Legacy MattersFive months after disappearing while flying over the Nevada desert, Steve Fossett was declared dead by a Chicago court.
Dozens of planes and helicopters spent more than a month searching 20,000 square miles of the western Nevada mountains, one of the most remote and uninhabited regions of the US.
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Throughout his life Mr Fosset had set more than 90 aviation records in balloons, fixed-wing aircraft, gliders and airships and 23 sailing records. Some 60 still stand.
On his sixth attempt, in 2002, he became the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon - in one unsuccessful bid he plunged five miles into the sea off Australia.
Three years later made the first solo, non-stop, non-refuelled flight around the globe in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.
He also swam the English Channel, completed the Ironman Triathlon and the Iditarod dog sled race and climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Everest, however, eluded him.
Mr Fossett, who earned his fortune as a financial trader, broke the round-the-world sailing record by six days in 2004 and even set world records for cross-country skiing.
The Telegraph obituary
Steve Fossett, who has been declared dead aged 63, made his fortune on the Chicago futures exchange and embarked on a dogged campaign to break more world records than any other sportsman in history; he set 116 records in hot air balloons, sailing boats, gliders and powered aircraft, getting into numerous scrapes and surviving several brushes with death.
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He was known in Britain for his friendship with Sir Richard Branson, an erstwhile rival balloonist who became a co-sponsor.
Branson once described Fossett as "a loner: half-Forrest Gump, half android" and suggested that he was not so much interested in sport for its own sake as in testing the limits of his own endurance: "If there's an ocean to swim, he'll choose Christmas Day and it must be snowing and, if possible, the only day in the last decade when the channel ices over," Branson observed. "That's Steve for you."
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At some point in his thirties Fossett typed out a list of his lifetime sporting goals. These included swimming the English Channel, climbing the highest mountains on six continents, establishing eight world records in sailing, and flying non-stop around the world in a balloon. Once his business was firmly established he set out to tick items off the list. He achieved them all - and more. He became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Explorers' Club, and in 2002 won the Gold Medal of the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale.
David Monk, 46, went to the Alps for a weekend of skiing with some friends.
But first some drinking when they had the bright idea of sliding down the mountain. They had the bright idea of removing the foam crash barriers around one of the ski-lift supports to use as a makeshift sled.
They walked the piste, laid down their new sled, and barreled down the mountain, picking up speed until they came to a crashing dead stop against the barrier they had just denuded of its safety protection.
David was killed and his two friends gravely injured.
"He hit the post where the mat had been removed and that was it. It's terrible for his wife and two young kids.
"We tried to help him but the impact was too strong. He went into the gap where the padding was and hit his head.
He leaves a grieving wife and two teen-age sons.
How sad and useless.
Suicide bomber falls down stairs
A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.
It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah.
Yesterday's blast was in a busy market area of the eastern town of Khost, a deputy provincial police chief said.
The would-be attacker tripped as he was leaving a building apparently to target an opening ceremony for a mosque that was expected to be attended by Afghan and international military officials, said Sakhi Mir.
"Coming down the stairs, he fell down and exploded. Two civilian women and a man were wounded,'' Mir said.
Ace writes Dies of Embarrassment and Bomb Detonation, But Mostly Bomb Detonation
Suicide bomber falls down stairs
A WOULD-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.
It was the second such incident in two days, with another man killing himself and three others on Tuesday when his bomb-filled waistcoat exploded as he was putting it on in the southern town of Lashkar Gah.
Yesterday's blast was in a busy market area of the eastern town of Khost, a deputy provincial police chief said.
The would-be attacker tripped as he was leaving a building apparently to target an opening ceremony for a mosque that was expected to be attended by Afghan and international military officials, said Sakhi Mir.
"Coming down the stairs, he fell down and exploded. Two civilian women and a man were wounded,'' Mir said.
Ace writes ; Dies of Embarrassment and Bomb Detonation, But Mostly Bomb Detonation
Secret Funeral for 'Eleanor Rigby' pensioner after public appeal for mourners.
There had been fears that no one would come to Olive Archer's funeral.
But yesterday a small chapel was filled with remembrance and fond feelings as the 83-year-old was laid to rest.
Miss Archer, who died on December 20, never married, had no children, and spent her last five years without a single visitor at the Kington St Michael care home in Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Amid concern that her funeral would be like that of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, when "nobody came," church minister Reverend Akasha Lonsdale launched an appeal for friends and family that was highlighted in the Daily Mail.
Dozens of friends, relatives and well-wishers came forward and 16 were chosen to be at the Swindon service.
With societies aging and fewer children, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more funeral mourners are paid.
Such is the case in Taiwan where wailers are for hire to mourn the dead.
Re-enacting grief-stricken daughters, among the most emotive elements of a traditional funeral, professional mourners offer themselves for T$2,000 ($60) to T$3,000 per half day of singing, crying and crawling on the ground.
The phenomenon, which appears to date back to ancient Greek times, is not unique to Taiwan, where mourners for hire emerged in the 1970s largely to give funerals the somber atmosphere that shows the appropriate respect to deceased elders.
Peter Davi, an accomplished surfer, lived for monster waves and died in one off Ghost Trees, a Monterey County surf spot known for its "potent swells and dangerous conditions."
A friend and competitor professional surfer Tyler Smith said
the wave faces were as big as 60 to 70 feet, "almost as big as we've seen out there."
"It's super-sad, man. He was a gentle giant who surfed for his whole life."
Legendary surfer perishes in huge waves.
The Italian mob boss was on the run from the police since 1993.
When Daniele Emanuello, tried to flee a police raid on a farmhouse in Sicily where he had been hiding, he was shot and killed.
But not before he swallowed secret notes with names and telephone numbers.
Italy mob boss swallowed secrets before dying.
What do you make of two clowns shot dead at a circus in Cucuta, Columbia?
The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters. One of the clowns was killed instantly and the second died the next day in hospital.
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Local reports say the audience of about 20 people, mostly children, thought the shooting was part of the show before realizing both men had been killed.
It wouldn't be the first time. a clown was killed in Cucuta.
Last year, a prominent circus clown, known as Pepe, was also shot dead by a unknown assailant in Cucuta.
I don't think you'll see any more clowns in Cucuta in the near future.
From a review by Will Blythe entitled Food for the Soul. of Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison.
Note how he records his family's history before he goes, so the memory is not lost.
In Donald’s opening monologue, a rambling family history for the benefit of his children, recorded by Cynthia, his wife and teenage sweetheart, Donald announces, “It seems I’m to leave the earth early but these things happen to people.” His mind remains clear while his body becomes “desiccated road kill,” as K puts it. Barely able to swallow, he must sniff rather than taste a final meal of barbecued pork ribs. However, Donald doesn’t rage against the dying of the light, nor indulge in the deathbed histrionics of Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich. Dying seems to strike him as no more an aberration than birds returning to their roost at dusk. His mortality evokes the sense of a man going home at twilight, of — echoing the book’s lovely title — returning to earth. A luminous, sad calm pervades this novel.
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Donald’s dignified death is of a piece with his life (my father, a doctor, once said that in his experience people died as they lived, in character right to the end).
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This regal suicide marks only the halfway point of “Returning to Earth.” The novel’s subject now becomes an absence; Donald’s survivors must learn to negotiate the hole left in them by his departure. ... In treating the raggedy contours of grief, Harrison shows no patience with that banality known as “closure.” “There’s much talk about ‘healing’ these days before the blood is dry on the pavement,” Donald’s brother-in-law, David, complains.
For three years 47-year-old Canadian Robert Case campaigned to have regional officials remove a tree stump from Lake St. Clair calling it a dangerous hazard.
Last Friday he and a friend were driving their snowmobile on the ice of the great lake when Robert reached down to tie off a loose strap on the hood. He didn't see the stump in the snow when he struck it and was killed.
The regional authority said the responsibility over the beds of the Great Lakes was that of the provincial government.
Robert's wife, now a widow after 26 years of marriage, said
"I'm still trying to understand. This is the worst thing in my life. I lost my life.
"We didn't have much but we had each other. I'm so mad at ERCA."
I've set up a new category for particularly fitting deaths, people dying while they were doing what they loved.
Steve Erwin, the Australian conservationist who was fatally pierced by a stingray comes first to mind, so does the Snake king Ali Khan who died from a cobra bite.
Definitely in that category is Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun who died yesterday following a head injury he got while attending a Rolling Stones concert and 60th birthday party for former president Bill Clinton. He was 83.
From USA Today
By the 1960s, Ertegun was nurturing soul stars such as Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Wilson Pickett. He helped usher in the invasion of such British rockers as the Rolling Stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin, and oversaw an American pop explosion, with acts such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sonny and Cher, and Bette Midler. And the label is now home to such diverse acts as Missy Elliott, James Blunt, Stone Temple Pilots, Jewel, Death Cab for Cutie and Kid Rock.
Ertegun, who was born in Istanbul in 1923 and was the son of a Turkish diplomat, was a moving force in the founding of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1985 in Cleveland. He was himself inducted two years later, and its main exhibition hall is named for him. He never lost his passion for music. He was still chairman of Atlantic Records when he died.
From an interview he gave to Slate
Slate: What do you want for your legacy?
AE: I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.