Octopus Overlords

Rumpy wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:24 pm Didn't realize he was still at the Vatican. I would have thought they would have him live his remaining days in a papal vacation home.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:13 pm Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters dies at 74

Anita was the second oldest of the four sisters, who rose to fame with hits in the 1970’s and 80’s including “I’m So Excited.”

I remember them exclusively in the 1980s.

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 1:34 pm Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (whose retirement made room for Pope Francis) died today in Vatican City. He was 95.

Ken Block, the rally racer most famous for co-founding Hoonigan Industries and starring in the wildly popular Gymkhana series of stunt driving videos, was killed in a snowmobile crash on Monday, January 2nd, according to a statement posted to Instagram. He was 55 years old.

Mr. Cunningham, a physicist and a former Marine pilot, joined with Capt. Walter M. Schirra Jr. of the Navy and Maj. Donn F. Eisele of the Air Force on a virtually flawless 11-day mission in October 1968. They completed 163 orbits of the Earth (four and a half million miles) in a reconstructed space capsule with many safety modifications and became the first NASA astronauts to appear on television from space.

The flight — the first manned Apollo mission — buoyed an America shocked by the capsule fire that took the lives of Virgil I. Grissom, Roger B. Chaffee and Edward H. White II as they rehearsed for an envisioned Apollo 1 mission at Cape Kennedy, Fla., in January 1967.
...
Apollo 7 — which blasted off on Oct. 11, 1968, following unmanned Apollo flights in the wake of the disastrous fire — passed its maneuverability and reliability tests. The capsule rendezvoused with an orbiting stage of the Saturn 1-B rocket that had sent it into space, indicating that it would have no trouble docking with a lunar module that would carry two astronauts from the capsule to the moon and back. The Apollo 7 astronauts, who comprised NASA’s first three-man crew, also successfully tested an engine in the rear of their capsule designed to put the spacecraft into and out of lunar orbit on a future mission.

And for the first time, astronauts carried a camera providing TV images. They demonstrated how they could float in their weightless environment in what became known as “The Wally, Walt and Donn Show,” and they put together a hand-lettered sign that said, “Hello From the Lovely Apollo Room, High Atop Everything.”

There was a problem, though: Captain Schirra had a heavy head cold, Major Eisele had a lesser cold and Mr. Cunningham, as he would later recall, felt “a little blah.” NASA feared that the colds could result in the bursting of eardrums as the astronauts returned to Earth.

They were, in fact, just fine when they splashed down some 325 miles south of Bermuda, less than a mile off target. Their mission was so successful that Apollo 8 orbited the moon, another important prelude to the moon landing in July 1969.

But Apollo 7 had its blemishes. It would be remembered for Captain Schirra’s disputes with NASA controllers in Houston. Speaking on an open microphone monitored by the press, he protested the agency’s ambitious schedule for TV transmissions, which he felt took valuable time away from the astronauts’ work. He also insisted that the astronauts dispense with the rule requiring pressurized helmets on re-entry, fearing that this could damage their eardrums in light of their colds. He got his way.

Captain Schirra, who flew in the Mercury and Gemini programs, had told NASA he planned to retire after Apollo 7. That mission proved to be not just the first but also the last for both Mr. Cunningham and Major Eisele.

“I never figured out why Schirra had such a burr under his saddle,” Gene Kranz, one of the flight directors for Apollo 7, wrote in his memoir, “Failure Is Not an Option” (2000). “Perhaps he just could not deal with the irritation of having something so piddling as a cold invade the trip of a lifetime. In any case, the careers of the two younger astronauts suffered. Neither Cunningham nor Eisele flew in space again.”
...
Soon after Apollo 7, Mr. Cunningham was named director of what became known as the Skylab program, which developed America’s first space station. The astronaut Pete Conrad succeeded him in 1970. Mr. Cunningham resigned from NASA the next year after failing to get an assignment to fly in Skylab’s forthcoming missions.

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 4:25 pm It always amazes me that people younger than me are dying before me. I haven't done much to keep in shape and most people do.
Life really is a crap shoot.

A nonny mouse wrote: ↑Sun Jan 08, 2023 1:48 pm Adam Rich of Eight is Enough, has died.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/entertai ... index.html
No cause of death as of yet, but still way too young.

I remember watching it all the time as a kid ( we are nearly the same age).

R. I. P.

RM2 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 7:35 pm Jeff Beck

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/je ... 91ff7517f1

McNutt wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 9:28 pm I've always known Jeff Beck was one of the greats, but I am completely unfamiliar with his work. I need to remedy that.

Lisa Marie Presley — the only child of Elvis Presley — died Thursday after being hospitalized earlier that day, her mother said in a statement. The singer was 54.

“It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,” Priscilla Presley said in a statement Thursday evening. “She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known.”

The announcement came just hours after Priscilla Presley had confirmed that Lisa Marie Presley was rushed to the hospital earlier Thursday.

Los Angeles County paramedics were dispatched to a Calabasas home at 10:37 a.m. following a report of a woman in full cardiac arrest, according to Craig Little, a spokesperson for the county’s fire department. Property records indicate Presley was a resident at that address.

Paramedics arrived about six minutes later, Little said. A subsequent statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said paramedics performed CPR and “determined the patient had signs of life” before taking her to a hospital in nearby West Hills immediately.

Robbie Knievel, an American stunt performer who set records with daredevil motorcycle jumps following the tire tracks of his thrill-seeking father — including at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1989 and a Grand Canyon chasm a decade later — has died in Nevada, his brother said. He was 60.

Robbie Knievel died early Friday at a hospice in Reno after battling pancreatic cancer, Kelly Knievel said.