Obituaries

[pbrower2a]

Sadat successor,but increasingly dictatorial former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:


Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak[a] (4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian military and political leader who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011. 


Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in the Egyptian Air Force. He served as its commander from 1972 to 1975 and rose to the rank of air chief marshal in 1973.[2] Some time in the 1950s, he returned to the Air Force Academy as an instructor, remaining there until early 1959.[2] He assumed the presidency after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mubarak's presidency lasted almost thirty years, making him Egypt's longest-serving ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha, who ruled the country from 1805 to 1848, a reign of 43 years.[3] Mubarak stepped down after 18 days of demonstrations during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.[4] On 11 February 2011, former Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak and he had resigned as president and vice president respectively and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.[5][6]   

On 13 April 2011, a prosecutor ordered Mubarak and both of his sons (Alaa and Gamal) to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power.[7] Mubarak was then ordered to stand trial on charges of negligence for failing to halt the killing of peaceful protesters during the revolution.[8] These trials began on 3 August 2011.[9] On 2 June 2012, an Egyptian court sentenced Mubarak to life imprisonment. After sentencing, he was reported to have suffered a series of health crises. On 13 January 2013, Egypt's Court of Cassation (the nation's high court of appeal) overturned Mubarak's sentence and ordered a retrial.[10] On retrial, Mubarak and his sons were convicted on 9 May 2015 of corruption and given prison sentences.[11] Mubarak was detained in a military hospital and his sons were freed 12 October 2015 by a Cairo court.[12] He was acquitted on 2 March 2017 by the Court of Cassation and released on 24 March 2017.[13][14]

He died on 25 February 2020.[15][16]

Mubarak was injured during the assassination of President Sadat in October 1981 by soldiers led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli.[33] Following Sadat's death, Mubarak became the fourth president of Egypt.


Egypt's return to the Arab League

Until Libya's suspension from the Arab League at the beginning of the Libyan Civil War, Egypt was the only state in the history of the organization to have had its membership suspended, because of President Sadat's peace treaty with Israel.[citation needed] In June 1982, Mubarak met King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, which marked a beginning of an Egyptian-Saudi rapprochement.[34] Since Egypt is the most populous Arab country and Saudi Arabia the richest, the Saudi–Egyptian axis was a powerful force in the Arab world. At an Arab League summit later in 1982 in Fez, Saudi Arabia put forward an Egyptian peace plan where in exchange for Israel resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by allowing a Palestinian state, the entire Arab world would make peace with Israel.[34]

The Islamic Republic of Iran had, from 1979 onward, been making the claim to be the leader of the Islamic world, and in particular Ayatollah Khomeini had called for the overthrow of the governments of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, calling these states illegitimate.[35] The claim of the Ayatollah Khomeini to be the rightful leader of the Islamic world and his attempts to export the Iranian revolution by working to overthrow governments that Khomeini deemed un-Islamic caused profound alarm and fear in the governments that were targeted like Iraq and Saudi Arabia.[35] In the face of the Iranian challenge, the other Arab states looked towards Egypt as an ally.[35] For King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the other leaders of the Arab Gulf states, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict faded into the background and the main concern was resisting Iranian pretensions to be the leader of the Islamic world, meaning that Egypt could not be ignored.[35]
During the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, Egypt supported Iraq militarily and economically with one million Egyptians working in Iraq to take the place of Iraqi men serving on the front-line.[35] In December 1983, Mubarak welcomed Yasser Arafat of the PLO to a summit in Cairo, marking a rapprochement with the PLO, and from that time, Egypt became the PLO's main ally.[36] In 1985, the Achille Lauro hijacking caused a major crisis in relations when the U.S Air Force forced an EgyptAir plane carrying the Achille Lauro hi-jackers to Tunisia to land in Italy; otherwise the plane would have been shot down. Mubarak stated in a press conference on 12 October 1985: "I am very wounded. Now there is coolness and strain as a result of this incident."[37] Egypt had been ostracized by the other Arab states for signing the Camp David Accords in 1979, but Egypt's weight within the Arab world had led to Egypt regaining its "central place in the Arab world" by 1989.[38] In 1989, Egypt was re-admitted as a full member to the Arab League and the League's headquarters were moved to their original location in Cairo.[39]

Governing style

Throughout the 1980s, Mubarak increased the production of affordable housing, clothing, furniture, and medicine. By the time he became President, Mubarak was one of a few Egyptian officials who refused to visit Israel and vowed to take a less enthusiastic approach to normalizing relations with the Israeli government.[30] Under Mubarak, Israeli journalists often wrote about the "cold peace" with Egypt, observing Israeli–Egyptian relations were frosty at best.[40] Mubarak was quick to deny that his policies would result in difficulties for Egyptian–Israeli dealings in the future.[30]

The Israeli historian Major Efraim Karsh wrote in 2006 that in Egypt "...numberless articles, scholarly writings, books, cartoons, public statements, and radio and television programs, Jews are painted in the blackest terms imaginable".[41] Karsh accused Mubarak of being personally antisemitic, writing he "evidently shared the premises" of his propaganda.[40]

Egypt's heavy dependence on US aid[42] and its hopes for US pressure on Israel for a Palestinian settlement continued under Mubarak.[43] He quietly improved relations with the former Soviet Union. In 1987, Mubarak won an election to a second six-year term.[19]
In his early years in power, Mubarak expanded the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service (Mabahith Amn ad-Dawla) and the Central Security Forces (anti-riot and containment forces).[44] According to Tarek Osman, the experience of seeing his predecessor assassinated "right in front of him" and his lengthy military career—which was longer than those of Nasser or Sadat—may have instilled in him more focus and absorption with security than seemed the case with the latter heads of state. Mubarak sought advice and confidence not in leading ministers, senior advisers or leading intellectuals, but from his security chiefs—"interior ministers, army commanders, and the heads of the ultra-influential intelligence services."[45] All through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, violations of human rights by the security services in Egypt were described as "systematic" by Amnesty International.[46] In 2007, Amnesty International reported that the Egyptian police routinely engaged in "beatings, electric shocks, prolonged suspension by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions, death threats and sexual abuse".[46] The state remained large under Mubarak employing 8 million people out of a population of 75 million.[46]

Because of his positions against Islamic fundamentalism and his diplomacy towards Israel, Mubarak was the target of repeated assassination attempts. According to the BBC, Mubarak survived six attempts on his life.[47] In June 1995, there was an alleged assassination attempt involving noxious gases and Egyptian Islamic Jihad while Mubarak was in Ethiopia for a conference of the Organization of African Unity.[48] He was also reportedly injured by a knife-wielding assailant in Port Said in September 1999.[49]

[/url]
Mubarak in West Berlin in 1989

Gulf War of 1991
Egypt was a member of the allied coalition during the 1991 Gulf War; Egyptian infantry were some of the first to land in Saudi Arabia to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.[50] Egypt's participation in the war solidified its central role in the Arab World and brought financial benefits for the Egyptian government.[50] Reports that sums of up to US$20 billion worth of debt forgiven were published in the news media.[50] According to The Economist:

Quote:The programme worked like a charm: a textbook case, says the [International Monetary Fund]. In fact, luck was on Hosni Mubarak's side; when the US was hunting for a military alliance to force Iraq out of Kuwait, Egypt's president joined without hesitation. After the war, his reward was that America, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Europe forgave Egypt around $20 billion of debt.[51]

Iraqi stamp about the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Cooperation_Council]Arab Cooperation Council (ACC), founded 1989 by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of (North) Yemen, King Hussein of Jordan and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq

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

[pbrower2a]

Mario Augusto Bunge (/ˈbʊŋɡeɪ/;[4] Spanish: [ˈbuŋxe]; September 21, 1919 – February 25, 2020) was an Argentine philosopher of science and physicist who was mainly active in Canada.

Bunge was a prolific intellectual, having written more than 400 papers and 80 books, notably his monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy in eight volumes (1974–1989), a comprehensive and rigorous study of those philosophical aspects Bunge takes to be the core of modern philosophy: semantics, ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science and ethics.[9] Here, Bunge develops a comprehensive scientific outlook which he then applies to the various natural and social sciences.


His thinking embodies global systemism, emergentism, rationalism, scientific realism, materialism and consequentialism. Bunge has repeatedly and explicitly denied being a logical positivist,[10] and has written on metaphysics.[11]

An inspection of his work allows one to identify a variety of scientists and philosophers who have influenced his thought in one way or another. Among those thinkers, Bunge has explicitly acknowledged the direct influence of his own father, the Argentine physician Augusto Bunge, the Czech physicist Guido Beck, the Argentine mathematician Alberto González Domínguez, the Argentine 
mathematician, physicist and computer scientist Manuel Sadosky, the Italian sociologist and psychologist Gino Germani, the American sociologist Robert King Merton, and the French-Polish epistemologist Émile Meyerson.[5] In the political arena, Bunge has defined himself as a "left-wing liberal" and democratic socialist, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill and José Ingenieros. He was also a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which advocates for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.[12]

Popularly, he is known for his remarks considering psychoanalysis as an example of pseudoscience.[13] He has also freely criticized the ideas of well known scientists and philosophers such as Karl Popper, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Daniel Dennett.[14]
In his review of Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist,[5] James Alcock sees in Bunge "a man of exceedingly high confidence who has lived his life guided by strong principles about truth, science, and justice" and one who is "[impatient] with muddy thinking".[14]

Mario Bunge was distinguished with twenty-one honorary doctorates and four honorary professorships by universities from both the Americas and Europe.[15] Bunge was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1984–) and of the Royal Society of Canada (1992–), and he is in the Science Hall of Fame of the AAAS.[16] In 1982 he was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Prince of Asturias Award), in 2009 the Guggenheim Fellowship,[9][8] and in 2014 the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking.[16][17]


Popularly, he is known for his remarks considering psychoanalysis as an example of pseudoscience.[13] He has also freely criticized the ideas of well known scientists and philosophers such as Karl Popper, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Daniel Dennett.[14]

In his review of Between Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Philosopher-Scientist,[5] James Alcock sees in Bunge "a man of exceedingly high confidence who has lived his life guided by strong principles about truth, science, and justice" and one who is "[impatient] with muddy thinking".[14]

Awards
Mario Bunge was distinguished with twenty-one honorary doctorates and four honorary professorships by universities from both the Americas and Europe.[15] Bunge was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1984–) and of the Royal Society of Canada (1992–), and he is in the Science Hall of Fame of the AAAS.[16] In 1982 he was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias (Prince of Asturias Award), in 2009 the Guggenheim Fellowship,[9][8] and in 2014 the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Award in Complexity Thinking.[16][17]

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

[pbrower2a]

No -- I do not accept his claimed age of 122, even if it is 'only' a few days longer than that of the late Jeanne Calment. If his connection to Mohandas Gandhi is valid, then he is of interest just for that -- and being one of the last to testify about that great man from personal experience and participation.

Pandit Sudhakar Chaturvedi (Kannada: ಸುಧಾಕರ್ ಚತುರ್ವೇದಿ) (died 27 February 2020)[1][2] was an Indian Vedic scholar, Indologist, and supercentenarian. At the claimed age of 122 years, 313 days, some Indian newspapers reported him as the oldest Indian ever.[3][4]

Pandit Chaturvedi was reportedly born on 20 April 1897 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India[3][5][6] (or in Kyatsandra in Tumkur district, Karnataka state[7] according to one report).[8] One report also claimed an age of 121 in 2011, which would put his birth in 1890.[9]

Pandit Chaturvedi was given his title "Chaturvedi", which literally means "master of the four Vedas," for his knowledge of the Vedas.[3][10] He was a disciple of Swami Shraddhanand at Gurukul Kangri in Haridwar, where he got his Veda Vachaspati degree (equivalent to a postgraduate degree).[5]
Pandit Chaturvedi was a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he first met when studying the Vedas in a gurukula in northern India. Subsequently, he became an ardent follower of Gandhian methods.[11] He was a witness to many events in the Indian independence movement, including being an eyewitness to the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.[5][10][12][13][14] He was known as Gandhi's Postman, as he took down and delivered letters dictated by Gandhi addressed to the Viceroys or Governors-General.[6][10][15] Gandhi called him 'Karnataki'.[16] He lost the use of his right arm in 1938 while travelling with Gandhi, when the railwayman detached the last three compartments of the train as it was struggling to climb uphill. He took part in the freedom struggle[17] and was arrested at least 31 times during the freedom struggle,[3][6][10][13][15][18] landing in prisons all over the country from Peshawar to Vellore.[5]

He was offered the post of minister in the old Mysore state by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, which he turned down.[5] He also campaigned for the unification of the state.[19]

In his later life, he became a follower of Dayanand Saraswati of the Arya Samaj.[3] He adopted[3] a man named Arya Mitra[20] as his son, and had three grandchildren.[20] He never married:[5][20]

Quote:"My youth was spent in the struggle. By the time we got freedom [in 1947], I was over 50 years. Who would give me a girl then?"

Pandit Chaturvedi was the first teacher of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.[10][21][22][23] In 2011 he took part in the India Against Corruption campaign.[17] He lived in Jayanagar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.[3][7] and in 2010 stated he was still working for eight hours every day.[6] This included an hour-long lecture he gave on the Vedas every Saturday.[3][20][24] He woke up at 3 am[20] or 3:30,[3][15] going to bed by 7 pm.[20] He advised people to "follow the instructions in the Vedas and a happy life awaits you." He practiced a strict vegetarian diet.[3][15] He said he wanted to live to 300.[6][9][15][18]
Pandit Chaturvedi died on 27 February 2020, at the claimed age of 122.[25]

He was honoured by Motilal Banarsidass for his contributions to Indology, when it celebrated its centenary in 2003.[26] The Karnataka Sahitya Anuvada Academy gave him an honorary award for 2007–08.[27] In 2009 he was given a "Socio Economic Development Teacher Award", by the Sri Kashi Sesha Sastri Charitable Trust.[14] He was honoured by his alma mater, Gurukul Kangri university, in 2010.[28] In 2010 he was given a "Living Legend" Award by IDL Foundation at a public function where he pledged to donate his eyes.[6][18][29] In March 2011 he was gifted a wheelchair by the IDL Foundation, sponsored by Lokayukta Santosh Hegde[10][13][15][30] and began to use it.[17] On Republic Day in 2010, he was felicitated by the Governor of Karnataka.[31]

Pandit Chaturvedi has written over 40 books in the Kannada language and, as of 2008, was working on the publication of Vedic texts in 20 volumes.[27] He was also announced in 2002 to be heading a project of the Arya Samaj to publish a 30,000-page treatise in Kannada on Veda Bhashya,[32] and by 2009, three of the four Vedas and six volumes of the Rig Veda were released.[33]

He was the moving spirit behind the Bangalore Arya Samaj, which published the Kannada monthly magazine Veda Taranga.

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

(Comment: some religious bodies have the habit of giving a promising scholar the identity of someone already deceased. Thus a promising young scholar might succeed a recently-deceased scholar and assume his name and key attributes, including his age and aspects of his biography. Thus a 23-year-old scholar suddenly ages to the age of the admired decedent and becomes much older. 

On the other hand, if he could be associated reliably with a census report from about 1900 in British India... 

What Wikipedia has to say:

  

Quote:

• The first two cases of people Guinness acknowledged as having reached 113 have now been discredited.[citation needed]
  
  
• The first three cases of people Guinness acknowledged as having reached 114 are no longer considered verified.[citation needed]
  
  
• Three people previously regarded by Guinness or the Gerontology Research Group as having reached 116 are no longer considered verified.[citation needed]
  
  
  

In numerous editions from the 1960s through the 1980s, Guinness stated that

Quote:No single subject is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood, and deliberate fraud than the extremes of human longevity.[6]

Despite demographic evidence of the known extremes of modern longevity, stories in otherwise reliable sources still surface regularly, stating that these extremes have been exceeded. Responsible, modern, scientific validation of human longevity requires investigation of records following an individual from birth to the present (or to death); purported longevity far outside the demonstrated records regularly fail such scrutiny.
Actuary Walter G. Bowerman stated that ill-founded longevity assertions originate mainly in remote, underdeveloped regions, among non-literate peoples, with only family testimony available as evidence.[7] This means that people living in areas of the world with historically more comprehensive resources for record-keeping have tended to hold more claims to longevity, regardless of whether or not individuals in other parts of the world have lived longer.

In the transitional period of record-keeping, records tend to exist for the wealthy and upper-middle classes, but are often spotty and nonexistent for the middle classes and the poor. In the United States, birth registration did not begin in Mississippi until 1912 and was not universal until 1933. Hence, in many longevity cases, no actual birth record exists. This type of case is classified by gerontologists as "partially validated".[citation needed]

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

[pbrower2a]

Freeman John Dyson FRS (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.[7][8] He was professor emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College[9] and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.[10]


Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson's transform, a fundamental technique in additive number theory,[11] which he developed as part of his proof of Mann's theorem;[12] the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson's eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy.

Dyson believed global warming is caused by increased carbon dioxide through burning fossil fuels but that some of the effects of this are favourable and not taken into account by climate scientists, such as increased agricultural yield. He was skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority.

Much more at Wikipedia

[Marypoza]

RlP Rev Daniel Berrigan. I met him once @ a demonstration where he was a speaker. I told him he gave a gr8 talk & he did. Very dynamic speaker

[pbrower2a]

Business executive Jack Welch, who transformed General Electric during his tenure as CEO, has died. He was 84.


“Today is a sad day for the entire GE family. Jack was larger than life and the heart of GE for half a century,” said current CEO Larry Culp in a statement to Barron’s. “He reshaped the face of our company and the business world. Jack was a strong and constant influence throughout my career despite never having worked directly for him.”

Culp said Welch remained committed to GE’s success long after his retirement. “He will be deeply missed by me and the entire GE team.”

Welch led General Electric (ticker: GE)—the company founded, in part, by Thomas Edison in 1892—for about 20 years, starting in April 1981 and retiring in September 2001. Under his leadership, GE stock returned almost 25% a year, on average, about 8 percentage points better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same span.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/jack-we...1583158116

[Eric the Green]

(02-29-2020, 07:25 PM)Marypoza Wrote: RlP Rev Daniel Berrigan. I met him once @ a demonstration where he was a speaker. I told him he gave a gr8 talk & he did. Very dynamic speaker

Died in 2016.

Daniel Joseph Berrigan SJ (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
Like many others during the 1960s, Berrigan's active protest against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, but it was his participation in the Catonsville Nine that made him famous.[1][2] It also landed him on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "most wanted list" (the first-ever priest on the list),[3] on the cover of Time magazine,[4] and in prison.[5] His own particular form of militancy and radical spirituality in the service of social and political justice was significant enough,[6] at that time, to "shape the tactics of resistance to the Vietnam War" in the United States.[5]
For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States' leading anti-war activists.[7] In 1980, he founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight.[8] He was also an award-winning and prolific author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator.[5] He, along with his activist brother Philip Berrigan, was nominated in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize by 1976 laureate Mairead Maguire.


On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan (above), his brother Philip, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares Movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts.[1]

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

[Marypoza]

(03-02-2020, 11:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-29-2020, 07:25 PM)Marypoza Wrote: RlP Rev Daniel Berrigan. I met him once @ a demonstration where he was a speaker. I told him he gave a gr8 talk & he did. Very dynamic speaker

Died in 2016.

Daniel Joseph Berrigan SJ (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.
Like many others during the 1960s, Berrigan's active protest against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, but it was his participation in the Catonsville Nine that made him famous.[1][2] It also landed him on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "most wanted list" (the first-ever priest on the list),[3] on the cover of Time magazine,[4] and in prison.[5] His own particular form of militancy and radical spirituality in the service of social and political justice was significant enough,[6] at that time, to "shape the tactics of resistance to the Vietnam War" in the United States.[5]
For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States' leading anti-war activists.[7] In 1980, he founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight.[8] He was also an award-winning and prolific author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator.[5] He, along with his activist brother Philip Berrigan, was nominated in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize by 1976 laureate Mairead Maguire.


On September 9, 1980, Daniel Berrigan (above), his brother Philip, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares Movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts.[1]

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

-- oh shit a friend just sent me his obit, l thought it was recent. sorry

[pbrower2a]

Bobbie Battista, one of the first anchors on CNN Headline News:

Barbara Ann "Bobbie" Battista (July 23, 1952 – March 3, 2020) was an American journalist and a prominent newscaster on CNN. During her 20-year career with the cable news company, Battista anchored numerous programs on CNN, CNN Headline News, and CNN International.[2][3][4]

After beginning her career at a radio station in Raleigh, North Carolina, she moved on to be an anchor, reporter and producer with WRAL-TV; she was the writer and assistant producer for the 1981 documentary Fed up with Fear, which won a Peabody Award.[5] On November 17, 2006, Battista returned to WRAL to co-anchor a special "reunion" newscast celebrating the station's 50th anniversary.[6]


With CNN, Battista was one of the original anchors on the CNN Headline News station,[5] and then moved to the main network in 1988, where she served as host of numerous daily and regularly scheduled shows as well as handling anchor and reporting duties. She anchored CNN WorldDay, CNN NewsDay, CNN NewsHour, CNN Daybreak (during the Gulf War), CNN PrimeNews, and CNN WorldNews. During that time, she also reported on historic events including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the Gulf War, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. Battista also hosted a regular program CNNI World News (1600 CET) on the CNN International network since 1992, when CNN/US show CNN WorldDay was canceled due to expanding of CNN Morning News. Her unique style was often parodied on Saturday Night Live.[2][3][7] She was also very popular in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, while she anchored HLN.[citation needed]
In 1998, Battista was named as the host of the first multi-platform interactive talk show, TalkBack Live, which ran for an hour on weekday afternoons. Battista left CNN after the merger of CNN's parent company, Time Warner, with America Online in 2001. She joined her husband John Brimelow's firm, Atamira Communications, and has provided strategic counsel to a wide range of Fortune 500 companies. Battista remained active in television and was a member of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).[8][9][10]

In 2009, Battista made periodic, part-time contributions to ONN; the Onion News Network, her first report was released in February 2009.[2]

Battista, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, was also in the process of starting a new video production company focusing on reality television programming.[2][11] In 2014, Battista began hosting "On the Story" on Georgia Public Broadcasting.[citation needed]

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

[pbrower2a]

Javier Felipe Ricardo Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra KCMG (/ˈpɛrɛs də ˈkweɪjɑː/;[1] Spanish: [xaˈβjeɾ ˈperez ðe ˈkweʝaɾ][2]; January 19, 1920 – March 4, 2020)[3][4] was a Peruvian politician and diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. He ran unsuccessfully against Alberto Fujimori for President of Peru in 1995 and following Fujimori's resignation over corruption charges, he was Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs from November 2000 until July 2001. In September 2004, he stepped down from his position as Peru's Ambassador to France, where he formerly resided. He was also a member of the Club de Madrid, a group of more than 100 former Presidents and Prime Ministers of democratic countries, which works to strengthen democracy worldwide.[5] At the age of 100 years, 45 days, at the time of his death in March 2020 Pérez de Cuéllar was both the oldest living former Peruvian prime minister and Secretary General of the United Nations.

Pérez de Cuéllar joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940 and the diplomatic service in 1944, serving subsequently as Secretary at Peru's embassy in France, where he met and married his first wife, Yvette Roberts (died Lisbon, 2013). He also held posts in the United Kingdom, Bolivia, and Brazil, and later served as ambassador to Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Venezuela. From his first marriage, he has a son, Francisco, born in Paris, and a daughter, Águeda Cristina, born in London.[citation needed]


He was a junior member of the Peruvian delegation to the first session of the General Assembly, which convened in London in 1946, and a member of the delegations to the 25th through 30th sessions of the Assembly. In 1971, he was appointed permanent representative of Peru to the United Nations, and he led his country's delegation to all sessions of the Assembly from then until 1975.[citation needed]

In 1973 and 1974, he represented his country in the Security Council, serving as its President at the time of the events in Cyprus in July 1974. On September 18, 1975, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Cyprus – a post he held until December 1977, when he rejoined the Peruvian Foreign Service. On October 29, 1975, in Cyprus, Mr. Pérez de Cuéllar married his second wife, the former Marcela Temple Seminario (August 14, 1933,[8] – July 3, 2013)[9][10] with whom he had no children.

On February 27, 1979, he was appointed as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs. From April 1981, while still holding this post, he acted as the Secretary-General's Personal Representative on the situation relating to Afghanistan. In that capacity, he visited Pakistan and Afghanistan in April and August of that year in order to continue the negotiations initiated by the Secretary-General some months earlier.[citation needed]





On December 31, 1981, Pérez de Cuéllar succeeded Kurt Waldheim as Secretary-General and was re-elected for a second term in October 1986. During his two terms, he led mediations between Great Britain and Argentina in the aftermath of the Falklands War and promoted the efforts of the Contadora Group to bring peace and stability to Central America. He also interceded in the negotiations for the independence of Namibia, the conflict in Western Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the war between Croatian forces seeking independence and the Yugoslav People's Army as well as local Serb forces, and the Cyprus issue. In 1986 he presided over an international arbitration committee that ruled [11] on the Rainbow Warrior incident between New Zealand and France. In 1983 he initiated the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in order to unite countries to pursue sustainable development.[citation needed]



Shortly before the end of his second term, he rejected an unofficial request by members of the Security Council to reconsider his earlier decision not to run for a third term, shortened to two years, as a search for his successor had not, as of then, yielded a consensus candidate.[citation needed] A suitable candidate, Boutros Boutros Ghali of Egypt, was agreed upon in late December 1991, and his second term as Secretary-General concluded, as scheduled, on December 31, 1991.

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Pérez de Cuéllar in 2008

On July 22, 2005, Pérez de Cuéllar suffered a heart attack and was admitted to a hospital in Paris; he was released on July 30. On June 19, 2017, with a lifespan of 35,581 days he surpassed [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Solf_y_Muro]Alfredo Solf y Muro (1872–1969) in terms of longevity and had the longest life of any Prime Minister in Peru's history.
Pérez de Cuéllar died in Lima on March 4, 2020, at age 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_P%C...%C3%A9llar

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Joseph Henri Richard (February 29, 1936 – March 6, 2020) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who played centre with the Montreal Canadiens in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1955 to 1975. He was the brother of Canadiens legend and fellow Hockey Hall of Famer Maurice Richard. Fifteen years younger and three inches shorter, he was given the nickname "The Pocket Rocket". Henri won 11 Stanley Cups as a player, the most in NHL history. In 2017 Richard was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.[1]

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Henri Richard signing autographs in 2011

The two Richard brothers' style of play was quite different. While Maurice shot left (left hand lower on the stick), Henri shot right. Maurice played right wing and Henri played centre. Henri led the league in assists in 1957–58 and 1962–63, a feat never matched by Maurice though the latter had led the league in goals five times. Lastly, Henri totaled over 1,000 points, a mark never reached by Maurice.
Henri won 11 Stanley Cups as a player, the most in NHL history. Former teammate and predecessor as team captain Jean Béliveau has 17 Stanley Cup titles, but only 10 as a player (the other 7 as an executive. Yvan Cournoyer also has 10 Stanley Cup titles.[citation needed] Only one other athlete in North American professional sports has achieved winning eleven championships in his respective league—Bill Russell of the NBA's Boston Celtics.[citation needed]

In 1957–58, he was named to the First All-Star Team and in 1959 he was named to the Second All-Star Team. In his career, he scored 358 goals and earned 688 assists in 1,256 games. His 1,256 regular-season games played in a Canadiens uniform are a franchise record.[citation needed]

He scored the Stanley Cup clinching goal at the 2:20 mark of the first overtime of Game Six in the 1966 Stanley Cup Finals against the Detroit Red Wings.[citation needed] In the 1971 Stanley Cup Finals, Richard scored the game-tying and Stanley Cup-winning goals in Game Seven against the Chicago Black Hawks.[citation needed]

He was named [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_(hockey)]captain of the Canadiens in 1971 until his retirement in 1975, after his team was eliminated in the playoffs by the Buffalo Sabres. He always wore the number 16, which was retired on December 10, 1975 by the Canadiens in his honour. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979. In 1998, he was ranked number 29 on The Hockey News' list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players. He would later serve as an ambassador for the Canadiens' organization. In 2015, it was announced that Richard had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.[2] He died on March 6, 2020 at the age of 84, in Laval, Quebec.[3]

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

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NEW YORK (AP) — McCoy Tyner, the groundbreaking and influential jazz pianist and the last surviving member of the John Coltrane Quartet, has died. He was 81.

Tyner’s family confirmed the death in a statement released on social media Friday. No more details were provided.

“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of jazz legend, Alfred “McCoy” Tyner. McCoy was an inspired musician who devoted his life to his art, his family and his spirituality,” the statement read. “McCoy Tyner’s music and legacy will continue to inspire fans and future talent for generations to come.”


Tyner was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, 1938. He eventually met Coltrane and joined him for the 1961 album “My Favorite Things,” a major commercial success that highlighted the remarkable chemistry of the John Coltrane Quartet. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

The quartet would go on to release more revered projects, becoming an international renowned group and one of the seminal acts in jazz history.

Tyner eventually found success apart from the John Coltrane Quartet, releasing more than 70 albums. He also won five Grammy Awards.

In 2002, he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

https://apnews.com/1bba11e86d46f349ca677c8a331bb35c

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Max von Sydow, actor


Max von Sydow (/vɒn ˈsiːdoʊ/ von SEE-doh;[1][a] born Carl Adolf von Sydow; 10 April 1929 – 8 March 2020)[2] was a Swedish-born actor who appeared in European and American films. Von Sydow featured in more than 100 films and TV series.[3] His most memorable film roles include Knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), the earliest of 11 films he made with Bergman, which includes iconic scenes in which his character plays chess with Death.[4]


He also played Jesus Christ in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and also appeared in William Friedkin's The Exorcist, David Lynch's Dune (1984), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990), Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002), Julian Schnabel's, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010). He later appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and in HBO's Game of Thrones as Three-eyed Raven, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Throughout his long career he received two Academy Award nominations for his performances in Pelle the Conqueror (1987) and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011).

Von Sydow received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, was made a [i]Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres[/i] in 2005, and was named a [i]Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur[/i] on 17 October 2012. Von Sydow became a French citizen after his second marriage.

In 1955, von Sydow moved to Malmö, where he met his mentor, Ingmar Bergman. His first work with Bergman occurred on stage at the Malmö Municipal Theatre, and he would eventually work with Bergman on eleven films including The Seventh Seal ([i]Det sjunde inseglet[/i], 1957), Wild Strawberries ([i]Smultronstället[/i], 1957) and The Virgin Spring ([i]Jungfrukällan[/i], 1960). In The Seventh Seal, von Sydow is the knight who plays a chess game with Death. The chess scenes and the film were international breakthroughs for actor and director alike.


Critical recognition came as early as 1954 when he was awarded the Royal Foundation Culture Award. He worked profusely on both stage and screen while in Scandinavia, resisting the increasing calls from the United States to go to Hollywood. After being seen in Bergman's Academy Award-winning films and having been first choice for the title role of Dr. No (1962), von Sydow finally traveled to America after agreeing to star in the film which led to much greater recognition, in the role of Jesus in George Stevens's all-star epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). As his talents were soon in demand for other American productions, von Sydow and his family relocated for some time to Los Angeles. From 1965, he became a regular on the American screen while maintaining a presence in his native Sweden. He appeared in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1969), and gave a powerful, quiet performance in Jan Troell's acclaimed The Emigrants (1971), one of several films in which von Sydow acted alongside Liv Ullmann. Though often typecast as a villain, he was rewarded in the United States with two Golden Globe nominations, for Hawaii (1966) and The Exorcist (1973). In the mid-1970s, he moved to Rome and appeared in a number of Italian films, becoming friendly with another screen legend, Marcello Mastroianni. In the U.S., von Sydow played a memorably professional Alsatian assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), a role which won him the KCFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he appeared in Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Strange Brew (1983), David Lynch's Dune (1984), and Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). In 1985, he was a member of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival.[10] He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Danish film Pelle the Conqueror (1987), which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Von Sydow has since won the Australian Film Institute's Best Actor Award for his title role in Father (1989), the Guldbagge Best Director Award for his only directorial foray, Katinka ([i]Ved vejen[/i], 1988), based on a novel by Herman Bang, and the Best Actor Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival for The Silent Touch [pl] ([i]Dotknięcie ręki[/i], 1993). He received international acclaim for his performance as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Knut Hamsun in Jan Troell's biopic Hamsun. He received his third Swedish Guldbagge and his second Danish Bodil for his depiction of a character often described as his King Lear. Also in 1993, he appeared as Leland Gaunt in Needful Things. In 1996, he starred in Liv Ullmann's Private Confessions ([i]Enskilda samtal[/i]). Back in Hollywood, he appeared in What Dreams May Come (1998).

He was acclaimed for his role as an elderly lawyer in Scott Hicks's Snow Falling on Cedars. In 2002, Sydow had one of his largest commercial successes, co-starring with Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's science fiction thriller Minority Report. In 2003, he played mentor character Eyvind in the European TV adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelung saga. The show set ratings records and was released in the US as Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. In 2007, Sydow starred in the box-office hit Rush Hour 3. He followed that with Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

Von Sydow appeared in Showtime's drama series The Tudors, in which he portrayed Otto, Cardinal Truchsess von Waldburg, a German-born clergyman who tries to organize the defeat of King Henry VIII. He also appeared in Martin Scorsese's 2010 film adaptation of Shutter Island and Ridley Scott's 2010 adaptation of Robin Hood, playing Robin's blind stepfather Sir Walter Loxley.[11]
Von Sydow voices Esbern in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released on 11 November 2011. He narrated the initial teaser trailer for the game.[12][13]

In April 2013, von Sydow was honored at the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) Festival in Hollywood, with screenings of two of his classic films, Three Days of the Condor and The Seventh Seal.[14]

In March 2014, von Sydow guest-starred in the animated sitcom The Simpsons, and in 2015, he had a role in the sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens.[15] In 2016, he joined the HBO series Game of Thrones in Season 6 as the Three-eyed Raven.[16]
In 2017, von Sydow joined the cast of Thomas Vinterberg's film Kursk, based on the true story of the submarine accident.[17]

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

[Eric the Green]

I didn't know that Rosalind P Walter, the ubiquitous financier of many public television programs I have seen, was Rosie the Riveter!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_P._Walter

Rosalind P. Walter (née Palmer; June 25, 1924 – March 4, 2020) was an American philanthropist and humanities advocate who was best known for her late 20th and early 21st century support for public television programming across the United States. She also contributed to the improvement of educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth and the protection of wildlife and open space areas.

During World War II, she inspired the creation of "Rosie the Riveter", a song about civilian women employed in the war industry which was penned by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb and popularized by Kay Kyser and The Four Vagabonds.

[sbarrera]

Mart Crowley (August 21, 1935 -  March 7, 2020)

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cul...84-964742/

Mart Crowley , Groundbreaking ‘The Boys in the Band’ Playwright, Dead at 84
Watershed play was one of the first to portray gay life when it opened Off-Broadway in April 1968
By 
JERRY PORTWOOD 
Mart Crowley — best known for penning The Boys in the Band, a play about a group of gay and bisexual friends in New York City — has died at age 84. The playwright died Saturday night in Manhattan of complications from heart surgery, according to friend David Cuthbert, via the New York Times.

The Boys in the Band was one of the first plays to portray gay life when it opened Off-Broadway in April 1968. “I went to see Boys in the Band several times,” playwright Edward Albee says in the 2011 documentary Making the Boys. “And more and more I saw an audience there of straights who were so happy to be able to see people they didn’t have to respect.” It later became a film in 1970 directed by William Friedkin.

Although still groundbreaking in how it depicted gay men as complex protagonists rather than deviants or villains, it hit cinemas after the 1969 Stonewall Riots and was criticized by many for its portrayal of the men as self-loathing and stereotypical.

“The first time, we would take anyone who would do it; we were beating the bushes [for actors],” Crowley told Broadway.com in 2019. “It was very different back then. You could get arrested for doing the things they do in this play. It was quite awful and ridiculous and demeaning. Naturally, everybody’s agent told them not to do this play. We offered the roles and many turned it down. Agents said it was a career killer.”

Crowley wrote several other plays, including a sequel, The Men From the Boys (2002), and worked on the television series Hart to Hart. He was also a close friend of Natalie Wood (he was her assistant while she was filming 1957’s West Side Story) and other Hollywood stars of the era, a time when it was still criminal to be known as a homosexual.

“I got very friendly with all the dancers who were gay [in West Side Story],” he explained in an interview last year. “We all got into comic drag one night — nothing serious. Suddenly, there were whistles and police invaded a private home in West Hollywood and they arrested us. That’s just the way it was. We spent the night in jail. We were offered one phone call, and I called Natalie. Her lawyer got us all out in time for the guys to show up at the studio to film a dance number. I don’t know how they had the stamina to do it. I stumbled home and slept through the day.”

The pioneering The Boys in the Band retained its power for generations, receiving multiple Off-Broadway and critically lauded regional productions. In 2018, 50 years after its premiere, it finally earned a Broadway staging, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Andrew Rannells, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer and others. The production won a Tony for Best Revival of a Play and Netflix announced that it’s making a new movie adaption with members of the Broadway cast.

Playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick shared a tribute via Twitter, stating: “RIP Mart Crowley … He was justly acclaimed, ignorantly attacked and finally given his due. He dissected and celebrated gay lives, and as a person, he was funny, generous and brave. He got there first, and the theater is in his debt.”

Actor Andrew Rannells also wrote on Twitter: “Mart Crowley. Kind. Smart. Hilarious. Generous. I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent so much time with him. He will be greatly missed and always loved.”

Despite the play being a watershed moment in LGBTQ cultural history, Crowley never believed that it would be considered that revolutionary. “Everybody that knew me, my friends, they all thought I was going around the bend a bit when I’d tell them what I was working on,” he said. “I just kept going. I had faith in something, I don’t know what it was — myself, I hope. I finally typed ‘The End’ and put it on my arm and came to New York with it.”

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Charles Wuorinen, composer:

NEW YORK (AP) — Charles Wuorinen, winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music and composer of the operas “Brokeback Mountain” and “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” died from injuries sustained in a fall last September. He was 81.

Wuorinen, who composed more than 270 works, died Wednesday at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, spokeswoman Aleba Gartner said Thursday.

Known for much of his career as an admirer of the 12-tone system of composition, Wuorinen was opinionated.

“We have a world in which the instant response of the untutored becomes the sole criterion for judgment,″ he told The New York Times in 1988, ahead of his 50th birthday. “A great work like a Beethoven symphony becomes like a blob of toothpaste. There is the bored orchestra. There are the indifferent audiences. They wait it through. They applaud. They leave.”

https://apnews.com/8deb0cdf5291f86b6aecae56556369b3

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Good riddance!


Nasser Shabani (Persian: ناصر شعبانی‎; died March 13, 2020) was an Iranian general and senior commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He took credit for using Houthi rebels to target Saudi oil tankers.[1]

Shabani began his military career in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq War.[2] He participated in suppressing the Amol uprising the same year. In the final year of the Iran-Iraq War, he was promoted to become one of several fronts of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He played a key role in Operation Mersad, and later wrote several books about the war. In 2011, he succeeded the president of the university of Imam Hussein and became one of the deputies of the Tharallah camp.[3]

In 2018, he stated in Iranian state media that the IRGC ordered the Houthi forces in Yemen to attack two Saudi oil tankers on the Bab al-Mandab strait.

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

COVID-19 has performed one great service to Humanity!

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Stuart Whitman, actor:

Stuart Maxwell Whitman (February 1, 1928 – March 16, 2020[1]) was an American film and television actor, known for his lengthy career in both media. Whitman played major roles in a large variety of genres. Some of these credits include the dramatic The Mark for which he was nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards, the Western film The Comancheros (1961), the aviation comedy Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), or the cult horror Night of the Lepus (1972). On television, Whitman is known for roles in Highway Patrol (1955–1957), Cimarron Strip (1967), and Superboy (1988–1992). Whitman was born in San Francisco, and raised in New York until the age of twelve. His family relocated to Los Angeles. Whitman finished high school in 1945, and was honorably discharged from the United States Army in the Corps of Engineers in 1948. Afterwards, Whitman started studying acting and appearing in plays. In 1951, he had bit roles in the films Rudolph Maté's When Worlds Collide and Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. Until 1957, Whitman had a streak working in mostly bit parts in films directed by notable directors. On television Whitman guest starred in series such as Dr. Christian, The Roy Rogers Show, Death Valley Days and also had a recurring role on Highway Patrol. This led Whitman to play one of the central roles in John H. Auer's Johnny Trouble.
In the late 1950s, 20th Century Fox was on a drive to develop new talent. Head of production Buddy Adler chose Whitman to be one of the new names signed to Fox as part of a $3–4 million star-building program. For the next couple of years Whitman continued working with notable directors, but in the lead cast. These are William A. Wellman's Darby's Rangers (1958), Frank Borzage's China Doll (1958), Philip Dunne's Ten North Frederick (1958), Andrew L. Stone's The Decks Ran Red (1958), Don Siegel's Hound-Dog Man (1959), Richard Fleischer's These Thousand Hills (1959), Henry Koster's The Story of Ruth (1960), Stuart Rosenberg's directorial credit shared with Burt Balagan for Murder, Inc., Michael Curtiz's The Comancheros (1961), and Guy Green's The Mark (1961) for which he was nominated for Best Actor.
Whitman now an established actor, continued acting in both film and television from 1962 to 1972. While he continued working with notable directors, the films were met with variable degrees of success. His standout roles of that era were the all-star World War II epic The Longest Day (1962), René Clément's The Day and the Hour (1962), and Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965). The latter was a critically acclaimed British period comedy film about a race in the early days of aviation, released theatrically on 70 mm, and it was a success at the box office, and later on home video making it a classic. Whitman took the lead role in the western series Cimarron Strip which first aired in 1967. The show which had a major production budget and proved to be to be costly in contrast to its ratings was not renewed. In 1972, Whitman acted in the horror film Night of the Lepus. According to Whitman, the poor quality of the film put a dent in his reputation. From that point to 1987, Whitman would regularly appear on the major television show of that time period, some of these include The Streets of San Francisco, Love, American Style, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Knight Rider, Matt Houston, among many others. He acted in several episodes of the A-Team, S.W.A.T., Fantasy Island, and Murder, She Wrote. He appeared in television-films and mini-series such as The Pirate, Condominium, Once Upon a Texas Train, etc. During this time he appeared in many genre films including Fred Williamson's Mean Johnny Barrows, Jonathan Demme's Crazy Mama, several collaborations with director René Cardona Jr., etc. In 1988, aired the first season of Superboy, the comic book adaptation lasted until 1992. Until the very end, Whitman played Jonathan Kent, the superhero's adoptive father. In 1990, he was seen playing a recurring role in Knots Landing. During this time, he acted twice in two hour western specials . First was the 1993 debut of Bruce Campbell's The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. The second, in 1994, was Chuck Norris' Walker, Texas Ranger episode The Reunion. He was seen in several television films and series as well as the big screen for other projects until the year 2000, but was reported to be retired from acting after that.

More at Wikipedia

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Lyle Waggoner

Lyle Wesley Waggoner[1] (/ˈwæɡnər/; April 13, 1935 — March 17, 2020) was an American actor[2] and former model, known for his work on The Carol Burnett Show[2] from 1967 to 1974, and for playing the role of Steve Trevor and Steve Trevor Jr. on Wonder Woman from 1975 to 1979.[2]

Waggoner was born in Kansas City, Kansas, the son of Marie (Isern) and Myron Waggoner, and spent part of his childhood in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.[1][3] In 1953, he graduated from Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Missouri, and then studied briefly at Washington University in St. Louis. He then joined the United States Army, serving two years in West Germany as a radio operator.[4]
After his discharge, Waggoner studied mechanical engineering in the junior executive program at the General Motors Institute of Technology. He then sold encyclopedias door to door. He made his acting debut as a muscle man in a Kansas City production of Li'l Abner, after which he created a sales promotion organization that enabled him to make enough money to finance a trip to Los Angeles and start an acting career.[4]

By the mid-1960s, Waggoner was appearing regularly in television and films, including an episode of Gunsmoke. He was a finalist for the title role in the TV series version of Batman, but lost the role to Adam West.
In 1967, he appeared in Catalina Caper (with Tommy Kirk, a former child actor trying to restart his career as a young adult), a film which would eventually be lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also had a minor guest-starring role in the season-three episode "Deadliest of the Species" of the TV series Lost in Space.

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Waggoner and other cast members from [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carol_Burnett_Show]The Carol Burnett Show in 1967 (clockwise from the bottom): Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner (on the right, the 1977 cast)

Also in 1967, Waggoner began a seven-year stint on The Carol Burnett Show, a comedy sketch and variety show, on which he appeared as announcer and performer. In 1973, Waggoner became Playgirl's first male seminude centerfold. Waggoner left The Carol Burnett Show in 1974 in the hopes of advancing his career as a lead actor. His spot on the show was filled by frequent guest star Tim Conway (and his role as announcer by Ernie Anderson). He also appeared on some of the show's reunion TV specials.

In 1976, Waggoner was appointed "mayor" of Encino, California, by the local chamber of commerce. The "mayor" is not an actual government official; the post is an honorary "goodwill ambassador" position. In addition to Waggoner, other holders of the title include Steve Allen, Mike Connors, Fred Travalena, Ronnie Schell, and Cesare Danova.[5]

A year after leaving Carol Burnett, Waggoner landed the role of Steve Trevor for the pilot and first season of the television series Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter. Initially set during World War II, when the subsequent two seasons advanced the timeline to the 1970s, Waggoner played Steve Trevor, Jr.

Waggoner also appeared in several TV movies and minor motion pictures during the 1970s and 1980s, often cast for “hunk” appeal. He made guest appearances on numerous television series including Charlie's Angels, The San Pedro Beach Bums, Happy Days, Mork & Mindy, The Golden Girls, Ellen, and most recently The War at Home. Waggoner also played at least three roles on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Murder, She Wrote throughout their respective runs.

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

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Alfred Worden, astronaut, command module in the Apollo 15 lunar mission:

Alfred Merrill "Al" Worden (February 7, 1932 – March 18, 2020), (Col, USAF, Ret.), was an American astronaut and engineer who was the Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971. One of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon, he orbited it 74 times in the Command Module Endeavour.[1]

During Apollo 15's return flight to Earth, Worden performed an extravehicular activity to retrieve film cassettes from the exterior of the spacecraft, the command and service module. It was the first "deep space" EVA in history, at great distance from any planetary body. As of 2020, it remains one of only three such EVAs which have taken place, all during the Apollo program's J-missions.

Worden was one of the 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966.[7] He served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 9 flight and as backup Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 12 flight.[8][9]

Worden served as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 15, which flew from July 26 to August 7, 1971. His companions on the flight were David Scott, spacecraft commander, and James B. Irwin, Lunar Module Pilot.[10] Apollo 15 was the fourth crewed lunar landing mission and the first to visit and explore the Moon's Hadley Rille and Montes Apenninus which are located on the southeast edge of the Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).[11] Apollo 15's achievements include the largest payloads placed in Earth and lunar orbits at that time, the first scientific instrument module bay flown and operated on an Apollo spacecraft, the longest lunar surface stay at that time (the Apollo Lunar Module, Falcon, remained on ground for 66 hours and 54 minutes), the longest lunar surface stay to that point (Scott and Irwin logged 18 hours and 35 minutes each during three EVAs onto the lunar surface), the longest distance traversed on lunar surface at that time, the first use of the Lunar Roving Vehicle, the first use of a lunar surface navigation device (mounted on Rover-1), the first subsatellite launched in lunar orbit, and the first EVA from a command module during transearth coast.[citation needed]

Additionally, Worden has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Most isolated human being" during his time alone in the command module Endeavour. When the orbiting command module was at its greatest distance from Scott and Irwin in the Falcon, Worden was 2,235 miles (3,597 km) away from any other human beings.[12] Worden said he enjoyed his "three wonderful days in a spacecraft all by myself", including being out of contact with Earth while on the far side of the Moon, because he was used to being alone as a fighter pilot.[13][14]

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Worden (age 39) performing humanity's first deep-space EVA during Apollo 15's homeward journey (1971).

Scott and Irwin collected approximately 171 pounds (78 kg) of lunar surface materials on their three expeditions onto the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_surface]lunar surface, and Worden logged 38 minutes in extravehicular activity outside the Command Module Endeavour. In completing his three excursions to Endeavour's scientific instrument module bay, Worden retrieved film cassettes from the panoramic and mapping cameras, performing the first deep-space EVA,[15] and reported his personal observations of the general condition of equipment housed there. Apollo 15 concluded with a Pacific splashdown and subsequent recovery by USS Okinawa. In completing his space flight, Worden logged 295 hours and 11 minutes in space.[3]



Although the astronauts were allowed to choose the design for the patch, they were not allowed to put on the Roman numeral for 15 ("XV"). They got around this technicality by adding it to the Moon's surface in the background.[16]

He also received an Honorary Doctorate of Science in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1971.

During 1972–1973, Worden was Senior Aerospace Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, and from 1973 to 1975 he was chief of the Systems Study Division at Ames.[3] Between 1972 and 1975, he made seven guest appearances on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.[citation needed]



After retirement from NASA and active duty in 1975, Worden became President of Maris Worden Aerospace, Inc., and then became staff Vice President of Goodrich Aerospace in Brecksville, Ohio. Worden served as Chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation until 2011,[17] providing scholarships to exceptional science and engineering students. Worden is the last of the Apollo astronauts to have participated in the Kennedy Space Center's "Encounter with an Astronaut" program.[citation needed]



In 2011, Worden's memoir Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut's Journey to the Moon made the top 12 of the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list.


In 2017, Worden was also a contributor and wrote the foreword for the award-winning book A Quarter Million Steps by Dr. Anthony Paustian that looks at leadership using perspectives from the Apollo Program.

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