obituaries

Katherine Johnson, one of the history-making, barrier-breaking NASA mathematicians depicted in "Hidden Figures" ; died Monday, the administrator of NASA said. She was 101. "Hidden Figures" A movie worth watching...

The guy was 103, and it may be that few remember Hotchner, but long ago he wrote a fairly controversial biography of Hemingway, and was a friend and business associate of Paul Newman. Together they founded "Newman's Own" foods, and ran the Hole in the Wall fund. I remember him fondly because...

Most notably the author of True Grit, but he wrote a small number of other things, also pretty good fun. But True Grit is surely a classic, worth a read even if you've seen both of the movies.

Last Tuesday Catharina Meessen died at the tender age of 106. Link (sorry. Dutch only). Catharina was not an important person. In fact, I would be surprised if she ever really travelled far from the village where she was born and where she died. But Catharina was unique in Europe in that her...

Derek Acorah, TV medium, dies aged 69 I guess she doesn't think she'll be hearing from his spirit anytime soon. He was a "fake medium" as opposed to a "real medium" of course. :rolleyes:

Clive James has died.:( Clive amused us with comments like: "advertising agencies for a product that doesn't exist" when describing religions, and saw atheism as the obvious default position to take. Hard to argue against this presumption I think, given that children raised without being...

Apologies a bit over long Pretty amazing dude really Sad Good innings though https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/nov/27/clive-james-obituary Trimmed for rule 4; please visit the link given to read the entire obituary.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/politics/elijah-cummings/index.html

I don't have a link. But he is dead.

I wasn't always on her wavelength but she was one hell of a good writer. Sorry to see another one go. Please excuse misprint in title, will try to correct.

Not a commonly known character nowadays, Paul Krassner was credited by some as being the founding father of Yippies, a satirist and publisher of a sometimes amusing little underground paper called The Realist. Often good for a laugh, he tended to be irreverent about just about everything...

Ross Perot, billionaire tycoon and 2-time presidential candidate, dies at 89 https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/09/politics/ross-perot-dead/index.html

To me, who thinks nothing good of the "libertarian" ideology, antiwar.com was one of the sites that really taught others how to use links in early internet writing. While the usual pre$$titute sites even these days don't link to the sources they are writing about, but instead use if anything...

The sudden death of Labour's leader a quarter of a century ago was to a lot of people genuinely shocking. A decent man, though with a reputation (at least in the media*) for being dour (though this was the time of John Major's premiership, so go figure). After his passing, some viewed him as...