INQUIRER: Cartoonist Ted Key, 95, whose characters included a bossy maid and a time-traveling dog scientist, died at his Tredyffrin home on Saturday. Hazel made Mr. Key famous: The maid became a weekly feature in The Saturday Evening Post soon after he sold his first cartoon to the publication in 1943. He drew Hazel for 50 years. But younger readers may best remember Mr. Key’s animated characters – Mr. Peabody, the genius dog, and his boy, Sherman – that he drew for Rocky and His Friends. Mr. Key was born Aug. 25, 1912, in Fresno, Calif. He moved to Tredyffrin […]
RIP: Albert Hofmann, Father Of LSD, Dead At 102
EROWID: Albert Hofmann passed away at his home at 9am on Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 102. He will be missed. Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland in 1906. He graduated from the University of Zürich with a degree in chemistry in 1929 and went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland. With the laboratory goal of working towards isolation of the active principles of known medicinal plants, Hofmann worked with Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima) for several years, before moving on to the study of Claviceps purpurea (ergot) and ergot alkaloids.Over […]
RIP: Kenneth Keith Kallenbach, Hero Of The Stupid
[via THE DAILY EXAMINER] For Howard Stern fans of a certain age, yesterday’s announcement that Wack Pack member Kenneth Keith Kallenbach had died of pneumonia at 39 was both a shock and a chance to reminisce about their own, possibly misspent, youths listening to Stern before there was such a thing as satellite radio. Philly Grill caught up by e-mail with phone prankster extraordinaire and fellow original Wack Packer Captain Janks, known off the air as Tom Cipriano, to talk about his longtime friend. When and how did you first meet Kenneth Keith — was it before you both started […]
RIP: Moses Charlton Heston Dead At 84
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84. Heston spokesman Bill Powers says the actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia was at his side. Heston revealed in 2002 that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease, saying, “I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure.” With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal […]
RIP: Puzzles, Beloved Local Giraffe, Dead At 27
BY SAM WOOD OF THE INQUIRER Puzzles, 27, had been suffering from failing health due to her advanced age. The female reticulated giraffe [NOT pictured] was one of the oldest living in the United States. Puzzles was born in 1981 at a Children’s Zoo in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Three years later, she joined the Philadelphia Zoo. She was the mother of seven calves, all of which were adopted by zoos across the country.Puzzles is survived by giraffes Stella, 7, and Twigga, 28, her enclosure mates in the Zoo’s “African Plains” exhibit. Zoo staff have been closely monitoring Twigga, who […]
RIP: Actor Heath Ledger Dead At 28
NEW YORK TIMES: The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28. At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. […]
RIP: Producer Joel Dorn Dead At 65
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Veteran record producer Joel Dorn, who worked with such artists as Roberta Flack, Max Roach and the Neville Brothers, died of a heart attack on Monday in New York. He was 65. Dorn, a one-time disc-jockey at a Philadelphia jazz radio station, was perhaps best known for his work with Atlantic Records’ prestigious jazz stable between 1967 and 1974. Working alongside the label’s jazz chief, Nesuhi Ertegun, he brought a pop sensibility to works by musicians such as Roach, Herbie Mann, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Mose Allison and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.Dorn once said his two […]
DAN FOGELBERG: Longer Than
Soporific sire of soft-rock, dead at 56.
THIS JUST IN: Stockhausen Is Dead
He was number 5. WIKIPEDIA: Who was Karlheinz Stockhausen?
RIP: Evel Knievel 1938-2007
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69. Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills. [via SPORTS ILLUSTRATED]
LIFE & DEATH: Redskin Dies, Veep Lives
MIAMI (AP) — Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor died early Tuesday, a day after he was shot at home by what police say was an intruder. He was 24. Family friend Richard Sharpstein said Taylor’s father told him the news around 5:30 a.m. “His father called and said he was with Christ and he cried and thanked me,” said Sharpstein, Taylor’s former lawyer. He said Taylor died early Tuesday at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where he had been airlifted after the shooting early Monday. Doctors had been encouraged late Monday when Taylor squeezed a nurse’s hand, according to Vinny […]
Hyski O’Rooney McVoutie O’Zoot Has Left The Building
Hy Lit, 73, one of Philadelphia’s pioneer disc jockeys, died yesterday at Paoli Memorial Hospital of what his son termed “bizarre complications” after a knee injury. Mr. Lit was on hand for much rock-and-roll history as it played out in Philadelphia. He played Rolling Stones music early on and accompanied the Beatles to the city in 1964. A dashing figure with a face for television, he also hosted dance shows on WKBS in Philadelphia and a New York station. Another longtime fixture in local radio, disc jockey Jerry Blavat, last night called Mr. Lit’s death “the end of the era […]
REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT: Norman Mailer RIP
BY LOUIS MENAND OF THE NEW YORKER No one would say of Norman Mailer, who died on November 10th, at the age of eighty-four, that he hoarded his gift. He was a slugger. He swung at everything, and when he missed he missed by a mile and sometimes ended up on his tush, but when he connected he usually knocked it out of the park. He was immodest about his failures and modest about his successes, which is a healthy trait for a writer and probably a healthy trait for life. He left a huge footprint on American letters. Mailer […]