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Farina Sergio (b. 1926-09-08 / d. 2012-07-03) alias Sergio Pininfarina
He was an Italian automobile designer and Senator for life. In 1965 it was Sergio Pininfarina who personally persuaded Enzo Ferrari to adopt a "mid-engined" engine configuration for a new line of road cars, with the engine positioned behind the driver, but ahead of the rear wheels. The resulting Ferrari Dino Berlinette Speciale was presented at the Paris Motor Show in October, although it would be another two years before the cars were offered for sale. After his father's death in 1966, Pininfarina became chairman of the company. In 2006 Sergio and his son Andrea, who died in 2008 were named Honorary Chairmen of Pininfarina,
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92
Born 1932-12-05. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Jacques Roubaud was a French poet, writer, and mathematician. Jacques Roubaud taught mathematics at University of Paris X Nanterre and poetry at EHESS. A member of the Oulipo group, he has published poetry, plays, novels, and translated English poetry and books into French, such as Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau had Roubaud's first book, a collection of mathematically structured sonnets, published by Éditions Gallimard, and then invited Roubaud to join the Oulipo as the organization's first new member outside the founders. He died exactly the day of his birthday.
87
Born 1935-09-29. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Jerry Lee Lewis was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed "The Killer", he was described as "rock & roll's first great wild man". A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1952 at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and early recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. "Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the Southern United States, but it was his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" that shot Lewis to worldwide fame. He followed this with the major hits "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless", and "High School Confidential". His rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin once removed.
91
Born 1926-03-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker, and humanitarian, dubbed "The King of Comedy" and "The Total Filmmaker". He gained his career breakthrough with singer Dean Martin, becoming Martin & Lewis in 1946 and would perform together for ten years until their acrimonious breakup in 1956. Lewis pursued a solo career, starring in several theatrical movies, worked behind-the-scenes as director, producer and screenwriter, performed comedy routines on stage, released many albums as a singer. Lewis suffered from a number of chronic health problems, illnesses and addictions related both to aging and a back injury sustained in a comedic pratfall. In its aftermath, Lewis became addicted to the painkiller Percodan for thirteen years. He said he had been off the drug since 1978. In April 2002, Lewis had a Medtronic "Synergy" neurostimulator implanted in his back, which helped reduce the discomfort. He was one of the company's leading spokesmen. Lewis suffered numerous heart problems throughout his life; he revealed in the 2011 documentary Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, that he suffered his first heart attack at age 34 while filming Cinderfella in 1960. In December 1982, he had another heart attack. Several months later, in February 1983, Lewis underwent emergency open-heart double-bypass surgery. En route to San Diego from New York City on a cross-country commercial airline flight on June 11, 2006, Lewis suffered his third heart attack. It was discovered that he had pneumonia, as well as a severely damaged heart. He underwent a cardiac catheterization days after the heart attack, and two stents were inserted into one of his coronary arteries, which was 90 percent blocked. The surgery resulted in increased blood flow to his heart and allowed him to continue his rebound from earlier lung problems. Having the cardiac catheterization meant canceling several major events from his schedule, but Lewis fully recuperated in a matter of weeks. In 1999, Lewis' Australian tour was cut short when he had to be hospitalized in Darwin with viral meningitis. He was ill for more than five months. It was reported in the Australian press that he had failed to pay his medical bills. However, Lewis maintained that the payment confusion was the fault of his health insurer. The resulting negative publicity caused him to sue his insurer for US$100 million. In addition to his decades-long heart problems, Lewis had prostate cancer, type 1 diabetes, and pulmonary fibrosis. Prednisone treatment in the late 1990s for pulmonary fibrosis resulted in considerable weight gain and a startling change in his appearance. In September 2001, Lewis was unable to perform at a planned London charity event at the London Palladium. He was the headlining act, and he was introduced but did not appear. He had suddenly become unwell, apparently with heart problems. He was subsequently taken to the hospital. Some months thereafter, Lewis began an arduous, months-long therapy that weaned him off prednisone and he lost much of the weight gained while on the drug. The treatment enabled him to return to work. On June 12, 2012, he was treated and released from a hospital after collapsing from hypoglycemia at a New York Friars Club event. This latest health issue forced him to cancel a show in Sydney. In an October 2016 interview with Inside Edition, Lewis acknowledged that he might not star in any more films, given his advanced age, while admitting, through tears, that he was afraid of dying, as it would leave his wife and daughter alone. In June 2017, LLewis was hospitalized at a Las Vegas hospital for a urinary tract infection. The cause of his death was end-stage cardiac disease and peripheral artery disease.
87
Born 1928-11-23. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was a French clown, comedian and filmmaker. Étaix made a series of short- and feature-length films, many of them co-written by influential screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. He won an Academy Award for best live action short film in 1963. Due to a legal dispute with a distribution company, his films were unavailable from the 1970s until 2009. As an actor, assistant director and gag writer, Étaix worked with the likes of Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, Nagisa Oshima, Otar Iosseliani and Jerry Lewis, the last of whom cast the comedian in his unreleased film The Day the Clown Cried. Etaix died from complications of an intestinal infection in Paris.
90
Born 1926-06-15. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Age
He was an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter" subgenre of horror films. He is often called the "Godfather of Gore" (a title also given to Lucio Fulci), though his film career included works in a range of exploitation film genres including juvenile delinquent films, nudie-cuties, two children's films and at least one rural comedy. On Lewis' career, AllMovie wrote, "With his better-known gore films, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a pioneer, going farther than anyone else dared, probing the depths of disgust and discomfort onscreen with more bad taste and imagination than anyone of his era."
47
Born 1969-07-28. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:AIDS
She was an American actress, cabaret performer, underground cartoonist, and activist. Arquette was born Robert Arquette in Los Angeles, the fourth of five children of Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), an actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher, and therapist; and Lewis Arquette, an actor and director. Lewis's family's surname was originally "Arcouet"; Lewis's father was comedian Cliff Arquette, who went by the stage name of Charley Weaver. Arquette was distantly related to American explorer Meriwether Lewis. Actors Rosanna, Richmond, Patricia, and David Arquette are her siblings. In 2004, Arquette expressed an interest in undergoing gender-affirming medical treatment in the form of hormone therapy and, ultimately, sex reassignment surgery, which she realized in 2006, in her late 30s. Those experiences were documented in the film Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother, which debuted at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Arquette was a vocal supporter of other transgender people, including Chaz Bono, who transitioned shortly after her. Arquette contracted HIV in 1987. In her later life, she suffered from health issues as a result of her HIV-positive status. Amid these increasing complications, Alexis began presenting herself again as a man in 2013. Her brother David Arquette said that she told him she was "gender suspicious", and alternately felt like a man or a woman at different times. Arquette was placed in a medically induced coma and died on September 11, 2016, surrounded by close family, at the age of 47. Arquette was serenaded with David Bowie's "Starman". The cause of death was cardiac arrest caused by myocarditis stemming from HIV.
25
Born 1989-08-03. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
He was a French motor racing driver who drove for Marussia F1 in the FIA Formula One World Championship. On lap 43 of the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, which was held on Sunday, 5 October, under intermittent heavy rainfall caused by the approaching Typhoon Phanfone, Bianchi lost control of his car and veered right towards the run-off area on the outside of the Dunlop Curve (known as "turn seven") of the Suzuka Circuit. He collided with the rear of a tractor crane tending to the removal of Adrian Sutil's Sauber after Sutil had spun out of control and crashed in the same area a lap before. Subsequent media reports said to be based on information obtained from FIA documents claimed that the speed of impact was recorded at 212 km/h (132 mph)[ and that the impact generated 92 g (900 m/s2). Spectators' video footage and photographs of the accident revealed that the left side of Bianchi's Marussia car was extensively damaged and the roll bar destroyed as it slid under the tractor crane. The impact was such that the tractor crane was partially jolted off the ground causing Sutil's Sauber, which was suspended in the air by the crane, to fall back to the ground. The race was stopped and Lewis Hamilton was declared the winner. a medical update, confirmed that the injury suffered was a diffuse axonal injury and that Bianchi was in a critical but stable condition. He was taken out of his artificial coma in November 2014 and began breathing unaided, making his relocation to France for admission at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nice (fr) (CHU), possible. There Bianchi remained unconscious and in a critical condition but more accessible to his family for their daily vigil. On 13 July 2015 (4 days before his death), Bianchi's father publicly conceded becoming "less optimistic" as a consequence of no significant progress and the lapse of time since the accident.
79
Born 1935-07-31. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Geoffrey Bond Lewis was an American character actor. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows, and was principally known for his film roles alongside Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. He typically portrayed villains or quirky characters. He played a bodyguard in the Jean-Claude van Damme film Double Impact.
71
Born 1942-03-02. Domain:Music. Cause of death:alcohol, other drugs
He was an American rock musician and songwriter. After being guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, his solo career spanned several decades. In May 2013, Reed underwent a liver transplant in Cleveland. Afterwards he claimed on his website to be "bigger and stronger" than ever. On October 27, 2013, Reed died at the age of 71 from liver disease at his home in Southampton, New York, on Long Island. His physician Charles Miller noted that Reed "was fighting right up to the very end. He was doing his Tai Chi exercises within an hour of his death, trying to keep strong and keep fighting."
75
Born 1936-04-12. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Charles Lewis Napier was an American character actor in film and television known for his prolific career playing memorable supporting and leading roles in genre cinema, often in the role of a police officer, soldier, or authority figure. After leaving his Kentucky hometown to serve in the army, he graduated from college and worked as a sports coach and art teacher before settling on acting as a career. Napier established himself in character roles and worked steadily for the next 35 years. He made numerous collaborations with director Jonathan Demme, including roles in the critically acclaimed drama Philadelphia, comedy Married to the Mob, historical horror-drama Beloved, the political-thriller remake The Manchurian Candidate, and the Best Picture-winning psychological horror film adaptation The Silence of the Lambs. Other notable roles include the short-tempered country singer Tucker McElroy in The Blues Brothers, gruff army Commander Gilmour in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, and bureaucratic CIA officer Marshall Murdock in Rambo: First Blood Part II. He also had numerous voiceover roles in television, most notably the character of Duke Phillips on the prime time animated sitcom The Critic and Agent Zed on Men in Black: The Series. Napier died after collapsing the previous day. He was 75 years old. The exact cause of death was not released, but Napier had been treated for deep vein thrombosis in his legs in May 2010.
78
Born 1933-04-23. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Age
Annie Jean Easley was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She worked for the Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage, and was one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA.
81
Born 1928-11-23. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Jerry Bock was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.
Bock spoke at the funeral of 98-year-old Fiddler playwright Joseph Stein just 10 days before his own death, from heart failure.
41
Born 1969-04-26. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
She was an American murderer and the only woman on death row in Virginia prior to her execution.
Lewis was sentenced to death for hiring two men to kill her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis, Jr., and her stepson, Charles J. Lewis, in their Pittsylvania County home on the night of October 30, 2002. Her stepson had a $250,000 life insurance policy from his military service, with Julian Lewis as the primary beneficiary and Lewis as the secondary beneficiary. The motive for the murder on the eve of the stepson's deployment, according to a later interview, was to collect the life insurance money. Her two accomplices, Matthew Jessee Shallenberger, then 21, and his former roommate and friend Rodney Lamont Fuller, then 19, were sentenced to life terms at their separate trials. Schallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.
Lewis was executed on September 23, 2010, at 9 p.m. by lethal injection, at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt.
Lewis' lawyer stated that “She’s not mentally retarded, but she is very, very close to it."
62
Born 1946-07-02. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer
Silver died of esophageal cancer, which he was diagnosed with two years earlier.
Silver made his film debut in Tunnel Vision in 1976. From 1976 to 1978 he played downstairs neighbor Gary Levy in the series Rhoda. Additional screen roles include Lovesick (1983), the devoted son of Anne Bancroft in Garbo Talks (1984), an incompetent detective in Eat and Run (1986), the pistol-wielding psychopath opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in 1989's Blue Steel. and the lead in Paul Mazursky's Oscar-nominated Enemies: A Love Story (1989). Silver also starred opposite Jerry Lewis in the "Garment District Arc" of the crime show Wiseguy (1988). He often said in interviews that growing up the son of a man working in the garment industry was a great help in preparing for the role. He also portrayed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune (1990), based on the trial of Claus von Bülow. In 1998, he starred opposite Kirstie Alley for the last 2 seasons of Veronica's Closet.
85
Born 1923-04-22. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Mr Cale in Quadrophenia (1979).
78
Born 1927-07-02. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:cancer (pancreas)
Lieutenant Hatcher in the film Soylent Green
Darth Vader in the Star Wars radio series
Det. Frank Lewis in The Young and the Restless
Fleet Admiral Cartwright in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Lucius Fox in Batman: The Animated Series
Joseph Sisko, Benjamin Sisko's father, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
85
Born 1917-01-16. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
He was a veteran actor of dozens of character roles of film and television, who regularly appeared in Jerry Lewis features, including The Patsy, The Ladies Man, The Nutty Professor, Three on a Couch, Smorgasbord, Hardly Working", and The Big Mouth.
87
Born 1913-01-06. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:cancer (uterus)
In 1935, Young had an affair with Clark Gable, who was married at the time, while on location for The Call of the Wild. During their relationship, Young became pregnant. Due to the moral codes placed on the film industry Young covered up her pregnancy in order to avoid damaging her career (as well as Gable's). Returning from a long "vacation" (during which she secretly gave birth to her daughter), Young announced that she had adopted the little girl. The child was raised as "Judy Lewis" after taking the name of Young's second husband, producer Tom Lewis. According to Lewis's autobiography Uncommon Knowledge, Lewis was made fun of because of the ears that she received from her father, Clark Gable. Over the years she had heard rumors and secretly knew that Loretta Young was her biological mother, but it was not until 1958 when Judy's future husband Joseph Tinney told her that "everybody" knew the rumors that she really began to suspect. It was not until a few years later when Judy was a mother herself that she finally got the nerve to ask her mother, who finally admitted that Clark Gable was Judy's father.
68
Born 1927-06-17. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Age
He was an Italian film director, screenwriter and actor. Although he worked in a wide array of genres through a career as a film director spanning nearly five decades, including comedy and spaghetti westerns, he garnered an international cult following for his giallo and horror films. His most notable films include the "Gates of Hell" trilogy—City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981), and The House by the Cemetery (1981)—as well as Massacre Time (1966), One on Top of the Other (1969), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), White Fang (1973), Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Sette note in nero (1977), Zombi 2 (1979), The New York Ripper(1982), and A Cat in the Brain (1990). Although a number of films over the years were said to have been "co-produced" by Fulci, he was just allowing them to use his name to promote the films (with the exception of City of the Living Dead, which he did actively attempt to obtain some funding for). Because of the high level of visceral graphic violence present in many of his films, especially Zombi 2, The Beyond, Contraband and The New York Ripper, Fulci is frequently referred to as "The Godfather of Gore", a title also given to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Lucio Fulci died alone, in his sleep, in his apartment in Rome at around 2 P.M. on the afternoon of 13 March 1996, from diabetes-related complications at the age of 68. Toward the end of his life, Fulci had lost his house and was forced to move into a cramped apartment. Since Fulci had been so despondent in his later years, some believed that he may have intentionally allowed himself to die by not taking his diabetes medication, but this is controversial. Dario Argento paid for Fulci's funeral arrangements.
91
Born 1903-12-10. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
George J. Lewis was a Mexican-born actor who appeared in many films and eventually TV series from the 1920s through the 1960s, usually specializing in westerns. He is probably best known for playing Don Alejandro de la Vega, who was Don Diego de la Vega's father in the 1950s Disney television series Zorro. Lewis co-starred in Zorro's Black Whip (in which a Zorro-like character was a woman played by Linda Stirling) and had a minor role in Ghost of Zorro before starring as Don Alejandro in the Disney series.
27
Born 1965-11-21. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Heart attack
He was an American professional basketball player for the NBA's Boston Celtics from 1987 to 1993. Lewis suffered sudden cardiac death on the basketball court at an off-season practice on July 27, 1993 at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He was only 27 years old. Lewis had shown symptoms of heart problems in the preceding months (including collapsing during the opening game of their first-round playoff series with the Charlotte Hornets), and the cause of his death was subsequently attributed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a structural heart defect that is considered the most common cause of death in young athletes.
70
Born 1909-07-23. Domain:Painting. Cause of death:Age
He passed away unexpectedly in 1979 in New York.
67
Born 1903-03-07. Domain:Painting. Cause of death:Pneumonia
Maud Kathleen Lewis (née Dowley) was a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia. Lewis lived most of her life in poverty in a small house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, achieving national recognition in 1964 and 1965. Several books, plays and films have since been produced about her. Lewis remains one of Canada's best-known folk artists; her works and the restored Maud Lewis House are displayed in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. In the last year of her life, Maud Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital for treatment of health issues. She died in Digby from pneumonia. Her husband Everett was killed in 1979 by a burglar during an attempted robbery of the couple's house.
27
Born 1942-02-28. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Unknown
He was a founding member, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in the English rock group The Rolling Stones.
At around midnight on 3 July 1969, Jones was discovered motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at his home in Hartfield, Sussex, England. His Swedish girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, is convinced he was alive when they took him out, insisting he still had a pulse. However, by the time the doctors arrived, it was too late, and he was pronounced dead. The coroner's report stated "Death by misadventure", and noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.Some felt it was suicide, however, blaming Jagger and Richards for his state of mental depression.
Wohlin claimed in 1999 that Jones had been murdered by a builder who had been renovating the house the couple shared. The builder, Frank Thorogood, allegedly confessed to the murder on his deathbed to the Rolling Stones' driver, Tom Keylock; however, there were no other witnesses. In ("The Murder Of Brian Jones"), Wohlin alleges that Thorogood behaved suspiciously and showed little sympathy when Jones was discovered in the pool (he was the last to see Brian alive), but she admits she was not present at Jones's death. Witnesses who claim to have seen the 'murder' have been interviewed by journalists; however, these witnesses have almost always used pseudonyms, and none has been willing to go on record or report to the police. A critical witness, still alive, is a man called 'Marty' in the Hotchner book 'Blown Away'. Another builder present, called Mo(rris) passed away a couple of years ago.
Many items, such as instruments and expensive furniture, were stolen from the home after Jones's death, most likely by Thorogood, driver Tom Keylock, and others who worked on the property. Rumours also exist that recordings by Jones for his future projects were stolen but nothing has surfaced to date. A watch given by Alexis Korner to Brian, with a personal inscription, surfaced at Christie's in New York.
Upon Jones' death, Pete Townshend wrote a poem titled "A Normal Day For Brian, A Man Who Died Every Day" (printed in The Times), Jimi Hendrix dedicated a song to him on U.S. television, and Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote a published poem entitled Ode To L.A. While Thinking Of Brian Jones, Deceased.
69
Born 1898-09-08. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Guy Anthony "Tony" Vandervell was a British industrialist, motor racing financier, and founder of the Vanwall Formula One racing team. Increasing age and the strains of running a high-profile sporting team had taken its toll on Tony Vandervell's health. Vandervell had been deeply affected by Lewis-Evans's death, and in January 1959 he announced that he would not be continuing with the team. The loss of Vandervell's drive, ambition and money crippled Vanwall, and the team never again won a World Championship race. Vanwall struggled on with a new car in 1959. The same vehicle was run occasionally in non-championship events in 1960, but after 1961 when Lotus experimented with a Vanwall engine in one of their chassis, the Vanwall name disappeared from F1. The last Vanwall car was built to Intercontinental Formula rules for John Surtees in 1962. This series was unsuccessful and Vanwall folded for good, fewer than four years after their world domination. Tony Vandervell withdrew from public life after leaving Vanwall. He died in March 1967. Just seven weeks earlier he had married his personal secretary, Marian Moore.
36
Born 1925-07-20. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:cancer (blood)
Frantz Omar Fanon (/ˈfænən/, US: /fæˈnɒ̃/; French: [fʁɑ̃ts fanɔ̃]) was a Francophone Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As well as being an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonization and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization. With his health declining, Fanon's comrades urged him to seek treatment in the U.S. as his Soviet doctors had suggested. In 1961, the CIA arranged a trip under the promise of stealth for further leukemia treatment at a National Institutes of Health facility. During his time in the United States, Fanon was handled by CIA agent Oliver Iselin. As Lewis R. Gordon points out, the circumstances of Fanon's stay are somewhat disputed: "What has become orthodoxy, however, is that he was kept in a hotel without treatment for several days until he contracted pneumonia." Fanon subsequently died from double pneumonia in Bethesda, Maryland, on 6 December 1961 after finally having begun his leukemia treatment. He had been admitted under the name of Ibrahim Omar Fanon, a Libyan nom de guerre he had assumed in order to enter a hospital in Rome after being wounded in Morocco during a mission for the Algerian National Liberation Front. He was buried in Algeria after lying in state in Tunisia. Later, his body was moved to a martyrs' (Chouhada) graveyard at Aïn Kerma in eastern Algeria.
28
Born 1930-04-20. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
Stuart Nigel Lewis-Evans was a British racing driver, who competed in Formula One at 14 Grands Prix from 1957 to 1958. Born in Luton and raised in Kent, Lewis-Evans served in the Royal Corps of Signals before starting his racing career in 1951, driving a Cooper 500. After winning the non-championship 1957 Glover Trophy, he debuted in Formula One at the Monaco Grand Prix with Connaught. Lewis-Evans contested five further Grands Prix in 1957 with Vanwall, taking his maiden pole position at the Italian Grand Prix before retiring with engine issues. Retaining his seat for 1958, Lewis-Evans also retired from pole at the Dutch Grand Prix, before taking his maiden podiums in Belgium and Portugal. Lewis-Evans crashed heavily at the dusty Ain-Diab Circuit during the season-ending Moroccan Grand Prix. His car's engine seized and sent him lurching into barriers at high speed, where it burst into flames. He was airlifted back to the UK, but died of his burns in hospital six days after the accident. His death cast a pall over Vanwall's victory in the 1958 International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, an achievement to which Lewis-Evans had contributed significantly. Vandervell never fully recovered from Lewis-Evans's death and withdrew from motorsport at the end of 1958.
37
Born 1915-09-28. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29, 1951, and on April 5 were sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman under Section 2 of the 1917 Espionage Act, 50 U.S. Code 32 (now 18 U.S. Code 794), which prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government information "relating to the national defense." The conviction helped to fuel Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into anti-American activities by U.S. citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well documented, the Rosenbergs denied the espionage charges even as they faced the electric chair.
The couple was executed at sundown in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. This was delayed from the originally scheduled date of June 18 because, on June 17, Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had granted a stay of execution. That stay resulted from the intervention in the case of Fyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had previously met with scorn from the Rosenbergs' attorney.
On June 18, the Court was called back into special session to dispose of Douglas' stay rather than let the execution be delayed for months while the appeal that was the basis of the stay wended its way through the lower courts. The Court did not vacate Douglas's stay until noon on June 19. Thus, the execution then was scheduled for later in the evening after the start of the Jewish Sabbath. Desperately playing for more time, their lawyer, Emanuel Bloch, filed a complaint that this offended their Jewish heritage—so the execution was scheduled before sunset. Reports of the execution state that Julius died after the first application of electricity, but Ethel did not succumb immediately and was subjected to two more electrical charges before being pronounced dead. The chair was designed for a man of average size; and Ethel Rosenberg was a petite woman: this discrepancy resulted, it is claimed, in the electrodes fitting poorly and making poor electrical contact. Eyewitness testimony (as given by a newsreel report featured in the 1982 documentary film The Atomic Cafe) describes smoke rising from her head.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are buried at Wellwood Cemetery in Pinelawn (Suffolk County), New York.
The Rosenbergs' two sons, Robert and Michael, were orphaned by the executions, and no relatives dared adopt them for fear of ostracism or worse. They were finally adopted by the songwriter Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne, and they assumed the Meeropol surname. Abel Meeropol (under the pen name of Lewis Allan) wrote the classic anti-lynching anthem "Strange Fruit", made famous by singer Billie Holiday. Robert and Michael co-wrote a book about the experience, We are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975), and Robert wrote another book in 2004, An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey. In 1990, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a non-profit foundation that provides support for children whose parents are leftist activists involved in court cases.
50
Born 1884-02-22. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Heart
His career spanned the silent film and early sound film age. Cody had at least 99 film credits during a twenty year period between 1914 and 1934. He was married twice. His first marriage to Dorothy Dalton ended in divorce. Cody married Mabel Normand in 1926. She died of tuberculosis four years later, the day after his 46th birthday. Four years after this, Cody died from heart disease. He is buried in St. Peters Cemetery in Lewiston, Maine with his father and grandparents.