Dead Pool 7th December 2025

With little over three weeks to go, it’s all to play for. With Abi leading us with over a hundred points, but with Neil and Lee chasing in second and third place but with their Cert and Woman spent, we might be looking at someone lower down in the league table to chase Abi’s lead!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

Robin Smith, 62, South African-born English cricketer (Natal, Hampshire, England national team).
Hugh Wallace, 68, Irish architect
Ludwig Minelli, 92, Swiss lawyer, founder of Dignitas, assisted suicide.
Claude, 30, American albino alligator, liver cancer.
Arnfinn Nesset, 89, Norwegian convicted serial killer.
Steve Cropper, 84, American guitarist (Booker T. & the M.G.’s), songwriter (“In the Midnight Hour“) and record producer (“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay“), two-time Grammy winner.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, 75, American actor (Licence to Kill, Mortal Kombat, The Man in the High Castle), stroke.
Frank Gehry, 96, Canadian-American architect (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Gehry Residence, Louis Vuitton Foundation), respiratory illness.

In Other News

Below Deck star Fraser Olender has revealed he suffered a heart attack due to “vape poisoning.” The 33-year-old reality star shared an update with his followers on Instagram Friday, sharing a carousel of photos showing him in hospital. “A few weeks ago I was rushed to hospital due to severe chest pains and difficulties breathing,” Olender wrote in the post’s caption. “Following this, I spent a week in London hospitals seeing specialists to identify the cause and possible damage of the incident. To keep it simple – I had vape poisoning, (an E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI)) and I have never experienced fear or pain like it.” EVALI is “a serious inflammatory condition that damages your lungs,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. Healthcare experts still aren’t sure which components of e-liquids directly lead to inflammation. “Whatever was in my vape caused me to have a coronary artery vasospasm. Medically, that means the arteries supplying blood to my heart suddenly clamped down,” Olender continued. “That spasm reduced blood flow enough to cause an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), better known as a heart attack – not because of a blockage, but because my heart wasn’t getting enough oxygen during the spasm. I’m grateful to still be recovering now, and I’m sharing this because I never realised something like this could happen. If this experience can help even one person rethink vaping, it’s worth telling. I haven’t touched a vape since this happened and never will. The pain I endured for 24 hours was inexplicable, 2 rounds of morphine didn’t touch the sides and eventually had to be given the strongest pain relief legal to administer in ER – and that only brought my pain from a 10 to a 7.” He concluded: “I could have died for the sake of something so ridiculously stupid, so please do yourselves a favour and give it up too – cold turkey. We do not know enough about these horrific things but I can tell you one thing; that was NOT cute, not even for the plot. Love you all, be safe, put your health first and thank you for all of your well wishes.”

A teenager has been mauled to death in front of horrified onlookers after leaping into a lion’s enclosure at a zoo in Brazil. The victim has been identified as 19-year-old Gerson Machado, who had previously tried to stow away on a plane to Africa in a bid to pursue his dream of training big cats. Tragic Machado was well-known to police after an earlier incident when he breached airport security in a desperate attempt to reach Africa. The teenager, who had spent years in care and struggled with mental health problems, was filmed climbing down a tree to reach the lioness after scaling a 20-foot wall in the northeastern port city of Joao Pessoa. Horror video footage which captured the moment the lioness, later described by zoo veterinarians as “stressed” and “in shock,” attacked him as he neared the ground. Veronica Oliveira, a child protection worker who worked with Mr Machado for eight years, said: “Gerson was a child who suffered violations of his rights. He was the son of a mother with schizophrenia, with grandparents who also had mental health issues. He lived in extreme poverty. Gerson’s story is that of a boy who just wanted to get to know Africa to tame lions. He discovered too late that a lion isn’t a domestic cat and that we can’t tame them without the right knowledge. Sadly, he wasn’t sensible enough for that.” City hall officials confirmed that the Arruda Camara Park, also known as Bica, would remain closed while investigations continue. In a statement, they said: “The man killed scaled a 20-foot wall and managed to get into the animal enclosure using one of the trees. According to police it was a possible act of suicide. Although security staff tried to stop him, he acted very quickly and died as a result of the injuries the lioness inflicted on him. The park was immediately closed. We would like to express our solidarity with the family of the victim of this regrettable incident.” Brazilian politician Mr Matheus Laiola commented online: “A lioness did exactly what a lioness does. Instinct, defence, natural behaviour of a wild animal. Tragedy and error begin when humans ignore basic safety limits, risk their own lives and also endanger the life of the animal. Respecting wildlife is not a choice. It is a rule. When this boundary is ignored, it is always the animal that suffers, and this cannot continue to happen. Who do you think was the ‘animal’ in this situation?”

A woman who was wrongly declared dead at home later woke up in the mortuary, an inquest has heard. Police, paramedics and family all attended Olive Martin’s address after she suffered a seizure. But instead of being taken to the emergency department to receive care, the 54-year-old was transferred to Darlington Hospital Mortuary, where staff discovered she was still alive. Coroner Jeremy Chipperfield told the court on Tuesday that brain damage was the cause of Ms Martin’s death, ‘albeit some time later’. Tom Barclay Semple, representing her family, said there was a period of two hours during which she received ‘no treatment at all’ and asked whether the outcome would have been different if she had been taken straight to hospital instead of to the mortuary. He asked: ‘What should that treatment have looked like?’ and questioned whether or not ‘her death could have been avoided or prolonged in some meaningful way’. Mr Barclay Semple said it should be up to an expert witness from either emergency or intensive care to answer those questions. The coroner told the court that he did not know how long Ms Martin had been starved of oxygen when she was found in her home.

On This Day

1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1944 – An earthquake along the coast of Wakayama Prefecture in Japan causes a tsunami which kills 1,223 people.
1946 – A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.
1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo Moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.
1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

Deaths