[1/1/08 Update: The Cincinnati Post and Clooney column links below are already dead — apparently turned off by Baby New Year as he passed through town at the stroke of midnight.]Sad news for newspaper fans: the Cincinnati Post published its last edition today, ending its 126-year run and ending Cincinnati’s days as a two-newspaper town.
Happy birthday to Who2’s unofficial mascot, Ulrich Zwingli. The oft-forgotten Swiss theologian turns 624 on New Year’s Day.We can’t describe Zwingli better than we did in last year’s tribute: “The Protestant Reformer who survived bubonic plague, had a secret marriage at age 38, and still ended up playing Avis to Martin Luther’s Hertz.”
Tom Brady set a new season record for touchdown passes (50) as the New England Patriots became the first NFL team to go undefeated in a 16-game season. NFL.com has photos galore.
The shocking death of Benazir Bhutto has turned into a confounding argument over the cause.Early reports said she’d died in a bomb blast. Then reports of gunshots surfaced. Now amateur photos show two possible attackers: a clean-cut (alleged) gunman and a head-scarf-wearing (alleged) bomber.
Two years ago we noted that TV host Dick Clark was born the same year as Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, Jr..
The New York Times has posted a rather stunning slideshow with commentary by John Moore, a photographer who covered the last rally of Benazir Bhutto and saw her killed.
The BBC and the International Herald Tribune report that Benazir Bhutto has been killed at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She was reportedly shot by an assassin who then detonated a suicide bomb.
Novelists Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer… evangelists Jerry Falwell and Tammy Faye Bakker… Derby champ Barbaro and talking chimp Washoe. They’re all celebrities who passed away in 2007.Here’s our full list.
Rough water has blocked Revolutionary War buffs from reenacting George Washington’s historic crossing of the Delaware River.”This time, Delaware crosses up Washington” reports the Newark Star-Ledger.
Look at ’em all.
On Christmas Eve of 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 read aloud from the book of Genesis as they circled the moon.
Sign o’ the times: Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas Address will appear on YouTube.
This is the last day of the working or school year for many of our users.With that in mind: Happy holidays! And thanks to you all for another wonderful year. Who2 will turn 10 years old in 2008, and we wouldn’t have done it without you.Yes, Virginia, the Internet is a Santa Claus, with more gifties, tinsel, lumps of coal and candy canes than any of us could have imagined in 1998.And Groundhog’s Day is only six weeks away!
In its entirety, from Who2 user G. Peters:”Is there any truth to the story that Abe Vigoda and Erik Estrada are working on a new comedy series called Fish & CHiPs?”
California Governor Arnold Scwharzenegger says he’ll sue the federal government to allow California to set its own aggressive emissions standards for cars.George W. Bush’s EPA head, Stephen Johnson, rejected the necessary waiver on Thursday, after two years of consideration.
Who2 Labs engineer Mike Duffy sends along this trailer for the latest Batman movie, due next summer.The swell Christian Bale returns as the Dark Knight, with Heath Ledger showing his chops as the latest scenery-chewing Joker.
A rare copy of the Magna Carta has been sold for $21.3 million.What else sold in that price range lately? Andy Warhol’s portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, just last month. (The seller was actor Hugh Grant; the BBC says he bought it in 2001 for $15 million, while The New York Times claims he paid only $3.5 million.)
Opening lines from today’s obituaries for singer Dan Fogelberg:”The troubador of might-have-been has sung his final song.” -The Toronto Star”Singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg, whose ’70s and ’80s soft-rock hits, such as ‘Leader of the Band’ and ‘Same Old Lang Syne,’ combined poignant lyrics with his tender delivery…” -People
Great holiday gift idea: Born Standing Up, the new memoir by Steve Martin.It’s somehow both brisk and sentimental, with penetrating notes on how he developed his act — starting with his childhood days bicycling to work at the Disneyland magic shop. As Martin describes his 18 stand-up years, “Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent in refining, and four were spent in wild success.”
The Times of London has a new look back at the disappearance of adventurer Steve Fossett. The reporter, Emma Smith, gingerly raises the question of suicide (briskly rejected by Fossett’s friends) and notes that “A report in Men’s Journal, a US magazine, has suggested his mind may have been on other matters in the wake of a rare argument with [his wife] Peggy earlier that morning.”
Cryptomundo runs ’em down.(Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip.)
Headlines from today’s obituaries for Ike Turner, rocker and onetime husband of Tina Turner:”Ike Turner, a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer known for his infamy, dies at 76.” -The Associated Press”Rock pioneer was known for abusing wife Tina Turner.” -The Los Angeles Times
It’s the Curse of Tecumseh nobody talks about — the aura of death that surrounded the administrations of U.S. presidents William Henry “Old Tippecanoe” Harrison and John Tyler.Harrison died in office, four of his children died around the same time, and Tyler’s wife died while First Lady. Or as their 1840 campaign slogan proclaimed: Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!Here’s the rundown:
First George Bernard Shaw — now Al Gore has tangled with daredevil Evel Knievel.
Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has had a minor heart attack. A terse announcement on the show’s official site says he’s fine and will be back on the job in January.
Imagine if Bill Clinton had stepped down in 1996 so that his wife Hillary could be elected to replace him.Then suppose that Bill was elected again in 2000, and Hillary again in 2004 — with Hillary now in year 15 of a Clinton White House.
December 6th is unusual. It’s been known around Who2 HQ as the day nobody was born — the one day on which nobody in our database had a birthday. And we have consistently pledged not to hunt for a December 6th celeb just to artificially fill the gap.
What a biographical bust the 50 State Quarters program turned out to be!
Two users wrote us last week with the same thing on their minds:
Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel has died at age 69.Knievel was a crafty star of the pre-cable TV age, when a single rare appearance on ABC’s Wide World of Sports would be seen by tens of millions. Nowadays kids in the X Games perform motorcycle jumps, spins and look-ma-no-hands shenanigans that beat anything Evel ever did. But Evel had the P.T. Barnum gene and knew how to milk a jump over 10 Greyhound busses for maximumum publicity, drama, and cash.A spin through the obituary openers:
Grover Cleveland, apparently.(Seems to be borrowed from this.)Interesting side note from the U.S. Treasury: Bills bearing the image of Santa Claus may be legal tender.
The wife of adventurer Steve Fossett has asked a court to declare her husband legally dead.”After nearly three months we feel now that we must accept that Steve did not survive,” Peggy Fossett said in a statement.
We missed it: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last week.They were married on 20 November 1947, just two years after the end of World War II. The queen is the first English monarch to be married for 60+ years.
“Does Civilization Need Religion?” asked theologian Reinhold Niebuhr 80 years ago in the title of one of his many works on church and society.
New York magazine unmasks the latest candidate for jumpin’ skyjacker D.B. Cooper.(Of course, there have been others.)It was 36 years ago this weekend. Here’s a nifty Cooper timeline.
Robert F. Kennedy would be 82 years old today. He was only 42 when he was shot to death by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.Sirhan has been in jail for almost 40 years, and he’s still only 63 years old.Three people born the same year as Bobby Kennedy: Paul Newman, Barbara Bush and Margaret Thatcher.
Philosophy & First Ladies editor Paul Hehn has published a new profile of not-quite-First-Lady Anna Harrison.You may recall that her husband, William Henry Harrison, died 30 days after giving a 100-minute whopper of an inaugural speech, in the snow, without a hat or coat. Anna was still back in Ohio, packing, when he died.
Arthur Bremer, would-be assassin of George Wallace, released from prison after 35 years.See The Taxi Driver Connection for notes on Bremer’s weird domino effect on Hollywood, Hinckley, and Reagan.
Norman Mailer has died at age 84. The cause was reported as renal failure, though he also had lung surgery last month. The leads from various obituaries:
Monday is Guy Fawkes Day.
Walter Cronkite turns ninety-one today. He’s been retired for 26 years — longer than he held the anchor chair for The CBS Evening News. Fun fact: Cronkite was such an icon in his day that Swedish news anchors are known as Kronkiters.
Our friends at Infoplease asked us to look into the exact birthdate of 19th-century superstar actress Sarah Bernhardt. Most everyone agrees she was born in 1844, but the exact date may be October 22, 23, or 25… or something else entirely. The tale is both lively and confusing.First, a bit about The Divine Sarah, as she was known in her day. Cornelia Otis Skinner, in her 1967 book Madame Sarah, puts it this way:
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Robert Goulet has died while awaiting a lung transplant in Los Angeles. He was 73.Goulet was “the strikingly handsome singer with the rich baritone who soared to stardom on the Broadway stage in 1960 playing Lancelot in the original production of the hit musical Camelot,” says the The Los Angeles Times.
“Porter Wagoner, a country singer who mixed rhinestone suits, a towering cotton-candy pompadour and cornball jokes with direct, simple songs…”So begins the New York Times obituary of the longtime Grand Ole Opry star. He died of lung cancer on Sunday in Nashville.
The Boston Red Sox have swept the Colorado Rockies, 4-0, to win their second World Series in four years after an 86-year drought. Sorry, Babe Ruth! The colorful curse of the Bambino is a thing of the past.
Juicy tidbit about GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee: He comes from Hope, Arkansas, the very same small town that produced President Bill Clinton.
Two recent profiles: Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and college radio favorite Conor Oberst.Oberst fronts the folk-rock band Bright Eyes. Huckabee, the governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007, fronts a rock band called Capitol Offense. This being 2007, both bands have MySpace pages.
Singer Robert Goulet is gravely ill at the “sickbay to the stars,” Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.Goulet’s family says he has Interstitial Pulmonary Fibrosis, a “rare but rapidly progressive and fatal condition.” Goulet is hoping for a lung transplant if a donor can be found.
First Mister Ramen. Now Mister Rice-A-Roni.
New England quarterback Tom Brady had six touchdown passes yesterday. It was the most of his career and put him one short of the NFL record of seven, last achieved by Joe Kapp way back in 1969.
Deadpan comedian Joey Bishop has died in California at 89. Bloomberg has the obit.
Actress Deborah Kerr has died at age 86. She suffered from Parkinson’s Disease, according to the Associated Press.Kerr (pronounced “carr”) was a huge star in the 1950s. She shared a rolling-in-the-surf makeout scene with Burt Lancaster in From Here To Eternity that remains one of Hollywood’s most famous kisses. (See video below.)
DNA discoverer and Nobel Prize winner James Watson has ruffled feathers yet again with new comments about his fellow scientist Rosalind Franklin — the woman who took a crucial X-ray image that helped him make his big discovery.Watson told the Guardian that he thinks Rosalind Franklin was “partially autistic” and “either not a nice person, or just clueless.”
Tycoon Richard Branson says that his friend Steve Fossett is probably “no longer with us.”Fossett, the thrillseeking millionaire, disappeared in a small airplane over Nevada on September 3rd and has not been seen since. Branson made his remarks on NBC’s The Today Show, noting that “I think everybody involved has pretty well given up hope, sadly.”
Harvard formally installs its first female president today. She is Drew Gilpin Faust — Civil War historian, former dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and thrillseeker.
Al Gore is going to Oslo.The former vice-president has been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace. He shares the prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The Nobel committee calls Gore “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding” of climate change and the measures needed to combat it.
October 16th is the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam war protest in which 67 American draft resisters burned their Selective Service cards at Boston’s Arlington Street Church (Unitarian). 214 more protesters placed their draft cards on offering plates held by ministers, including Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin.
Quirky (but Oscar-winning!) director Errol Morris has an irregular feature in The New York Times titled Zoom, in which he muses about photographs and their power to inspire or mislead.
The mysterious case of Steve Fossett has us looking through our Who2 case files of oddities: missing rafters, nutty hypnosis subjects, elusive mountain critters, and the like.Which bring us to the Boy in the Box, otherwise known as the Fox Chase Boy and certainly one of the oddest unsolved crime mysteries of 20th century America.
Aviator Steve Fossett remains missing in Nevada. It’s now been one month since he disappeared after leaving on a three hour tour from an airstrip near Reno.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the event that excitable physicist Edward Teller called “A greater defeat for our country than Pearl Harbor.”
A sugar maple tree that gave shade to poet Robert Frost has been cut down. The tree was rotting from the inside, alas. Frost and the tree cohabited on his farm in Derry, New Hampshire from 1900-1911. The sugar maple may (or may not) have inspired one of Frost’s more ethereal poems, Tree At My Window.
Larry Craig isn’t leaving the Senate after all. Not yet, anyway.The Idaho senator said three weeks ago that he intended to resign on September 30th, after stories leaked out about his quiet guilty plea to a June arrest for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport restroom. But Craig later backtracked, saying he would try to take back his guilty plea and might stay in the Senate if he succeeded in doing so.
The official search for adventurer Steve Fossett has been suspended.His friends still hold out hope — though as one put it, “‘It certainly doesn’t look promising’ is an understatement.”
Hooray! The New York Times will now stop charging for access to much of its content.The change takes effect Tuesday night — two years after The Times started its ‘Times Select’ subscription service. Regular stories used to go behind the subscription wall after a week of availability online.Money quote from the article: “The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, [has become] so much more attractive.”
Adventurer Steve Fossett is still missing. And the Amelia Earhart comparisons have started.
What is the true birth name of Nelson Mandela?Hint: It’s not Nelson.[[wysiwyg_imageupload:1308:]]
The Toronto Star’s colorful remembrance of First Ex Jane Wyman ends this way: “In person, Wyman sported the earthy language of a longshoreman. She carried her pack of Kent cigarettes with her everywhere.”
Oscar-winning actress Jane Wyman has died at age 93.Wyman was the first wife of actor Ronald Reagan, who went on to become America’s first divorced president. Reagan and Wyman were married from 1940-48. Reagan married another actress, Nancy Davis, in 1952.
The Amazon Mechanical Turk page is asking Internet users to help scan satellite photos for Steve Fossett’s plane.Welcome to the 21st century.Fossett’s official site also has updates on the search.
Aviator Steve Fossett is still missing in Nevada, and the headlines are getting grimmer.
The BBC has transcript excerpts from the latest Osama Bin Laden video.
The headlines are turning grimmer for Steve Fossett, the adventurer and pilot who’s been missing in the Nevada desert since Monday.
Luciano Pavarotti has died of pancreatic cancer at age 71.Bloomberg calls him the “most famous opera tenor since Caruso,” and that sums things up pretty well.That Bloomberg obit is full of good quotes, including his former manager calling him “a rock star for people over 30,” and rock star Bono saying “Some can sing opera; Luciano Pavarotti was an opera.”
Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett remains missing in the Nevada desert this morning. His small plane disappeared on Monday, apparently while he was scouting locations by air for a run at the land speed record.
Richard Jewell has died at age 44, apparently of natural causes. He was diagnosed with diabetes in February and has been in poor health since.Jewell, you may recall, was the security guard who discovered a suspicious knapsack at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He helped clear the area before the knapsack, which turned out to be a bomb, exploded.
Real estate magnate Leona Helmsley has willed a $12 million trust fund to her dog Trouble, according to CBS News.Helmsley cut two grandchildren out of her will entirely, cut two others in for $5 million each — if they visit their father’s grave once per calendar year — and left $100,000 to her chauffeur.The will also calls for her mausoleum to be steam-cleaned once a year.
More on the Larry Craig story:The Idaho Statesman has now published a lengthy recap of a five-month investigation it recently made into rumors that the Idaho senator was gay.
Roll Call reported today that Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested and charged with lewd conduct in a men’s room at Minneapolis International Airport in June. The story sounded a bit outlandish — Craig was arrested after tapping his foot and touching shoes with a plainclothes officer — but in fact, Craig pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct on August 8th in Minnesota’s Hennepin County District Court.
Odd legal note of the day: movie critic Roger Ebert holds a trademark on “thumbs up.” Who knew?The famed film reviewer is in a contract dispute with Disney-ABC Domestic Television, which distributes At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper. Disney claimed last week that Ebert was barring the thumbs from his show as a negotiating tactic; now Ebert claims on his official site that he is only withholding the thumbs until Disney negotiates in good faith.
Director John Singleton has been declared innocent of any wrongdoing in the death of a pedestrian hit by his Lexus SUV last week in Los Angeles.The victim was 57-year-old Constance Russell, who apparently jaywalked in front of Singleton’s car. An LAPD news release said Singleton stopped at the scene, was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and was questioned and released.
Elvis Presley died 30 years ago, on 16 August 1977.Time Magazine has a rather cynical report in the “good career move” vein. Elvis’s estate is holding an anniversary concert, “starring the real Elvis Presley, via video,” with a $90 top ticket price.
Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto, beloved New York Yankees shortstop and broadcaster, has died at age 89. The New York Post has the full story.The Yankees won seven World Series titles with Rizzuto at shortstop from 1941-56.
Karl Rove, the powerful political adviser who guided George W. Bush to the Texas statehouse and then to the White House, is resigning as deputy chief of staff on August 31.
Merv Griffin, creator of the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, has died at age 82.Bloomberg News quotes a spokesperson as saying Griffin died of “prostate cancer that spread to other organs in an ‘unexpected and immediate’ manner.”
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Rick Ankiel was a sad figure when we profiled him back in 2000. The 21-year-old had suddenly, shockingly lost his ability to pitch during the third inning of a playoff game against the Atlanta Braves. He threw five wild pitches before being pulled from the game. The Cardinals started him in another playoff game a few days later, and Ankiel didn’t even make it out of the first inning.
With Roberto Clemente in the books (see below), this seems like a good time to salute those who made 3000 profiles possible: managing editor (since 1998!) and First Lady aficionado Paul Hehn, religion and show tunes editor Hans Holznagel, and the indispensable boys in the boiler room: Mike Duffy and Adam DuVander. Thanks, fellahs!
Our 3000th profile is up, and the subject is a fitting one: baseball’s Roberto Clemente.Clemente had exactly 3000 hits in his major league career; the last was a double in his final game on 30 September 1972. That made him one of only 27 players in major league history to collect 3000 hits.
Who2 is very close to the magical round number of 3000 profiles. The profiles leading up to 3000 have been the usual marvelous jumble of types. 2997 was Mel Blanc, the voice of cartoon icon Bugs Bunny. 2998 was Mary Todd Lincoln, the troubled wife of President Abraham Lincoln. And 2999, just published, is of clergyman and anti-war activist William Sloane Coffin.
Yup, he did it. Barry Bonds hit his 756th career home run on Tuesday night to become American baseball’s all-time home run leader. He did the trick with a homer off of Washington Nationals pitcher Mike Bacsik.The San Francisco Chronicle is a good place to read all about it.
Religion and antiquities editor Hans Holznagel has just come up with two new profiles of juicy Biblical villains: King Herod and Herod Antipas.Herod #1 is the ruler who, in the famous story, ordered the murder of all Bethlehem boys under age 2. (The toddler Jesus of Nazareth escaped just in time.) Herod #2, Herod Antipas, is the dude who beheaded John the Baptist.
Matt Damon returns this weekend in The Bourne Ultimatum, his third film as the heroic amnesiac Jason Bourne.
It’s an old gag, but in this case it held true: Soon after Ingmar Bergman comes news of the deaths of two other celebrities: iconoclastic late-night TV host Tom Snyder and San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh.
Film director Ingmar Bergman, dead at 89.
“Someone once noted that watching members of Congress question Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was a little like watching the clubbing of a baby seal.”-Time magazine unloads on memory-impaired AG Alberto Gonzales. (The original “baby seal” reference apparently came in this CNN report by Suzanne Malveaux in April.)
Interesting new profile by editor Paul Hehn of Ernest O. Lawrence, the creator of the cyclotron and the father of “big science.” His creations led to the discovery of lawrencium, californium, and those other crazy elements at the end of the periodic table of the elements.
Actor Leonard Nimoy told an excited crowd at Comic-Con yesterday that he will return as the beloved Vulcan Mr. Spock in another Star Trek movie.
The family of Jim Henson is donating many of his original Muppets to a museum in Atlanta, according to The New York Times.
“Potter defeated by Sandler’s fake gay firemen.”That’s Britain’s The Guardian describing the weekend U.S. boxoffice. (Translation: Adam Sandler’s film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry took in $34.8 million to only $32.2 million for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.)
Tammy Faye Messner died on Friday after a long struggle with cancer. 48 hours earlier she had taped a final interview with Larry King, looking terribly gaunt (video) and saying her weight had dropped to 65 pounds.
“I’ve seen the miracles of God with my own eyes. I did a lot of bluffing, also.”Professional poker has its latest unknown champion: Jerry Yang, a psychologist from Temecula, California, has won the 2007 World Series of Poker.
Roger Federer claimed his fifth straight Wimbledon singles title today. The feat ties him with Swedish great Bjorn Borg, who pulled the same trick from 1976-80.On the distaff side, Venus Williams won her impressive fourth (non-consecutive) Wimbledon singles title this year.
Joey Chestnut has shocked the world of competitive eating. The civil engineering student from San Jose ate an astonishing 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes in the annual Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating competition at Coney Island. (That’s one hot dog every 10.91 seconds, if you’re counting at home.) It’s a new world record, by 6.5 dogs.
It isn’t exactly Folsom Prison, but Paris Hilton entered a Los Angeles jail on Sunday night to serve her time for violating parole by driving with a suspended license. A few notes:
Just in time for tourist season, the latest “sighting” of the Loch Ness Monster is being reported. You don’t think that the Tourism Board of Scotland… well, let’s let that unkind thought pass.
He hasn’t formally, formally announced his candidacy, but Republican actor-politician Fred Thompson has dropped enough hints that we’ve added him to our list of Candidates 2008.USA Today says that Thompson will announce his run on July 4th. There’s something symbolic about that date, apparently.
Amazing but true: President John F. Kennedy would be 90 years old today.A few others born in 1917 who are still alive now: actor Ernest Borgnine, singer Lena Horne, and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke.
You might have thought that committing suicide in disgrace was just an old cliche about Japan, but the practice seems to be alive and well. So to speak.
Apolo Anton Ohno skated to a new title last night: king of the TV ballroom dancers.
Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts chosen by NASA, died Thursday of a heart attack at age 84. His family reported that he died at a hospital in La Jolla, California.
It appears that Gordon Brown is about to realize his decades-long dream and become prime mininster of the United Kingdom. Tony Blair has held the office for 10 years, but hinted strongly this week that he would step down soon.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on Monday in Menlo Park, California. He was being driven from Berkeley to an interview with former NFL quarterback Y.A. Tittle when the crash occurred, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The University of Virginia has named the student accused of killing 32 people on campus yesterday: Cho Seung-Hui.According to a news release posted on the university’s website, Cho was 23 and was “enrolled as an undergraduate student in his senior year as an English major at Virginia Tech. Cho, a South Korean native, was in the U.S. as a resident alien with a residence established in Centerville, Virginia.”
15 April 2007 is the 60th anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in American baseball. On this day in 1947, Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbetts Field. That made him the first African-American to play in baseball’s major leagues in the modern era. (Robinson’s line for his first game: 0-for-3 at the plate, one run scored, and he helped turn a double play in Brooklyn’s win ovef the old Boston Braves.)
Entertainer Don Ho died Saturday, of heart failure in Waikiki. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a fine recap of his life and career.
“Richard S. Prather, Author of Naked Mysteries, Dies at 85.”That headline tops a very funny obituary in today’s New York Times (registration required). In what must be its most entertaining obituary of the year so far, the Times describes Prather as a “hugely popular mystery writer of the 1950s and ’60s whose novels were known for their swift violence, loopy humor and astonishing number of characters with no clothes on.”
We’ve been sweating the birth date of S.E. Hinton, the celebrated author of the 1967 novel The Outsiders and other books for what used to be called “young adults” and now are often called “tweens.”Hinton is not a public person by any means, but she’s particularly coy about her birthdate. Many sources say 1950 or 1948; others say 1949 or even 1951. A letter from reader Sebastian Collins (a 1948 proponent) prompted us to dig into the matter somewhat deeper.
The U.S. Mint has released designs for the first four presidential dollar coins.
Punxsutawney Phil has made his annual Groundhog Day prediction, and it’s a shocker: spring is almost here. The ageless groundhog failed to see his shadow (according to his official site) for only the 14th time since 1886.
A short gem, from Who2 user H.S.:To: [email protected] not have a few not-so-famous people on Who2.com? I am not so famous, but I have a colorful background of accidents and incidents. H.S.
With Groundhog Day looming, we have received a delightful letter from Mr. Ben Hughes of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Mr. Hughes is one of the official handlers for America’s top-dog groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.Here is what Mr. Hughes had to say:”A correction on your Punxsutawney Phil information.
In December we reported the death of Joseph Barbera, of the Hanna-Barbera animation studios. Now comes the sad news of the demise of Iwao Takamoto, the Hanna-Barbera animator who designed Scooby-Doo. Takamoto was 81 when he died on Monday of heart failure.
Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen noodles, has died of a heart attack in Japan. Ando was 96. Plucky to the last, he made a new year’s speech at the corporate offices of his company on Wednesday before returning home and falling ill.
January 1st marked the 523rd birthday of Ulrich Zwingli, Who2’s unofficial mascot. Zwingli, you’ll recall, was the Protestant Reformer who survived bubonic plague, had a secret marriage at age 38, and still ended up playing Avis to Martin Luther’s Hertz. Plucky to the last, Zwingli was wounded in a Catholic-vs.-Protestant wrangle and then put to the sword when he refused a Catholic confessor.