Robert F. Kennedy would be 82 years old today. He was only 42 when he was shot to death by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968.Sirhan has been in jail for almost 40 years, and he’s still only 63 years old.Three people born the same year as Bobby Kennedy: Paul Newman, Barbara Bush and Margaret Thatcher.
Philosophy & First Ladies editor Paul Hehn has published a new profile of not-quite-First-Lady Anna Harrison.You may recall that her husband, William Henry Harrison, died 30 days after giving a 100-minute whopper of an inaugural speech, in the snow, without a hat or coat. Anna was still back in Ohio, packing, when he died.
Arthur Bremer, would-be assassin of George Wallace, released from prison after 35 years.See The Taxi Driver Connection for notes on Bremer’s weird domino effect on Hollywood, Hinckley, and Reagan.
Norman Mailer has died at age 84. The cause was reported as renal failure, though he also had lung surgery last month. The leads from various obituaries:
Monday is Guy Fawkes Day.
Walter Cronkite turns ninety-one today. He’s been retired for 26 years — longer than he held the anchor chair for The CBS Evening News. Fun fact: Cronkite was such an icon in his day that Swedish news anchors are known as Kronkiters.
Our friends at Infoplease asked us to look into the exact birthdate of 19th-century superstar actress Sarah Bernhardt. Most everyone agrees she was born in 1844, but the exact date may be October 22, 23, or 25… or something else entirely. The tale is both lively and confusing.First, a bit about The Divine Sarah, as she was known in her day. Cornelia Otis Skinner, in her 1967 book Madame Sarah, puts it this way:
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2358:]]
Robert Goulet has died while awaiting a lung transplant in Los Angeles. He was 73.Goulet was “the strikingly handsome singer with the rich baritone who soared to stardom on the Broadway stage in 1960 playing Lancelot in the original production of the hit musical Camelot,” says the The Los Angeles Times.
“Porter Wagoner, a country singer who mixed rhinestone suits, a towering cotton-candy pompadour and cornball jokes with direct, simple songs…”So begins the New York Times obituary of the longtime Grand Ole Opry star. He died of lung cancer on Sunday in Nashville.