.
- Ronald LaPread, 75, American musician (Commodores).
- Kelly Curtis, 69, American actress (The Devil’s Daughter, Trading Places, False Arrest). Sister of Jamie Lee Curtis.
- Bruno Kant, 110, German supercentenarian and Roman Catholic priest.
In Other News
Barry Manilow has offered new insight into his lung cancer diagnosis and recovery. The 82-year-old “Copacabana” crooner revealed his diagnosis in December, saying it was “found early.” He underwent surgery to remove a spot on his left lung, postponing his Las Vegas residency and several planned tour dates to recover. But part of his post-surgery recovery was a seven-day ICU stay during which he unknowingly had pneumonia. “I didn’t know about pneumonia,” the singer told the Flying Monkeys “I was in the ICU for seven days, because they couldn’t grasp this pneumonia that was just about killing me.” However, Manilow says he’s on the mend. “I’m doing good. I’m doing good,” Manilow said when asked about his health. “It took longer than I thought it was gonna take to get past this lung cancer thing.” Since the start of the year, Manilow has announced multiple rounds of show postponements as he continues his recovery. He described a February visit to the surgeon ahead of his anticipated return to the stage as “very depressing.” Despite “using the treadmill three times a day” to prepare for his upcoming arena tour dates, his surgeon advised against him resuming the previously postponed concerts. The entire ordeal has forced Manilow to take stock of his life. “This made me stop and think about: Have I done what I wanted to do, and have I made people happy? Have I been a good friend?” he mused. “All of those cornball things that I’ve read for all of my life, I started to think about that, too. It really did stop me in my tracks. And the answers are yes. And as a matter of fact, there are more yeses than I ever thought.”
Lord Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, has announced he is taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords following the recurrence of his cancer. The Labour peer was initially diagnosed with non-aggressive prostate cancer in March 2023, from which he later received the all clear. However, the former minister, who served under both Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, revealed in a Substack post on Friday that he was informed earlier this year that the disease had returned. While initial tests have suggested this second bout of cancer has “gone”, Lord Watson is scheduled to undergo further checks later this summer. His announcement comes as the government recently advised against a population-wide prostate cancer screening programme, instead recommending testing for only a “few thousand” high-risk men. In his Substack post, Lord Watson, who previously resigned as a minister under Sir Tony Blair, also detailed his renewed struggle with weight. He had previously shed more than 125 pounds but admitted to regaining weight in recent years after ceasing exercise following his initial diagnosis. The former MP for West Bromwich East wrote: “I knew the weight was piling on because my clothes no longer fitted me. Not only was I obese again, but the cancer came back earlier this year. Is it weird to say this was the wake-up call I needed to choose life again? Perhaps it is. But it is true. So I have taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords for treatment and recuperation. Initial tests suggest the cancer has gone, though I will not know for certain until more tests in the summer. Despite the uncertainty, I feel good. Chipper, in fact.”
Police responding to reports of a shotgun blast at a convenience store sounds like the opening of countless American crime movies, but when cops in Nebraska responded to a recent such call they found an unusual culprit: a dog. Local TV station KNOP News 2 reported that police in the town of Scottsbluff were called out to a local store recently after reports of a blast involving a shotgun. Upon arrival they found a truck with blast damage in one of its doors and a woman who had been struck in the arm by a pellet from a shotgun. However, investigation showed a canine cause behind the shooting when it was revealed the blast happened as the vehicle had pulled up to the store as a dog had been moving from one side of its back seat to another. Somehow, the dog had triggered the shotgun – which had a live round chambered – to fire, damaging the vehicle and striking a female passerby. The victim was taken to hospital though not seriously injured, she’s now probably bankrupt. Surprisingly, it is illegal in Nebraska to drive with a loaded shotgun in your vehicle. As of the first quarter of 2026, there have been 3,103 shooting deaths in the United States. Amazingly, this figure represents the lowest number of shooting deaths recorded for that period in the last twelve years!
On This Day
- 1859 – The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time.
- 2003 – Air France retires its fleet of Concorde aircraft.
- 2005 – Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was “Deep Throat”.
Deaths
- 2009 – Danny La Rue, Irish-British drag queen performer and singer (born 1927).
- 2016 – Carla Lane, English television writer (born 1928).
- 2024 – Robert Pickton, Canadian serial killer (born 1949).
How would YOU choose to be executed?
Late one Friday afternoon in March last year, the curtain in the ‘witness room’ of South Carolina’s state execution chamber opened to reveal convicted murderer Brad Sigmon strapped to a chair.
A large metal basin had been fitted underneath it to collect his blood and he was dressed all in black to hide the bloodstains that would soon soak through his clothes.
With straps around his ankles, lap, waist and even his chin, he could barely move an inch. A black-and-white target had been Velcroed to his clothes over his heart.
A black hood was then placed over his head, before another curtain was pulled back to reveal three square gun ports cut into a wall 15ft away from him. Standing behind each was a volunteer prison guard holding a loaded rifle.
Without any countdown, they suddenly fired together, the three special bullets, designed to fragment as much as possible on impact – opening up a fist-sized hole where his heart once was. Sigmon, 67, was pronounced dead three minutes later.
He had been sentenced to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents, David and Gladys Larke, with a baseball bat in 2001.
He’d had the dubious privilege of becoming the first US death row inmate in 15 years to be executed by firing squad, choosing it over lethal injection and the electric chair. Sigmon didn’t pick the chair because it would ‘burn and cook him alive’, said his attorney Gerald King, adding that lethal injection was ‘just as monstrous’.
Convicted Alabama murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith, on the other hand, became the first American prisoner ever to be executed by nitrogen asphyxiation in 2024. Two years earlier, three executioners had spent 90 awful minutes trying to kill him by lethal injection but had given up after they couldn’t find the two veins they needed.
When I interviewed him a few months before he died, Smith, who had languished on death row for three decades, said he was ‘terrified’ at the prospect of being executed a second time and felt he’d been punished enough.
His protests were in vain. He was strapped to a bed wearing a full-face mask that forced pure nitrogen into his lungs. Witnesses said he thrashed violently in panic and terror before losing consciousness, suffocating some five minutes after the deadly gas began to fill his airways.
An autopsy later revealed that his lungs had been flooded with ‘dark maroon blood’ – a sign of a so-called ‘negative-pressure pulmonary oedema’. Experts believe that, because he hadn’t been sedated, he automatically panicked when he couldn’t breathe.
The authorities had given both Smith and Sigmon the grim choice of how they would die and both rejected lethal injection – for decades America’s de facto execution ‘protocol’.
Now many more death row residents face the same grisly decision. Donald Trump’s administration has just revealed plans to add firing squads, nitrogen gas and electrocution as permissible ways of executing people convicted of the most serious federal crimes.
Some US states already have these alternative execution methods on their books to punish state crimes but rarely use them.
The President, who has reportedly even mused about broadcasting executions live, is keen to expand not only the methods available but also the number of criminals meeting their end in these ways.
To some, this will signal a chilling return to a more barbaric age. To others, it is merely fitting retribution for the worst of the worst criminals.
Trump has long been an enthusiast for the ultimate sanction. In the final six months of his first term, he hastily signed the death warrants of 13 federal inmates by lethal injection – more than had been executed by the previous ten presidents combined.
His successor, Joe Biden, then placed a moratorium on federal executions, commuting (or reducing to life imprisonment) the death sentences of all but three of the 40 people on death row. (The remaining trio were 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Dylann Roof, convicted in 2016 of killing nine black worshippers at a South Carolina church; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pennsylvania in 2018.)
Trump is not quite so merciful, and a new report from the Department of Justice (DoJ), which ultimately reports to him, not only says that it is clearing the way for firing squads, electrocutions and lethal gas for federal crimes but, with many death row cases taking decades to complete every permissible appeal, it is intent on ‘streamlining internal processes’ to ‘expedite’ the killings.
Trump has reportedly even considered trying to introduce the guillotine (which has never been used in the US), hold ‘group executions’ and ‘mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives’, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
A White House official said: ‘Trump has a particular affinity for the firing squad, because it seemed more dramatic, rather than… putting a syringe in people and putting them to sleep’, adding that the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ President enjoyed fantasising publicly about ‘lining up criminals and drug dealers before a firing squad’.
At a campaign rally in 2022, Trump won roars of approval when he suggested copying hardline leaders in China, Iran – and, it might be added, Nazi Germany – in sending the executioner’s bullet to the condemned’s family along with a bill for it.
Trump also considered a ‘flashy, government-backed video ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods’, including ‘footage from these new executions’, said Rolling Stone.
An administration official said: ‘The President believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals.’ A Trump spokesman denied the claim. The law as it stands is messy, patchy and inconsistently applied.
It’s further complicated by the fact that some capital crimes are federal offences, over which Trump and the DoJ have jurisdiction, and others are state offences.
Some 27 states theoretically carry out capital punishment, although six of them have passed moratoriums on the practice. Nine US states authorise the electric chair, nine permit death by gassing, five allow inmates to be executed by firing squad, while three states allow hanging – a method that went out of fashion in America in the 19th century.
The 48-page DoJ report stresses that the move to expand execution methods for federal crimes has been driven by difficulties obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections – which remain by far the most common execution method in the US, authorised in all death penalty states.
Experts have argued that Trump’s ‘favourite’ method – firing squad – may, somewhat ironically, be by far the most humane. Doctors say that almost everyone shot in the heart loses consciousness in seconds.
In 2010, Deborah Denno, a law professor at New York’s Fordham University who had studied various execution methods, called the firing squad a ‘dignified execution’ despite ‘its brutal image and roots’.
Four years later, Court of Appeals judge Alex Kozinski echoed that view, adding that while the guillotine was ‘probably best’ [that is, most reliable], it was ‘inconsistent with our national ethos’.
‘The firing squad strikes me as the most promising,’ he said. ‘Eight or ten large-calibre rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time. There are plenty of people employed by the state who can pull the trigger and have the training to aim true.’
Indeed, America’s last recorded botched execution by firing squad dates all the way back to 1879, when Utah riflemen missed murderer Wallace Wilkerson’s heart entirely. He hadn’t been tied down and stiffened at the last moment, dislodging the target pinned to his chest.
Wilkerson reportedly leapt up, screaming: ‘Oh my God! They’ve missed it!’ and then took 27 minutes to die. Anti-death-penalty campaigners claimed that sadistic shooters missed his heart on purpose to prolong his agony.
Utah has since attempted to prevent similar mishaps by ensuring the inmate’s head is immobilised by a strap and the chest, shins and arms similarly held in place. Sandbags are stacked around the chair and wooden boards erected behind it to prevent the bullets from ricocheting around the room. Ceiling lights glare down on the prisoner to further guide the riflemen’s aim while a small square of white cloth, bearing a black target, is placed over the heart.
In Utah, one of the Winchester rifles used by the firing squad is usually loaded with a wax round so nobody knows if they fired a fatal shot. (Experienced shooters insist they can tell the difference as a dummy round produces less recoil.)
Until Brad Sigmon was shot dead last year in South Carolina, the firing squad had been used only three times since 1976 and always in Utah. Many dismissed it as barbaric and even a former Utah governor, Gary Herbert, conceded it was ‘a little bit gruesome’.
Killer Gary Gilmore, the first person to be executed after the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, famously growled ‘Let’s do it’ before he was shot by a firing squad in 1977. His words are said to have inspired the creator of the Nike slogan ‘Just do it’.
The US remains the only country in the world to retain the use of the electric chair, or ‘Old Sparky’, but South Carolina is the only state that still prefers it as the default execution method.
The inmate is usually shaved and strapped to a wooden chair. A metal electrode in the shape of a skullcap is attached to the scalp, another to an ankle. The inmate receives a blast of up to 2,000 volts for 30 seconds and, if their heart is still beating, another one.
Although death should be almost instantaneous, it is a notoriously grisly spectacle – sometimes with flames leaping from the condemned’s mask-covered head as their overheating body swells and turns scarlet. Experts say it isn’t painless, either, because the current sends the muscles into uncontrollable and agonising spasms.
Nine states permit inmates to be gassed. Before the introduction of nitrogen, the condemned were usually dispatched by having a pail of sulphuric acid placed under the execution chair, with crystals of sodium cyanide then released into the pail. The prisoner slowly loses consciousness as they breathe in the gas and eventually die from hypoxia, the cutting off of oxygen to the brain.
Experts say it is unquestionably painful and nerve-racking, comparing it to the experience of having a heart attack. A former prison warden recalled: ‘At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain and strangling. The eyes pop, the skin turns purple and the victim begins to drool.’
And as for the time-honoured tradition of permitting inmates to choose their last meal, this hasn’t survived the attention of money-conscious officials. In Oklahoma, the cost is now limited to $25, compared with $40 in Florida.
In 2011, Texas – by far the biggest executioner of any state – stopped the practice after racist killer Lawrence Russell Brewer requested a vast feast including two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, a ‘meat lover’s’ pizza, a pint of ice cream and peanut butter fudge. He didn’t eat any of it.
Then again, who would have much of an appetite nowadays when facing the daunting execution alternatives on offer in Trump’s America?
Last Week’s Birthdays
Clint Eastwood (96), Colin Farrell (50), Brooke Shields (61), Lea Thompson (65), Tom Berenger (77), Colm Meaney (73), Stephen Tobolowsky (75), Keir Dullea (90), Harry Enfield (65), Ted Levine (69), Annette Bening (68), Laverne Cox (54), Sarah Millican (51), Carey Mulligan (41), Kylie Minogue (58), Michelle Collins (64), Joseph Fiennes (56), Paul Bettany (55), Jack McBrayer (53), Helena Bonham Carter (60), Pam Grier (77), Bobcat Goldthwait (64), Lenny Kravitz (62), and Stevie Nicks (78).
Better late than never! This week we find Tinkerbell has died, along with Britains most overrated artist. I wonder if Peter Pan will be next… 
A man has died after reportedly using high-strength adhesive instead of a condom for contraception. Salman Mirza, 25, a drug user, is said to have sealed his cock with an ultra-strong epoxy resin during sex with his partner, with a mystery green liquid found in his abdomen. The couple were inhaling the glue “for a kick” before opting to use it as a contraceptive during a meet up at the Amber Hotel in Ahmedabad, a city in India’s western state of Gujarat. Within a day of checking into the hotel, Salman was discovered unconscious in the “shrubs” outside the hotel by an acquaintance. He was immediately rushed to hospital but sadly passed away shortly afterwards. The Flying Monkeys reported the pair decided to engage in sexual activity after consuming drugs. “Since they didn’t have any protection, they decided to apply the adhesive onto his dick to ensure that she didn’t get pregnant.” Following his death, Salman’s family alleges that it was his partner who applied the adhesive to his meat and two veg. They have lodged a complaint with the police accusing his partner of murder. Police have confirmed samples have been sent for forensic analysis to determine if this was indeed the case, and an autopsy is currently in progress. Police have declared the official cause of the 25-year-old’s death was due to “multiple organ failure”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains a website listing different possible birth control methods. It divides them into different categories such as intrauterine contraception, hormonal methods, barrier methods, emergency contraception, and permanent methods of birth control. Notably, gluing your snake eye shut is not one of the methods listed. 
A 21-year-old woman died in Limera, Brazil, after a rope jumping crew failed to connect her to the safety rope used in the extreme sport, military police and witness accounts said. About six men were arrested following the woman’s death. Three of them were released following questioning. The other three will be investigated on charges of homicide with implied malice, local media reported. Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, a graduate of physical education and sports management, had gone rope jumping with her fiancé at the Ponte do Esqueleto (Skeleton Bridge). According to military police, people on site reported that the safety equipment was not secured on to the woman before she was launched by two men off the platform. Two videos emerged of the incident. The videos also show that the rope was not secured to the woman before the men carried her to be thrown off the bridge. Right before she was launched off the platform, someone can be heard shouting, “Guys, the rope,” after realising the woman was not connected to the safety rope. The woman fell 40 meters and suffered multiple injuries. Paramedics confirmed her death on site. Before her death, Freitas posted photographs on her Instagram. In one of the captions, she joked, “Who was the crazy person who let me jump off a bridge?” Her profile was taken down after her death. Her social media showed that she was a recent graduate and was a resident of Jandira in Greater São Paulo, where she worked at a gym. The gym posted a message mourning Freitas’s death. The company that runs the rope-jumping business, Entre Cordas, deleted its page with 80,000 followers after the incident. The Limeira City Hall said Saturday that it will sue the Federal Government in court “due to the omission regarding the Ponte do Esqueleto”, after the death of a young woman at the site. In a statement, the City Hall claimed that the responsibility for the inspection, maintenance, and access control of the bridge lay exclusively with the Federal Government. They stated that since 2025, they had already sent official letters to the responsible bodies demanding security measures on the bridge, including a request to block access and place warning sites. Despite this activities continued. The three men who were arrested are 47,32 and 27 years old. One of them is a civilian firefighter, and the other two helped on-site with the jumping. The woman’s fiancé reportedly fell ill after her death and was given medical attention. In rope jumping, the practitioner jumps from an elevated location like bridges, buildings or rock faces while attached to climbing ropes connected to an anchor. The ropes used are less elastic, giving the person a feeling that they are free-falling for a longer time. Adventure sports require rigorous planning and calculations regarding height and equipment. The founder of rope jumping, Dan Osman, died in 1998 when his anchoring system failed during a jump in Yosemite National Park, California.
X-Men star Tyler Mane has revealed a “super rare” breast cancer diagnosis. This week, the 59-year-old, who starred as Sabretooth in X-Men and Deadpool & Wolverine, opened up about the “bad news” regarding his health. “Yep. I have breast cancer. And yep, it’s super rare. Only one per cent of breast cancers are men,” he shared on Instagram. “I’ll be honest, my first reaction was to keep it secret. I mean it’s kind of embarrassing. But then I found out that men are more likely to be diagnosed in advance stages BECAUSE it’s not talked about and not looked for. In fact, my doctors all dismissed it and it was only because my wife pushed me to get the lump removed that I got in early.” Breast cancer in men is rare and accounts for less than one per cent of all cancers in men. Mane, a former professional wrestler, promised to share his treatment journey on social media, hoping to raise awareness. He said breast cancer in men was normally detected later and therefore led to poorer prognoses than in women. In footage from his first chemotherapy session, Mane flipped the bird and quietly said “fuck cancer”. Mane said thankfully, the cancers had not spread to his lymph nodes and he would undergo four rounds of chemotherapy over 12 weeks.
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