Dead Pool 14th July 2024

Inches matter! What could have been, oh well, maybe next time! So, lets dole out the points!

Following the sad passing of Shannen Doherty at the young age of 53, I can award 97 points to the following: Mark W, me, Julia, Paula, Abi, Mark K, and 197 to Ian who had her down as his Woman. Well done everyone!!! 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Joe Engle, 91, American astronaut (STS-2, STS-51-I). 
• Pat Colbert, 77, American actress (Dallas, Leonard Part 6). 
• Benji Gregory, 46, American actor (ALF, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Once Upon a Forest), heat stroke.
• Shelley Duvall, 75, American actress (The Shining, Nashville, 3 Women), complications from diabetes. 
• Ruth Westheimer, 96, German-American sex therapist and Holocaust survivor. 
• Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, American gunman (attempted assassination of Donald Trump), shot. 
• Shannen Doherty, 53, American actress (90210), cancer. 
• Richard Simmons, 76, American fitness personality. 

In Other News

Souvenir T-shirts picturing the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump have already gone on sale. The T-shirts use an image of a defiant Trump raising his fist into the air as Secret Service officers try to safely move him off the stage. The former president narrowly escaped being killed after a bullet hit his ear at the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The assassination attempt took place at around 6.15pm local time, with photos of Trump’s recovery being published minutes later. Mere hours later, T-shirts with variations of the historic image have gone on sale from outlets based in the US and China. By around 8pm on Saturday some Chinese manufacturers had already put the iconic photo onto T-shirts, according to the South China Morning Post. The first batch reportedly went on sale on Taobao, a Chinese e-commerce platform, at 8.40pm. One of the Taobao sellers, Li Jinwei, told the Hong-Kong based newspaper: “We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the US.” Potoshirt, an online store for trending T-shirts which is based in the US, was also advertising defiant Trump assassination T-shirts on social media on Sunday morning. One product, which was on sale for $22.95, had a shot of a bloodied Trump raising his fist in defiance with the words “you can’t kill Trump” above the image. Another T-shirt, on sale for the same price, used the full image of the former president surrounded by security personnel, with the line “if you come at the king you best not miss” underneath the photo.  

The family of an 82-year-old woman who was pronounced dead at a New York nursing home are demanding answers after after she was later found to be breathing two hours later at the funeral home. Janet Balducci was thought to have died mid-morning on February 4th, 2023 at the Water’s Edge Rehab and Nursing Center in Port Jefferson on New York’s Long Island. Balducci’s body was then driven from the nursing home to Casimir Funeral Home in nearby Miller Place, some six miles away, to be embalmed. Just as funeral parlour workers were ready to tend to Balducci’s body they noticed the cadaver that lay before them still had a pulse. Now the family, Balducci’s two sons, Robert and Joseph, are looking for an explanation as to how the mix-up occurred in what has been termed as ‘extreme and outrageous conduct’ in a lawsuit filed by the family which is taking on a two-pronged approach. The sons are suing for what they allege is the premature and wrongful death of their mother. The family believe that staff at the care home both declared Balducci prematurely deceased but then also contributed to her actual death by failing to diagnose a deep vein thrombosis, which they allege occurred as nursing home workers stood by and did nothing to help treat her. The family’s lawyer say the woman’s sons are ‘horrified’ by what happened and have to live with the sickening reality their mother ‘was placed in a body bag alive.’ ‘I think the case is more emblematic of what happens when elderly people go into these homes,’ DeNoto said. ‘They don’t have an advocate to keep track of what’s happening,’ lawyer Peter DeNoto, told the Flying Monkeys. A criminal investigation into the entire episode is also still ongoing.   

Strictly professional Amy Dowden has revealed she made an unexpected dash to hospital last week amid her ongoing battle with breast cancer. The star, 33, was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer last year. Caerphilly-born Dowden has since undergone a mastectomy, chemotherapy and fertility treatment, and missed out on being a competitor on Strictly during the 2023 series. On Monday, she took to social media to update her fans about how she spent time at a respiratory unit last week. She wrote under pictures of herself on a hospital bed: “So last week didn’t exactly go to plan. Feeling much better now and still taking it easy. “But can’t thank the NHS and the care I received on the respiratory unit enough. Also to my family and Ben of course. Always dropping everything and spending endless hours next to my bed while I mainly slept. Feeling much better and thanks for the many messages after going quiet. Off to oncology unit today for my monthly injection, (missed it last week due to being poorly).” 

On This Day

• 1881 – American outlaw Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in the Maxwell House at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
• 1983 – Mario Bros. is released in Japan, beginning the popular Super Mario Bros franchise.
• 2002 – French president Jacques Chirac escapes an assassination attempt from Maxime Brunerie during a Bastille Day parade at Champs-Élysées.
• 2016 – A man ploughs a truck into a Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing 86 people and injuring another 434 before being shot by police.

Deaths

• 1827 – Augustin-Jean Fresnel, French physicist and engineer, reviver of wave theory of light, inventor of catadioptric lighthouse lens (b. 1788). 
• 1881 – William H. Bonney aka Billy the Kid, American gunfighter and outlaw (b. 1859). 
• 1998 – Richard McDonald, American businessman, co-founded McDonald’s (b. 1909).
• 2022 – Ivana Trump, Czech-American socialite and model (b. 1949).

Last Week’s Birthdays

Phoebe Waller-Bridge (39), Jackie Earle Haley (63), Matthew Fox (58), Conor McGregor (36), David Mitchell (50), Kyle Gass (64), Harrison Ford (82), Patrick Stewart (84), Ken Jeong (55), Melissa O’Neil (36), Michelle Rodriguez (46), Cheryl Ladd (73), Tamsin Greig (58), Bill Cosby (87), Michelle Fairley (61), Stephen Lang (72), Sofía Vergara (52), Fiona Shaw (66), Peter Serafinowicz (52), Chiwetel Ejiofor (47), Tom Hanks (68), Pamela Adlon (58), Kelly McGillis (67), Scott Grimes (53), Jimmy Smits (69), Courtney Love (60), Richard Wilson (88), Kevin Bacon (66), Maya Hawke (26), Anjelica Huston (73), and Jaden Smith (26).