Dead Pool 29th April 2018

After last weeks excessiveness, it was too much to ask of the flying monkeys to haul in a few more notables. However, the scythe of the Grim Reaper ne’er remains still and kept itself busy by removing a few Z list celebrities. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News 

Former President George H.W. Bush will remain at Houston Methodist Hospital through the weekend to continue his recovery, according the latest health update from Bush family spokesman Jim McGrath. The 41st president was hospitalised on April 22nd after contracting an infection that spread to his blood, one day after the funeral of his wife Barbara Bush, who died April 17th. He was in intensive care until April 25th and is now recovering in a regular patient room. McGrath tweeted Friday that , Bush is “in excellent spirits, and is looking forward to resuming his schedule and going to Maine next month.” Let’s keep a sharp eye on what happens. 

We don’t normally highlight people after their  deaths, but I thought it was apt that Rick Dickinson, the designer of Sinclair computers, was given a little nod. The British designer, thought to be in his 60s, worked in-house for Sinclair Research and oversaw the creation of its home computers in the 1980s. He was responsible for the boxy look of the ZX80 and ZX81 and the Bauhaus-inspired appearance of the Spectrum. Mr Dickinson also helped to develop the technologies for the UK company’s touch-sensitive and rubber keyboards. It’s fair to say that his machines spawned a generation of coders that helped to establish the UK’s reputation as a creative, game-making powerhouse. A spokesman at Dickinson Associates confirmed he had died earlier this week. Mr Dickinson had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015, for which he had received successful treatment. However, the cancer had returned last year. Mr Dickinson had then travelled to the US for specialist care but had died suddenly between bouts of treatment.  

They say bad luck comes in threes, and for Dylan McWilliams, a 20-year-old from Colorado, that has unfortunately proved true. The young outdoorsman has survived his third bloody brush with the animal kingdom – a shark attack while body boarding off the coast of Hawaii. “It’s kind of crazy,” Dylan told us at DPT from the island of Kauai. “I don’t seem to have a lot of luck but it’s kind of lucky in unlucky situations.” He was enjoying the Pacific waves on Thursday morning when he felt something hit his leg. He explained: “I saw the shark underneath me. I started kicking at it – I know I hit it at least once – and swam to shore as quickly as I could.” Worried about the trail of blood he was leaving, he told local media after the attack: “I didn’t know if I lost half my leg or what.” The shark, believed to be a tiger shark between 6 and 8ft (about 2m), left distinctive teeth marks in Dylan’s leg that needed seven stitches. His second brush with death occurred on a camping trip in Colorado last July, when at 4am, while sleeping outdoors, he was woken up to find his head being clamped in the jaws of a bear. “This black bear grabbed me by the back of the head, and I was fighting back, poking it in the eye until it let me go,” Dylan describes vividly. His friends awoke to the commotion, but after the 300 pound (136kg) male bear stomped on Dylan, it walked away. Nine staples to the back of his head have left scars and a pain when he touches them, but the experience hasn’t put off the young man from his love of the outdoors. And this brings us to Dylan’s arguably least deadly run-in three years ago – a rattlesnake attack during a hiking trip in Utah. “I was walking down a trail and I thought I kicked a cactus but couldn’t see one, and then saw a rattlesnake all coiled up.” The then 17-year-old made the call not to go to the hospital because he figured he had only suffered a dry bite. “There was a little venom so I did get a bit sick for a couple of days,” the aspiring police officer said. I think we better keep an eye on this chap. 

On This Day

  • 1770 – James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names.   
  • 1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Hitler and Braun both commit suicide the following day.  
  • 1991 – A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour (249 km/h), killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as ten million homeless.

Deaths

Last Week’s Birthdays

Penélope Cruz (44), Jessica Alba (37), Ann-Margret (77), Jorge Garcia (45), Jay Leno (68), Sheena Easton (59), Russell T. Davies (55), Pablo Schreiber (40), Channing Tatum (38), Giancarlo Esposito (60), Jet Li (55), Kevin James (53), Joan Chen (57), Melania Trump (48), Al Pacino (78), Renée Zellweger (49), Hank Azaria (54), Gina Torres (49), William Roache (86), Aidan Gillen (50), Djimon Hounsou (54), Barbra Streisand (76), Shirley MacLaine (84), Rory McCann (49), Lee Majors (79), John Hannah (56), John Oliver (41), Michael Moore (64), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (52), Jack Nicholson (81), Sheryl Lee (51) and John Waters (72).

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.