Category: Worldly stuff

CNN – American actor David Carradine has been found dead, hanging by a nylon rope in a hotel room closet in Bangkok, Thailand, according to a Thai police official.

David Carradine became famous in the 1970s after starring in the television series “Kung Fu.”

Carradine became famous in the 1970s when he starred in the television series “Kung Fu.”

The rope was believed taken from the hotel room curtains, Bangkok Police Lt. Colonel Pirom Chanpirom said.

Investigators found no sign of a forced entry into Carradine’s room, Chanpirom said.

An autopsy was being conducted at a Bangkok hospital, but no results will be available for another day, he said.

A Carradine family spokeswoman issued a short statement saying the family “is devastated by the news of David’s passing.”

“Circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown, and there will be no further comment until more information can be confirmed,” the statement said.

The last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic has died aged 97.

Millvina Dean was nine weeks old when the liner sank after hitting an iceberg in the early hours of 15 April 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton.
The disaster resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people in the north Atlantic, largely due to a lack of lifeboats.

Miss Dean, who remembered nothing of the fateful journey, died on Sunday at the care home in Hampshire where she lived, two of her friends told the BBC.

Her family had been travelling in third class to America, where they hoped to start a new life and open a tobacconist’s shop in Kansas City.
Miss Dean’s mother, Georgetta, and two-year-old brother, Bert, also survived, but her father, Bertram, was among those who perished when the vessel sank.

If it hadn’t been for the ship going down, I’d be an American
Millvina Dean

The family returned to Southampton, where Miss Dean went on to spend most of her life.

Despite having no memories of the disaster, she always said it had shaped her life, because she should have grown up in the US instead of returning to the UK.

Don LaFontaine, the voiceover king whose “In a world …” phrase on movie trailers was much copied — and much parodied — has died, according to media reports. He was 68.

LaFontaine died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, according to ETOnline, “Entertainment Tonight’s” Web site. He died from complications from pneumothorax, a collapsed lung that causes air to build in the pleural cavity, his agent, Vanessa Gilbert, told “ET.”

LaFontaine, who was born in Duluth, Minnesota, began as a voice actor in the mid-1960s while working as a recording engineer, according to his Web site. His strong, slightly gravelly voice was featured on trailers for thousands of films, including “The Godfather,” “Fatal Attraction” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” For a time in the late ’70s, LaFontaine was the official voice of Paramount Pictures.

His favorite work was one he did for the 1980 film “The Elephant Man,” he said in interviews, but whether the film was Oscar-caliber or a bomb waiting to blow, he handled every assignment equally. Watch LaFontaine at work »

Continue reading “Donald LaFontaine”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Continue reading “George Denis Patrick Carlin”

Antonio Stradivari created this violin at his workshop in Cremona, Italy around the year 1700. It’s now up for auction at Christie’s and is expected to bring in between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000. In May of 2006, Christie’s sold Stradivari’s “The Hammer” to an anonymous telephone bidder for just over $3,500,000. Now that’s a big wad of cash!

(CNN) — Author Arthur C. Clarke, whose science fiction and non-fiction works ranged from the script for “2001: A Space Odyssey” to an early proposal for communications satellites, has died at age 90, associates have said. Visionary author Arthur C. Clarke had fans around the world.

Clarke had been wheelchair-bound for several years with complications stemming from a youthful bout with polio and had suffered from back trouble recently, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

He died early Wednesday — Tuesday afternoon ET — at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, Chase said.

“He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit,” he said.

Continue reading “Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE”