Obituaries

[sbarrera]

Bernard John Ebbers (August 27, 1941 – February 2, 2020) was a Canadian businessman who was the co-founder and CEO of WorldCom. Under his management WorldCom grew rapidly only to collapse in 2002 amid revelations of accounting irregularities. Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the accounting scheme.

The WorldCom scandal was, until the Madoff schemes came to light in 2008, the largest accounting scandal in United States history. In December 2019, he was released from Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Worth, having served 13 years of his 25-year sentence. In 2013, Portfolio.com and CNBC named Ebbers as the fifth-worst CEO in American history. In 2009, Time named him the tenth most corrupt CEO of all time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers

[pbrower2a]

I think of the Lord High Executioner's "little list" in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Variations are made to fit the sensibilities of the day, varying from people who talk during a musical performance, people who drive badly,  to  Internet spammers and scammers. 

Bernie Ebbers, like Jeffrey Epstein, never will be missed.

[Marypoza]

RlP Kirk Douglas
May everybody live as long a u

[pbrower2a]

Too bad he didn't die earlier:

Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (April 15, 1962 – February 6, 2020) also known by the alias "Popeye", was a hitman[1] who was part of the criminal structure of the Medellín Cartel until his surrender to the Colombian justice system in 1992. Within this structure he claimed to be a lieutenant commanding half of the sicarios.[2]

Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez was born in the municipality of Yarumal, Antioquia, Colombia. He was admitted to the Colombian National Army; later he joined the cadet school of the national police, only to leave days later, having not found any satisfaction in his profession. Later, he entered the school of apprentices of the Colombian Navy where he earned his distinctive nickname 'Popeye' because of his physical resemblance to the character, which would later be removed by plastic surgery. Velásquez escaped from prison once and was later caught and served the time.

Velásquez was identified as one of the most important hitmen of the Medellín cartel. He confessed to 257 personal killings, the kidnapping of then candidate for mayor of Bogotá, Andrés Pastrana Arango (who would later become President of the republic), the kidnapping of Francisco Santos (who would later become vice president), kidnapping and murder of Colombian politician Carlos Mauro Hoyos, complicity in the murder of the governor of Antioquia, Antonio Roldán Betancur, in a failed mission entrusted to Popeye and John Jairo Arias Tascón, alias "Pinina" to kill a police colonel, and the killing of politician and Presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento.[3] He also admitted to arranging over 3000 killings.[4] He helped plan the plane bombing that killed 110 people.

In May 2018 Velásquez was arrested on charges of extortion and criminal conspiracy. It is claimed he was blackmailing former associates of Pablo Escobar pantera who still control some of his assets.[5]



Since 1992, Velásquez served a prison sentence on charges of terrorism, drug trafficking, extortion, conspiracy for terrorist purposes and murder.[6] However, despite the severity of his crimes, Colombia does not have capital punishment and the maximum sentence at the time of his conviction was thirty years. During 2000 and 2001, Popeye was involved in armed clashes in La Modelo prison. In 2008, he was sentenced to twelve years for other judicial proceedings against him. On August 22, 2014 he received probation for having served three-fifths of his sentence. At age of 52, he was released on 26 August 2014 after 23 years and 3 months in prison.[7}

Velásquez was once in a relationship with Wendy Chavarriaga Gil, a former lover of his boss Pablo Escobar. They were lying in bed one day when the phone rang; on the other end was a recording of Wendy speaking with DEA agents. 'Popeye' was then given a choice: "love or death, money or lead (plata o plomo)". Velásquez hung up the phone and shot Wendy fatally twice in the forehead, in a fit of rage. [8] In an interview, according to Popeye, Escobar was clear in his instructions, "you or her, do not hesitate a single second ... plata o plomo, amor o muerte. I’m waiting"[9] As his main sicario (hitman) and Escobar's right hand man, "Popeye" performed the murder himself even though she was the woman he loved. Velásquez was loyal to Escobar until the King of Cocaine released him of his duties while on the run.


Controversy continued to follow Popeye since his release from prison. On December 12, 2016, a video appeared in which Velásquez brandishes and fires a handgun in the streets of Medellín.[10] In the video, Velásquez proudly states, "Hello warriors, I'm here in the streets of my beloved Medellín, testing out my beautiful 9mm Pietro Beretta. We're firing it, it's a doll, a beauty!"[11]


In December 2016, two men on motorbikes pulled up alongside him as he was driving in his car and robbed him of his glasses, two old bracelets and an old mobile phone, he said. He also said it was the second time he had been targeted in such a way but he had not reported the incidents.[12]


Aside from being a controversial figure, Velásquez was a YouTube personality who uploaded videos. In these videos, he critiqued various topics in Colombia such as a corrupt government and socioeconomic hardships.[13]. He was working on a TV series based on his own life and his involvement in the Medellín Cartel and will star in season 3 of Narcos (TV series). Netflix released a drama series called Surviving Escobar in 2017, which is based on the book[14] written by Velásquez. Velásquez performs in a 2019 film X Sicario - Pablo Escobar's Hitman. He played Simon, the most feared hitman who worked for Pablo Escobar, in this film. The film tells a story in which Simon resists against the new regulator of the Mafia in Medellín.


After having been admitted to hospital for a month, on December 23 2019, Velásquez was transferred for health reasons from the maximum-security prison of Valledupar to La Picota prison in Bogotá[15]. On January 8 2020, it was announced that Velásquez had terminal esophageal cancer and that he had at most a few months left to live. He died on February 6, 2020 in Bogotá from cancer, he was 57 years old.[16][17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhon_Jairo_Vel%C3%A1squez

Anybody still using cocaine? Anyone who does finances crimes like his. 

[Eric the Green]

(02-02-2020, 09:47 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Classical pianist Peter Serkin:


Peter Adolf Serkin (July 24, 1947 – February 1, 2020) was an American classical pianist. He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Bard College. He won two Grammy awards, Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1966 and Best Chamber Music Performance (with Mstislav Rostropovich) in 1984, and he performed globally....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Serkin

I heard him play with our local symphony when my Dad was president and I worked there. Surprised he passed so young. At least, I will remember him as a bright young pianist.

[pbrower2a]

Orson Bean (I had no idea that he was still alive... another Silent comedian, and the biggest contribution of the Silent to American culture is comedy... as the 4T continues we get increasingly self-righteous  and stubborn... Just a reminder: we will need Artist comedy again to take the stuffiness out of our lives... just as the Crisis comes to an end.

Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was a veteran American film, television, and stage actor, and a comedian, writer, and producer. He was a game show and talk show host,[1][2][3][4][5] and a "mainstay of Los Angeles’s small theater scene."[2] He appeared frequently on several televised game shows from the 1960s through the 1980s and was a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth.[2] "A storyteller par excellence",[4] he was a favorite of Johnny Carson, appearing on The Tonight Show over 200 times.[6]

Bean became one of the first "neocelebrities" in television – someone who was "famous for being famous."[2]

In 1952, Bean made a guest appearance on NBC Radio's weekly hot-jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, which was his first big break.[citation needed] His vocal mannerisms were ideal for the mock-serious tone of the show, and he became the show's master of ceremonies ("Dr. Orson Bean") for its final season. Bean was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson),[5] and appeared on game shows originating from New York. He was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth[15] in versions from the late 1950s through 1991.[8] On July 5, 1965, his father appeared as a subject of the panel and he had to disqualify himself from participating.[citation needed] He appeared on Super Password and Match Game, among other game shows. He hosted a pilot for a revamped version of Concentration in 1985,[citation needed] which was picked up later on in 1987 as Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek.[citation needed] An appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was cancelled due to his being on the "black list," and he was rendered persona non grata there for years because of it. Sullivan eventually relented and rebooked him, opining that he was the master of his own show, not "Campbell's Soup."[2]
Although Bean was placed on the Hollywood blacklist for attending Communist Party meetings while dating a member, he continued to work through the 1950s and 60s.[2][5][9] He played the title character in the Twilight Zone episode "Mr. Bevis" (1960).[citation needed] For the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson,[citation needed] he starred as John Monroe in "The Secret Life of James Thurber" (1961), based on the works of the American humorist James Thurber.[citation needed]
For ten years, he was the house comic at New York's Blue Angel comedy club.[2] In 1954, The New York Times noted in a review of The Blue Angel, Bean's delivery was always well played, even if a joke fell flat.[5] He once hosted a television show "Blue Angel" on CBS.[4]

He "maintained a steady career since the 1950s and cut his teeth on and off Broadway before becoming a live television staple."[2]

On Broadway he starred in the original cast of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? with Walter Matthau and Jayne Mansfield.[2] Then, in 1961, he was featured in Subways Are for Sleeping with Sydney Chaplin, for which he received a Tony Award nomination as Best Featured Actor in a Musical,[2][8] He performed in Never Too Late the following year. In 1964, he produced the Off-Off-Broadway musical Home Movies — which won an Obie Award.[16][17] And the same year appeared in the Broadway production I Was Dancing.[18] He starred in the musical “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac”.[2] He also voiced and sang the role of Charlie Brown on MGM's original 1966 concept album of the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown[19] and starred in Illya Darling, the 1967 musical adaptation of the film Never on Sunday.[8][citation needed] Doing stand up comedy, magic tricks and passing on wit and wisdom, he became a regular on I've Got a Secret, What’s My Line? and To Tell the Truth. He guest starred on television talk and variety shows, e.g., The Ed Sullivan Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. Among dozens of appearances, he starred in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and Desperate Housewives while tallying guest appearance credits, e.g., How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, The Closer.[2] Bean was a regular in both Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman[citation needed] and its spin-off Fernwood 2Nite. He also portrayed the shrewd businessman and storekeeper Loren Bray on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman throughout its six-year run on CBS in the 1990s.[8] He played John Goodman's homophobic father on the sitcom Normal, Ohio. He played the main characters Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the 1977 and 1980 Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and The Return of the King. He also played Dr. Lester in Spike Jonze's 1999 film, Being John Malkovich.

Bean appeared as a patient in the final two episodes of 7th Heaven's seventh season in 2003. In 2005, Bean appeared in the sitcom Two and a Half Men in an episode titled "Does This Smell Funny to You?", playing a former playboy whose conquests included actresses Tuesday Weld and Anne Francis. He appeared in the 2007 How I Met Your Mother episode "Slapsgiving" as Robin Scherbatsky's 41-year-old boyfriend, Bob.[citation needed] In 2009 he was cast in the recurring role of Roy Bender, a steak salesman, who is Karen McCluskey's love interest on the ABC series Desperate Housewives.[citation needed] At the age of 87, Bean in 2016 appeared in "Playdates", an episode of the American TV sitcom Modern Family.[citation needed] He appeared in a 2017 episode of Teachers (TV Land, season 2, episode 11, "Dosey Don't"). He appeared as the elderly Holocaust survivor in the 2018 film The Equalizer 2.[citation needed]

He was a chief creator and "mainstay" of The Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, California.[2][4][5]
In later life, "his politics turned more conservative." His daughter married Andrew Breitbart, and Bean authored intermittent columns for Breitbart News.[2][8] He ventured the thought that being a conservative in 21st-century Hollywood was a lot like being a suspected Communist back in the 1950s.[2]

For much of his career and to his death, he was represented by the Artists & Representatives agency. In its brief statement after his death, they noted he was an assiduous nurturer of rising talent.[4]

An admirer of Laurel and Hardy, Bean, in 1964, served as a founding member of The Sons of the Desert, the international organization devoted to sharing information about the lives of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and studying and enjoying their films.[5]

In 1966 he helped found the 15th Street School in New York City, a primary school using the radical democratic free school, Summerhill, as a model.[5][20] Bean wrote an autobiographical account about his life-changing experience with the orgone therapy developed by Austrian-born psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Published in 1971, the account is titled Me and the Orgone: The True Story of One Man's Sexual Awakening.[5][21]

Bean was married three times. His first marriage was in 1956 to actress Jacqueline de Sibour, whose stage name was Rain Winslow and who was the daughter of the French nobleman and pilot Vicomte Jacques de Sibour and his wife, Violette B. Selfridge (daughter of American-born British department-store magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge).[2][22][23][24] Before their divorce in 1962, Bean and Jacqueline had one child, Michele.[25]

In 1965, he married actress and fashion designer Carolyn Maxwell with whom he had three children: Max, Susannah, and Ezekiel.[2][26] The couple divorced in 1981. Their daughter Susannah married journalist Andrew Breitbart (died 2012) in 1997. Bean's third wife was actress and Dr. Quinn co-star Alley Mills, 23 years his junior. They married in 1993, and lived in Los Angeles until his death in 2020.[2][25]
He was a "distant cousin" of President Calvin Coolidge.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Bean

[pbrower2a]

Robert Conrad (born Conrad Robert Falk; March 1, 1935 – February 8, 2020) was an American film and television actor, singer, and stuntman. He is best known for his role in the 1965–1969 television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West. He portrayed World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron). In addition to acting, he was a singer, and recorded several pop/rock songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Bob Conrad. He hosted a weekly two-hour national radio show (The PM Show with Robert Conrad) on CRN Digital Talk Radio beginning in 2008.

Hawaiian Eye

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Robert Conrad with co-star [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Stevens]Connie Stevens on Hawaiian Eye, 1961

Warner Brothers had a big success with its detective show 77 Sunset Strip and then made Hawaiian Eye, a follow-up series. Conrad starred as detective Tom Lopaka. He was introduced on Strip, then spun off into his own series that ran from 1959 to 1963, both in the U.S. and overseas. During the series' run, Conrad appeared on an episode of the Warner Brothers series The Gallant Men. When Hawaiian Eye was over, Conrad starred in Palm Springs Weekend (1963), Warners' attempt to repeat the success of Where the Boys Are (1960) with its young contract players.[14]



In Mexico, Conrad signed a recording contract with the Orfeon label, where he released two albums, with a few singles sung in Spanish. In 1964, he guest-starred on an episode of Temple Houston and then performed in the comedic film La Nueva Cenicienta (also known as Cabriola). The next year, he was in the episode "Four into Zero" of Kraft Suspense Theatre and played Pretty Boy Floyd in Young Dillinger alongside his old friend Nick Adams.[18]

The Wild Wild West



In 1965, Conrad began his starring role as government agent James West on the popular weekly series The Wild Wild West, which aired on CBS until its cancellation in 1969. He made $5,000 a week.[19] He did most of his own stunts and fight scenes during the series, and while filming the season four episode "The Night of the Fugitives," he was injured and rushed to the hospital after he dived from the top of a saloon staircase, lost his grip on a chandelier, fell 12 feet, and landed on his head.[20]



In addition to starring in The Wild Wild West, Conrad found time to work on other projects. He went to Mexico in 1967 to appear in Ven a cantar conmigo (Come, sing with me), a musical. He also formed his own company, Robert Conrad Productions, and under its auspices he wrote, starred in, and directed the 1967 Western film The Bandits.[21]



Paul Ryan and Jake Webster

Conrad appeared in episodes of Mannix and Mission: Impossible. In 1969, he signed a three-picture deal with Bob Hope's Doan Productions. The first two films were slated to be Keene then No Beer in Heaven but only the first movie was ever produced.[22]



In 1969, he debuted as prosecutor Paul Ryan in the TV movie D.A.: Murder One (1969). He reprised the movie in D.A.: Conspiracy to Kill (1971) and the short-lived 1971 series The D.A..[23] He was also in such made-for-television movies as Weekend of Terror (1970) and Five Desperate Women (1971).[14] He tried another TV series as American spy Jake Webster in Assignment Vienna (1972), which only lasted eight episodes.[24] He was a murderous fitness franchise promoter in an episode of Columbo ("An Exercise in Fatality").[25] Conrad starred in the feature films Murph the Surf (1975) and Sudden Death (1977). He reprised his role as Paul Ryan in the TV movie Confessions of the D.A. Man.[14]



Baa Baa Black Sheep

Conrad found ratings success again from 1976 to 1978 as legendary tough-guy World War II fighter ace Pappy Boyington in Baa Baa Black Sheep, retitled for its second season and in later syndication as Black Sheep Squadron. He directed three episodes.[26][27]



The show's success led Conrad to win a People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.[28] He followed it with a lead part in the television miniseries Centennial (1978).[29]



The Duke and A Man Called Sloane



In 1978, Conrad starred in the short-lived TV series The Duke as Duke Ramsey, a boxer turned private eye. Conrad directed some episodes. In the late 1970s, he served as the captain of the NBC team for six editions of Battle of the Network Stars. Around this time reprised the role of West in a pair of made-for-TV films which reunited him with his West co-star, Ross Martin, The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979) and More Wild Wild West (1980).[20]

Conrad was identified in the late 1970s with his television commercials for Eveready batteries, particularly his placing of the battery on his shoulder and prompting the viewer to challenge its long-lasting power: "Come on, I dare ya".[30] The commercial was parodied frequently on American television comedies such as Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show and The Carol Burnett Show.[citation needed]



Conrad made the occasional feature such as The Lady in Red (1979) for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, where he played John Dillinger from a script by John Sayles. Conrad later played a modern-day variation of James West in the short-lived series A Man Called Sloane in 1979.[31] Conrad directed some episodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conrad

No obvious relationship to actor Peter Falk. 

[pbrower2a]

Just a reminder: these people -- Holocaust survivors -- are dying off. Never forget, lest such horror happens again.

Lucille Eichengreen (née Cecilie Landau; February 1, 1925 – February 7, 2020),[1] was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto and the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. She moved to the United States in 1946, married, had two sons and worked as an insurance agent. In 1994, she published From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust. She frequently lectured on the Holocaust at libraries, schools and universities in the United States and Germany. She took part in a documentary from the University of Giessen on life in the Łódź Ghetto, for which she was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Born Cecilie Landau in Hamburg, Germany, on February 1, 1925,[1] she was the older of two daughters of the Polish-born wine merchant Benjamin Landau and his wife Sala (Sara), née Baumwollspinner. She described her childhood as "very nice, very comfortable" before Hitler came to power in 1933. After that, the Jews became exposed to growing reprisals by the Nazis as well as insults and assaults by the local population.[2] After returning to Hamburg in the spring of 1939, Benjamin Landau was arrested by the Gestapo on September 1 of that year during the attack on Poland, as a "foreign enemy". He was first brought to a police jail in Fuhlsbüttel, then to Oranienburg concentration camp, and finally to Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered on December 31, 1940. The family learned of his death only in February 1941,[1] when the Gestapo brought his ashes, "in a cigar box with a rubber band",[2] to their apartment, as Eichengreen recalls:

Quote:Two Gestapo came to the house and threw them on the kitchen table. ... They only said 'Ashes, Benjamin Landau!' And walked out. They didn't talk.[2]

Deportation
On October 25, 1941, she was deported, at age 16, to the Łódź Ghetto with her mother and her little sister Karin. In the ghetto, her mother starved to death, dying on July 13, 1942.[3] Lucille found work and survived, living under inhumane conditions. Karin, whom she took care of, was separated from her at age eleven in September 1942, deported to Chełmno extermination camp and murdered.[3]

Lucille worked as a secretary for the journalist and writer Oskar Singer.[4] In 1943, she was hit on the left ear during an interrogation by the Nazi police after a denunciation, resulting in permanent deafness in that ear. In August 1943, she was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was deemed fit to work during the selection process. A few weeks later, when she went through another selection process, concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele sent her to the satellite camp Dessauer Ufer of KZ Neuengamme, where she was forced to heavy labour, working in construction and removing detritus from bomb damage. Later, she was assigned to physically less straining task in an office, though she was still exposed to mistreatment from supervisors. In March 1945, she was deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.[3]

After liberation of the concentration camps[edit]

[/url]
Commemorative plaque with an image of Lucille Eichengreen

Landau was the only member of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust, though she only was certain about her sister's death in 1947. After the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen camp by the British army, she spent a few months in the camp for [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_displacement]displaced persons in Bergen-Belsen, working as a translator for the British. In cooperation with the British forces, she identified 40 members of the SS as having worked in the Neuengamme concentration camp, leading to their arrest and trial before a court. After receiving death threats, she moved to the United States, where she married another Jewish emigrant from Hamburg, Dan Eichengreen.[3] By her own account, she struggled to overcome the traumatic events of her youth and continued to suffer from recurring nightmares. In 1995, she returned to Poland and Germany for the first time since 1945, including a visit to Hamburg after accepting an invitation by the Hamburg senate. She also returned to Auschwitz and the former Łódź ghetto.[1]
Eichengreen last lived in Oakland, California. One of her two sons is the American economist Barry Eichengreen.[3] She died on February 7, 2020, shortly after her 95th birthday.[1][5]

In the 1990s, Eichengreen began to write her memoirs for publication. Her book From Ashes to Life. My Memories of the Holocaust. was published in the United States in 1994. After first visiting Germany, she lectured in schools, universities and at commemorative events. She worked with the research unit for Holocaust literature at the University of Giessen on the chronicles of the Łódź ghetto, a text which gives an account of life in the ghetto. For her involvement, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in the field of language, culture and literature from the university in May 2007.[6]

When an exhibition in Hamburg with the title In den Tod geschickt. Die Deportation von Juden, Roma und Sinti aus Hamburg 1940 bis 1945 (Sent to Death: The Deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945), she was awarded the Hamburger Ehrendenkmünze in Gold (Hamburg gold medal of honour) by mayor Ole von Beust. A Festschrift was printed about the history of deportation of Jews from Hamburg.[7][8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Eichengreen

[pbrower2a]

Mirella Freni (Italian: [miˈrɛlːa ˈfreːni], born Mirella Fregni, 27 February 1935 – 9 February 2020)[1] was an Italian operatic soprano who had a career of 50 years and appeared at major international opera houses. She received international attention at the Glyndebourne Festival, where she appeared as Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and as Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.


Freni is associated with the role of Mimi in Puccini's La bohème,[2] which she sang at La Scala in Milan and the Vienna State Opera in 1963, conducted by Herbert von Karajan.[3] She also performed the role in a film of the production and as her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1965.[3] In the earliest opera DVDs, she portrayed her characters convincingly in both acting and singing.[4] Freni was married for many years to the Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, with whom she performed and recorded. Her obituary from The New York Times describes her as a "matchless Italian prima donna".[1]


More at Wikipedia

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirella_Freni#cite_note-nytimes-1][/url]

[pbrower2a]

Tony Fernandez, Dominican-born baseball star:


Octavio Antonio Fernández Castro (June 30, 1962 – February 15, 2020), better known as Tony Fernández, was a Dominican baseball shortstop who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball for seven teams, most notably the Toronto Blue Jays. Fernández was known for his defensive skills, setting a nine-year record for shortstops with a .992 fielding percentage in 1989,[1] while still holding the single-season fielding percentage record for third basemen with .991 in 1994.

Promoted to the Blue Jays in 1983,[7] Fernández became the team's full-time shortstop in 1985,[1] and contributed significantly to the team winning its first division title that year. Fernández continued to star for the Jays for several years afterwards. His 213 hits in 1986 were, at the time, a major league single-season record for a shortstop (the record has since been surpassed).[6]

Before the 1991 season, Fernández was traded to the San Diego Padres in a deal that also sent Jays star Fred McGriff to San Diego in exchange for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter.[1] Fernández played for San Diego for two years. After the 1992 season, the Padres traded him to the New York Mets for D. J. Dozier, Wally Whitehurst, and a player to be named later.[8] After a disappointing start to the 1993 season, the Mets traded him back to the Blue Jays for Darrin Jackson.[1] [9] He played well for the remainder of the season and was instrumental in helping the Blue Jays win the 1993 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. In that World Series, Fernández drove in nine runs,[1] a record for a shortstop.[10]

Before the 1995 season, Fernández signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees.[11] It was because of an injury early in the season to Fernández that Derek Jeter was called up to the major leagues for the first time.[12] Fernández injured his elbow during spring training in 1996,[13] and missed the entire season.[14]

[/url]
Tony Fernandez is a member of the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blue_Jays]Toronto Blue Jays' Level of Excellence.

Fernández signed with the Cleveland Indians for the 1997 season.[14] Thanks in large part to his own game-winning home run against Baltimore in the American League Championship Series[1]—the only 1–0 game in MLB postseason history with an extra-innings home run—he played in the 1997 World Series with the Indians. In Game 7 of the World Series against the Florida Marlins, Fernández hit a two-run single in the top of the third inning for the Indians' only runs of the game, and was in position to be credited with the Series-winning hit for Cleveland, had they won the game.[15][16] However, in the bottom of the 11th inning, Fernández committed an error on a potential double play ball while playing at second base, and the eventual World Series-winning run was put on base as a result.[17]

In 1998, he rejoined the Blue Jays, and revitalized his hitting, batting over .300 in two seasons there.[18] In 2000, Fernández played for the Seibu Lions in Japan[19] before returning to the majors the following year. When he returned in 2001, he briefly played for the Milwaukee Brewers but returned to Toronto late in the season,[20] and retired at its conclusion.[21]



A very thin man, Fernández had a tilted, wavering batting stance[22] that made it appear as if he might not be strong enough to hold his bat. From early in his career he carried a scar on his right cheek from a pitched ball. Fernández was a noted fitness fanatic.[23]



Early in his career, Fernández was well known for his exceptional defensive skills at shortstop, and was described by Ivan Maisel in a Sports Illustrated article as having "the range of a Texas cattleman".[24] He was especially famous for leaping into the air while simultaneously making an underhanded throw to first base, on balls hit far to his right.[25]



Fernández was awarded four consecutive Gold Glove Awards for his defense, from 1986 to 1989.[26] Fernández was also named to five All-Star teams. He finished his career with a .288 batting average in 2,158 games played, and batted .327 in postseason play. Fernandez hit for the cycle as a New York Yankee on September 3, 1995, against the Oakland Athletics.[27]



On October 17, 2016, Fernandez was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, where he thanked the fans in Toronto, Ontario and in Canada for embracing him.[28]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Fern%C3%A1ndez

[pbrower2a]

M*A*S*H' STAR KELLYE NAKAHARADEAD AT 72

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2/17/2020 1:08 PM PT

EXCLUSIVE
REMEMBERING KELLYE NAKAHARALAUNCH GALLERY

Getty

Kellye Nakahara, who played Lieutenant Nurse Kellye on "M*A*S*H," has died ... TMZ has learned.
Kellye died Sunday after a short battle with cancer. Her family was with her when she died at the family home in Pasadena ... this according to a family member. We're told she went peacefully.
Kellye, who was born on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, actually moved to San Francisco as a young adult not to pursue acting but rather a career in art.

She was on "M*A*S*H" for the entire run of the show. In case you didn't know ... "M*A*S*H" was considered one of the best shows ever produced on TV. It still lives in reruns and syndication.

She also appeared in the films, "Clue" in 1985 and "Black Day Blue Night."

She married David Wallett in 1968 and they had 2 kids. She also has 2 grandchildren.

Kellye was an accomplished artist who was awesome with watercolors. She loved making Xmas ornaments and one even hung in the White House. She and her husband were active supporters of the Ronald McDonald House.
Kellye was 72.

https://www.tmz.com/2020/02/17/kellye-na...ies-nurse/

[pbrower2a]

The UAW International Executive Board is deeply saddened at the passing today of UAW beloved President Emeritus Owen F. Bieber at age 90.

“Owen Bieber’s death is a loss for our union and all working people. He was a man of incredible leadership. He was not afraid of tough battles or taking a stand on controversial issues,” said UAW President Rory L. Gamble. “He was not only a devoted trade unionist but a social activist whose impact was felt around the world. Whether it was his support to end apartheid in South Africa or in Poland, Owen stood on the right side of history for the nation and the world.”

Bieber served from May 19, 1983 to June 15, 1995 as the union’s seventh president.

Bieber, the son of Albert F. and Minnie (Schwartz) Bieber, was born in North Dorr, Mich. on Dec. 28, 1929. After graduating from Catholic grade school and high school in 1948, he went to work at McInerney Spring and Wire Company in nearby Grand Rapids, the same auto supply plant where his father worked. In 1939 he co-founded UAW Local 687, the first UAW local in the Grand Rapids city limits. His first job was bending by hand the thick border wire on car seats. A year later, at age 19, Bieber’s co-workers elected him Local 687’s shop steward. By 1955 he was elected to the local bargaining committee and was involved in talks on local plant issues. In 1956 he was elected local president. Bieber, a devoted Democrat, also worked on behalf of Sen. John Kennedy’s campaign for the U.S. presidency in 1960.

In 1972 Bieber was appointed director of UAW Region 1D, a position he held until 1980, when he was elected vice president. Bieber served as director of the union’s General Motors (GM) Department, the union’s largest department with more than 400,000 members.

Bieber was elected UAW president in 1983 during the union’s 27th Constitutional Convention in Dallas. He succeeded Douglas Fraser and served four consecutive terms.

He is credited with diversifying the UAW by inviting new members from areas outside of industrial sectors, including public and private employers.  Active in the Democratic Party, he became a political force, advocating for working people on legislative issues and contributed to bringing President Bill Clinton into the White House.

He was vocal on legislation pertaining to national and international trade and the reformation of health care. On an international level, he led the first trade unionist delegation to visit China, meeting with Deng Xiaoping to acknowledge International Labor Day.

International solidarity and global justice

His presidency continued the union’s legacy of supporting labor and civil rights movements and leaders across the globe, where the stakes were about more than higher wages.

One of those leaders was Lech Walesa, the shipyard electrician and member of the labor movement ‘Solidarity’ who rose to challenge Communism in Poland. Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected president of Poland in 1990.

During the 1980s and under Bieber’s leadership, the union provided financial support to keep Solidarity afloat, paying for printing presses that were smuggled into Poland so the union could get its message out. The union increased its support after the Communist government tried to crush the movement by destroying its offices.

Anti-apartheid

Bieber traveled to South Africa twice, including once in 1986 as a member of a State Department advisory committee under Secretary of State George Schultz. The committee recommended sanctions to pressure the South African government to replace apartheid with a nonracial, democratic system.

Bieber traveled separate from the others as the only union member of the group. He said he traveled apart so he could talk to people who might be suspicious of the group’s motivations. One of his main goals was to check on labor activist Moses Mayekiso, a leader with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, who was imprisoned for leading a rent boycott. Mayekiso had been put in solitary confinement for nine months and charged with treason, which was punishable by death. Bieber and others raised the international profile of Mayekiso’s case and the activist was eventually acquitted.

While in South Africa and at the request of a trio of Yale professors, Bieber captured more evidence of the real impact of apartheid when he smuggled images out of the country showing the scarred bodies of people in South Africa who had challenged the country’s apartheid government.

Bieber and the UAW so passionately fought against the brutally discriminatory system in South Africa that when Nelson Mandela toured the United States after his release from prison in 1990, he insisted on celebrating with UAW Local 600. During that trip, Bieber stood at Mandela’s side at a rally at Tiger Stadium in Detroit where the South African leader again thanked the UAW and the 45,000 people who had gathered at the stadium.

During his 2003 visit to Grand Rapids, Archbishop Desmond Tutu singled out Bieber for his years of calling attention to the horrors of apartheid. Bieber was arrested when he marched with Tutu at the South African embassy in Washington in 1986.

“We came asking for help, and you gave that help and accomplished this extraordinary thing,” Tutu said

https://uaw.org/uaw-mourns-loss-presiden...-f-bieber/

[Eric the Green]

(02-09-2020, 10:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Robert Conrad (born Conrad Robert Falk; March 1, 1935 – February 8, 2020) was an American film and television actor, singer, and stuntman. He is best known for his role in the 1965–1969 television series The Wild Wild West, playing the sophisticated Secret Service agent James T. West. He portrayed World War II ace Pappy Boyington in the television series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron). In addition to acting, he was a singer, and recorded several pop/rock songs in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Bob Conrad. He hosted a weekly two-hour national radio show (The PM Show with Robert Conrad) on CRN Digital Talk Radio beginning in 2008.

Hawaiian Eye

[/url]
Robert Conrad with co-star [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Stevens]Connie Stevens on Hawaiian Eye, 1961

Warner Brothers had a big success with its detective show 77 Sunset Strip and then made Hawaiian Eye, a follow-up series. Conrad starred as detective Tom Lopaka. He was introduced on Strip, then spun off into his own series that ran from 1959 to 1963, both in the U.S. and overseas. During the series' run, Conrad appeared on an episode of the Warner Brothers series The Gallant Men. When Hawaiian Eye was over, Conrad starred in Palm Springs Weekend (1963), Warners' attempt to repeat the success of Where the Boys Are (1960) with its young contract players.[14]



In Mexico, Conrad signed a recording contract with the Orfeon label, where he released two albums, with a few singles sung in Spanish. In 1964, he guest-starred on an episode of Temple Houston and then performed in the comedic film La Nueva Cenicienta (also known as Cabriola). The next year, he was in the episode "Four into Zero" of Kraft Suspense Theatre and played Pretty Boy Floyd in Young Dillinger alongside his old friend Nick Adams.[18]

The Wild Wild West



In 1965, Conrad began his starring role as government agent James West on the popular weekly series The Wild Wild West, which aired on CBS until its cancellation in 1969. He made $5,000 a week.[19] He did most of his own stunts and fight scenes during the series, and while filming the season four episode "The Night of the Fugitives," he was injured and rushed to the hospital after he dived from the top of a saloon staircase, lost his grip on a chandelier, fell 12 feet, and landed on his head.[20]



In addition to starring in The Wild Wild West, Conrad found time to work on other projects. He went to Mexico in 1967 to appear in Ven a cantar conmigo (Come, sing with me), a musical. He also formed his own company, Robert Conrad Productions, and under its auspices he wrote, starred in, and directed the 1967 Western film The Bandits.[21]



Paul Ryan and Jake Webster

Conrad appeared in episodes of Mannix and Mission: Impossible. In 1969, he signed a three-picture deal with Bob Hope's Doan Productions. The first two films were slated to be Keene then No Beer in Heaven but only the first movie was ever produced.[22]



In 1969, he debuted as prosecutor Paul Ryan in the TV movie D.A.: Murder One (1969). He reprised the movie in D.A.: Conspiracy to Kill (1971) and the short-lived 1971 series The D.A..[23] He was also in such made-for-television movies as Weekend of Terror (1970) and Five Desperate Women (1971).[14] He tried another TV series as American spy Jake Webster in Assignment Vienna (1972), which only lasted eight episodes.[24] He was a murderous fitness franchise promoter in an episode of Columbo ("An Exercise in Fatality").[25] Conrad starred in the feature films Murph the Surf (1975) and Sudden Death (1977). He reprised his role as Paul Ryan in the TV movie Confessions of the D.A. Man.[14]



Baa Baa Black Sheep

Conrad found ratings success again from 1976 to 1978 as legendary tough-guy World War II fighter ace Pappy Boyington in Baa Baa Black Sheep, retitled for its second season and in later syndication as Black Sheep Squadron. He directed three episodes.[26][27]



The show's success led Conrad to win a People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.[28] He followed it with a lead part in the television miniseries Centennial (1978).[29]



The Duke and A Man Called Sloane



In 1978, Conrad starred in the short-lived TV series The Duke as Duke Ramsey, a boxer turned private eye. Conrad directed some episodes. In the late 1970s, he served as the captain of the NBC team for six editions of Battle of the Network Stars. Around this time reprised the role of West in a pair of made-for-TV films which reunited him with his West co-star, Ross Martin, The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979) and More Wild Wild West (1980).[20]

Conrad was identified in the late 1970s with his television commercials for Eveready batteries, particularly his placing of the battery on his shoulder and prompting the viewer to challenge its long-lasting power: "Come on, I dare ya".[30] The commercial was parodied frequently on American television comedies such as Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show and The Carol Burnett Show.[citation needed]



Conrad made the occasional feature such as The Lady in Red (1979) for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, where he played John Dillinger from a script by John Sayles. Conrad later played a modern-day variation of James West in the short-lived series A Man Called Sloane in 1979.[31] Conrad directed some episodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conrad

No obvious relationship to actor Peter Falk. 

Conrad played the murderer Milo Janus with Peter Falk on Columbo in 1974. Janus was a physical fitness advocate, and Conrad showed off his skills during the program. I guess they didn't help him too much to avoid a drunk driving accident in which he killed a man and paralyzed his right side in 2003 that ended his TV and movie career.

[Eric the Green]

Orson Bean

Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was a veteran American film, television, and stage actor, and a comedian, writer, and producer. He was a game show and talk show host and a "mainstay of Los Angeles’s small theater scene." He appeared frequently on several televised game shows from the 1960s through the 1980s and was a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. "A storyteller par excellence", he was a favorite of Johnny Carson, appearing on The Tonight Show over 200 times.

Television
He played the title character in the Twilight Zone episode "Mr. Bevis" (1960). For the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson, he starred as John Monroe in "The Secret Life of James Thurber" (1961), based on the works of the American humorist James Thurber.

Among dozens of appearances, he starred in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and Desperate Housewives while tallying guest appearance credits, e.g., How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Two and a Half Men, The Closer. Bean was a regular in both Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spin-off Fernwood 2Nite. He also portrayed the shrewd businessman and storekeeper Loren Bray on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman throughout its six-year run on CBS in the 1990s. He played John Goodman's homophobic father on the sitcom Normal, Ohio. He played the main characters Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in the 1977 and 1980 Rankin/Bass animated adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and The Return of the King. He also played Dr. Lester in Spike Jonze's 1999 film, Being John Malkovich.

Bean appeared as a patient in the final two episodes of 7th Heaven's seventh season in 2003. In 2005, Bean appeared in the sitcom Two and a Half Men in an episode titled "Does This Smell Funny to You?", playing a former playboy whose conquests included actresses Tuesday Weld and Anne Francis. He appeared in the 2007 How I Met Your Mother episode "Slapsgiving" as Robin Scherbatsky's 41-year-old boyfriend, Bob. In 2009 he was cast in the recurring role of Roy Bender, a steak salesman, who is Karen McCluskey's love interest on the ABC series Desperate Housewives. At the age of 87, Bean in 2016 appeared in "Playdates", an episode of the American TV sitcom Modern Family. He appeared in a 2017 episode of Teachers (TV Land, season 2, episode 11, "Dosey Don't"). He appeared as the elderly Holocaust survivor in the 2018 film The Equalizer 2.

Game shows
Doing stand-up comedy and magic tricks, and passing on wit and wisdom, he became a regular on I've Got a Secret, What’s My Line?, and To Tell the Truth. He appeared on game shows originating from New York. He was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth in versions from the late 1950s through 1991. On July 5, 1965, his father appeared as a subject of the panel and he had to disqualify himself from participating. He appeared on Super Password and Match Game, among other game shows. He hosted a pilot for a revamped version of Concentration in 1985, which was picked up in 1987 as Classic Concentration with Alex Trebek.

Talk and variety shows
Bean was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show (with both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson). He guest starred on television talk and variety shows, e.g., The Ed Sullivan Show, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Bean

[sbarrera]

Larry Tesler (April 24, 1945 – February 16, 2020) 

Larry Tesler, creator of copy, cut and paste function, dies at 74

New York (CNN Business)Larry Tesler, a pioneer of personal computing credited with creating the cut, copy and paste as well as the search and replace functions, has died. He was 74.

Tesler was not nearly as well known as computing giants such as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But he played an early, central role in making computers accessible to people without computer engineering degrees, i.e. most of us.
Xerox (XRX), the company for whom he developed the functions, tweeted out news of his death. "Your workday is easier thanks to his revolutionary ideas," the company's tweet said.

But before Tesler's work, computer users had to interact with clunky programs in different "modes," where the same commands meant different things depending on how they were used. Even an expert like Tesler found that to be a problem.
"Most interactive programs had modes, which always tripped me up," he wrote in a 2012 paper about the development of copy, cut and paste. Tesler became a champion of eliminating modes from computer programs. His personal web site was nomodes.com.

The elimination of modes opened the door to how computer users have interacted with personal computers for the last 40 years. Much of that work was done not at one of today's tech giants, but at a computer lab at Xerox.

Today most people know Xerox only as a maker of copiers, but in its heyday the company developed much of the technology that led to the personal computer: the mouse, a graphical user interface that allowed for more than lines of text on a screen. The work was done at the company's Silicon Valley-based Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC.

Tesler was at the center of those efforts, and is credited with coining the terms "friendly user interface" and "browser" during his time at Xerox.

When Jobs visited Xerox PARC in 1979, he met with Tesler. "You're sitting on a gold mine!" Tesler later recalled Jobs telling him. "Why aren't you doing something with this technology? You could change the world!"

Jobs was right: Xerox was not taking advantage of the pivotal research being done at Xerox Parc. So Apple (AAPL) to became the first to make broad use of the graphic user interface, as well as the mouse and other features. Tesler left Xerox for Apple in 1980, where he rose to the position of vice president and chief scientist.

While there he helped to design the Macintosh computer, QuickTime and the Lisa computer, one of the first personal computers to use a graphical user interface. It was the Lisa that popularized the now-familiar copy, paste and undo shortcuts. (That's C to copy, V to paste and Z to undo).

"I have been mistakenly identified as the 'father of the graphical user interface for the Macintosh,'" Tesler wrote on his website. "I was not. However, a paternity test might expose me as one of its many grandparents."

Tesler stayed at Apple until in 1997. In 2001 he joined Amazon (AMZN), where he served as vice president of shopping experience. He then went to Yahoo (YAHOF) in 2005, where he was vice president of user experience and design. He was issued numerous patents while working at those firms.

Until his death, Tesler served as a consultant to companies like Western Union (WU) and note-taking app Evernote on how to improve their user experience on desktop and mobile. He was dedicated to innovating, simplifying, improving.

"As is my personality, if I ever hear somebody say something's impossible or extremely difficult, almost impossible, it's a challenge and I always try to do it," he said in an interview at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum in 2013.

One thing he never overcame -- his hatred of modes. He drove around California with the personalized license plate "NOMODES."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/tech/larr...bGSwI68T3g

[pbrower2a]

A.P. Indy (March 31, 1989 – February 21, 2020) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse who won the Belmont Stakes and Breeders' Cup Classic on his way to American Horse of the Year honors in 1992. His time in the Belmont Stakes tied Easy Goer for the second-fastest running in the history of the race, behind his broodmare sire Secretariat.[2]
A.P. Indy subsequently became a "breed-shaping sire", leading the North American sire list twice and establishing a sire line that has produced multiple American Classic winners.[3] A.P Indy lived most of his life at Lane's End Farm, where he was born and raised, and stood his entire stud career.[4] For many years, he was the oldest living winner of the Breeders' Cup Classic, [5] the oldest living winner of the Belmont Stakes, and the oldest living winner of a Triple Crown race.
A.P. Indy is part of the only three-generation sequence of Belmont Stakes winners in American racing history. He is by 1977 winner Seattle Slew and is the sire of 2007 winner Rags to Riches.[6]
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. He has been called "the fantasy of every Thoroughbred industry participant, from sale-topper yearling, to champion runner, to game-changing stallion to sire of sires." Bill Farish, son of Lane's End founder William Farish, said, "Words really can't put into perspective what he's meant to us. How many sale toppers are yearlings that end up being that good where they are Horse of the Year and then go on and be two-time champion sire and then have the long term influence that he has had and will continue to have? It's pretty amazing."



Trained by Hall of Famer Neil Drysdale, A.P. Indy won three of four starts in 1991, including the Grade I Hollywood Futurity. On the Experimental Free Handicap, he was co-ranked the third best two-year-old of 1991 at 124 pounds, six pounds below the juvenile champion Arazi and one pound below Bertrando.[13]
He started his three-year-old campaign in 1992 with wins in the San Rafael Stakes and Santa Anita Derby. He was the second favorite on the morning line for the 1992 Kentucky Derby, but had to be scratched on the morning of the race due to a bone bruise. "He galloped very well," Drysdale said of a routine workout the day before. But in early afternoon, he came out of the stall and the trouble was discovered. "He just went like this," Drysdale said, lunging to one side to describe A.P. Indy's lameness.[14]
Drysdale eventually used a fiberglass patch to repair a small, almost invisible crack in A.P. Indy's hoof.[15] A.P Indy missed the Preakness as a result, then prepped for the Belmont in the Peter Pan Stakes. The field was no match for A.P. Indy, who won by 5 1⁄2 lengths.[16]

[/url]
A.P. Indy before the 1992 Belmont Stakes

On June 6, he entered the Belmont Stakes against a field of eleven that included Preakness Stakes winner, Pine Bluff. Having drawn the number 1 post, Drysdale was concerned was getting trapped on the rail so he talked to jockey Eddie Delahoussaye about working toward the outside. Also of concern were heavy rains that fell for most of the day before the race and into the night, making the track condition "muddy" for the first eight races of the undercard.[2] And above all, Drysdale worried about A.P. Indy's hoof. "The patch? I think about it every day. I look at it every day."[15]
The sun finally came out and the track was upgraded to "good" for the Belmont Stakes. As expected, A.P. Indy broke behind the leaders and tracked the pace in fourth for the first mile. Agincourt and Casual Lies set a brisk pace, followed by Pine Bluff. As they rounded the turn, Pine Bluff moved to the lead while A.P. Indy circled wide to close the gap. The two dueled down the stretch with A.P. Indy finally drawing clear in deep stretch. My Memoir then started closing quickly, but A.P. Indy had enough in reserve and prevailed by 3⁄4 lengths, with My Memoir beating Pine Bluff by a neck for second.[17] "I thought I was the winner turning for home," said My Memoirs' jockey, Jerry Bailey. "Eddie had just enough horse and he rated him really well. He deserves a lot of credit. He sat chilly and knew he had enough."[15]
Despite the track being good instead of fast, A.P. Indy raced the mile and a half in 2:26 flat, matching the second-fastest time for the Belmont Stakes set in 1989 by Easy Goer. He was two seconds off the track record set in 1973 by his grandfather Secretariat.[2]
A.P. Indy was given the summer off to allow his hoof to completely heal, then returned on September 13 with a dull performance in the Molson Export Million, finishing fifth.[10] On October 10, he finished third in the Jockey Club Gold Cup after stumbling at the start and tearing off his right front shoe. "There wasn't much foot left," Drysdale recalled later. "Fortunately, acrylic had just been developed, and [farrier] Joey Carroll rebuilt his foot that night."[18] Finishing ahead of him were Pleasant Tap, who was having an outstanding year, and Strike the Gold, the previous year's Kentucky Derby winner.[19]
The Breeders' Cup that year was held on October 31 at Gulfstream Park. There was a full field of fourteen horses for the Classic, twelve of whom had won Group 1 or Grade I races.[16] A.P. Indy and Pleasant Tap were the two betting favorites, going off at 2-1 and 5-2 respectively. A.P. Indy broke well but soon dropped back to eighth off a fast opening pace set by Thunder Rumble. He remained on the rail at the back of the pack until the final turn when he split between horses to find running room. Under a hand ride, he drew clear to win by 2 lengths over Pleasant Tap.[20][21]
He was voted the Eclipse Awards for American Horse of the Year and Champion three-year-old colt. In his career, he made 11 starts, winning eight and showing once, earning a total of $2,979,815.[1]
In 2000, A.P. Indy was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at the same time as Drysdale, his trainer.[19]
Stud record[edit]
A.P. Indy was retired to stud at Lane's End Farm in 1993 with an initial stud fee of $50,000.[16] Farish explained: “We wanted to keep him in training. He’s very sound and such a brilliant horse, but it would be taking a tremendous risk with a great sire prospect. So many of our top horses have been retired to Europe or Japan that we need a horse like this to stand in the U.S. Everyone involved concluded that this was the right thing to do.”[22]

A.P. Indy in January 2017 after he was pensioned.

A.P. Indy went on to become a "breed-shaping" sire. For much of his career, he stood for $300,000.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.P._Indy#cite_note-DRFHotSire-3][3] He was the leading sire in North America for 2003 and 2006,[23] and was among the top 10 for 10 consecutive years.[13] He sired 88 graded stakes winners and 12 champions.[16] His 12.5% stakes winners to foals ratio is the best among contemporary American stallions of the "big book era".[7]
A.P. Indy was also an important broodmare sire, leading the North American list in 2015. His daughters have produced Royal Delta,[5] Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver, Kentucky Oaks winner Plum Pretty, champion Wait A While and Grade 1 stakes winners Bluegrass Cat and Any Given Saturday.[13]
A.P. Indy was a valuable source of stamina in the normally speed-oriented stallion ranks of North America.[24] This means his progeny are highly prized by those who are looking for racehorses who can compete in top races at classic distances.[3] In 2008, A.P. Indy became the 208th chef-de-race with an Intermediate/Classic designation.[13]
A.P. Indy sired his last foals in 2010, when only 36 of 80 mares he bred conceived. Of these, two would become grade 1 winners: Honor Code and Got Lucky, whose name refers to the multiple tries it took her dam to get in foal.[5] He was retired from stud duty on April 8, 2011, upon failing to produce a confirmed live foal in the 25 mares he covered. A.P. Indy remains at Lane's End Farm in his old stall, with sons Mineshaft in the stall across the aisle from him and Honor Code in the stall next to him.[16]
A.P. Indy lived to age 31, an advanced age for a horse. From June 2017 until his death, he had been the oldest living winner of the Belmont Stakes and the oldest living Classic winner overall.[25] He was also the oldest living winner of the Breeders' Cup Classic.[26] He died on February 21, 2020 due to the infirmities of old age.[27]

Some of his leading progeny include (fillies in italics):[6][28]

• Pulpit (1994) - Blue Grass Stakes
  
  
• Tomisue's Delight (1994) - Ruffian Handicap, Personal Ensign Handicap
  
  
• Golden Missile (1995) - Pimlico Special
  
  
• Old Trieste (1995)- Del Mar Breeders' Cup Handicap, Californian Stakes
  
  
• Stephen Got Even (1996) - Donn Handicap
  
  
• Symboli Indy (1996) - NHK Mile Cup
  
  
• Secret Status (1997) - Kentucky Oaks, Mother Goose Stakes
  
  
• Aptitude (1997) - Jockey Club Gold Cup
  
  
• Mineshaft (1999) - (Jockey Club Gold Cup), 2003 Horse of the Year and champion older horse
  
  
• Tempera (1999) - Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, champion 2-year-old filly
  
  
• Jiljab (1999) - Coaching Club American Oaks
  
  
• Jump Start (1999)- Saratoga Special Stakes
  
  
• Congrats (2000) - San Pasqual Handicap
  
  
• Suave (2001) - Multiple graded stakes winner
  
  
• Friend's Lake (2001) - Florida Derby,
  
  
• Bernardini (2003) - 2006 Preakness Stakes, champion 3-year-old colt
  
  
• Rags to Riches (2004) (2007 Belmont Stakes), champion 3-year-old filly
  
  
• Marchfield (2004) - in Canada, champion older horse
  
  
• Serenading (2004) - in Canada, champion older mare
  
  
• Eldaafer (2005) - Brooklyn Handicap, Breeders' Cup Marathon
  
  
• Music Note (2005) - Coaching Club American Oaks, Ballerina Handicap
  
  
• Eye of the Leopard (2006) - Queen's Plate
  
  
• Love and Pride (2008) - Personal Ensign Handicap, Zenyatta Stakes
  
  
• Take Charge Indy (2009) - Florida Derby, Alysheba Stakes
  
  
• Dreaming of Julia (2010) - Frizette Stakes, Gulfstream Oaks
  
  
• Long River (2010) - Al Maktoum Challenge Race 3 (UAE-G1)
  
  
• Commissioner (2011) - Hawthorne Gold Cup, Pimlico Special, second in 2014 Belmont Stakes
  
  
• Got Lucky (2011) - Spinster Stakes, Molly Pitcher Stakes
  
  
• Honor Code (2011) - Metropolitan Handicap, Whitney Handicap, Champion Older Dirt Horse
  
  
  
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.P._Indy
  

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One of the Hidden Figures:



Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.[2] During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".[3]
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Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_window]launch windows and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon.[2][4][5] Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program,[2] and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[6] She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.
In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.[7]


Johnson decided on a career as a research mathematician, although this was a difficult field for African Americans and women to enter. The first jobs she found were in teaching. At a family gathering in 1952 a relative mentioned that the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was hiring mathematicians.[14] At the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, based in Hampton, Virginia, near Langley Field, NACA hired African-American mathematicians as well as whites for their Guidance and Navigation Department. Johnson accepted a job offer from the agency in 1953.

According to an oral history archived by the National Visionary Leadership Project:

Quote:At first she [Johnson] worked in a pool of women performing math calculations. Katherine has referred to the women in the pool as virtual "computers who wore skirts". Their main job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other precise mathematical tasks. Then one day, Katherine (and a colleague) were temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team. Katherine's knowledge of analytic geometry helped make quick allies of male bosses and colleagues to the extent that, "they forgot to return me to the pool". While the racial and gender barriers were always there, Katherine says she ignored them. Katherine was assertive, asking to be included in editorial meetings (where no women had gone before). She simply told people she had done the work and that she belonged.[18]

From 1953 to 1958, Johnson worked as a "computer",[19] analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. Originally assigned to the West Area Computers section supervised by mathematician Dorothy Vaughan, Johnson was reassigned to the Guidance and Control Division of Langley's Flight Research Division. It was staffed by white male engineers.[20] In keeping with state racial segregation laws, and federal workplace segregation introduced under President Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century, Johnson and the other African-American women in the computing pool were required to work, eat, and use restrooms that were separate from those of their white peers. Their office was labeled as "Colored Computers". In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson stated that she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch." She added: "I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."[21]


NACA disbanded the colored computing pool in 1958 when the agency was superseded by NASA, which adopted digital computers. Although the installation was desegregated,[20] forms of discrimination were still pervasive. Johnson recalled that era:

Quote:We needed to be assertive as women in those days – assertive and aggressive – and the degree to which we had to be that way depended on where you were. I had to be. In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports – no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor – he was not a fan of women – kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something.[22]

From 1958 until her retirement in 1986, Johnson worked as an aerospace technologist, moving during her career to the Spacecraft Controls Branch. She calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space.[2] She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission.[23] She plotted backup navigation charts for astronauts in case of electronic failures.[8] When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on Johnson to verify the computer's numbers; Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations.[2][24][25] Biography.com states these were "far more difficult calculations, to account for the gravitational pulls of celestial bodies".[4] Author Margot Lee Shetterly stated, "So the astronaut who became a hero, looked to this black woman in the still-segregated South at the time as one of the key parts of making sure his mission would be a success." She added that, in a time where computing was "women's work" and engineering was left to men, "it really does have to do with us over the course of time sort of not valuing that work that was done by women, however necessary, as much as we might. And it has taken history to get a perspective on that."[26]



Johnson later worked directly with digital computers. Her ability and reputation for accuracy helped to establish confidence in the new technology.[4] In 1961, her work helped to ensure that Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury capsule would be quickly found after landing, using the accurate trajectory that had been established.[27]



She also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.[2][4] During the moon landing, Johnson was at a meeting in the Pocono Mountains. She and a few others crowded around a small television screen watching the first steps on the moon. In 1970, Johnson worked on the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the mission was aborted, her work on backup procedures and charts helped set a safe path for the crew's return to Earth,[4] creating a one-star observation system that would allow astronauts to determine their location with accuracy. In a 2010 interview, Johnson recalled, "Everybody was concerned about them getting there. We were concerned about them getting back."[28] Later in her career, Johnson worked on the Space Shuttle program, the Earth Resources Satellite,[2][4] and on plans for a mission to Mars.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson

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Another centenarian, but with no honor:


John "Sonny" Franzese Sr. (Italian: [ˈfrantseːze; -eːse]; February 6, 1917 – February 23, 2020) was an Italian-American mobster who was a longtime member of the Colombo crime family. Franzese's career in organized crime began in the 1930s and spanned over eight decades. He served as underboss of the Colombo family from 1963, until he was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery charges in 1967. He was paroled in 1978, but was re-jailed at least six times on parole violations throughout the decades that followed. He became Colombo family underboss again in 2004, until he was convicted of extortion in 2011, and sentenced to eight years in prison. His son John Franzese Jr. had testified against him, becoming the first son of a New York mobster to turn state's evidence and testify against his father. At the time of his release on June 23, 2017, at the age of 100, he was the oldest federal inmate in the United States and the only centenarian in federal custody.[2][3][4][5]


In 2006, Franzese discussed techniques for mob murders with Gaetano "Guy" Fatato, a Colombo associate, not realizing that Fatato was a government informant and taping the conversation. Franzese told Fatato:[19]
“
I killed a lot of guys – you're not talking about four, five, six, ten.
”
Franzese also told Fatato that he put nail polish on his fingertips before a murder to avoid leaving fingerprints at the crime scene. Franzese also suggested wearing a hairnet during the murder so as to avoid leaving any hair strands at the crime scene that could be DNA analyzed.

Finally, Franzese stressed the importance of properly dealing with the corpse. His procedure was to dismember the corpse in a kiddie pool, dry the severed body parts in a microwave oven, and then run the parts through a commercial-grade garbage disposal. Franzese observed:
“
Today, you can't have a body no more ... It's better to take that half-an-hour, an hour, to get rid of the body than it is to leave the body on the street.
”
More on this pig.

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Last living child star of the silent-film era:

Diana Serra Cary (born Peggy-Jean Montgomery, October 29, 1918 – February 24, 2020), known as Baby Peggy, was an American child film actress, vaudevillian, author and silent film historian. She was the last living film star of the Silent Era of Hollywood.[1]
Baby Peggy was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent film era along with Jackie Coogan and Baby Marie. Between 1921 and 1923, she made over 150 short films for the Century Film Corporation. In 1922, she received over 1.2 million fan letters and by 1924, she had been dubbed The Million Dollar Baby for her $1.5 million annual salary ($22 million in 2018). Despite her childhood fame and wealth, she found herself poor and working as an extra by the 1930s.[2]

Having an interest in both writing and history since her youth, Montgomery found a second career as an author and silent film historian in her later years under the name Diana Serra Cary. She was the author of several books including her historical novel, The Drowning of the Moon. She was also an advocate for child actors' rights.


Baby Peggy was "discovered" at the age of 19 months, when she visited Century Studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood with her mother and a film-extra friend. Her father, Jack, a former cowboy and park ranger, had done work as a stuntman and stand-in for Tom Mix in a number of his cowboy movies. Impressed by Peggy's well-behaved demeanor and willingness to follow directions from her father, director Fred Fishback hired her to appear in a series of short films with Century's canine star, Brownie the Wonder Dog. The first film, Playmates in 1921, was a success, and Peggy was signed to a long-term contract with Century.[8]

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Baby Peggy in The Family Secret

Between 1921 and 1924, Peggy made close to 150 short comedy films for Century. Her movies often spoofed full-length motion pictures, social issues and stars of the era; in one, Peg O' The Movies, she satirized both Rudolph Valentino and Pola Negri. She also appeared in film adaptations of novels and fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Jack and the Beanstalk, contemporary comedies, and a few full-length motion pictures.[8]

In 1923, Peggy began working for Universal Studios, appearing in full-length dramatic films. Among her works from this era were The Darling of New York, directed by King Baggot, and the first screen adaptation of Captain January. In line with her status as a star, Peggy's Universal films were produced and marketed as "Universal Jewels," the studio's most prestigious and most expensive classification. During this time, she also starred in Helen's Babies, opposite Clara Bow.[8]

The success of the Baby Peggy films brought her into prominence. When she was not filming, she embarked on extensive "In-Person" personal appearance tours across the country to promote her movies. She was also featured in several short skits on major stages in Los Angeles and New York, including Grauman's Million Dollar Theatre and the Hippodrome. Her likeness appeared on magazine covers and was used in advertisements for various businesses and charitable campaigns. She was also named the Official Mascot of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, and stood onstage waving a United States flag next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[1]

Baby Peggy holding a Baby Peggy doll - June 1922

By the age of 5, she had her own line of various endorsed items, including dolls in her likeness, sheet music, jewelry, and even milk.[9][1]
As a child, Frances Gumm (later Judy Garland) owned at least one Baby Peggy doll. Cary would later befriend Garland, and wrote in her autobiography that she believed Garland's mother had pursued fame for her children based on Baby Peggy's success.[10]
While under contract with Century and Universal, Peggy commanded an impressive salary. By 1923, she was signed to a $1.5 million a year contract at Universal (equivalent to $20.6 million in 2014 dollars); on her vaudeville tours she made $300 per day. Her parents handled all of the finances; money was spent on expensive cars, homes, and clothing.[9]

Baby Peggy with Frances & Gene Quirk at the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House]White House, Washington D.C., 2 February 1925

Nothing was set aside for the welfare or education of Peggy or her sister. Peggy herself was paid one nickel for every vaudeville performance. Through reckless spending and corrupt business partners of her father, her entire fortune was gone before she hit puberty. When fellow child star Jackie Coogan sued his parents in 1938, Peggy's parents asked her if she was going to do the same. Believing it would do no good, Peggy did not pursue legal action. Coogan's case, and cases like Baby Peggy's, eventually inspired the Coogan Act to protect child actors' earnings.[11]

Peggy's working conditions, as described in later interviews and her autobiography, were harsh. As a toddler she worked eight hours a day, six days a week. She was generally required to perform her own stunts, which included being held underwater in the ocean until she fainted (Sea Shore Shapes), escaping alone from a burning room (The Darling of New York), and riding underneath a train car (Miles of Smiles). While at Century she also witnessed several instances of animal cruelty and saw a trainer crushed to death by an elephant.[12]

Schooling for both Peggy and her sister, Louise, was sporadic at best. Neither attended school until the end of the vaudeville era; for their secondary education, they worked to pay for their tuition at Lawlor Professional School, which offered flexible schedules and allowed them to continue performing in films.[13]
Baby Peggy’s career was controlled by her father, who accompanied her to the studio every day and made every decision about her contracts. Mr. Montgomery often claimed that Peggy's success was based not on her own talent, but on her ability to follow orders unquestioningly.[14]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Serra_Cary

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Dmitry Timofeyevich Yazov (Russian: Дми́трий Тимофе́евич Я́зов; 8 November 1924 – 25 February 2020[1]) was the last Marshal of the Soviet Union to be appointed (on 28 April 1990) before the fall of the Soviet Union. He was the only Marshal of the Soviet Union to be born in Siberia. A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Yazov was the last surviving Soviet Marshal and the only military marshal not to have been awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Yazov joined the Red Army voluntarily in November 1941, a seventeen-year-old young man, not having time to finish high school. When he joined the army, he said he was a year older than he was, saying that he was born in 1923.[2] He was enrolled in training at the Moscow Higher Military Command School (Evacuated due to the Battle of Moscow to Novosibirsk from November 2, 1941 to January 28, 1942) and graduated from it in June 1942.[3][4] He received a school graduation certificate only in 1953, already being a major.

From August 1942 he fought on the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts as commander of a rifle platoon and commander of a rifle company, platoon commander of front-line courses of junior lieutenants of the 483rd Rifle Regiment of the 177th Rifle Division of the Leningrad Front. He participated in the battles of the Siege of Leningrad, in the offensive operations of Soviet troops in the Baltic states, in the blockade of the Courland Pocket. In 1944 he joined the CPSU.

In 1971–1973, he commanded the 32nd Army Corps in the Crimean region of the Odessa Military District. In 1979–1980, Yazov was commander of the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia. He was commanding the Far East Military District in the northern summer of 1986, when, according to Time magazine, he made a favourable impression on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, which led to later promotions. He held the post of Soviet Defence Minister from May 1987. From June 1987 to July 1990, Yazov was a candidate member of the Politburo.[5] He was a key part of Black January. Yazov was responsible for deployment of Russian OMON commando units to Latvia and Lithuania in early 1991. During the August Coup of 1991, Yazov was a member of the State Emergency Committee, for which he was removed from his post by Gorbachev. During the Yeltsin period, Yazov was prosecuted and acquitted in 1994.

Yazov spent 18 months in Matrosskaya Tishina. According to the magazine Vlast' No. 41(85) of 14 October 1991 "...from the prison contacted the President with a recorded video message, where repented and called himself "an old fool"". Yazov denied ever doing so. He did accept the amnesty offered by Yeltsin, stating that he was not guilty. He was dismissed from the military service by Presidential Order and awarded a ceremonial weapon. He was awarded an order of Honor by the President of Russian Federation. Yazov later worked as a military adviser at the General Staff Academy.

Despite his selection by Gorbachev for the Defence Minister's position, William Odom, in his book The Collapse of the Soviet Military, repeats Alexander Yakovlev's description of Yazov as a "mediocre officer", "fit to command a division but nothing higher".[6] Odom suggests Gorbachev was only looking for "careerists who would follow orders, any orders".
In March 2019, Yazov was tried in absentia and convicted of war crimes by a Lithuanian court for his role in the military crackdown in Lithuania in January 1991, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Russia denounced the trial as politically motivated and refused to extradite Yazov.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Yazov