Obituaries

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Two Hall of Fame members in their respective sports.

Neil Armstrong (not the first man on the moon!)


David "Neil" Armstrong (December 20, 1932 – December 6, 2020) was a Canadian professional ice hockey linesman and an Honoured Member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.[1][2]

Armstrong began playing minor hockey in Galt, Ontario, but he never did go beyond that. He was offered a chance to officiate a game in the same league. Armstrong accepted and later earned his Ontario Hockey Association certification.

He officiated his first National Hockey League game on November 17, 1957, when he was 24. In the game, which was between the Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs, the two teams got into a brawl near the end of the game. Armstrong broke up a fight involving Fern Flaman, who later skated up to him with his arm dangling and proclaimed "you broke my arm!". However it turned out that Flaman was only kidding.

During his career, he had only been seriously injured once and had never missed any games, which helped him gain the nickname "ironman". His one major injury came in 1971 when Philadelphia Flyers player Gary Dornhoefer fell along the boards, and knocked Armstrong up against the glass. Dornhoefer's stick cut Armstrong's hand and broke a bone, forcing him to wear a cast for three months. On October 16, 1973, Armstrong was honoured in a ceremony at the Detroit Olympia for officiating his 1,314th game, which broke the previous record set by George Hayes.[3]

In total, Armstrong officiated a total of 1,744 games and retired in 1978.[4] After retiring, he became a scout for the Montreal Canadiens. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as an official in 1991.
His son, Doug Armstrong, later became general manager of the Dallas Stars. Following his tenure with Dallas, Doug became the executive vice president and general manager of the St. Louis Blues.[5]


In total, Armstrong officiated a total of 1,744 games and retired in 1978.[4] After retiring, he became a scout for the Montreal Canadiens. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as an official in 1991.
His son, Doug Armstrong, later became general manager of the Dallas Stars. Following his tenure with Dallas, Doug became the executive vice president and general manager of the St. Louis Blues.[5]

More at Wikipedia


Richard Dennis Ralston (July 27, 1942 – December 6, 2020) was an American professional tennis player whose active career spanned the 1960s and 1970s.

As a young player, he was coached by tennis pro Pancho Gonzales. He attended the University of Southern California (USC) and won NCAA championships under their coach George Toley. He and partner Bill Bond captured the NCAA doubles title in 1964.[3] He was the highest-ranked American player at the end of three consecutive years in the 1960s; Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph ranked him as high as world no. 5 in 1966 (Ralston was also ranked world no. 3 by the magazine Reading Eagle in 1963).[4]
His best result at a Grand Slam singles event came in 1966 when he was seeded sixth and reached the final of the Wimbledon Championships which he lost to fourth-seeded Manuel Santana in straight sets.[5][6] At the end of that year he turned professional.[7]
Ralston was a member of the Handsome Eight, the initial group of players signed to the professional World Championship Tennis tour.[8][9] He won 27 national doubles and singles titles, including five grand-slam doubles crowns.[10]
Ralston, a Davis Cup winner with the US Davis Cup team in 1963, continued to serve in the team as a coach from 1968 to 1971 and as a captain from 1972 to 1975, winning the title in 1972 over Romania.[11]

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Dennis Ralston Wimbledon circa 1987

Ralston was inducted into the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Tennis_Hall_of_Fame]International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987.[12] In 2016, he was inducted into the Texas Tennis Hall of Fame.[13]

More at Wikipedia

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Probably one of the greatest players in baseball (except from the steroid era and Black Sox) not in the Hall of Fame, Dick Allen.


Richard Anthony Allen (March 8, 1942 – December 7, 2020) was an American professional baseball player. During his 15-season Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he appeared primarily as a first baseman, third baseman, and outfielder, most notably for the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox, and is ranked among baseball's top offensive producers of the 1960s and early 1970s.


Allen was an All-Star in seven seasons. He won the 1964 National League (NL) Rookie of the Year Award and the 1972 American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award. He also led the AL in home runs for two seasons; led the NL in slugging percentage one season and the AL in two seasons, respectively; and led each major league in on-base percentage, one season apiece. His .534 career slugging percentage ranks among the highest in what was an era marked by low offensive production.

Allen's older brother Hank was a reserve outfielder for three AL teams; his younger brother Ron was briefly a first baseman with the 1972 St. Louis Cardinals.

In 2014, Allen appeared for the first time as a candidate on the Baseball Hall of Fame's Golden Era Committee election ballot[1] for possible Hall of Fame consideration in 2015. He and the other candidates all missed getting elected by the committee.[2] Allen was one vote short of the required 12 votes needed for election.[3] The Golden Era Committee met and voted on 10 selected candidates from the 1947–1972 era every three years, until being replaced by the Golden Days Committee, in 2016.[4] The Golden Days Committee is scheduled to vote next in 2021, for induction into the Hall's Class of 2022.[4] The Phillies retired Allen's number on September 3, 2020.[5]
Allen was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2004.[6]

Dick (Don't call him "Richie") Allen.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Allen][/url]

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Charles Elwood Yeager (/ˈjeɪɡər/ YAY-gər, February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound in level flight.
Yeager's career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army Air Forces in 1941.[a] After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942 he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II USAAF equivalent to warrant officer), later achieving most of his aerial victories as a P-51 fighter pilot on the Western Front, where he was credited with shooting down 11.5 enemy aircraft (the half credit is from a second pilot assisting him in a single shootdown).

After the war, Yeager became a test pilot and flew many types of aircraft, including experimental rocket-powered aircraft for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. As such, he became the first human to officially break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 when he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,700 m), for which he won both the Collier and Mackay trophies in 1948. He then went on to break several other speed and altitude records in the proceeding years.

Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany, as well as in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. In recognition of the outstanding performance ratings of those units, he was promoted to brigadier general in 1969, retiring on March 1, 1975. Yeager's three-war active-duty flying career spanned more than 30 years and took him to many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. Throughout his life, he flew more than 360 different types of aircraft.

Yeager enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) on September 12, 1941, and became an aircraft mechanic at George Air Force Base, Victorville, California. At enlistment, Yeager was not eligible for flight training because of his age and educational background, but the entry of the U.S. into World War II less than three months later prompted the USAAF to alter its recruiting standards. Yeager had unusually sharp vision (a visual acuity rated 20/10), which once enabled him to shoot a deer at 600 yards (550 m).[12]


At the time of his flight training acceptance, he was a crew chief on an AT-11.[13] He received his pilot wings and a promotion to flight officer at Luke Field, Arizona, where he graduated from Class 43C on March 10, 1943. Assigned to the 357th Fighter Group at Tonopah, Nevada, he initially trained as a fighter pilot, flying Bell P-39 Airacobras (being grounded for seven days for clipping a farmer's tree during a training flight),[14] and shipped overseas with the group on November 23, 1943.[15]

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P-51D-20NA, Glamorous Glen III, is the aircraft in which Yeager achieved most of his aerial victories.

Stationed in the United Kingdom at RAF Leiston, Yeager flew P-51 Mustangs in combat with the 363d Fighter Squadron. He named his aircraft Glamorous Glen[16][17] after his girlfriend, Glennis Faye Dickhouse, who became his wife in February 1945. Yeager had gained one victory before he was shot down over France in his first aircraft (P-51B-5-NA s/n 43-6763) on March 5, 1944, on his eighth mission.[18] He escaped to Spain on March 30 with the help of the Maquis (French Resistance) and returned to England on May 15, 1944. During his stay with the Maquis, Yeager assisted the guerrillas in duties that did not involve direct combat; he helped construct bombs for the group, a skill that he had learned from his father.[19] He was awarded the Bronze Star for helping a navigator, Omar M. "Pat" Patterson, Jr., to cross the Pyrenees.[20]

Despite a regulation prohibiting "evaders" (escaped pilots) from flying over enemy territory again, the purpose of which was to prevent resistance groups from being compromised by a second capture, Yeager was reinstated to flying combat. He had joined another evader, fellow P-51 pilot 1st Lt Fred Glover,[21] in speaking directly to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on June 12, 1944.[22] "I raised so much hell that General Eisenhower finally let me go back to my squadron" Yeager said. "He cleared me for combat after D Day, because all the free Frenchmen—Maquis and people like that—had surfaced."[23] In the meantime, Yeager shot down his second enemy aircraft, a German Junkers Ju 88 bomber, over the English Channel.[24] Eisenhower, after gaining permission from the War Department to decide the requests, concurred with Yeager and Glover.[24]
Yeager demonstrated outstanding flying skills and combat leadership. On October 12, 1944, he became the first pilot in his group to make "ace in a day," downing five enemy aircraft in a single mission. Two of these kills were scored without firing a single shot: when he flew into firing position against a Messerschmitt Bf 109, the pilot of the aircraft panicked, breaking to starboard and colliding with his wingman. Yeager said both pilots bailed out. He finished the war with 11.5 official victories, including one of the first air-to-air victories over a jet fighter, a German Messerschmitt Me 262 that he shot down as it was on final approach for landing.[25][26]

In his 1986 memoirs, Yeager recalled with disgust that "atrocities were committed by both sides", and he said he went on a mission with orders from the Eighth Air Force to "strafe anything that moved."[27][28] During the mission briefing, he whispered to Major Donald H. Bochkay, "If we are going to do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we are on the winning side."[27][28] Yeager said, "I'm certainly not proud of that particular strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory."[29] He also expressed bitterness at his treatment in England during World War II, describing the British as "arrogant" and "nasty".[30]

Yeager was commissioned a second lieutenant while at Leiston, and was promoted to captain before the end of his tour. He flew his 61st and final mission on January 15, 1945, and returned to the United States in early February. As an evader, he received his choice of assignments and, because his new wife was pregnant, chose Wright Field to be near his home in West Virginia. His high number of flight hours and maintenance experience qualified him to become a functional test pilot of repaired aircraft, which brought him under the command of Colonel Albert Boyd, head of the Aeronautical Systems Flight Test Division.[31]

Test pilot – breaking the sound barrier[edit]

Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 in the X-1.

Yeager remained in the Air Force after the war, becoming a test pilot at Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base), following graduation from Air Materiel Command Flight Performance School (Class 46C).[32] After Bell Aircraft test pilot Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin demanded $150,000 (over $1.7 million in 2020 dollars) to break the sound "barrier," the USAAF selected Yeager to fly the rocket-powered Bell XS-1 in a NACA program to research high-speed flight.[33][34]

Yeager in front of the Bell X-1, which, as with all of the aircraft assigned to him, he named Glamorous Glennis (or some variation thereof), after his wife.

Yeager in the Bell X-1 cockpit

Yeager in 1950

Such was the difficulty in this task that the answer to many of the inherent challenges was along the lines of "Yeager better have paid-up insurance."[35] Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, Yeager broke two ribs when he fell from a horse. He was worried that the injury would remove him from the mission and reported that he went to a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond, who taped his ribs.[36][c] Besides his wife who was riding with him, Yeager told only his friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley about the accident. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the X-1's hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch.[37]
Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,700 m)[38][d] over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. The success of the mission was not announced to the public until June 1948.[42] Yeager was awarded the Mackay Trophy and the Collier Trophy in 1948 for his mach-transcending flight,[43][44] and the Harmon International Trophy in 1954.[45] The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.[46]

Yeager went on to break many other speed and altitude records. He was also one of the first American pilots to fly a MiG-15, after its pilot, No Kum-sok, defected to South Korea.[47][48] Returning to Muroc, during the latter half of 1953, Yeager was involved with the USAF team that was working on the X-1A, an aircraft designed to surpass Mach 2 in level flight. That year, he flew a chase aircraft for the civilian pilot Jackie Cochran as she became the first woman to fly faster than sound.[49]

On November 20, 1953, the U.S. Navy program involving the D-558-II Skyrocket and its pilot, Scott Crossfield, became the first team to reach twice the speed of sound. After they were bested, Ridley and Yeager decided to beat rival Crossfield's speed record in a series of test flights that they dubbed "Operation NACA Weep." Not only did they beat Crossfield by setting a new record at Mach 2.44 on December 12, 1953, but they did it in time to spoil a celebration planned for the 50th anniversary of flight in which Crossfield was to be called "the fastest man alive."[49]
The new record flight, however, did not entirely go to plan, since shortly after reaching Mach 2.44, Yeager lost control of the X-1A at about 80,000 ft (24,000 m) due to inertia coupling, a phenomenon largely unknown at the time. With the aircraft simultaneously rolling, pitching, and yawing out of control, Yeager dropped 51,000 feet (16,000 m) in less than a minute before regaining control at around 29,000 feet (8,800 m). He then managed to land without further incident.[49] For this achievement, Yeager was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) in 1954.[50][e]

Yeager, as Commandant of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School with a model of the North American X-15

Yeager was foremost a fighter pilot and held several squadron and wing commands. From 1954 to 1957, he commanded the F-86H Sabre-equipped 417th Fighter-Bomber Squadron (50th Fighter-Bomber Wing) at Hahn AB, West Germany, and Toul-Rosieres Air Base, France; and from 1957 to 1960 the F-100D Super Sabre-equipped 1st Fighter Day Squadron at George Air Force Base, California, and Morón Air Base, Spain.[51]

Now a full colonel[52] in 1962, after completion of a year's studies and final thesis on STOL aircraft[53] at the Air War College, Yeager became the first commandant of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, which produced astronauts for NASA and the USAF, after its redesignation from the USAF Flight Test Pilot School. (Yeager himself had only a high school education, so he was not eligible to become an astronaut like those he trained.) Between December 1963 and January 1964,[54] Yeager completed five flights in the NASA M2-F1 lifting body. An accident during a December 1963 test flight in one of the school's NF-104s eventually put an end to his record attempts.[citation needed]

In 1966, Yeager took command of the 405th Tactical Fighter Wing at Clark Air Base, the Philippines, whose squadrons were deployed on rotational temporary duty (TDY) in South Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. There he accrued another 414 hours of combat time in 127 missions, mostly in a Martin B-57 Canberra light bomber. In February 1968, Yeager was assigned command of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, and led the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II wing in South Korea during the Pueblo crisis.[citation needed]
Yeager was promoted to brigadier general and was assigned in July 1969 as the vice-commander of the Seventeenth Air Force.[55]
From 1971 to 1973, at the behest of Ambassador Joe Farland, Yeager was assigned to Pakistan to advise the Pakistan Air Force.[56] In one of the numerous raids carried out by Indian pilots against Pakistani airfields, Yeager's plane was destroyed while it was parked at Islamabad airport.[57] Edward C. Ingraham, a U.S diplomat who had served as political counselor to Ambassador Farland in Islamabad recalled this incident in the Washington Monthly of October 1985: "After Yeager's Beechcraft was destroyed during an Indian air raid, he raged to his cowering colleagues that the Indian pilot had been specifically instructed by Indira Gandhi to blast his plane. 'It was,' he later wrote, 'the Indian way of giving Uncle Sam the finger.'"[58] After having his twin-engined Beechcraft liaison aircraft destroyed in an Indian air raid on the Chaklala Airbase, he was incensed and demanded U.S. retaliation.[59][60]
Post-retirement career[edit]

Brigadier General Yeager in 2000

On March 1, 1975, following assignments in Germany and Pakistan, Yeager retired from the Air Force at Norton Air Force Base, California, after serving over 33 years on active duty, although he continued to occasionally fly for the USAF and NASA as a consulting test pilot at Edwards AFB.[citation needed][f]
Yeager made a cameo appearance in the movie The Right Stuff (1983). He played "Fred," a bartender at "Pancho's Place", which was most appropriate, as Yeager said, "if all the hours were ever totaled, I reckon I spent more time at her place than in a cockpit over those years."[61] His own role in the movie was played by Sam Shepard.[62]

For several years in the 1980s, Yeager was connected to General Motors, publicizing AC Delco, the company's automotive parts division.[63] In 1986 he was invited to drive the Chevrolet Corvette pace car for the 70th running of the Indianapolis 500. In 1988, Yeager was again invited to drive the pace car, this time at the wheel of an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. In 1986, President Reagan appointed Yeager to the Rogers Commission that investigated the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.[64]

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yeager set several light general aircraft performance records for speed, range, and endurance. Most notable were flights conducted on behalf of Piper Aircraft. On one such flight, Yeager performed an emergency landing as a result of fuel exhaustion. On another, he piloted Piper's turboprop Cheyenne 400LS to a time-to-height record: FL350 (35,000 feet) in 16 minutes, exceeding the climb performance of a Boeing 737 at gross weight.[citation needed]

During this time Yeager also served as a technical adviser for three Electronic Arts flight simulator video games. The games include Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer 2.0, and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. The game manuals featured quotes and anecdotes from Yeager, and were well received by players. Missions featured several of Yeager's accomplishments and let players attempt to top his records. Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer was Electronic Art's top selling game for 1987.[65]

In 2009, Yeager participated in the documentary The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a profile of his friend Pancho Barnes. The documentary was screened at film festivals, aired on public television in the United States and won an Emmy Award.[66]
Yeager fully retired from military test flying after having maintained that status for three decades after his official retirement from the Air Force.[citation needed] On October 14, 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his historic flight past Mach 1, he flew a new Glamorous Glennis III, an F-15D Eagle, past Mach 1.[67] The chase plane for the flight was an F-16 Fighting Falcon piloted by Bob Hoover, a longtime test, fighter and aerobatic pilot who had been Yeager's wingman for the first supersonic flight.[68] This was supposed to be Yeager's last official flight with the U.S. Air Force. However he was called back into flying with the USAF in 2000 and continued to do so until the end of 2012.[citation needed] At the end of his speech to the crowd in 1997, Yeager concluded, "All that I am ... I owe to the Air Force."[69] Later that month, he was the recipient of the Tony Jannus Award for his achievements.[70]
On October 14, 2012, on the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, Yeager did it again at the age of 89, flying as co-pilot in a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle piloted by Captain David Vincent out of Nellis Air Force Base.[71]

Special Congressional Silver Medal awarded to Yeager in 1976

In 1973, Yeager was inducted into the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aviation_Hall_of_Fame]National Aviation Hall of Fame, arguably aviation's highest honor. In 1974, Yeager received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[72] In December 1975, the U.S. Congress awarded Yeager a silver medal "equivalent to a noncombat Medal of Honor ... for contributing immeasurably to aerospace science by risking his life in piloting the X-1 research airplane faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947." President Gerald Ford presented the medal to Yeager in a ceremony at the White House on December 8, 1976.[73][g]

Yeager, who never attended college and was often modest about his background, is considered by many, including Flying Magazine, the California Hall of Fame, the State of West Virginia, National Aviation Hall of Fame, a few U.S. presidents, and the United States Army Air Force, to be one of the greatest pilots of all time. Despite his lack of higher education, he was honored in his home state. Marshall University has named its highest academic scholarship, the Society of Yeager Scholars, in his honor. Yeager was also the chairman of Experimental Aircraft Association's Young Eagle Program from 1994–2004, and was named the program's chairman emeritus.[75]

In 1966, Yeager was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.[76] He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1981.[77] He was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor 1990 inaugural class.[78]

Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia, is named in his honor. The Interstate 64/Interstate 77 bridge over the Kanawha River in Charleston is named in his honor. He also flew directly under the Kanawha Bridge and West Virginia named it to the Chuck E. Yeager Bridge. On October 19, 2006, the state of West Virginia also honored Yeager with a marker along Corridor G (part of US Highway 119) in his home Lincoln County, and also renamed part of the highway the Yeager Highway.[79]

Yeager was an honorary board member of the humanitarian organization Wings of Hope.[80] On August 25, 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced that Yeager would be one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in The California Museum's yearlong exhibit. The induction ceremony was on December 1, 2009, in Sacramento, California. Flying Magazine ranked Yeager number 5 on its 2013 list of The 51 Heroes of Aviation; for many years, he was the highest-ranked living person on the list.[81]
The Civil Air Patrol, the volunteer auxiliary of the USAF, awards the Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager Award to its Senior Members as part of its Aerospace Education program.[82]


More at Wikipedia.

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Is there any question that Iran is not a totalitarian state? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards act much like a composite of the Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi Schutzstaffel, and Stalin's OGPU.


Ruhollah Zam (Persian: روح‌الله زم‎, also Romanized as "Rouhollah Zam"; 27 July 1978 – 12 December 2020) was an Iranian activist and journalist.[2][3] He was best known for operating a Telegram channel named 'Amadnews' (or 'Sedaiemardom', lit. 'Voice of the People'), which he founded in 2015. Zam played a high-profile role in the 2017–18 Iranian protests, during which he devoted special coverage.[4] Voice of America's Persian service frequently invited Zam on its broadcasts.[5][6] In June 2020, an Iran court found him guilty of "corruption on earth" for running a popular anti-government forum, which officials said incited the 2017–2018 Iranian protests. He was sentenced to death by an Iranian court and was executed on 12 December 2020.[7]

Ruhollah Zam was born into a clerical family in Tehran in 1978.[5] His father, Mohammad-Ali Zam, is a reformist who served in senior government positions in the 1980s and 1990s.[4] Mohammad-Ali Zam chose the name "Rouhollah" for his son as he was a supporter of Rouhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, however Rouhollah later asked his friend to call him Nima. Ruhollah Zam turned against the establishment after the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, and was imprisoned in Evin Prison for some time. Zam eventually fled Iran to reside in France.[8]

On 14 October 2019, Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced they had lured Zam back to Iran and arrested him, although according to other sources he would have been arrested in Iraq.[9][10] The guards posted the news of his arrest on Zam's Telegram channel with a following of over a million users, effectively taking over the administration of the popular channel.[11]

The court hearing was held at the 15th branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran presided over by Judge Abolqasem Salavati.[12] Ruhollah Zam was sentenced to death according to the judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili.[13]

Ruhollah Zam was executed by hanging on December 12, 2020.[14]

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

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Charley Frank Pride (March 18, 1934[1] – December 12, 2020) was an American singer, musician, guitarist, business owner, and professional baseball player. His greatest musical success came in the early to mid-1970s, when he became the best-selling performer for RCA Records since Elvis Presley.[4] During the peak years of his recording career (1966–87), he garnered 52 top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 30 of which made it to number one. He also won the Entertainer of the Year award at the Country Music Association Awards in 1971.

Pride was one of only three African-Americans to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry (the others are DeFord Bailey and Darius Rucker). He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

Much more at Wikipedia.

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Akito Arima(有馬 朗人, Arima Akito, September 13, 1930 – December 7, 2020) was a Japanese nuclear physicist and politician, known for the interacting boson model.[1][2][3][4]

Arima was born 1930 in Osaka. He studied at the University of Tokyo, where he received his doctorate in 1958. He became a research associate at the Institute for Nuclear Studies in 1956.

Arima died on December 7, 2020 at the age of 90.[5]

Arima became a lecturer in 1960, and an associate professor at the Department of Physics in 1964 at the University of Tokyo. He was promoted to a full professor in 1975. He was president of the University of Tokyo during 1989–1993. In 1993, he moved to Hosei University. Since 1993, he has been scientific adviser of the Ministry of Education and from 1993 to 1998 president of RIKEN.[6][7]
He was a visiting professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey (1967–1968), and a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1971–1973). In 1974, he founded the interacting boson model with Francesco Iachello.
In 1998 he entered the Diet of Japan as a member of the House of Councillors for the Liberal Democratic Party. He was Minister of Education until 1999 under the government of Keizo Obuchi. After the cabinet reshuffle in 1999, he served as Director of the Science Museum. From 2000 he was chairman of the Japan Science Foundation.

Arima has served as the Chancellor of Musashi Academy of the Nezu Foundation since 2006.[8][9]

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LONDON (AP) — John le Carre, the spy-turned-novelist whose elegant and intricate narratives defined the Cold War espionage thriller and brought acclaim to a genre critics had once ignored, has died. He was 89.

Le Carre’s literary agency, Curtis Brown, said Sunday he died in Cornwall, southwest England on Saturday after a short illness. The agency said his death was not related to COVID-19. His family said he died of pneumonia

In classics such as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “The Honourable Schoolboy,” Le Carre combined terse but lyrical prose with the kind of complexity expected in literary fiction. His books grappled with betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological toll of a secret life. In the quiet, watchful spymaster George Smiley, he created one of 20th-century fiction’s iconic characters — a decent man at the heart of a web of deceit.

“John le Carre has passed at the age of 89. This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit,” tweeted novelist Stephen King. Margaret Atwood said: “Very sorry to hear this. His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century.”

For le Carre, the world of espionage was a “metaphor for the human condition.”

“I’m not part of the literary bureaucracy if you like that categorizes everybody: Romantic, Thriller, Serious,” le Carre told The Associated Press in 2008. “I just go with what I want to write about and the characters. I don’t announce this to myself as a thriller or an entertainment.

“I think all that is pretty silly stuff. It’s easier for booksellers and critics, but I don’t buy that categorization. I mean, what’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities?’ — a thriller?”

His other works included “Smiley’s People,” “The Russia House,” and, in 2017, the Smiley farewell, “A Legacy of Spies.” Many novels were adapted for film and television, notably the 1965 productions of “Smiley’s People’ and “Tinker Tailor” featuring Alec Guinness as Smiley.

Le Carre was drawn to espionage by an upbringing that was superficially conventional but secretly tumultuous.

Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, southwest England on Oct. 19, 1931, he appeared to have a standard upper-middle-class education: the private Sherborne School, a year studying German literature at the University of Bern, compulsory military service in Austria — where he interrogated Eastern Bloc defectors — and a degree in modern languages at Oxford University. But his ostensibly ordinary upbringing was an illusion. His father, Ronnie Cornwell, was a con man who was an associate of gangsters and spent time in jail for insurance fraud. His mother left the family when David was 5; he didn’t meet her again until he was 21.

It was a childhood of uncertainty and extremes: one minute limousines and champagne, the next eviction from the family’s latest accommodation. It bred insecurity, an acute awareness of the gap between surface and reality — and a familiarity with secrecy that would serve him well in his future profession.

“These were very early experiences, actually, of clandestine survival,” le Carre said in 1996. “The whole world was enemy territory.”

After university, which was interrupted by his father’s bankruptcy, he taught at the prestigious boarding school Eton before joining the foreign service.

Officially a diplomat, he was in fact a “lowly” operative with the domestic intelligence service MI5 —he’d started as a student at Oxford — and then its overseas counterpart MI6, serving in Germany, on the Cold War front line, under the cover of second secretary at the British Embassy.

His first three novels were written while he was a spy, and his employers required him to publish under a pseudonym. He remained “le Carre” for his entire career. He said he chose the name — square in French — simply because he liked the vaguely mysterious, European sound of it.

“Call For the Dead” appeared in 1961 and “A Murder of Quality” in 1962. Then in 1963 came “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” a tale of an agent forced to carry out one last, risky operation in divided Berlin. It raised one of the author’s recurring themes: the blurring of moral lines that is part and parcel of espionage, and the difficulty of distinguishing good guys from bad. Le Carre said it was written at one of the darkest points of the Cold War, just after the building of the Berlin Wall, at a time when he and his colleagues feared nuclear war might be imminent.

“So I wrote a book in great heat which said ‘a plague on both your houses,’” le Carre told the BBC in 2000.

It was immediately hailed as a classic and allowed him to quit the intelligence service to become a full-time writer.

His depictions of life in the clubby, grubby, ethically tarnished world of “The Circus” — the books’ code-name for MI6 — were the antithesis of Ian Fleming’s suave action-hero James Bond, and won le Carre a critical respect that eluded Fleming.

Smiley appeared in le Carre’s first two novels and in the trilogy of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “The Honorable Schoolboy,” and “Smiley’s People.”

Le Carre said the character was based on John Bingham — an MI5 agent who wrote spy thrillers and encouraged le Carre’s literary career — and the ecclesiastical historian Vivian Green, the chaplain of his school and later his Oxford college, “who became effectively my confessor and godfather.” The more than 20 novels touched on the sordid realities of spycraft but le Carre always maintained there was a kind of nobility in the profession. He said in his day spies had seen themselves “almost as people with a priestly calling to tell the truth.”

“We didn’t shape it or mold it. We were there, we thought, to speak truth to power.”

“A Perfect Spy,” his most autobiographical novel, looks at the formation of a spy in the character of Magnus Pym, a boy whose criminal father and unsettled upbringing bear a strong resemblance to le Carre’s own.

His writing continued unabated after the Cold War ended and the front lines of the espionage wars shifted. Le Carre said in 1990 that the fall of the Berlin Wall had come as a relief. “For me, it was absolutely wonderful. I was sick of writing about the Cold War. The cheap joke was to say, ‘Poor old le Carre, he’s run out of material; they’ve taken his wall away.’ “The spy story has only to pack up its bags and go where the action is.”

That turned out to be everywhere. “The Tailor of Panama” was set in Central America. “The Constant Gardener,” which was turned into a film starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, was about the pharmaceutical industry’s machinations in Africa.

“A Most Wanted Man,” published in 2008, looked at extraordinary rendition and the war on terror. “Our Kind of Traitor,” released in 2010, took in Russian crime syndicates and the murky machinations of the financial sector.

There was more to come, including a memoir, “The Pigeon Tunnel,” and novels “A Delicate Truth” and “Agent Running in the Field.” The last, published in 2019, brought his stories of duplicity and deceit into the era of Brexit and Donald Trump.

There were many film and television adaptations of his work over the decades, in recent years of high quality. Recent examples included a big screen version of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” starring Gary Oldman as Smiley, and television miniseries of “The Night Manager” and “The Little Drummer Girl.”

Le Carre reportedly turned down an honor from Queen Elizabeth II — though he accepted Germany’s Goethe Medal in 2011 — and said he did not want his books considered for literary prizes.

In later years he was a vocal critic of the government of Tony Blair and its decision, based partly on hyped-up intelligence, to go to war in Iraq. He criticized what he saw as the betrayals of the post-World War II generation by successive British governments.

“The changes that I was promised since I was about 14 — I remember being told when Clement Atlee became prime minister and (Winston) Churchill was slung out after the war that that would be the end of the (private) school system and the monarchy,” he said in 2008.

“How can we have achieved the poverty gap that we have in this country? It’s simply unbelievable.”

In 1954, le Carre married Alison Sharp, with whom he had three sons before they divorced in 1971. In 1972 he married Jane Eustace, with whom he had a son, the novelist Nick Harkaway.

Although he had a home in London, le Carre spent much of his time near Land’s End, England’s southwesternmost tip, in a clifftop house overlooking the sea. He was, he said, a humanist but not an optimist.

“Humanity — that’s what we rely on. If only we could see it expressed in our institutional forms, we would have hope then,” he told the AP. “I think the humanity will always be there. I think it will always be defeated.”

Le Carre is survived by his wife and sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen and Simon.

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British pianist and teacher Fanny Waterman

Dame Fanny Waterman DBE (22 March 1920 – 20 December 2020) was a British pianist, academic piano teacher, and the founder, chair and artistic airector of the Leeds International Piano Competition. She was also president of the Harrogate International Music Festival and a patron of The Purcell School for Young Musicians.[1]

Waterman was born in Leeds; her father, Myer Waterman, a Russian Jew, had emigrated to England to work as a jeweller.[2] She began to study with Tobias Matthay[3] at age 18; she started giving public performances, and in 1941 opened the concert season in Leeds with the Leeds Symphony Society.[2] She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and studied with Cyril Smith.[3] In 1944, she married Dr. Geoffrey de Keyser and in 1950, with the arrival of her first child, gave up her concert career and concentrated on teaching. Her son Paul de Keyser also became a musician and music author.[4]


By the early 1960s, Waterman felt that young British pianists needed a goal to give them a competitive edge over overseas pianists. In 1961, jointly with her pianist friend Marion, Countess of Harewood (later Marion Thorpe) and Roslyn Lyons, she founded the Leeds International Piano Competition. She was Artistic Director of the competition and, from 1981, chair of the competition jury, holding the posts until 2015.[3] Finalists of the competition who began an international career based on it include Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, Sunwook Kim, Federico Colli, Eric Lu, András Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Lars Vogt and Denis Kozhukhin.[3] Her contribution to the city of Leeds was recognised in April 2006, when she was given the Freedom of the City.[3] Waterman was Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Piano Performance at Leeds College of Music until 2006.[3]
She was the guest for BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs in July 2010. Although then aged 90, she was still teaching masterclasses and continued to be involved with every detail of the Leeds competition. "They call me Field Marshal Fanny" she said, "I am a busy breeches."[5]

Waterman was the Honorary President of the Harrogate International Festivals since 2009.[1]
Waterman turned 100 on 22 March 2020.[6] She died at a care home in Ilkley on 20 December 2020.[3]

Waterman was appointed OBE in 1971, CBE in 2001 and DBE in the 2005 New Year Honours. She was also awarded the degree of Doctor of Music (DMus) honoris causa by the University of Leeds in 1992.[7]

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K.C. Jones, basketball star:

K.C. Jones

A hard-nosed, playmaking guard and defensive specialist, it would be hard to find a basketball personality who achieved more as a player and a coach than K.C. Jones. What he gave his teams on the court did not always show up on the stat sheet, but certainly translated into championships. Jones enjoyed a phenomenal collegiate career playing with fellow Hall of Famer Bill Russell under Hall of Fame coach Phil Woolpert at the University of San Francisco. With the ball-hawking guard, the Dons won 57 of 58 games and captured back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and 1956. In 1956 Jones played on the U.S. Olympic gold medal team and then, soon after, joined the Boston Celtics where he was reunited with Russell. Dressed in green and white, Jones played admirably on eight consecutive NBA championship teams, making a huge impact as a scrapping, hustling player. Jones coached Boston to the 1984 and 1986 NBA championships, and earned 12 NBA championship rings in his distinguished career.

https://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/kc-jones


K. C. Jones (May 25, 1932 – December 25, 2020) was an American professional basketball player and coach. He is best known for his association with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with whom he won 11 of his 12 NBA championships (eight as a player, one as an assistant coach, and two as a head coach).[1] As a player, he is tied for third for most NBA championships in a career, and is one of three NBA players with an 8–0 record in NBA Finals series.[2] He is the only African-American coach other than Bill Russell to win multiple NBA championships.[3][4] Jones was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989.

Jones attended Commerce High School in San Francisco, California, where he played basketball and football.[5] He played college basketball at the University of San Francisco and, along with Bill Russell, led the Dons to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. Jones also played with Russell on the United States team which won the gold medal at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia.

After completing college and joining the NBA, Jones considered a career as an NFL player, even trying out for a team. However, he failed to make the cut.[citation needed] During his playing days, he was known as a tenacious defender. Jones spent all of his nine seasons in the NBA with the Boston Celtics, being part of eight championship teams from 1959 to 1966, retiring after the Celtics' loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1967 playoffs. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989.[6]

Jones is one of only eight players in basketball history to win an NCAA championship, an NBA championship, and an Olympic gold medal,[7] joining Bill Russell, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Jerry Lucas, Clyde Lovellette, Quinn Buckner, and Anthony Davis. In NBA history, only his former teammates Russell (11 championships) and Sam Jones (10 championships) have won more championship rings during their playing careers.
Coaching career[edit]
Jones began his coaching career at Brandeis University, serving as its head coach from 1967 to 1970. He served as an assistant coach at Harvard University from 1970 to 1971.[8] Jones then reunited with former teammate Bill Sharman as the assistant coach for the 1971–72 NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers. During the said season, the team won a record 33 straight games. He became the first-ever head coach of the ABA's San Diego Conquistadors on August 8, 1972.[9]

One week after Jones' only season with the Conquistadors ended with his resignation, he signed a three‐year contract to succeed Gene Shue in a similar capacity with the Capital Bullets (name changed to Washington Bullets beginning in 1974–75) on June 18, 1973.[10] During his three years in Washington, the Bullets had a 155–91 won‐lost record and arguably the most talented team in the league. Being swept by the Golden State Warriors in the 1975 NBA Finals and a seven-game loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals the following year resulted in Jones' contract not being renewed on May 7, 1976.[11] He was replaced by Dick Motta three weeks later on May 28, 1976.[12]

In 1983, Jones took over as head coach of the Boston Celtics, replacing Bill Fitch. Jones guided the Larry Bird-led Celtics to championships in 1984 and 1986.[13] Also in 1986, Jones led the Eastern squad in the 1986 NBA All-Star Game in Dallas at the Reunion Arena, beating the Western squad 139–132. The Celtics won the Atlantic Division in all five of Jones's seasons as head coach and reached the NBA Finals in four of his five years as coach. In a surprise announcement, he retired after the 1987–88 season and was succeeded by assistant coach Jimmy Rodgers.[14] Jones spent one season in the Celtics' front office in 1988–89, then resigned to join the Seattle SuperSonics as an assistant coach and basketball consultant for the 1989–90 season.[15] He served as head coach of the Sonics in 1990–91 and 1991–92.

In 1994, Jones joined the Detroit Pistons as an assistant coach for one season. The Pistons' head coach at that time, Don Chaney, had previously played for Jones with the Celtics.[16] Jones was also considered to once again coach the Celtics during the off-season in 1995.[17] In 1996, Jones returned to the Boston Celtics, this time as an assistant coach for one season.[18]

Jones returned to the professional coaching ranks in 1997, guiding the New England Blizzard of the fledgling women's American Basketball League (1996–1998) through its last 1½ seasons of existence. The Blizzard made the playoffs in his second year as head coach, but they were summarily dispatched by the San Jose Lasers.[citation needed]

Jones died on December 25, 2020 at an assisted living center in Connecticut.[19]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._C._Jones

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Another Hall of Fame pitcher of Major League Baseball:

Philip Henry Niekro (/ˈniːkroʊ/ NEE-kro; April 1, 1939 – December 26, 2020), nicknamed "Knucksie",[1] was an American baseball pitcher who played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), 20 of them with the Milwaukee / Atlanta Braves. Niekro's 318 career victories are the most by a knuckleball pitcher and rank 16th on MLB's all-time wins list. He won the National League (NL) Gold Glove Award five times, was selected for five All-Star teams, and led the league in victories twice and earned run average once. He was a key contributor to the Braves winning their only two division titles before 1991. Niekro was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997.


Niekro and his younger brother Joe amassed 539 wins between them, the most combined wins by brothers in baseball history. Phil's 121 career victories after the age of 40 is a major league record. His longevity is attributed to his knuckleball, which is a difficult pitch to master but is easy on the arm and often baffles hitters due to its unpredictable trajectory.

Niekro remains the last MLB pitcher to have both won and lost 20 or more games in the same season. With the 1979 Braves,[2] Niekro finished with 21 wins and 20 losses. This was his third and final 20-win season and his second and final 20-loss season.[1] That season, Phil and Joe Niekro were NL co-leaders in wins.


Niekro debuted with the Milwaukee Braves in 1964, working 15 major league innings and spending time with the team's class AAA minor league affiliate.[1][8] He stayed with the major league team all year in 1965, appearing in 74 2⁄3 innings in 41 games and recording six saves.[1] In 1966, Niekro split time again between the Braves and their minor league system, going 4–3 with a 4.11 earned run average (ERA).[8]

Niekro led the league with a 1.87 ERA in 1967, earning an 11–9 record with 10 complete games and 9 saves.[1] He had begun the year as a relief pitcher but had earned a job in the starting rotation during the season.[9]



Before the 1968 season, sportswriter Fred Down described the Braves' pitching staff as "chaotic" and reported that team leadership was planning to use Niekro as both a starter and a reliever in the coming season.[9] He appeared in 37 games, finishing with a 14–12 record and 15 complete games. He appeared in relief three times, earning two saves.



In 1969, his first All-Star season, he had a 23–13 season with a 2.56 ERA,[1] finishing second in Cy Young balloting to Tom Seaver. The Braves went to the playoffs, where Niekro was 0–1 with four earned runs allowed in an eight-inning appearance against the New York Mets.[1] Niekro's playoff loss came against Seaver. The team was eliminated from the playoffs after losing the next two games.[10]

[/url]
Niekro in 1974

In 1970, he went 12–18 with a 4.27 ERA in what turned out to be a down year. He surrendered a league-leading 40 home runs that year, a feat he would not repeat until 1979.[1]

From 1971 to 1973, he combined for a record of 44–36. The Braves finished 3rd, 4th, and 5th in their division respectively. On August 5, 1973, Niekro threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. The no-hitter was the first for the Braves after moving to Atlanta.[1]

In 1974, Niekro led the league in several pitching categories, including wins (20), complete games (18), and innings pitched (302.1). He finished third in the voting for the Cy Young Award that year.[1]



From 1975 to 1976, he went 15–15 and 17–11 respectively while making a second All-Star appearance in 1975.[1]

Between 1977 and 1979, Niekro was the league leader in complete games, innings pitched and batters faced. In 1979, the 40-year-old Niekro led the league in both wins (21) and losses (20). He finished sixth in Cy Young Award voting in both 1978 and 1979, and made his third All-Star appearance in 1978, as well as winning three consecutive gold glove awards from 1978 to 1980.[1]



From 1980 to 1981, he went 15–18 and 7–7 respectively while leading the league in games started (38) and losses (18) in 1980.[1]

In 1982, at the age of 43, Niekro led the team with a 17–4 season while winning his fourth gold glove and appearing in his fourth All-Star game. On October 1, with the Braves clinging to a one-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers, Niekro beat the San Diego Padres almost single-handedly by throwing a complete game shutout and hitting a two-run home run. Niekro started Game One of the subsequent NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals and pitched well, but the game was called on account of rain just before it became official. He pitched six innings of Game Two and left with a 3–2 lead. However, the Cardinals scored two late runs after Niekro left the game and would eventually sweep the series.[1]

In 1983, he went 11–10 and won his fifth gold glove. After the season, the Braves released him.[11]




Phil Niekro's number 35 was retired by the Atlanta Braves in 1984.





In 1984, Niekro signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees.[12] He won 16 games in 1984 and made his fifth and final All-Star appearance.

On October 6, 1985, Niekro gained entry into the 300 win club with a shutout win over the Toronto Blue Jays. At 46 years, 188 days, Niekro became the oldest pitcher to pitch a shutout in the major leagues. This record stood for nearly 25 years before Jamie Moyer (47 years, 170 days) bested the feat in May 2010. He did not throw his trademark knuckleball throughout the game until the final hitter,[13] former AL MVP Jeff Burroughs.[14] Instead, Niekro struck Burroughs out to end the game. He finished the 1985 season with a 16–12 record, the final time he won 15 or more games in a single season.[1] He was released by the Yankees before the 1986 season started.[15]



After two seasons in New York, Niekro pitched for the Cleveland Indians in 1986. He went 11–11 with a 4.32 ERA.[16] He started the 1987 season with the Indians, going 7–11 in 26 starts.[1]



On August 9, 1987, Niekro was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for Darryl Landrum and a player to be named later,[17] who was later revealed to be Don Gordon.[18] After going 0–2 in three starts, the Blue Jays released him.[19]




On September 23, 1987, Niekro signed with the Atlanta Braves.[20] On September 27, he made his final start of his career, pitching three innings and surrendering five runs in the no-decision. The Braves lost the game against the Giants 15–6.[1] Niekro retired at the end of the season.[21]
At the age of 48, Niekro was the oldest player in major league history to play regularly until Julio Franco played at age 49 in 2007. He set a major league record by playing 24 seasons in the major leagues without a World Series appearance. His total of 5,404 1⁄3 innings pitched is the most by any pitcher in the post-1920 live-ball era.[22]
Pitching repertoire[edit]

Niekro signing an autograph in 1982

A sidearm pitcher, his pitching featured the knuckleball, which frustrated major league hitters. Ralph Kiner compared Niekro's special pitch to "watching [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Andretti]Mario Andretti park a car".[23] Pete Rose said, "I work for three weeks to get my swing down pat and Phil messes it up in one night... Trying to hit that thing is a miserable way to make a living."[24] Catcher Bob Uecker was also frustrated by the pitch at times, saying, "Niekro struck out a hitter once and I never touched the ball. It hit me in the shinguard, bounced out to Clete Boyer at third base and he threw out the runner at first. Talk about a weird assist: 2–5–3 on a strikeout."[25]

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

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designer Pierre Cardin

PARIS (AP) — French fashion designer Pierre Cardin possessed a wildly inventive artistic sensibility tempered by a stiff dose of business sense. He had no problem acknowledging that he earned more from a pair of stockings than from a haute-couture gown with a six-figure price tag.
Cardin, who died Tuesday at age 98, was the ultimate entrepreneurial designer. He understood the importance his exclusive haute couture shows played in stoking consumer desire and became an early pioneer of licensing. His name emblazoned hundreds of products, from accessories to home goods.
“The numbers don’t lie,” Cardin said in a 1970 French television interview. “I earn more from the sale of a necktie than from the sale of a million-franc dress. It’s counterintuitive, but the accounts prove it. In the end, it’s all about the numbers.”
The French Academy of Fine Arts announced Cardin’s death in a tweet. He had been among its illustrious members since 1992. The academy did not give a cause of death or say where the designer died.
Designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who made his debut in Cardin’s maison, paid tribute to his mentor on Twitter: “Thank you Mister Cardin to have opened for me the doors of fashion and made my dream possible.”
Along with fellow Frenchman Andre Courreges and Spain’s Paco Rabanne, two other Paris-based designers known for their avant-garde Space Age styles, Cardin revolutionized fashion starting in the early 1950s.

At a time when other Paris labels were obsessed with flattering the female form, Cardin’s designs cast the wearer as a sort of glorified hanger, there to showcase the sharp shapes and graphic patterns of the clothes. Created for neither pragmatists nor wallflowers, his designs were all about making a big entrance — sometimes very literally.
Gowns and bodysuits in fluorescent spandex were fitted with plastic hoops that stood away from the body at the waist, elbows, wrists and knees. Bubble dresses and capes enveloped their wearers in oversized spheres of fabric. Toques were shaped like flying saucers; bucket hats sheathed the models’ entire head, with cutout windshields at the eyes.
“Fashion is always ridiculous, seen from before or after. But in the moment, it’s marvelous,” Cardin said in the 1970 interview.
A quote on his label’s website summed up his philosophy: “The clothing I prefer is the one I create for a life that does not yet exist, the world of tomorrow.”

Cardin’s name embossed thousands of products, from wristwatches to bed sheets. In the brand’s heyday, goods bearing his fancy cursive signature were sold at some 100,000 outlets worldwide.
That number dwindled dramatically in later years, as Cardin products were increasingly regarded as cheaply made and his clothing designs — which, decades later, remained virtually unchanged from its ’60s-era styles — felt dated.
A savvy businessman, Cardin used his fabulous wealth to snap up top-notch properties in Paris, including the belle epoque restaurant Maxim’s, which he also frequented. His flagship store, located next to the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris, continues to showcase eye-catching designs.

Cardin was born on July 7, 1922, in a small town near Venice, Italy, to a modest, working-class family. When he was a child, the family moved to Saint Etienne in central France, where Cardin was schooled and became an apprentice to a tailor at age 14.
Cardin later embraced a status as a self-made man, saying in the 1970 TV interview that going it alone “makes you see life in a much more real way and forces you to take decisions and to be courageous.

“It’s much more difficult to enter a dark woods alone than when you already know the way through,” he said.

After moving to Paris, he worked as an assistant in the House of Paquin starting in 1945 and also helped design costumes for the likes of filmmaker Jean Cocteau. He was involved in creating the costumes for the director’s 1946 hit, “Beauty and the Beast.”

After working briefly with Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior, Cardin opened his own fashion house in Paris’ posh 1st district, starting with costumes and masks.

Cardin delivered his first real collection in 1953. Success quickly followed, with the 1954 launch of the celebrated “bubble” dress, which put the label on the map.

Cardin staged his first ready-to-wear show in 1959 at Paris’ Printemps department store, a bold initiative that got him temporarily kicked out of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Cardin’s relationship with the organization — the governing body of French fashion — was rocky, and he later left of his own volition to stage shows on his own terms.

Cardin’s high-profile relationship with French actress Jeanne Moreau, the smoky-voiced blonde of “Jules and Jim” fame, also helped boost the brand’s profile. Described by both as a “true love,” the couple’s relationship lasted about five years, though they never married.



For Cardin, the astronomical expense of producing haute-couture collections was an investment. Even though the clothing’s pharaonic prices didn’t cover the cost of crafting the made-to-measure garments, media coverage generated by the couture shows helped sell affordable items, like hats, belts and underwear.

As Cardin’s fame and fortune spiked, so did his real estate portfolio. He long lived an austere, almost monastic existence with his sister in a sprawling apartment just across from the Elysee Palace and bought up so much topflight real estate in the neighborhood that fashion insiders joked he could have mounted a coup d’état.

In addition to his women’s and men’s clothing boutiques, Cardin opened a children’s shop, a furniture store and the Espace Cardin, a sprawling hall in central Paris where the designer would later stage fashion shows, as well as plays, ballet performances and other cultural events.



Beyond clothes, Cardin put his stamp on perfumes, makeup, porcelain, chocolates, a resort in the south of France and even the velvet-walled watering hole Maxim’s — where he could often be seen at lunch.

The 1970s saw a huge Cardin expansion that brought his outlets to more than 100,000, with about as many workers producing under the Cardin label worldwide.



Cardin was in the vanguard in recognizing the importance of Asia, both as a manufacturing hub and for its consumer potential. He was present in Japan starting in the early 1960s, and in 1979 became the first Western designer to stage a fashion show in China.

In 1986, he inked a deal with Soviet authorities to open a showroom in the Communist nation to sell clothes locally made under his label.

In his later life, with no heir apparent, Cardin dismantled much of his vast empire, selling dozens of his Chinese licenses to two local firms in 2009.

Two years later, he told the Wall Street Journal that he’d be willing to sell his entire company, at that point including an estimated 500-600 licenses , for $1.4 billion.

____
Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed. Former AP correspondents Suzy Patterson and Jenny Barchfield contributed biographical information to this obituary.

https://apnews.com/article/paris-europe-pierre-cardin-france-4e00ace15b988d71c96f3e09940cba00

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A reminder on how dangerous COVID-19: it can kill the rich and powerful even if they live in the most disciplined society that people generally think free.



Yuichiro Hata (羽田 雄一郎, Hata Yūichirō, 29 July 1967 – 27 December 2020) was a Japanese politician of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan. A native of Setagaya, Tokyo, and graduate of Tamagawa University, he was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 1999, a position he retained until his death in 2020. Hata was the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism from 4 June 2012 to 26 December 2012. He was the son of the late Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata.

Hata was a member of the Itochu Foundation during his time as a student at Tamagawa University. He graduated from the univeristy with a Bachelor of Arts in March 1993. Early in his career Hata was a secretary to his father, Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, during the latter's tenure in the House of Representatives.[1]

Hata served as member of the House of Councillors in the Diet beginning with his election in 1999.[2] He was affiliated with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) after the merger of the Democratic Party and Kibō no Tō, and finally Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) after the DPP's dissolution.[3] On 4 June 2012 Hata was appointed to be the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.[1] Following the loss of the Democratic Party of Japan to the Liberal Democratic Party in the 2012 Japanese general election, Noda and his Cabinet, including Hata, were succeeded by Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet on 26 December 2012.[4] In all, he served as a legislator for five terms and was the initial Secretary-General of the Upper House caucus of the CDP at the time of his death in December 2020.[5]



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Generally, Hata was part of Japan's center-left political parties. He was a member of the DPJ and later, the CDP, both of which are center-left parties. He held positions consistent with the platform of those parties. He was opposed to the revision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that prohibits Japan from going to war. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, he became critical of Japan's use of nuclear power, stating that the country should aim to get rid of its plants eventually and that the country should not support nuclear projects in other countries.[8] Hata was a supporter of agricultural protectionism in regards to fair trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.[9]



Yuichiro Hata died in Tokyo on 27 December 2020 at 53 from [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19]COVID-19 while being transported to University of Tokyo Hospital.[2] He is the first Japanese legislator to die of the disease.[5]

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

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Elected to the US House of Representatives... died of COVID-19 before he could be inaugurated. Died at age 41.

Luke Joshua Letlow (December 6, 1979 – December 29, 2020)[1][2] was an American politician from the state of Louisiana. A Republican, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana's 5th congressional district in 2020 but died of COVID-19 before he could take office. Before his election to Congress, Letlow served as chief of staff to retiring Representative Ralph Abraham.

Letlow worked for Bobby Jindal during Jindal's tenure in the United States House of Representatives for Louisiana's 1st congressional district as his congressional district director from 2005 to 2008, and during Jindal's first term as governor of Louisiana as director of intergovernmental affairs from 2008 to 2010.[6] He then worked as director of government and community affairs for QEP Resources, an energy company based in Denver.[7][1] Letlow returned to Louisiana in 2014 to serve as campaign manager for Ralph Abraham during his election for Louisiana's 5th congressional district.[4] He served as Abraham's chief of staff during his three-term tenure.[5]


On March 9, 2020, after Abraham honored his pledge not to serve more than three terms, Letlow announced his candidacy.[8] Abraham publicly endorsed him concurrent with Letlow's announcement.[5] In the nonpartisan blanket primary on November 3, Letlow finished in first place with 33% of the vote, while State Representative Lance Harris, a fellow Republican, finished second with 17%.[9] Letlow won the December 5 runoff election with 62% of the vote.[10][11]

Per Louisiana state law, a special election will be required to elect a candidate to represent the congressional district. The district, which includes much of Eastern Louisiana, is predominantly Republican.[12]

Letlow lived in Start, Louisiana, with his wife, Julia, and their two children.[5]
On December 18, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Letlow announced that he had tested positive for the virus. He was hospitalized in Monroe.[13] After his condition deteriorated, he was transferred to the intensive care unit of Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport on December 23.[14] On December 29, Letlow died of complications of COVID-19 at the age of 41, five days before he was scheduled to be sworn into office.[2][13] The hospital reported that he had no underlying conditions when admitted but died in the ICU of a heart attack after a procedure.[8]

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-staff on the day of Congressman-elect Letlow’s funeral.[15]

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

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Dawn Elberta Wells (October 18, 1938 – December 30, 2020) was an American actress who became known for her role as Mary Ann Summers on the CBS sitcom Gilligan's Island.


In 1959, Wells was crowned Miss Nevada and represented her state in the Miss America 1960 pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey.[2][3]
In Hollywood, Wells made her debut on ABC's The Roaring 20s and the movie The New Interns and was cast in episodes of such television series as The Joey Bishop Show, 77 Sunset Strip, The Cheyenne Show, Maverick, and Bonanza, before she took the role of Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island. She reprised her character in the various Gilligan's Island reunion specials, including the reunion cartoon spin-off Gilligan's Planet and three reunion movies: Rescue from Gilligan's Island, The Castaways on Gilligan's Island, and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island.
She also appeared as a guest star on Wagon Train, Tales of Wells Fargo, 87th Precinct, Surfside 6, Hawaiian Eye, Ripcord, The Everglades, The Detectives, It's a Man's World, Channing, Laramie, Burke's Law, The Invaders, The Wild Wild West, The F.B.I., Vega$, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Matt Houston, ALF, Herman's Head, Three Sisters, Pastor Greg, and Roseanne.

[/url]
Wells 1975 press release

Wells had small roles in the early 1960s films [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Springs_Weekend]Palm Springs Weekend and The New Interns, and later starred with Michael Dante in the independent 1975 film Winterhawk, playing a Western settler kidnapped by a Native Ametican chief. Her other films include The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Return to Boggy Creek, Lover's Knot, Soulmates, Forever for Now, and Super Sucker. In fall 2011, she began filming Silent But Deadly (originally titled Hotel Arthritis),[4] a comedy horror film released in 2012.

Following Gilligan's Island, Wells embarked on a theater career, appearing in nearly one hundred theatrical productions as of July 2009. She spent the majority of the 1970s, and 1980s, touring in musical theater productions. She also had a one-woman show at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in 1985.

In 1993, Wells published Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook with co-writers Ken Beck and Jim Clark, including a foreword by Bob Denver. She was close to Alan Hale Jr., who played The Skipper on Gilligan's Island, even after the series completed its run, and he contributed a family recipe ("Kansas Chicken and Dumplings") to her cookbook. Hale's character was the inspiration behind such concoctions as Skipper's Coconut Pie, Skipper's Navy Bean Soup, and Skipper's Goodbye Ribeye, and he is depicted as Skipper Jonas Grumby in numerous photographs throughout the book. She said in a 2014 interview with GoErie.com, "Alan could not have been kinder to a young actress. He was a real peach."[5]

In 2005, Wells consigned her original gingham blouse and shorts ensemble for sale from her signature role. Beverly Hills auction house Profiles in History sold it for $20,700.[2]

In 2014, Wells released What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide to Life, which she co-wrote with Steve Stinson. The book was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gilligan's Island.[6]
In May 2016, Wells was named Marketing Ambassador to MeTV Network.[7] In January 2019, she promoted the Gilligan's Island television series on the MeTV television network.

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

[Tim Randal Walker]

Good bye, Mary Ann.

[pbrower2a]

Innovative physician melding medicine and social work.

H. Jack Geiger (born Herman J. Geiger; November 11, 1925 – December 28, 2020) was an American physician and civil rights activist. He was a leader in the field of social medicine, the philosophy that doctors had a responsibility to treat the social as well as medical conditions that adversely affected patients' health, famously (and controversially) writing prescriptions for food for impoverished patients suffering from malnutrition. He was one of the doctors to bring the community health center model to the United States, starting a network that serves 28 million low-income patients as of 2020.

The Arthur C. Logan Professor of Community Medicine at the City University of New York School of Medicine, Geiger was a cofounder and president of Physicians for Human Rights as well as a cofounder and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, each of which won Nobel Peace Prizes.

With the help of a loan from Lee, Geiger enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1941.[2] At night he worked at The Madison Capitol Times newspaper, though still under 18, Geiger had to acquire a special exemption from Madison's curfew for minors.[1]

In 1942, Geiger joined A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin who were planning a march on Washington in protest of racial discrimination in the defense factories for World War II; they succeeded in pressuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt to take measures against this without going through with the march.[4] In 1943, Geiger met James Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which prompted Geiger to start a CORE chapter in Madison, one of the earliest chapters.[1]



The same year, Geiger turned 18 and left school to join the war effort, enlisting with the merchant marine because it was the only racially integrated military service at the time.[3] He worked on the only ship in World War II with an African American captain, Hugh Mulzac on the SS Booker T. Washington.[4] He was discharged in 1947 and enrolled at the University of Chicago to pursue pre-med studies, but where he also encountered significant anti-Black discrimination.[1] He organized a strike, with two thousand faculty and students protesting issues like the exclusion of African American patients from certain hospitals and the rejection of qualified African American applicants to the medical school.[4] For his "extracurricular" activities, he was blackballed by the American Medical Association and returned to working in journalism, unable to gain entrance to medical school.[1] Working as a science journalist, he was active in efforts to use science in the service of human needs.[5]


After five years in journalism, Geiger secured an assignment that allowed him to approach medical school deans.[3] Jack Caughey of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine was encouraging and Geiger successfully enrolled in 1954.[3] While in medical school, a Rockefeller grant[3] allowed him to spend five months working in Pholela, South Africa, at a health clinic that also invested in other local improvements—latrines, vegetable gardens, feeding programs—and succeeded thanks significantly to local staff members engagement with the community this way.[1] The experience spurred an interest in working in international health.[1] Geiger received his M.D. from Case Western in 1958.[6][7]

Geiger next trained in internal medicine at Harvard, working at Boston City Hospital from 1958 to 1964.[6][7] During this time, he also earned a master's degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and was a fellow at Harvard University's Research Training Program in Social Science and Medicine.[6]

In 1961, Geiger cofounded Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which argued that the government was understating the extent of destruction a nuclear war would cause.[1] Geiger conducted "the bombing run" at the group's public presentations, detailing the devastation a one-megaton nuclear bomb would inflict on the city hosting the meeting.[1] He coauthored one of the first papers to estimate the medical toll of nuclear war, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 1962, just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.[1] Taking Boston as a case study, it predicted a nuclear strike would leave millions dead and injured, vastly outstripping the hospital capacity that would remain to treat those who (initially) survived. The article argued physicians had to consider "the prevention of thermonuclear war" as a relevant part of preventive medicine.[1] In 1985, PSR was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to the disarmament effort.[8]

In 1964, Geiger participated in the Freedom Summer, serving as field coordinator of a group of health care workers called the Medical Committee for Human Rights,[3] who went to Mississippi to care for the civil rights activists in voting rights campaign.[8] In 1965, he organized medical care for the participants of the Selma to Montgomery march with Martin Luther King, Jr.[8] Working in the US South, he found many African Americans were living in conditions strikingly similar to the extreme poverty he had seen in apartheid South Africa and realized the health disparities abroad that he wanted to address also existed much closer to home.[3] President Lyndon B. Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity (part of the War on Poverty) as well as grants from Tufts University afforded him and two other doctors, John Hatch and Count Gibson, the chance to set up a clinic in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, which they modeled after the one Geiger had seen in South Africa: not only treating sick patients but also spending grant money digging wells and privies, establishing a library, and a variety of other social, educational and economic services.[1] Here Geiger wrote controversial prescriptions for food, paid out of the pharmacy budget, which drew the displeasure of the state's Governor.[3] Geiger replied:

Quote:"Yeah, well, the last time I looked in my medical textbooks, they said the specific therapy for malnutrition was food."

The Mound Bayou clinic, called the Delta Health Center, and a similar center in Columbia Point, Boston became a national model of care via community health centers and grew into network of clinics.[9] As of 2020, the network encompasses more than 1,300 clinics at more than 9000 sites and serves about 28 million low-income patients.[1]

From 1968 to 1971, Geiger was chair of the Department of Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, then Visiting Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1972–73.[6] For the following five years, he was Chair of the Department of Community Medicine at the State University of New York at Stonybrook School of Medicine,[6] then in 1978, joined the faculty at the City University of New York Medical School as a professor of community medicine.[1] He was founding Chair of the Department of Community Health and Social Medicine (CHASM), from 1978 until he took emeritus status in 1996.[8] In the interim he was also promoted to Arthur C. Logan Professor of Community Medicine.[10]



In 1986, Geiger was a cofounder (and later president) of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which shared in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 for its contributions to the effort to ban land mines.[11] The group applied medical skills to the investigation of human rights abuses and offered medical and humanitarian aid to victims of such abuses.[11] Geiger participated in human rights missions for PHR, the United Nations, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Kurdistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and South Africa.[10][12]



He was also a cofounder and president of the Committee for Health in South Africa and a cofounder and national program coordinator of the Medical Committee for Human Rights.[10]



In 1973, Geiger received the first Award for Excellence of the American Public Health Association for "exceptionally meritorious achievement in improving the health of the American people" in 1973.[4] In 1982, he received Award of Merit in Global Public Health from the Public Health Association of New York.[4]

In 1993, Geiger was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), United States National Academy of Sciences.[4] In 1998, he received the IOM's highest honor, the Lienhardt Award for "outstanding contributions to minority health".[10] In 1998 he also received the American Public Health Association's Sedgewick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health.[6] He also won the 2014 Frank A. Calderone Prize,[13] public health's highest honor, for foundational work demonstrating the interrelation of health and human rights throughout his career.[14]



In recognition of Geiger's pathbreaking work on discrimination in health care, the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Caucuses founded the H. Jack Geiger Congressional Fellowships on Health Disparities to support young minority scholars.[3][15]

Geiger received an honorary degree from Case Western in 2000[3] as well as an honorary doctorate of science from State University of New York.[16]
Personal life

[pbrower2a]

Just a reminder: if you think that 2020 was a bad year for the loss of baseball stars... you are right.

Baseball Lost A Team Of Legends This Year
By Howard Megdal

Filed under MLB


2020 has been a difficult year of loss in every corner of the world. It’s also been keenly cruel to the collective memory of Major League Baseball — and its best players. To be sure, we lose icons in the sport every year. But the sheer number and depth of the talent among those who died in 2020 is overwhelming.

In the span of just a few weeks, not just one but two iconic St. Louis Cardinals died: Bob Gibson and Lou Brock. These were defining members of many Cardinals championship teams as players who stayed within the St. Louis family for decades after their careers ended. They were routinely included in opening day festivities at Busch Stadium, wearing their red jackets.

We lost Tom Seaver, the defining Met. Joe Morgan, perhaps the best second baseman to ever play the game, with the Cincinnati Reds and numerous other teams. Whitey Ford, big game pitcher par excellence for the New York Yankees. Al Kaline: Mr. Tiger. And just Saturday, we lost Phil Neikro, the master of the knuckleball.

That’s seven Hall of Fame players. To put it in perspective, we lost seven Hall of Famers combined from 2016 to 2019: Frank Robinson in 2019; Willie McCovey and Red Schoendienst in 2018; Roy Halladay, Jim Bunning and Bobby Doerr in 2017; and Monte Irvin in 2016.

The last time as many as four Hall of Famers died was 2010, when Ron Santo, Robin Roberts, Bob Feller and Sparky Anderson all passed — though Anderson had earned induction as a manager, not a player. Most years since the turn of the century, it’s one or two Hall of Famers; in 2004 and 2008, it was none.

What also separates 2020, though, is the sheer depth of talent we lost. And that’s been what continues to hit home for me: the list includes longtime stars, All-Stars and postseason heroes beyond those who were inducted into Cooperstown. To make sense of it all, I wanted to think of it in baseball terms, to appreciate just how much player production came from players who have died in 2020.

This year has seen the deaths of 15 hitters and nine pitchers with at least 10 career wins above replacement,1 including 10 above 40 WAR. Compare that to 2019: eight hitters, six pitchers above 10 WAR, just three players above 40. Or 2018: eight hitters, seven pitchers at or above 10 WAR, with McCovey, Schoendienst and Rusty Staub the only three above 40.

This is no mere calculation. Every hit, every strikeout, every diving catch is remembered by thousands of people, those who watched or listened to it, those who witnessed it in person. So to truly comprehend the number and ability of the baseball players we lost in 2020, I’ve compiled a 26-man roster of those who died this year. Say what you will about the Dodgers: This is a team that I think could beat anyone.

Hitters
Starting lineup
C Hal Smith, 4.2 career WAR, 1955-64: Smith enjoyed a distinguished decade-long career catching for the Orioles, Kansas City Athletics, Pirates, Houston Colt .45s and Reds. He played a key role for the 1960 World Champion Pirates, slashing .295/.351/.508 for the eventual winners, and served as Houston’s catcher in the team’s very first game in 1962. He homered, too, as the Colt .45s won 11-2. Smith finished his career with three double-digit home run seasons, a slash line of .267/.317/.394, and yet somehow, on this team, he’s probably the No. 8 hitter.

1B Bob Watson, 28.3 WAR, 1966-84: Among the many distinguished, if not quite Hall of Fame worthy, players on this team, Watson made a pair of All-Star teams and earned MVP votes in three different seasons. The longtime Astro — who also saw time with the Red Sox, Yankees and Braves — drove in 100 runs twice. 1975 is an example of his typical consistency: a .324/.375/.495 slash line, with 18 home runs and an OPS+ of 149.

2B Joe Morgan, 100.5 WAR, 1963-84: The most valuable everyday player and owner of the second-best WAR on the roster, Morgan defined the position of second base for more than two decades. He made 10 All-Star teams, captured two MLB MVPs as the best player on the Cincinnati Reds dynasty of the mid-1970s, and did essentially everything well on a baseball field. His career slash line of .271/.392/.427 understates his offensive greatness, with much of that raw production coming during the offensively challenged 1960s. His OPS+ of 132 is impressive for any position, but it’s fourth all-time among the 177 primary second basemen with at least 1,000 games played in MLB history.

3B Dick Allen, 58.8 WAR, 1963-77: From a legacy perspective, this hurts most of all. Allen is, by all rights, a Hall of Famer, but his reputation of being difficult — something our 2020 eyes must see through the lens of being an outspoken Black man in Philadelphia in the 1960s — kept him from enshrinement. He looked set to get enough votes from this year’s Golden Era Veterans’ Committee, but COVID-19 pushed back by a year that meeting, which is held in person. Now, if and when the call is made to honor a career featuring a remarkable 156 career OPS+, the NL Rookie of the Year award, seven All-Star seasons and an AL MVP award, it will be up to the rest of us to stress how long overdue it was.

SS Tony Fernández, 45.3 WAR, 1983-2001: Fernández falls just shy of Hall of Fame enshrinement, according to Jay Jaffe, the dean of such evaluations, but had a tremendous career all the same. He made five All-Star teams and won four Gold Gloves at the most important defensive position, with a .288/.347/.399 career slash line. He stole 20 bases or more in seven seasons and played on five different postseason teams — with .327/.367/.420 career production in the playoffs.

LF Lou Brock, 45.4 WAR, 1961-79: The prototype for the speedy leadoff hitter, Brock stole 938 bases, made six All-Star teams and served as a fixture for three NL pennant-winning teams in St. Louis, including the World Series winners in 1964 and 1967. Brock’s raw slash line of .293/.343/.410 is also underrated because of the era — he led the NL in doubles and triples in 1968, and his ability to collect hits never disappeared. He finished with a .298 average over the final decade of his career, and in his final season at age 40, he hit .304.

CF Jim Wynn, 55.8 WAR, 1963-77: To get a sense of how great Jimmy Wynn was, consider that there are three Hall of Fame hitters on this roster, and yet Wynn’s WAR ranks third among them in the group, ahead of Brock. Wynn would have been adored by the sabermetric crowd — he produced a park-adjusted OPS+ of 129 — but a low batting average compounded by the era in which he played for much of his time made for a career slash line of just .250/.366/.436. (For context: Carlos Beltran, playing in a much more hitting-friendly period, finished with a raw slash line of .279/.350/.486, but his OPS+ was just 119.) Even so, Wynn cleared 30 home runs in three seasons, made three All-Star teams and would probably hit cleanup in this stacked lineup.

RF Al Kaline, 92.8 WAR, 1953-74: Mr. Tiger, one of the greatest to ever play the game, was an 18-time All-Star with 10 Gold Gloves. By WAR, he’s the fourth-best right fielder in the history of the game, trailing only Hank Aaron, Mel Ott and Roberto Clemente. His greatness started early — a batting title at age 20 — and didn’t wane for decades, with Kaline hitting .379/.400/.655 in the 1968 World Series for the Tigers in a win over the Cardinals. Kaline would be the three hitter in this lineup and a formidable figure on any team.

Bench
3B Tony Taylor, 23.2 WAR, 1958-76: Taylor made both All-Star teams in 1960 (they played twice back then!), served as a key member of some good and many not-so-good Phillies teams and eventually enjoyed three — yes, three — Tony Taylor Days in Philadelphia. Don’t let them fool you about Philly fans.

OF Claudell Washington, 19.6 WAR, 1974-90: A two-time All-Star and perfect fourth outfielder who played all three positions.

2B Frank Bolling, 16.9 WAR, 1954-66: Bolling was an elite fielder at second base with some power and was an All-Star in 1961 and 1962.

OF/1B Jay Johnstone, 16.5 WAR, 1966-85: A lefty bat off the bench who could play all three outfield positions along with first base.

IF Horace Clarke, 15.7 WAR, 1965-74: Clarke was a defining Yankee, to fans of a certain age, who could play second, third and short.

C Ed FitzGerald, 1.4 WAR, 1948-59: FitzGerald was a defense-first backup catcher.

2B Glenn Beckert, 15.6 WAR, 1965-75: A four-time All-Star and a Gold Glove winner at second base who could fill in around the infield or outfield.

Honorable mention: 1965 World Series hero OF Sweet Lou Johnson, 2B Damaso Garcia and 3B/SS Kim Batiste, who did this in the first playoff game I ever attended.

Pitchers
Rotation
SP Tom Seaver, 106 WAR, 1967-86: The Franchise was easily the best player in New York Mets history, and there’s an argument for him as the best pitcher in MLB history, too. Seaver made 12 All-Star teams and won three Cy Young Awards, along with five other top-five finishes in the Cy Young voting. His WAR ranks seventh all-time for pitchers, and five of the six ahead of him pitched decades before, during a pre-integrated MLB period, while Roger Clemens is the other — with his own complicated legacy. This is a deep, talented staff, but Tom Seaver gets the ball in Game 1 of any series it would play.

SP Bob Gibson, 81.7 WAR, 1959-75: A No. 2 starter only on this team, really, Gibson is 25th in WAR among all pitchers, meaning two of the top 25 in the history of the game died this year. Gibson might be ahead of Seaver if we’re purely talking 1968, when Gibson set the record in the live-ball era for single-season ERA at just 1.12. He was a nine-time All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner, and he won nine Gold Gloves. He also may have pitched the single most dominant World Series game ever.

SP Phil Niekro, 97 WAR, 1964-87: It is easy to get lost in the sheer magnitude of Niekro’s productivity — fourth all-time in innings pitched, with only Cy Young, Pud Galvin and Walter Johnson ahead of him — or the novelty of his pitch, the knuckleball, and miss just how great Niekro was at his best. He had five top-six Cy Young Award vote finishes, spreading them out over three different decades. He fielded his position extraordinarily well over his entire career — he won five Gold Gloves, the last coming in 1983, when he was 44 years old. He led the league in ERA and in winning percentage, but not in the same year — those two things happened 15 years apart! Niekro’s pitch, and his mastery of it, helped propel his singular career. And sadly, not only is he gone, but the knuckleball is, for now, extinct from MLB as well.

SP Whitey Ford, 53.6 WAR, 1950-67: The best big-game starting pitcher in New York Yankees history (a 2.71 ERA over 22 World Series starts) and author of a 25-4, 3.21 ERA season in the 1961 Maris-Mantle campaign, Ford was a critical part of 11 American League pennant winners and six World Series champions. He made 10 All-Star teams (two years he made two of them) and won a pair of ERA titles, rolling out stellar year after year playing in front of one of the greatest teams ever.

SP Johnny Antonelli, 31.2 WAR, 1948-61: Just a few minutes away from Ford, another big-game pitcher plied his trade for the New York Giants. Antonelli’s 21-7, 2.30 ERA season in 1954 won him the ERA title and a third-place MVP finish, before his 0.84 ERA in the World Series, including a complete game, helped New York upset the favored Cleveland Indians. Antonelli went west with the Giants and made both All-Star teams in 1959, among his six overall appearances as an All-Star. A stellar career.

Bullpen
RP Don Larsen, 12.5 WAR, 1953-67: Larsen belongs on this team not just because he did something in 1956 that nobody else has done: pitch a perfect game in the World Series. People like to boil his career down to that one game, but consider how well Larsen pitched for New York from 1955 to 1958: a 39-17 record, a 3.31 ERA. Larsen was a quality pitcher, and he certainly rose to the moment.

RP Ron Perranoski, 18.9 WAR, 1961-73: A shutdown closer, in the fireman variety as opposed to the typical one-inning guy, who dominated for the mid-1960s Dodgers and late-1960s Twins. He won MVP votes three times as a reliever.

RP Lindy McDaniel, 29.0 WAR, 1955-75: McDaniel was reliable in any role. His 1960 campaign for the Cardinals was exemplary but far from atypical: 12 wins, 27 saves, a 2.09 ERA and third in the Cy Young Award voting.

RP Dick Hyde, 6.1 WAR, 1955-61: A terribly underrated reliever who in 1958 posted a 1.75 ERA and led the American League in saves with the Washington Senators.

RP Mike McCormick, 17.4 WAR, 1956-71: An absolute stud of a pitcher who succeeded as both a starter (1967 NL Cy Young with the San Francisco Giants with league-leading 22 wins) and a reliever, so we’re using him here as the primary lefty out of the pen who could go multiple innings.

RP Bob Lee, 8.7 WAR, 1964-68: Posted consecutive seasons with a sub-2.00 ERA to begin his career with the Angels in 1964-65.

.... These really are all-time greats. Make a team of these and you would have a challenge to the 1927 Yankees or the Big Red Machine of the 1970's. Put any two of the starting rotation of pitchers on the staff of the 1927 Yankees and you would have an improvement. Morgan, Fernandez, Allen, and Kaline would have fit well into a "Murderer's Row" lineup. (OK, in view of the color bar in operation in the 1920's only Kaline would have made it)... 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bas...boola_feed

What a starting lineup!

Lou Brock, LF
Joe Morgan, 2B
Al Kaline, RF 
Dick Allen, 3B
Jimmy Wynn, CF
Bob Watson, 1B
Tony Fernandez, SS
Hal Smith, C
...and oh, what a starting rotation.

[Marypoza]

RIP Gerry from Gerry & the Pacemakers. Don't Let the Sun Catch ya Cryin

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Best known professionally as Tanya Roberts:


Victoria Leigh Blum (born October 15, 1955 died January 4, 2021),[1] known professionally as Tanya Roberts, was an American actress, producer, and model.[2] She was best known for playing Julie Rogers in the final season of the 1970s television series Charlie's Angels,[3] Stacey Sutton in the James Bond film A View to a Kill,[3][4][5] and Midge Pinciotti on That '70s Show.[3][4][5][6] She appeared in 81 episodes from 1998–2004, but eventually left the series to care for her sick husband.

Roberts began her career as a model in TV ads for Excedrin, Ultra Brite, Clairol, and Cool Ray sunglasses. She played serious roles in the off-Broadway productions Picnic and Antigone. She also supported herself as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. Her film debut was the horror film Forced Entry (1975).[3][5] This was followed by the comedy film The Yum-Yum Girls (1976).[5]

In 1977, as her husband was securing his own screenwriting career, the couple moved to Hollywood. The following year, Roberts participated in the drama Fingers.[5] In 1979 Roberts appeared in the cult movie Tourist Trap,[4] Racquet,[3][5] and California Dreaming.[5] Roberts was featured in several television pilots which were not picked up; Zuma Beach (a 1978 comedy),[5] Pleasure Cove (1979),[11] and Waikiki (1980).[11]

Roberts was chosen in the summer of 1980 from some 2,000 candidates to replace Shelley Hack in the fifth season of the detective television series Charlie's Angels.[3] Roberts played Julie Rogers, a streetwise fighter who used her fists more than her gun. Producers hoped Roberts's presence would revitalize the series's declining ratings and regenerate media interest in the series. Before the season's premiere, Roberts was featured on the cover of People magazine with a headline asking if Roberts would be able to save the declining series from cancellation.[12] Despite the hype of Roberts's debut in November 1980, the series continually drew dismal ratings and was cancelled in June 1981.[13]

Roberts played Kiri, a slave rescued by protagonist Dar (Marc Singer) in the adventure fantasy film The Beastmaster (1982),[11] which became a cult film and[3][4][7][5] which included a topless swimming scene. She was featured in a nude pictorial in Playboy to help promote the movie, appearing on that issue's October 1982 cover. In 1983, Roberts filmed the Italian-made adventure fantasy film Hearts and Armour (also known as Paladini-storia d'armi e d'amori and Paladins — The Story of Love and Arms), based on the medieval novel Orlando Furioso.

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[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacy_Keach]Stacy Keach and Tanya Roberts in 1983

She portrayed Velda, the secretary to private detective Mike Hammer, in the television movie Murder Me, Murder You (1983),[14] based on crime novelist Mickey Spillane’s iconic Mike Hammer private detective series. The two-part pilot spawned the syndicated television series Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.[14] She declined to continue the role in the Mike Hammer series to work on her next project, the 1984 fantasy movie Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, in which she played the main character.[3][4][7][5][11] The movie was a box office and critical disaster, garnering her a nomination for "Worst Actress" at the Razzie Awards.[15]

Roberts appeared as Bond girl Stacey Sutton, a geologist, in A View to a Kill (1985).[3][4][5][11] In the wake of this performance, she again was nominated for a Razzie Award.[16] Roberts's other 1980s films include Night Eyes, an erotic thriller;[3][5] Body Slam (1987), an action movie set in the professional wrestling world (another cult favorite);[3][5] and Purgatory, a movie about a woman wrongfully imprisoned in Africa.[5]

Roberts starred in the erotic thriller Inner Sanctum (1991) alongside Margaux Hemingway.[5][17] In 1992, she played Kay Egan in Sins of Desire.[5] She appeared on the cable series Hot Line in 1995; and in the video game The Pandora Directive in 1996.[5]

In 1998, Roberts took the role of Midge Pinciotti on the television sitcom That '70s Show.[3][4][5] Roberts revealed on E! True Hollywood Story that she left the series in 2001 because her husband had become terminally ill. She departed from the show after the 3rd season and returned for a few special guest appearances in the 6th and 7th season, in 2004. She retired from acting in 2005. She wrote the foreword to the book The Q Guide to Charlie's Angels (2008).[18] She has maintained an active social media presence by hosting video chats on Facebook and Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]


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

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Carrie Dann (1932-2021) was a Western Shoshone spiritual elder and activist for land and tribal rights.[8]
On April 1, 2007, Carrie Dann was arrested with 38 other activists for trespassing at the Nevada Test Site at a Nevada Desert Experience event protesting governmental programs at the site.[9][10] She has continued with activities to try to end nuclear testing and programs at the site.
In November 2008 Dann, with members of the Western Shoshone Defense Project and four other tribal and public interest groups, sued in federal court against the US and Canadian Barrick Gold, seeking an injunction to stop the "largest open pit cyanide heap leach gold mines in the United States - the Cortez Hills Expansion Project on Mt. Tenabo," Nevada. The Western Shoshone consider this to be sacred land. In addition to spiritual concerns, tribal and other groups are concerned about the proposed project's environmental impact on water, air and ground quality.[1]

Representation in documentary films

• Newe Segobia is Not for Sale (1993) was produced by Jesse Drew. The film depicts confrontations between Federal Bureau of Land Management officers determined to impound the Dann sisters' livestock, and the Danns' demonstration of US treaty violations.
  
  
• American Outrage (2008) is a documentary film about the Dann sisters and their decades-long struggle against the U.S. Government for the right to graze their horses on tribal grazing land.[11] The film follows the Dann sisters and tribal rights advocates as the case was ruled on by the US Supreme Court and the United Nations.[12]
  

(American First Peoples often get marginalized  in economic and political struggles). 

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