Dead Pool 18th May 2014

Dead Pool BackgroundWelcome all, what a strange week! Robert Burns died, no, not  that one, but the   Canadian politician. Also Tom Jones passed, no, not that one, the WWII Navajo soldier and coder, and last but not least, Charlie Brown died, no, not that one, the basketball player, so you can imagine my confusion!

We also said goodbye to Stephen Sutton, a truly inspiring character, whom to date has risen nearly £4 million for cancer charities, if only we all could be so altruistic in our own demises.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

heinz-beans-with-pork-sausagesAnyone else found that the tomato sauce in their Heinz Baked Beans has a slight tang in them recently? Well it might be down to Alec Brackenbury, 49, who had his hand chopped off whilst servicing a peeling machine at their factory. I’d assume that the spurting stump would add plenty of its own sauce to their recipe, but please look out if you prefer the Beans with Sausage variety. Nom nom…

2013-04-24_entertainment_news_12_1Award-winning TV writer and comedian Caroline Aherne is recovering from treatment for lung cancer. Aherne, 50, had eye cancer when she was a child and also revealed that she had been treated for bladder cancer in the past. The poor woman has a very troubled past, a suspected suicide bid in 1998 brought into sharp focus the problems she was having. Following a drug overdose, Aherne admitted she was an alcoholic and had not been aware of what she was doing to herself. A true candidate for the Dead Pool if I ever saw one!

Richard-and-Judy-310x310TV personalities Judy Finnigan and husband Richard Madeley have said they have agreed to an assisted death pact should one of them fall seriously ill. Madeley said: “If Judy was really ill and in logical mind…”I wouldn’t give a tuppenny if there was a risk of being prosecuted. I’d do what was right for my wife.” Finnigan added: “And I’d do the same. Stuff it all! We’ve made ourselves give each other a pledge along those lines.” Madeley continued: “If, when the time came… Judy said to me, ‘But what about you? What about the risk of prosecution?’, I’d say, ‘That’s my problem, I’ll deal with that, don’t worry about it.’ And for me, it would be the locked room, the bottle of whisky and the revolver. I wouldn’t want to mess around.” We are all wondering why both of you are waiting for illness, just do it!!

article-0-1DC526A500000578-51_634x574Australian actor Hugh Jackman has had a second cancerous skin growth removed from his nose. The 45-year-old attended the premiere of his latest film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, sporting a bandage on his face in New York on Saturday. The star told reporters he learned the results of a biopsy diagnosing the basal cell carcinoma on Thursday, and had it removed immediately.

lee-kun-heeYou know how we all know who Steve Jobs was, do any of you know who the head of Samsung is? No? Nor did I, but he is in a “stable condition” after undergoing emergency heart surgery. Lee Kun-hee underwent the operation after suffering breathing difficulties late on Saturday night. Mr Lee took over as chairman of South Korea’s biggest business in 1987 after his father’s death. He is credited with turning the company into an international force in the technology market. He has previously undergone lung surgery in the 1990s and has reportedly suffered respiratory problems since then. They guy is worth £6 billion and his son and two daughters have senior positions at Samsung and it is thought that his son, Jay Lee, currently vice-chairman, will eventually succeed him. Who knew eh?

1399664696888And finally, the Pentagon isn’t letting a little thing like zombies not existing get in the way of their emergency preparedness. The US military has cooked up a plan that would come in handy if the dead happened to rise from their graves to attack the living. “This plan was not actually designed as a joke,” reads a disclaimer in  the recently declassified 264216-369d7988-dbaf-11e3-8693-526588c1a688CONOP 8888, the “Counter-Zombie Dominance” plan devised by US Strategic Command planners in Omaha, Nebraska. But it’s not entirely serious, either. The plan was designed as a training tool for military personnel who would be tasked with assessing threats and protecting civilians in any sort of attack. The military doesn’t actually believe that zombies are a legitimate threat—just that they’re a useful training tool. Yeah, everything has a reason, we all know they have developed a virus that changes us into zombies, they just need to control us!

On This Day

Deaths

Horrible Ways to Die #7 – Broken on a Wheel by Dexychik

17-medieval-tortureYou’ve probably heard of a Catherine wheel firework. They’re named after the legend of the martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria, who was to be broken on a wheel. When the wheel touched her, it broke from miraculous force, so she was beheaded instead. Apparently, she then bled milk.

The first recorded use of the wheel was in Roman times, and they used it to kill slaves and martyrs. A man was laid underneath an iron wheel, which was then smashed into him with a weight. They also practised a form in which the victim was tied to a spiked wheel and then run over more spikes.

Being broken on the wheel was a medieval method of torture and execution across Europe although it was also used as a way to defile the dead well into the 18th century. It was never popular in England, though Scotland used it several times. In Germany, it remained on the statute books until the 19th century.

It had various applications. In its crudest form, the victim was simply run over by the wheel, attached to a cart or similar. The more awful version saw the victim stretched across the wagon wheel (which would be considerably larger than modern ones) and then spun, with their limbs broken in the gaps with a lead weight as they spun past. Some people were broken starting with the neck, which killed them quickly. Others were killed starting at the feet and working upwards- a  slow and painful death.

Darstellung des Räderns in einem Holzstich von 1586One of the most revolting uses of the wheel, recorded in Zurich, involved breaking a person’s bones and spine against the wheel as a brace, then threading the useless limbs around the spokes of it, which was then erected on a pole. The still-living victim was then left to die of shock and exposure.

Frequently, people sentenced to die in this manner were mercy-killed either by strangulation before beginning, or being killed by a direct blow to the chest at some point. However, those who suffered the full extent took a long time to die. The more serious the crime, the longer the victim was left on the wheel before being strangled or finished off. It was a very popular spectacle.

Bleurgh! Next time, would you like burned alive or the electric chair? You decide!

Last Week’s Birthdays

Stephen Colbert (50), Stevie Wonder (64), Tony Hawk (46), Stephen Baldwin (48), Emilio Estevez (52), Robert Pattinson (28), George Lucas (70), Tim Roth (53), Pierce Brosnan (61), Janet Jackson (48), Megan Fox (28), Bill Paxton (59), Enya (53), Trent Reznor (49), Jordan Knight (44), Steve Winwood (66), Burt Bacharach (86), Harvey Keitel (75), Brian Eno (66), Mark Zuckerburg (30), Sofia Coppola (43), Robert Zemeckis (62), Tori Spelling (41), Gabriella Sabatini (44), David Boreanaz (45), Olga Korbut (59), Debra Winger (59), Sugar Ray Leonard (58), Tina Fey (44) and Chow Yun-Fat (59).

2013 League Table

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Next week peeps!

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