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Cowan George (b. 1920-02-15 / d. 2012-04-20)
He was an American physical chemist, a businessman and philanthropist. Cowan received a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1941. He did graduate studies at Princeton, where he worked under future Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, whose investigation of uranium confirmed the feasibility of the Fermi pile. He continued his nuclear research with the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, Oak Ridge, Columbia University, and Los Alamos. Because he was transferred to various locations as a technological troubleshooter for the effort, he was among the very few people with knowledge of the separate components of the bomb, kept apart for security reasons. He joined the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946. He earned a Ph.D. from the Mellon College of Science in 1950. Weeks after his arrival at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1949, he directed the detection of radioactive fallout from samples collected near the Russian border indicating the Soviets were in possession of a nuclear bomb. He later served on the Bethe Panel that convinced government decision makers the radiochemistry detected represented weapons uses rather than peaceful pursuits.
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58
Born 1962-09-07. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Accident
Cliff Simon was a South African athlete and actor, best known for his portrayal of Ba'al in Stargate SG-1. Simon died in a kiteboarding accident in Topanga, California.
103
Born 1916-09-30. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Richard Kenneth Guy was a British mathematician. He was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. He is known for his work in number theory, geometry, recreational mathematics, combinatorics, and graph theory. He published more than 300 scholarly articles.
96
Born 1921-06-10. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
Oskar Gröning was a German SS Unterscharführer who was stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charge of the personal property of arriving prisoners. On a few occasions he witnessed the procedures of mass killing in the camp. After being transferred from Auschwitz to a combat unit in October 1944, Gröning surrendered to the British at the end of the war; his role in the SS was not discovered. He was eventually transferred to Britain as a prisoner of war and worked as a farm labourer. Upon his return to Germany, he led a normal life, reluctant to talk about his time in Auschwitz. However, more than 40 years later, he decided to make his activities at Auschwitz public after learning about Holocaust denial. He openly criticised those who denied the events that he had witnessed and the ideology to which he had subscribed. Gröning was notable as a German willing to make public statements about his experience as an SS soldier, which were self-incriminating and which exposed his life to public scrutiny. In particular, he confessed to stealing jewellery and currencies from gas chamber victims for his personal benefit. In September 2014, Gröning was charged by German prosecutors as an accessory to murder in 300,000 cases, for his role at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His trial began in April 2015, after the court had ruled that, at the age of 93, he was still fit to stand trial. The trial was held in Lüneburg, Germany. On 15 July 2015, he was found guilty of facilitating mass murder and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Following a number of unsuccessful appeals against the prison sentence, Gröning died on 9 March 2018 while hospitalized before he was set to begin his sentence.
52
Born 1965-11-05. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Suicide
Jo Min-ki was a South Korean actor. He is best known for his roles in the television series Love and Ambition, East of Eden, Queen Seondeok, and Flames of Desire. He was also a noted photographer and published two books and held solo exhibitions,. In addition since 2010 he was an assistant professor at Cheongju University. Following high-profile accusations of sexual misconduct from numerous students, Jo was found dead at an underground parking lot in Seoul in an apparent suicide.
35
Born 1982-01-11. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
He was a French Grand Prix motorcycle racer. He rode a Suzuki GSX-R1000 in the FIM CEV Superbike European Championship and the Endurance FIM World Championship. He died after falling from his bike during a test on the Circuit Paul Armagnac near Nogaro and breaking his neck.
25
Born 1989-10-28. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
She was a French swimmer and three-time Olympic medalist. In March 2015, part of a group of French sports stars participating in a reality TV show called Dropped, she was one of 10 people killed when two helicopters collided in mid-air during filming in northwestern Argentina.
28
Born 1986-11-17. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
He was a French boxer who won a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics at Light Welterweight. He also competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics, where he was eliminated in the quarterfinals in a controversial decision. He died in the Villa Castelli helicopter crash during the filming of French TV reality show Dropped for the TF1 network.
57
Born 1957-10-28. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Accident
She was a French sailor born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. She is the daughter of Jacques Arthaud, director of the Arthaud publishing house. She died in the Villa Castelli helicopter crash in Argentina.
51
Born 1963-03-10. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Infection
He was a Czech mathematician working in computational geometry and algebraic topology. He was a professor at Charles University in Prague and the author of several textbooks and research monographs.
70
Born 1942-02-00. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Accident
Terry Teene was an American musician, vocalist, songwriter, and entertainer, most commonly known for the early 1960s novelty hit "Curse of the Hearse". According to the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, he has recorded over 300 distinct songs and played on 100 or more released recordings, performing as a "major artist" on 25 of them. He has recorded under 70 names and appeared in over 500 nightclubs, by his own count. Teene began a second parallel career as a clown. He has performed under the names of "ToBo the Clown" and "Clownzo"; and was one of the creators and originators (with George Voorhees) of the costume, likeness, name and character of Ronald McDonald, one of the world's most recognizable trademark characters. On March 7, 2012, Teene was severely injured in Tyler, Texas, when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a tow truck. He died as a result of the accident. He was 70 years old.
85
Born 1916-07-19. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Age
Dubbing voice of Lana Turner in the French post-synchronized version of Green Dolphin Street (1947) (Le pays du dauphin vert) and Cass Timberlane (1947) (Éternel tourment).
24
Born 1972-05-21. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Murder
He was killed by an unknown assailant in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. His double-disc set Life After Death, released fifteen days later, hit #1 on the US album charts and was certified diamond in 2000. Biggie was noted for his “loose, easy flow”, dark semi-autobiographical lyrics and storytelling abilities.
44
Born 1952-04-23. Domain:Writing. Cause of death:Other
At the age of forty-three, on December 8, 1995, Bauby, a well-known Parisian, suffered a massive stroke which rendered his brain stem inactive. When he woke up twenty days later, he found he was mute and almost entirely paralysed; he could only move his head a little, grunt, and blink his left eyelid. This rare condition is called locked-in syndrome.
Despite his condition, he authored the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. Bauby had to compose and edit the book entirely in his head, and convey it one letter at a time. He had his interlocuter read from a special alphabet which consisted of the letters reordered in accordance with their frequency in the French language. This made dictation more efficient. The book was published in France on March 6, 1997. Bauby died three days after due to heart failure.
104
Born 1891-11-22. Domain:Journalism. Cause of death:Age
He is considered one of the fathers of the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.
He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.
76
Born 1917-09-20. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Cancer
42
Born 1946-11-04. Domain:Art. Cause of death:AIDS
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the homosexual male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States. Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989 at the age of 42 due to complications from HIV/AIDS, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital. His body was cremated.