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Portas Miguel (b. 1958-05-01 / d. 2012-04-24)
He was a Portuguese politician and a Member of the European Parliament for the Left Bloc, part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group. He was a member of the Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament and a member of the Delegation for relations with the Mashreq countries. He died of lung cancer in April 2012. The disease was diagnosed in 2010.
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50
Born 1909-05-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Suicide
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American actress of stage and film. Sullavan began her career onstage in 1929. In 1933, she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday. Sullavan preferred working on the stage and made only 16 movies, four of which were opposite James Stewart in a popular partnership that included The Mortal Storm and The Shop Around the Corner. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Three Comrades (1938). She retired from the screen in the early 1940s, but returned in 1950 to make her last film, No Sad Songs for Me, in which she played a woman who was dying of cancer. For the rest of her career, she appeared only on the stage. Sullavan experienced increasing hearing problems, depression, and mental frailty in the 1950s. She died of an overdose of barbiturates, which was ruled accidental, at the age of 50.
36
Born 1922-12-04. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer
72
Born 1887-03-05. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Hector Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, easily the best-known classical composer born in South America. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas brasileiras ("Brazilian Bach-pieces").
In June 1959, Villa-Lobos alienated many of his fellow musicians by expressing disillusionment, saying in an interview that Brazil was "dominated by mediocrity". In November he died in Rio; his state funeral was the final major civic event in that city before the capital transferred to Brasília. He is buried in the Cemitério São João Batista in Rio de Janeiro.
38
Born 1921-01-31. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Heart attack
His lirico spinto tenor voice was considered by his admirers to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso.
He died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 38.
70
Born 1889-01-27. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
He was a Dutch physicist. Van der Pol studied physics in Utrecht, and in 1920 he was awarded his doctorate (PhD). He studied experimental physics with John Ambrose Fleming and Sir J. J. Thomson in England. He joined Philips Research Labs in 1921, where he worked until his retirement in 1949. His main interests were in radio wave propagation, theory of electrical circuits, and mathematical physics. The van der Pol oscillator, one of the most widely used models of nonlinear self-oscillation, is named after him. He was awarded the Institute of Radio Engineers (now the IEEE) Medal of Honor in 1935. The asteroid 10443 van der Pol was named after him.
86
Born 1873-04-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
She was a French film actress. She appeared in 125 films between 1927 and 1959.
33
Born 1926-05-21. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer
She starred opposite Rex Harrison in the comedy The Constant Husband (1955), and an affair soon followed. Harrison was married to actress Lilli Palmer at the time. However, when he learned from Kendall's doctor that Kendall had been diagnosed with myeloid leukemia, he and Palmer agreed to divorce so he could marry Kendall and provide for her care. Kendall was never told of her illness and ended up believing she merely had an iron deficiency. As for the divorce, Palmer said she was not upset because she had a lover, too. She and Harrison planned to remarry after Kendall's death, but Palmer ended up falling in love with her companion, Carlos Thompson, and married him instead.
Kendall's distinctive nose, an aristocratic swoop, was the result of plastic surgery after a car crash. As she told Bogarde, the surgeon had only two noses in his repertoire, "this one and the other one." The one she chose, Kendall explained, made it difficult to photograph her in profile.
39
Born 1920-03-10. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Heart attack
He was born in Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, and educated at the École Centrale Paris.
On the morning of June 23, 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf for the screening of the film version of his controversial "Vernon Sullivan" novel, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (I Shall Spit On Your Graves). He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name withdrawn from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" He then collapsed into his seat and died of a heart attack en route to the hospital. The heart attack is widely attributed to the fact that Boris Vian had been suffering from irregular heartbeat for a long time.
45
Born 1914-01-05. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Suicide
Career difficulties after the war led him to move to New York for live television. It was television where he achieved the kind of fame that had eluded him in films, as he was cast in the lead of the now-iconic "Adventures of Superman" (1952). He got a few film roles, but he was mostly typecast as Superman, and other acting jobs soon dried up. His career had slid to the point where he was considering an attempt at exhibition wrestling when he committed suicide by shooting himself. Controversy still surrounds his death, due mainly to the fact of his longtime affair with Toni Lanier (aka Toni Mannix), the wife of MGM executive E.J. Mannix. Many of Reeves' friends and colleagues didn't believe that he had committed suicide but that his death was related to the Mannix situation. However, no credible evidence has ever been produced to support that contention.
71
Born 1888-02-25. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:cancer (colorectal)
John Foster Dulles was an American diplomat. A Republican, he served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world. Dulles developed colon cancer, for which he was first operated on in November 1956 when it had caused a bowel perforation. He experienced abdominal pain at the end of 1958 and was hospitalized with a diagnosis of diverticulitis. In January 1959, Dulles returned to work, but with more pain and declining health underwent abdominal surgery in February at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when the cancer's recurrence became evident. After recuperating in Florida, Dulles returned to Washington for work and radiation therapy. With further declining health and evidence of bone metastasis, he resigned from office on April 15, 1959.
77
Born 1882-05-23. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Balding and slender with a craggy voice and a master of the double-take, Gleason portrayed tough but warm-hearted characters, usually with a New York background. He appeared in several movies with his wife Lucille. James and Lucille Gleason had a son, Russell Gleason, who briefly worked as a film actor before being drafted into the army during World War Two. He died after accidentally falling out the window of a Manhattan hotel shortly before his regiment was due to leave for a combat posting in Europe. Russell Gleason was married to Cynthia Lindsay, a former Busby Berkeley chorus girl who later wrote a biography of family friend Boris Karloff.
52
Born 1906-03-06. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Heart attack
In 1942, Costello had an attack of rheumatic fever and was unable to work for a year. A tragic event shadowed his comeback. On November 4, 1943, the day Costello returned to the team's popular radio show, his infant son, Lou Jr. (nicknamed Butch) accidentally drowned in the family pool. The baby was only a few days short of his first birthday. Lou had asked his wife to keep Butch up that night so the boy could hear his Dad on the radio for the first time. Rather than cancel the broadcast, Lou said, "Wherever he is tonight, I want him to hear me," and went on with the show. No one in the audience knew of the death until after the show when Bud Abbott explained the events of the day, and how the phrase "The show must go on" had been epitomized by Lou that night.
59
Born 1900-06-08. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Heart attack
Apart from music, Antheil had many other pursuits. He was a corresponding reporter during World War II, contributing columns on endocrinology to Esquire, and on love advice to the Chicago Sun Syndicate. He also wrote books, including a popular autobiography, Bad Boy of Music (1945). His inventions included a patented torpedo guidance system and a broad-spectrum signal transmission system which then was called frequency skipping, co-authored with actress Hedy Lamarr.
22
Born 1936-09-07. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Accident
Holly began a solo tour with other notable performers, including Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson, "The Big Bopper." One night after a performance in Green Bay, Wisconsin, at the Riverside Ballroom, the three headliners gave their final show, at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 2, 1959. Afterwards, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new back-up band (Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch, and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. Carl Bunch missed the flight as he had been hospitalized for frostbite three days earlier. The Big Bopper asked Jennings for his spot on the four-seat plane, as he was recovering from the flu. Ritchie Valens was still signing autographs at the concert site when Allsup walked in and told him it was time to go. Allsup pulled a 50 cent coin out of his pocket and the two men flipped for the seat. Allsup lost.
The plane took off in light snow and gusty winds at around 12:55 A.M., but crashed after only a few minutes. The wreckage was discovered several hours later by the plane's owner, Jerry Dwyer, some 8 miles from the airport on the property of Albert Juhl. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson, and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. Holly's body, along with those of Valens and Richardson, were thrown from the wreckage, Holly's body being nearly decapitated by his impact with a tree. Holly and Valens lay 17 feet south of the wreckage and Richardson was thrown around 40 feet to the north of the wreckage. The pilot's body remained in the wreckage. All had suffered severe and multiple injuries. Without any doubt, all had died on impact, with the plane hitting the ground at 170mph. While theories abound as to the exact cause of the crash, an official determination of pilot error was rendered by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Although the crash received a good deal of local coverage, it was displaced in the national news by an accident that occurred the same day in New York City, when American Airlines Flight 320 crashed during an instrument landing approach at LaGuardia Airport, killing 65. Don McLean referred to it as "the Day the Music Died."
Holly's pregnant wife became a widow after barely six months of marriage and miscarried soon after.
17
Born 1941-05-13. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Accident
Buddy Holly, fed up with the conditions on the bus, decided to charter a small plane for himself and his back-up band (The Crickets name was surrendered to Buddy's former bandmates Jerry Allison and Joe Mauldin) to get to the next show on time, get some rest, and get their laundry done. After the February 2, 1959, performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly, Richardson (who pleaded with Waylon Jennings for his seat because he was stricken with flu), and Valens (who had won Tommy Allsup's seat after a coin toss), were taken to Clear Lake airport by the manager of the Surf Ballroom.
The plane, a four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza, departed for Fargo, North Dakota, into a blinding snowstorm and crashed into farmer Albert Juhl's cornfield shortly after takeoff. The crash ended the lives of all three passengers, as well as that of the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. This event is said to have inspired singer Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie", and immortalized February 3 as "The Day the Music Died." The event also inspired the Eddie Cochran song "Three Stars", which specifically mentions Holly, the Big Bopper, and Valens.
28
Born 1930-10-24. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Accident
In the early morning of February 3, 1959, after a performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, the small four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza took off from the Mason City airport during a blinding snow storm and crashed into Albert Juhl’s corn field several miles after takeoff at 1:05 a.m. Richardson was in the seat that Waylon Jennings was supposed to have occupied. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson and the 21-year-old pilot, Roger Peterson. In his 1971 hit song "American Pie," Don McLean referred to this event as "The Day the Music Died". The label has stuck.
78
Born 1881-08-12. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Heart
31
Born 1927-11-12. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Suicide
He was a Japanese mathematician known for the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture. Taniyama was best known for conjecturing, in modern language, automorphic properties of L-functions of elliptic curves over any number field. Taniyama committed suicide. He left a note explaining how far he had got with his teaching duties, and apologizing to his colleagues for the trouble he was causing them. His mystifying suicide note read: Until yesterday I had no definite intention of killing myself. But more than a few must have noticed that lately I have been tired both physically and mentally. As to the cause of my suicide, I don't quite understand it myself, but it is not the result of a particular incident, nor of a specific matter. Merely may I say, I am in the frame of mind that I lost confidence in my future. There may be someone to whom my suicide will be troubling or a blow to a certain degree. I sincerely hope that this incident will cast no dark shadow over the future of that person. At any rate, I cannot deny that this is a kind of betrayal, but please excuse it as my last act in my own way, as I have been doing my own way all my life. Although his note is mostly enigmatic it does mention tiredness and a loss of confidence in his future. Taniyama's ideas had been criticized as unsubstantiated and his behavior had occasionally been deemed peculiar. Goro Shimura mentioned that he suffered from depression. Taniyama also mentioned in the note his concern that some might be harmed by his suicide and his hope that the act would not cast "a dark shadow over that person." About a month later, Misako Suzuki, the woman whom he was planning to marry, also committed suicide, leaving a note reading: "We promised each other that no matter where we went, we would never be separated. Now that he is gone, I must go too in order to join him."
44
Born 1914-05-05. Domain:Other. Cause of death:Heart attack
"Ty Power" was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as The Mark of Zorro, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile.
Tyrone Power's will, filed on December 8, 1958, contained an unusual provision. It stated his wish that, upon his death, his eyes would be donated to the Estelle Doheny Eye Foundation, for such purposes as the trustees of the foundation should deem advisable, including transplantation of the cornea to the eyes of a living person.
40
Born 1918-04-18. Domain:Society. Cause of death:cancer (blood)
Co-founder of les cahiers du cinéma.
Bazin contracted tuberculosis early in his life and was ill and weak for all his lifetime. He eventually died of leukemia.
90
Born 1868-06-14. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker CSI FRS was an English physicist and statistician of the 20th century. Walker studied mathematics and applied it to a variety of fields including aerodynamics, electromagnetism and the analysis of time-series data before taking up a teaching position at the University of Cambridge. Although he had no experience in meteorology, he was recruited for a post in the Indian Meteorological Department where he worked on statistical approaches to predict the monsoons. He developed the methods in the analysis of time-series data that are now called the Yule-Walker equations. He is known for his groundbreaking description of the Southern Oscillation, a major phenomenon of global climate, and for discovering what is named after him as the Walker circulation, and for greatly advancing the study of climate in general. He was also instrumental in aiding the early career of the Indian mathematical prodigy, Srinivasa Ramanujan. Analyzing vast amounts of weather data from India and lands beyond, he published the first descriptions of the great seesaw oscillation of atmospheric pressure between the Indian and Pacific Ocean, and its correlation to temperature and rainfall patterns across much of the Earth's tropical regions, including India. This is now called the El Niño Southern Oscillation. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India in 1911.
82
Born 1876-04-04. Domain:Painting. Cause of death:Age
As a youth he was a professional cyclist. His career was ended by a bout with Typhoid fever in 1896.
26
Born 1931-11-06. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
At the German Grand Prix, pushing hard, Collins lost control of his car and spun off the track, disappearing over a bank. During the ensuing accident Collins was thrown clear of the Ferrari, but sustained critical injuries to his head. Despite being airlifted to hospital, Collins died later that afternoon.
72
Born 1886-07-03. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Other
Parkinson disease.
37
Born 1920-07-25. Domain:Science (Medical/Bio style). Cause of death:cancer (uterus)
She was a British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. After finishing her portion of the work on DNA, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic virus and the polio virus. She died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer.
32
Born 1925-10-10. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
Also known as "Handsome Harry", "Johnny Stomp", "John Steele", and "Oscar", he was a former United States Marine who became a bodyguard and enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen. In 1958, after a tumultuous relationship with actress Lana Turner, he was stabbed and killed by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane. Stompanato was stabbed to death at Turner's Beverly Hills, California home. Turner's then teenage daughter Cheryl Crane claimed Stompanato had been attacking her mother and that she had stabbed Stompanato defending her mother. The courts agreed, ruling the death to be justifiable homicide. After the ruling, Stompanato's family sued Turner for $7 million. The case was eventually settled out of court for unknown terms.
48
Born 1909-06-22. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Accident
He was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Todd's private plane, Lucky Liz, crashed near Grants, New Mexico. The plane, a Lockheed Lodestar, was downed by engine failure while being operated grossly overweight at the limit of its altitude capability, and the crash killed all four on board. Todd is buried in Chicago at Beth Aaron Cemetery. In his autobiography, Eddie Fisher, Todd's best friend, stated that no fragments of Todd had been found, and that his coffin contained only his ring.