Why does someone have to die? From the film The Hours (2002). Soundtrack by Phillip Glass.
"In memory of a very special person who died far too young!"
The audio plus a visual collage posted on YouTube by marjolein56 | 3 years ago | 53,294 views.
13 years old. My friend. (~1948-1961) Playing with another boy in his yard. He held a water hose, the other boy, a rifle. Gunshot wound.
~17 years Hersal Thomas (~1909-1926) Blues pianist and composer. Food poisoning, unclear circumstances.
17 3/4 years Richie Valens (1941-1959) American pop singer, song writer. Small (over-loaded) plane crashed.
20½ years Evariste Galois (1811-1832) French mathematician. He wrote down his mathematical ideas in notes made the night before the duel. Died from a bullet wound after a duel.
21 years Eddie Cochran (1938–1960) American rock and roll singer-songwriter, musician. Severe head injuries after his speeding taxi blew a tire, lost control, and crashed into a lamp post. Taxi driver at fault.
22 years Emmett Hardy (Emmett Louis Hardy) (1903-1925) Jazz cornet and banjo player. Tuberculosis.
22 years Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly) (1936-1959) Small (over-loaded) plane crashed.
23 years River Jude Phoenix (1970–1993) American film actor. Drug overdose, speedball (heroin plus cocaine) and diazepam.
23 years Stump Evans (Paul Anderson Evans) (1904-1928) Jazz baritone saxophone player. Tuberculosis.
24 years Claude de France (1499–1524) Duchess of Brittany, Queen Consort of France. Scoliosis, seven children, died of exhaustion.
24 years Clarence "Pinetop" Smith (1904-1929) Blues piano player, credited with creating boogie woogie piano style.
Hemorrhaged after being accidentally shot by a man while trying to break up a fight at a dance.
24 years James Byron Dean (1931-1955) American film actor. Head-on car collision. He drove a convertible. Other driver at fault.
24 years Steve Roland "Pre" Prefontaine (1951–1975) American middle and long-distance runner, record holder. Solo car accident. He drove a convertible with no roll-bar. The car hit a boulder on the side of the road, flipped over, and crushed his chest.
The film, Prefontaine (1997) is "Based on the life of Olympic hopeful Steve Prefontaine, a long distance runner who lived in Oregon and died young." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119937/
25 years John Keats (1795-1821) English romantic poet. Lung hemorrhage, tuberculosis.
25 years Akaboshi Intetsu (1810-1835) Japanese 7-dan professional Go player. Gennan's star pupil. Vomiting blood, tuberculosis.
25 years Franklin Joseph (Frankie) Lymon (1942–1968) American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. Heroin overdose.
26 years Jean Harlow (Harlean Harlow Carpenter) (1911–1937) American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde." Renal failure, uremia, cerebral edema.
26 years Otis Ray Redding, Jr. (1941–1967) American blues and soul singer and song writer. Plane crash.
26 11/12 years Louis Chauvin (1881-1908) "King of the Ragtime Players" Ragtime Pianist and composer. Neurosyphilitic sclerosis.
27 years Hippolyte Pixii (1808–1835) French instrument maker. In 1832 he built an early form of an alternating current electrical generator, a dynamo.
27 years Jesse Lorenzo Belvin (1932–1960) American R&B singer, pianist and songwriter. Head-on car collision after giving a concert.
RCA Victor was grooming Jesse Belvin, aka "Mr. Easy", as a crossover artist at the time of his tragic death with his wife in a car accident in 1960.
Goodnight My Love (1956) with the Don Ralke Singers and lush string work from Maxwell Davis' Orchestra and 11 year old Barry White on piano. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsuHXArur2U
Guess Who (1959). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyDx9fyvtKc&feature=related
My Funny Valentine (Rodgers & Hart) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2W5GazXHn4&feature=related
27 years Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones (Brian Jones) (1942–1969) English musician, a founding member of the Rolling Stones. Drug and alcohol abuse, enlarged liver and heart, "death by misadventure", drowned in his swimming pool.
27 years James Marshall "Jimi" Hendricks (1942-1970) American guitarist and singer. Asphyxiation, red wine vomit, sleeping pills, Vesperax, suicide. He died 16 days after Janis Joplin died.
The Star Spangled Banner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa-q-ztyZZw&feature=related
27 years Janice Joplin (1943-1970) American rock singer, song writer and arranger. Alcohol and heroin overdose.
"Get It While You Can" on the Dick Cavett Show, June 25, 1970.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju9yFA1S7K8&feature=related
and the interview with Dick Cavett. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOTEDnQ4Fvk&feature=related
27 years James Douglas "Jim" Morrison (1943-1971) American rock singer, poet. Lung hemorrhage, heroin overdose.
27 years Amy Jade Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer-songwriter. Alcohol overdose.
28 years Jiles Perry (J.P.) Richardson ("the Big Bopper") (1930-1959) Small (over-loaded) plane crashed.
28 years Brandon Bruce Lee (1965–1993) American actor, martial artist. Accidental shooting, movie stunt gun.
28 years Heath Andrew Ledger (1979-2008) Australian TV, film actor. Drug intoxication, oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, doxylamine.
28 years Chidiock "Charles" Tichborne (1558–1586) English conspirator and poet. Executed (disemboweled and hung) by Elizabeth I of England.
Tichborne's elegy. http://www.executedtoday.com/tag/locrine/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chidiock_Tichborne#Biography
29 years Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English romantic poet. Boat rammed at night, drowned.
"Fear not for the future; weep not for the past." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley.
29 years Jean Vigo (1905-1934) French film director. Septicemia, 8 years tuberculosis.
29 years Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) Elizabethan English dramatist and poet. Stabbed in the eye in a bar fight.
29 3/4 years Hank Williams (Hiram King Williams) (1923–1953) American singer-songwriter and musician. Alcohol plus injections of morphine and chloral hydrate for back pain, heart failure.
30 years Andy Gibb (1958-1988) British singer, youngest Gibb brother, Bee Gees. Viral infection, heart inflammation.
"Words" (1971). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JECTUQVrvzE&feature=related
30 years James Joseph (Jim) Croce (1943-1973) American singer, song writer. Small charter plane, crashed on takeoff, pilot error (pilot's heart attack?).
30 years Virginia Patterson Hensley (Patsy Cline) (1932-1963) American country singer. Private airplane crashed in severe weather.
31 years Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) The first African-American poet and first African-American woman to publish her writing. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was sold into slavery at the age of 7 or 8 and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
The Wheatley’s eighteen-year-old daughter Mary first tutored Phillis in reading and writing. John Wheatley was known as a progressive throughout New England; his family gave Phillis an unprecedented education for an enslaved person, and for a female of any race. By the age of twelve, Phillis was reading Greek and Latin classics and difficult passages from the Bible. Recognizing her literary ability, the Wheatley family supported Phillis’ education and left the household labor to their other domestic slaves. The Wheatleys often showed off Phillis' abilities to friends and family. Strongly influenced by her studies of the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, Horace and Virgil, Phillis Wheatley began to write poetry.
At the age of 21, in 1774, she was the most famous African-American in the world. In 1778, at the age of 25 Wheatley was emancipated after the death of her master John Wheatley. She married soon after. Her husband went to debtor's prison, leaving an impoverished Wheatley with a sickly infant son. She went to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support them. Life had forced her into a kind of domestic labor that she had been free of while enslaved. She died in poverty at the age of 31. Her three-year-old child died three and a half hours after her death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley
31 years Miguel Hernández Gilabert (1910-1942) Spanish poet and playwright. Died of tuberculosis in Alicante Prison, Spain.
31 years Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) American journalist and poet. WWI sniper’s bullet.
Trees: lyrics, 1913 by Alfred Joyce Kilmer; music, 1922 by Oscar Rasbach (1888-1975).
Paul Robeson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHekLZD5i4&feature=related
Trees. Walt Disney Studios, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ons5vcXP2HQ&feature=related
Trees. Mario Lanza, 1952. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTtfX7pVBiM&feature=related
31 years Sandy Denny (1947-1978) British folk singer, writer. Undiagnosed brain tumor, dizziness, a fall down a stairway.
“Who Knows Where the Time Goes” (Home Demo ~1968) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbpURBJA4uA
32 years Florence Mills (aka Blackbird and Queen Of Happiness) (1895-1927) Blues singer. Appendicitis.
32 years "Mama" Cass Elliot (1941-1974) American pop singer. Obesity, heart attack.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” (1973) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5rdB5zKHY
32 years Brian Samuel Epstein (1934–1967) English music entrepreneur, manager of The Beatles. Alcohol, cycle of all-night recording sessions---preludin, insomnia, accidental Carbitral overdose.
32 years Keith Moon (1946-1978) English rock drummer. Alcoholism, drug overdose, Clomethiazole.
32 years Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) Indian mathematician, autodidact, vegetarian. Dysentery, TB, vitamin deficiency, malnutrition, hepatic amoebiasis.
32 years Karen Carpenter (1950-1983) American singer and drummer. Anorexia nervosa, heart failure.
"All of My Life". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tABvtgFM4Zc&feature=related
"Let Me Be the One". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBtVUSIcAjM&feature=related
"When I Fall In Love". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWgdCoISwpA
"For All We Know" (1971). Live. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=KuglvdPZ-JU
"Close to You". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUDshT19j8Q&feature=related
"We’ve Only Just Begun" (1970). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvBCl3CBMXA
"A Song for You". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PMgmgDq2Fo
"Superstar". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-nlLQEfxx8
and 1971 on the Carol Burnett Show. Karen on drums and vocal, brother on keyboard and a five piece backup band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4J4SOO73B0&feature=related
"Solitaire". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQwCGNc0K8&feature=fvwrel
"This Masquerade". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N30s8EGEx6s&feature=related
32 years (Bruce Lee) Lee Jun-fan (1940-1973) Chinese-American actor, martial arts instructor. Cerebral edema, Equagesic (asprin+meprobamate).
32 years (Alexander the Great) Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC) a king of Macedon. Tutored by Aristotle. By the age of thirty was the creator of one of the largest empires in ancient history, stretching from the Ionian sea to the Himalaya. He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of the most successful commanders of all time. Died after 12 days of fever. "If I were not Alexander I [wish I] would be Diogenes."
33 years John Adam Belushi (1949-1982) American comedian, actor, and musician. Alcoholism, speedball injection (heroin + cocaine)
33 years Christopher Crosby (Chris) Farley (1964-1997) American comedian, actor. Obesity, cocaine and heroin overdose, cardiac arrest.
33 years Honinbo Shusaku (1829-1862) Japanese professional Go player. Cholera, dehydration.
33 years Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1872-1906) Master Chess player, U.S. Chess Champion (1897-1906), blindfold chess player. Syphilis, possibly from a Russian prostitute (in Moscow, 1902?) and untreated for 4? years.
34 years Little Katie Crippen (aka Ella White) (1895-1929) Blues singer. Cancer.
34 years Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress. Passenger in an automobile collision with a truck, driver error, excess speed. Led to legislation for trucks to install "the Mansfield bar" as a low rear bumper.
34 years Dana Michelle Plato (1964-1999) American film actor and TV child actress. Overdose of Vanadom and Lortab, suicide after a horrendous radio interview.
34 years Alma Angela Cogan (1932-1966) English singer of traditional pop music, celebrity hostess. Experimental weight loss injections, stomach cancer, ovarian cancer, 1 year.
35 years James Murray (1901-1935) American actor, star of The Crowd (1928). Alcoholism, failed career, panhandler. Fell from a pier into the Hudson River and drowned. His co-star, Eleanor Boardman became the 2nd wife of the director, King Vidor.
35 years (Joe Hill) Joel Emmanuel Haaglund aka Joseph Hillstrom (1879-1915) Swedish-American singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, communist, labor union agitator. Executed by firing squad.
35 years James Charles "Jimmie" Rodgers (1897–1933), American country singer. 8 years tuberculosis, lung hemorrhage.
35 years (Inger Stevens) Inger Stensland (1934–1970) Swedish-American movie and TV actress. Suicide, alcohol plus Tedral (a combination drug of theophylline, ephedrine and phenobarbital.
35 years Louis Alexander Slotin (1910–1946) Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Slotin accidentally began a fission reaction, which released a burst of hard radiation. He was rushed to a hospital, and died of radiation sickness nine days later.
35 years Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark. Their mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, establish trade and sovereignty over the natives near the Missouri River, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon territory for the United States before European nations. He died from gunshot wounds (murder or suicide?) in 1809 on his journey to deliver his journals to a Washington publisher.
35 years Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers. September 6-December 5, bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting. Cause of death unknown ~ miliary fever, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, kidney ailment, or acute rheumatic fever.
36 years Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) English Romantic poet. Fever, bleeding therapy, sepsis.
"She Walks in Beauty" (1814). http://www.potw.org/archive/potw9.html
"So We'll Go No More a Roving". So We'll Go No More a Roving http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFNu47XR2KE
"And Thou Art Dead, as Young and Fair". (1812) http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/and_thou_art_dead_as_young_and_fair.html
36 years Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist. Migraine headaches, operation, Wegener's granulomatosis.
36 years Paul Sarebresole (1875-1911) Early composer of ragtime music. ---
36 years Buddy Petit (aka Buddie Petit) (Joseph Crawford) (1895-1931) Jazz cornet player.
36 years (Louis Hirsch) Louis Achille Hirsch (1887-1924) Tin Pan Alley composer and pianist. One of the nine co-founders of ASCAP. Pneumonia.
36 years ("Blind" Lemon Jefferson) Lemon Henry Jefferson (1893–1929) Blues singer and guitarist. Titled "Father of the Texas Blues. First successful solo guitarist and male vocalist in the commercial recording world of the 1920s. Heart attack after becoming disoriented during a Chicago snowstorm, he froze to death.
See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S8Rjwwo2g4
36 years Norma Jeane Baker (Marilyn Monroe) (1926-1962) American actress, singer, model. Chloral Hydrate and Nembutal overdose, suicide.
36 years Elizabeth L. "Gail" Russell (1924-1961) American film actress. Alcoholism, heart attack.
37 years Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish romantic poet and lyricist, national poet of Scotland. Rheumatic heart, intemperance, dental extraction. My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose (1794).
37 years Vincent Willem van Gogh (1953-1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter. Suicide, shot once in the rib/chest. He was ambulatory. The gun was not found. He died two days later from the infection. Suspected mental illness compounded by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and consumption of alcohol, especially absinthe.
Here are two montages of his paintings shown while Don McClean sings, Vincent aka Starry Starry Night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvLq0TYiwI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
37 years George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (1859–1896) American engineer. He is mostly known for creating the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Typhoid fever.
37 years Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. (1939-1976) American film and theater actor. Taking out a bag of garbage at his apartment complex, knife attack, stabbed in the heart.
37 years Stephen Collins Foster (1826-1864) American song writer. Fever, fall, head contusion, infection.
Beautiful Dreamer. Published posthumously in 1864. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U1l5y2rkzA&feature=related
Beautiful Dreamer on a harp. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38SqiwPxo2U&feature=related
Swanee River aka Old Folks at Home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1-IizUlkM&feature=related
and sung by Paul Robeson. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36hJeMk1PLg&feature=related
37 years (Bobby Darin) Walden Robert Cassotto (1936–1973) American singer, actor and musician. Rheumatic fever, dental infection, sepsis, heart valve operation.
Beyond the Sea aka La Mer, 1959. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRAtV-jgoQ
37 years Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder (1945–1982) German movie director, screenwriter and actor. Heart failure, from sleeping pills and cocaine.
38 years Lucien Gaulard (1850-1888) French co-developer of the power transformer for the transmission of alternating current electrical energy. Gaulard died in an institution (Sainte-Anne Hospital) in Paris, and was said to have lost his reason due to the loss of the patents on his invention.
38 years Harry Forster Chapin (1942–1981) American singer-songwriter, musician, humanitarian, author, playwright. Heart attack while driving a car, then an automobile collision.
38 years Israel "IZ" Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole (1959–1997) Hawaiian musician, ukulele. obesity, myocardial infarction.
Somewhere over the Rainbow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I
38 years Mario Lanza (1921-1959) American tenor and Hollywood movie star. Heart attack, double pneumonia, and pulmonary embolism.
Ave Maria. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Y8t6tUAPQ
Be My Love. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovioztCVtCw&feature=related
On the Street Where You Live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98xxI-RAOvk&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL883111D595E372C8
Song of India. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yua3bdXQjzU&feature=related
38 years George Gershwin (1898-1937) American composer and pianist. Brain tumor, surgery.
Summertime from Porgy and Bess. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2c855pZxgQ&feature=related
Porgy and Bess (with 1959 film clips) medley: Summertime; I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'; Bess, You Is My Woman Now; I Can't Sit Down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsVMQSCXyk&feature=related
Someone to Watch Over Me by George and Ira Gershwin.
sung by Ella Fitzgerald (1959) with orchestra. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANcQf3fjuA
39 years Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, pacifist, anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. Met and conspired with a group within Abwehr in 1938 to assassinate Hitler. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, executed by hanging two years later.
39 years James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837–1876) American West gunfighter, scout, lawman, gambler. Shot in back of the head while playing poker. He had wanted a seat against the wall but no one would change seats with him. He held two pairs, aces and eights, now called 'a deadman's hand."
39 years Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) Italian physicist and mathematician, inventor of the mercury barometer. Typhoid fever.
39 years Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. Stomach cancer?
39 years (Lola Montez) Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld (1821–1861), Irish dancer and actress, courtesan and
mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and Franz List. Stroke, then pneumonia.
39 years Dennis Carl Wilson (1944–1983) Surfer, American rock and roll musician, founding member and the drummer of The Beach Boys. Cigarette smoking, Alcoholism. Drowned at Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles, after drinking all day and diving in the afternoon to recover items he had thrown overboard at the marina from his yacht three years prior.
40 years Samuel Louis "Sam" Warner (1887–1927) American film producer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Studios. Sinus infection, severe headaches and nosebleeds, acute mastoid infection, pneumonia, died from a cerebral hemorrhage as doctors were trying to remove infected cells from his brain.
40 years John Griffith "Jack" London (John Griffith Chaney (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist. Uremia, renal colic, morphine overdose?
40 years John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (1940-1980) English musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, writer, icon. Assassinated, four gunshots in the back, outside his hotel in NYC.
"In My Life" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI0Q8ytD44Y&feature=related
"Watching the Wheels" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9dc9im3-M&feature=related
40 years Charles François de Cisternay du Fay (1698–1739) French chemist, superintendent of the Jardin du Roi, researcher into electric charges. Constipation.
41 tears (Paul Rubens) Paul Alfred Rubens (1875-1917) English songwriter and librettist. Tuberculosis.
41 years Jane Austen (1775–1817) English romantic novelist. "Medicinal" arsenic poisoning.
42 years Timothy H. O'Sullivan (c. 1840–1882) was a American photographer of the Civil War and the American West. Tuberculosis.
42 years Elvis Aaron Presley (1935-1977) American singer, actor. Polypharmacy, constipation, heart attack.
"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" (1960) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrojFR7jM9E&feature=related
42 years Gilda Susan Radner (1946–1989) American comedienne and actress. Ovarian cancer.
42 years Kathleen Ferrier, CBE (1912-1953) Pianist, English contralto, stage, concert and recording artist. Breast cancer.
"What is Life (to Me without Thee)?" and "Art Thou Troubled?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypePP1ENcmw
Orfeo ed Euridice (Italian version), opera in 3 acts, Wq. 30 by Christoph Willibald Gluck
What Is Life? (Che farò senza Euridice)
Performed by: Kathleen Ferrier, Osborne Peasgood, and Thornton Lofthouse (1946). and
"Erbarme dich" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh_1CKyZVSc from the St. Matthew Passion (Matthäuspassion), by Johann Sebastian Bach: Have Mercy On Me, my God (Erbarme dich, mein Gott) Performed by: Kathleen Ferrier (1947).
43 years Bessie Smith (1894–1937) American blues singer. Fatal traffic accident, traumatic arm amputation when the car passed a truck too closely and her arm was hanging out the passenger's window, blood loss, shock, car driver at fault.
43 years John Franklin Candy (1950–1994) Canadian-American actor and comedian. Obesity, heart attack.
43 years (Natalie Wood) Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko (1938-1981) American films actress and child film star. Alcohol, fell overboard from a boat at anchor, accidentally drowning at night.
43 years Salvatore Licitra (~1967-2011) Leading Italian opera tenor. Lost control of his scooter, fell, hit his head, brain injuries.
43 years Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012) American publisher, researcher, commentator, editor, website launcher. Heart attack.
43 years Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774) Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet. Kidney infection.
44 years Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter" (1962-2006) Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. Pierced in the chest by a poison stingray barb, immediately removed, blood loss, and cardiac arrest.
44 years (Billie Holiday) Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959) Singer, songwriter, actress. Heroin addiction, alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver.
Your Mother's Son-in-Law (1933). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UqVomYQZY&feature=fvsr
Summertime (1936, Billie Holiday and her Orchestra with Bunny Berigan trumpet, Artie Shaw clarinet, Joe Bushkin piano, Dick McDonough guitar, Pete Peterson bass and Cozy Cole drums) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ENPQzlUpY&feature=relmfu
I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby (1936). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAR4aEtaH4c&feature=fvst
I Cried for You (1936, Teddy Wilson Orchestra). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxdkUwF4I5U&feature=related
When You're Smiling (1938). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC_XM4l1DHo&feature=related
You Go To My Head (1938) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGNc1yLGPug&feature=related
As Time Goes By. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYoet7-qDHI&feature=related
These Foolish Things (1953). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4jkUlClRYc&feature=related
Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4FsxtlGi3k&feature=related
I'll Be Seeing You. (with Eddie Heywood and his orchestra.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GGutxam8Qc
It Had to Be You. (Composed by Isham Jones with lyrics by Gus Kahn.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwdC58OFcyE&feature=related
Good Morning Heartache. (Live from Mr. Kelly's Restaurant) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDZOX9IdKs&feature=related
Yesterdays. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hkakz0jmew&feature=related
I'm A Fool to Want You. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNgy5zDtW-s&feature=related
44 years Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) English poet, Roman Catholic convert, Jesuit priest, Professor of Classics. Typhoid fever. http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
“Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
44 years (Ernest Hogan) Ernest Reuben Crowders (1865-1909) Father Of Ragtime. Tuberculosis.
44 years Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. He suffered from coughs and fevers, and perhaps tuberculosis, bronchiectasis or even sarcoidosis, died of cerebral hemorrhage.
44 years Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American author, tutor, pencil factory worker, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. Tuberculosis, 26 years (1835), bronchitis, three years (1859), declining health.
44 years David Herbert Lawrence (1884 –1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. Tuberculosis.
45 years Nathaniel Adams Coles (Nat King Cole) (1919-1965) American musician, baritone singer, songwriter, jazz pianist, the greatest male jazz vocalist. Heavy cigarette smoker, lung cancer.
You're The Cream In My Coffee, 1946. (Nat "King" Cole Trio). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x8VXukEqe8&feature=related
Dream A Little Dream of Me, 1947. (new Nat "King" Cole Trio).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=aIZG7hzQ6_4
(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 (Nat "King" Cole Trio). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSzGoJcVVg0&feature=related
I'm a Shy Guy, 1956. (Nat "King" Cole Trio). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTxPtzSkSFg&feature=related
Mona Lisa. (Nat "King" Cole Trio). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydVaUXw_HG4&feature=related
Sweet Lorraine, 1951. (Nat "King" Cole Trio). http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=bl8xeunYuJc
Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby. (King Cole Trio & Ida James, duet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99VPcF-lZ38&feature=related
Tea For Two, 1957 (Nat King Cole on piano, two versions). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCEcDhF2LSo&feature=related
There Will Never Be Another You, 1955. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjt-fjshj18&feature=related
Stardust. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjU6ZjrQulc&feature=related
Autumn Leaves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kP8jPa1wCg&feature=related
Tenderly (with Oscar Peterson on piano, 1957). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaK5tSm-H58&feature=related
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. (with a chorus) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Je0rHIal4&feature=related
When I Fall in Love. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfAb0gNPy6s&feature=related
Nature Boy (1947) sung by Nat King Cole at the piano, ~1951. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq0XJCJ1Srw
and with orchestra, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_m0etqUNg0&feature=related
Fly Me to the Moon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6qLNnxGDaA&feature=related
It's Only a Paper Moon. (A quintet. BBC special, "An Evening with Nat 'King' Cole," broadcast 21 September 1963).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCg11BL6Ydw&feature=related
Unforgettable (filmed and 1992 live, as a duet with daughter, Natalie Cole). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nitiMG81DRc
45 years Edward Montgomery Clift (1920–1966) American film and stage actor. Occlusive coronary artery disease, heart attack.
45 years Natasha Jane Richardson (1963–2009) English stage and screen actress. Skiing lesson, fall, head injury, undiagnosed hematoma.
45 years Eric Hilliard "Ricky" Nelson (1940–1985) American singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, actor. Cabin heater fire, plane crash.
45 years (Freddie Mercury) Farrokh Bulsara (1946–1991) British musician, lead vocalist, songwriter. Broncho-pneumonia, AIDS.
45 years John Holland Mallet III (John Cipollina) (1943-1989) founder and lead guitarist of rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service. Chronic emphysema.
Pride of Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG6A6G9uzsQ
Joseph's Coat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYQUyR6bO9E
Shady Grove (1969) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Ui86wn3DQ
Who Do You Love? (1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olnbwZxjcbI
45 years (George Reeves) George Keefer Brewer, George Bessolo (1914–1959) Film and TV actor. Gun shots, suicide.
46 years Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer, playwright, and poet. While being overworked in prison, a fall, burst right ear drum, later, surgery, cerebral meningitis.
46 years Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) (1903–1950) English novelist and journalist. Tuberculosis, two years; burst artery.
47 years Laura Branigan (1957–2004) American singer-songwriter and actress. Headaches, undiagnosed brain aneurysm.
47 years Tommy Edwards (1922-1969) American singer, songwriter. Brain aneurysm, alcoholism.
It's All in the Game (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtizr2G_7Bk
47 years Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm) (1922–1969) American actress, contralto singer and vaudevillian. The American Film Institute named her eighth among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time. Four divorces, five marriages. Nervous breakdown, prescription sleeping medication along with illicitly obtained pills containing morphine, alcohol, migraine headaches, several bloody suicide attempts, acute hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver, and finally, "an incautious self-overdosage" of the barbiturate, Seconal.
"To keep up with the frantic pace of making one film after another, Garland, Rooney, and other young performers were constantly given amphetamines, as well as barbiturates to take before going to bed. For Garland, this regular dose of drugs led to addiction and a lifelong struggle and contributed to her eventual demise. She later resented the hectic schedule and felt that her youth had been stolen from her by MGM. Despite successful film and recording careers, awards, critical praise and her ability to fill concert halls worldwide, she was plagued throughout her life with self-doubt and required constant reassurance that she was talented and attractive." ... "Garland later said of this suicide attempt. "I wanted to black out the future as well as the past. I wanted to hurt myself and everyone who had hurt me."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Garland
In Between, 1938. ( 'Love Finds Andy Hardy') http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-dsgtkxp_c&feature=relmfu
You Made Me Love You, 1938 ('Broadway Melody') http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFSczLif0q4&feature=related
Over the Rainbow (1939) (from 'The Wizard of Oz') http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HRa4X07jdE
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo
The Trolley Song. (from 'Meet Me in St. Louis', 1944 with chorus) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odXnKhKBxQ&feature=related
A Star Is Born, 1954. ( Medley) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtOne31CFxc&feature=relmfu
The Man That Got Away. (from 'A Star Is Born', 1954) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3SjisivsA&feature=relmfu
West Side Story medley (Maria, Something's Coming, Somewhere, Tonight, by Judy Garland and Vic Damone).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnYd41IwiJo&feature=relmfu
As Long As He Needs Me (on episode #25 of the Judy Garland Show, 1964) "She brings her life history into each and every song she performs, which is why they're so GOOD. And this one is just breathtaking." FLBoy46 5-20-12.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT0ms9UdxcE&feature=related
For Once In My Life (Live on The Mike Douglas Show, August 1968) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzLUqIc2Iik&feature=related
Judy Garland's last performance part 10. (with audio interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK68TbTZSfo&feature=relmfu
Judy Garland Speaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=k-AAPd56HIA
"Get the Hell Out of My Life!" (1966) on her autobiography. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi_xjmfoop0&feature=related
Interview with Jack Parr, May 15, 1967. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=d5qDVDIoA8w
47 years William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) (1862-1910) Sang, played guitar and mandolin, writer of some 900 short stories with an ironic, twist ending. Alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes and an enlarged heart.
48 years Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) Italian opera tenor. Pleurisy, peritonitis.
http://www.enricocaruso.dk/ and http://www.henryrosner.org/caruso/
48 years James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist and mathematician. Maxwell's equations. Abdominal cancer.
48 years Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861–1909) American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West. Chronic appendicitis, emergency appendectomy which led to peritonitis.
48 years Mary Ellen Harrison (Marion Harris) (1896-1944) American popular, jazz and blues singer. Smoking in bed, fell asleep, died in the ensuing hotel fire.
48 years Leonore Vonderlieth (Vaughn De Leath) (1894-1943) 1920s female radio jazz crooner. Alcoholism.
My Blue Heaven (1928). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VrMv-V7fg4&feature=related
Are you Lonesome Tonight (1927). http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=KC5TGHuvX68
49 years Christa Päffgen (Nico) (1938–1988) German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model, actress, nihilist, bohemian artist, nomad. 15 years+ as a heroin addict. "She looked like a retched, bedraggled has-been at the age of 28." Minor heart attack while riding a bicycle, hit her head as she fell. Misdiagnosed as heat prostration, died of severe cerebral hemorrhage.
49 years Philip Edward "Phil" Hartman (né Hartmann)(1948–1998) Canadian-American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist. Murdered by his 3rd wife; three gunshots. She confessed to friends, then suicide (after a failed career, drug addiction, Xoloft, rage, alcohol.)
49 years Robert Fulton (1765–1815) was an American engineer and inventor. After walking home on the frozen Hudson River when one of his friends, Addis Emmet, fell through the ice. In the attempt to rescue his friend, Fulton got soaked with icy water and on the journey home he caught pneumonia. His health worsened and he died of tuberculosis.
50 years Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution) (1743–1794) The "father of modern chemistry", was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology. He found and termed both oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), helped construct the metric system, put together the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. At the height of the French Revolution he was accused by Jean-Paul Marat of selling watered-down tobacco, and of other crimes, and was guillotined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
50 years Karl Stig-Erland (Stieg) Larsson (1954-2004) Swedish crusading political activist, communist and anti-Nazi journalist, and novelist. Heavy smoker, heart attack after climbing seven flights of stairs to go to work because the elevator was out of service.
50 years Bernard Jeffrey McCullough (Bernie Mac) (1957–2008) actor, stand-up comedian. Three years, sarcoidosis, then pneumonia.
50 years Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil or Vergil) (70 BC–19 BC) Ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. Fever.
52 years William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English poet and playwright, the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". Retired three years before death. Illness of one month? Typhus? or bubonic plague? Unknown cause.
52 years (Diana Dors) Diana Mary Fluck (1931–1984) English film and TV actress. The English 1950s blond bombshell. Ovarian cancer, 2 years.
52 years Frank Zappa (1940-1993) American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. Ten years, inoperable prostate cancer.
53 years James Maury (Jim) Henson (1936–1990) was an American puppeteer. Streptococcus pyogenes infection, 12 days, septic shock, and multiple organ failure.
53 years Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Russian composer, symphonies, operas, ballets, and chamber music. 9 days, Cholera?
Waltz of the Flowers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHkLdQy5f0&feature=related
None But the Lonely Hearts (1869). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PtIHBCuR-Q
Piano Concerto No.1 Op.23 in B Flat Minor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4P4OV8LVM&feature=related
Marche Slave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poSw7tFLB4&feature=related
1812 Overture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0cpKzDoOdA&feature=related
54 years Renee Jeanne Falconetti (1892-1946) French silent film star, Argentine theater director. Cancer.
54 years Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist. Syphilis, overdose of morphine and possibly heart attack.
54 years Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr. (1951–2005) American singer-songwriter and record producer. Diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and heart attack.
A House is Not a Home (live at the NAACP Image Awards, 1988, with Dionne Warwick in the audience).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu2JBMNBbKo
Love Won't Let Me Wait (1988 album, Any Love.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGkx29TWZWQ&feature=related
Endless Love (Duet with Mariah Carey). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIgrLTZwjos&feature=related
55 years Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Guthrie (1912-1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Huntington's disease, 15+ years.
56 years Steve Jobs (1955-2011) Visionary, entrepreneur, co-founder of Apple Inc., founder of NeXT and Pixar Animation Studios. 2004 pancreaticoduodenectomy. 2009 liver transplant, cachexia, pancreatic cancer, 7 years.
58 years Heinrich Heine (born Harry Heine, changed to Christian Johann Heinrich Heine following his conversion to Christianity from Judaism in 1825) (1797–1856) German lyric poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic. Chronic lead poisoning, 8 years.
.
Four general categories of early deaths:
1. Foolish or tragic risk, 2. self-destructiveness, 3. illness plus a failure of medical care, 4. death of the innocent by evildoers.
Read their biographies.
.
What could you or would you do if you knew such an immanent fate awaited you?
This is a premise writers have dealt with for decades.
Would you form a determination to do something important in your life?
This was the theme of the Japanese film, Ikiru (1952) directed by Akira Kurosawa, where a widowed Japanese bureaucrat discovers indirectly that he has stomach cancer and has only about six months to live. He then realizes he has done nothing important in his 30 year career. He is estranged from his son and daughter-in-law, but wants to do something worthy. Five months later he was dead.
When life is short and precious, what do you do?
Can you control your life, your destiny, your fate?
Would you drown yourself in alcohol to forget your fate?
Would you get drunk and hasten your death?
Would you change your bad habits, attempting to change your fate?
Would you stop your daily routine and go on a vacation?
Would you seek pleasure, spend your savings, and live for today?
Would you seek out a remedy or a cure for TB, pneumonia, cholera, syphilis, or cancer?
Would you proclaim use of mega-doses of vitamin C as the remedy for infections and toxins? I would.
.
Knowing the exact day of your death,
would you stop on that last day to appreciate the beauty in nature and the hope, faith, and optimism of youth?
Would you stop to love and embrace your children?
Would you plan a perfect day?
http://larryh.newsvine.com/_news/2008/01/29/1264167-my-perfect-day
Or, if was to be a fatal accident, a confluence of circumstances
Would you let someone else take your place on that doomed plane, boat, or train?
Would you want to wear an inflatable life vest on that boat?
Would you run elsewhere, hoping to avoid your fateful encounter with death?
Would you run the other way to avoid your destiny?
Biutiful, 2010.
This is the story of Uxbal, a man living in this world, but able to see his death, which guides his every move.
"Not everyone in the gutter is looking up at the stars."
Dirge without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.