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`60's Singer Bobby Vee passes at 73...
Bobby Vee: 1960s pop singer dies aged 73
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 - Bobby Vee, best known for 1960s hits including Rubber Ball and Take Good Care of my Baby, dies at the age of 73.
"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away," a statement on the Facebook page said. "We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries." The statement did not provide further details on Cohen's death, and representatives for the singer could not be reached immediately for comment. It said a memorial was planned in Los Angeles, where Cohen had lived for many years. "R.I.P. Leonard Cohen," singer-songwriter Carole King said on Twitter.
Singer Roseanne Cash echoed the lyrics from Cohen's song "Anthem" when she said in a tweet: "Leonard Cohen is dead. There's a crack in everything. No light yet." Cohen, a native of Quebec, was already a celebrated poet and novelist when he moved to New York in 1966 at age 31 to break into the music business. Before long, critics were comparing him to Bob Dylan for the lyrical force of his songwriting. Although he influenced many musicians and won many honors, including induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada, Cohen rarely made the pop music charts with his sometimes moody folk-rock.
But Cohen's most famous song, "Hallelujah," in which he invoked the biblical King David and drew parallels between physical love and a desire for spiritual connection, has been covered hundreds of times since he released it in 1984. "Hallelujah's" long road to mass appeal was matched by Cohen's own painstaking approach to writing it. He spent five years penning drafts, at one point banging his head on the floor of a hotel room in frustration.
THE SACRED AND PROFANE
Russell, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, died in his sleep in Nashville, Tennessee, his wife said in a statement on his website. Russell suffered health problems in his later years, having surgery to stop leaking brain fluid in 2010 and suffering a heart attack in July 2016. "He was recovering from heart surgery in July and looked forward to getting back on the road in January," said his wife, Jan Bridges.
Inductee Leon Russell performs during the Songwriters Hall of Fame awards in New York
Russell's period of stardom as a performer was relatively brief, but Elton John, who had once been Russell's opening act, engineered a comeback for him in 2010 when they collaborated on an album titled "The Union." "He was my biggest influence as a piano player, a singer and a songwriter," John told ABC News.
Musician Leon Russell poses for a portrait in New York June 15, 2011. Russell toiled in obscurity for decades, until recording with Elton John brought him an unlikely hit, but says he was never bitter his fame disappeared because that's just what happens to aging rockers.
Musician Leon Russell poses for a portrait in New York
Russell recorded more than 35 albums and also excelled as a songwriter for other performers. His "A Song for You" was recorded by Joe Cocker, the Carpenters, the Temptations, Neil Diamond, Lou Rawls, Dusty Springfield, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and good friend Willie Nelson. The Carpenters, Helen Reddy, Shirley Bassey, Robert Goulet and George Benson all covered Russell's "This Masquerade," with Benson's version winning the 1976 Grammy as record of the year.
U.S. musician Leon Russell performs onstage during the 45th Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux
Russell was known as "the master of space and time" in his 1970s heyday. He wore a cocked top hat, and with salt-and-pepper hair past his shoulders and a beard that reached his chest, created an inscrutable image that was equal parts shaman, tent revival preacher and cosmic ringmaster. He ruled the stage with piano-banging abandon and, backed by a multi-piece band and a backup chorus, put on a show that was a roiling stew of rock, soul, gospel and country. Russell's last performance was July 10 in Nashville.
WRECKING CREW
The 82-year-old singer's death was "sudden, unexpected and peaceful", Robert B Kory said in a statement. No cause was given by the family when Cohen's death was announced last week.
The statement said that Cohen died on 7 November - three days before an announcement was made to the public. He was buried in Montreal on 10 November. "With only immediate family and a few lifelong friends present, he was lowered into the ground in an unadorned pine box, next to his mother and father,'' the singer's son Adam Cohen wrote last week.
Leonard Cohen's representatives say a memorial in Los Angeles is being planned. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led worldwide tributes to the singer, who was known for songs including Hallelujah, Suzanne, Bird on the Wire and I'm Your Man. He released his 14th album, You Want It Darker, just last month.
Leonard Cohen: Singer died in sleep after fall - BBC News
Your avatar made it that much funnier!RIP...Democrat party.
Your avatar made it that much funnier!RIP...Democrat party.
I love when something I read makes me laugh out loud!
eta: and you posted that back in January... ROFLMAO
Cooley, who also performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States, founded the Texas Heart Institute and was one of the most celebrated heart surgeons in the world. The Texas native was also known however for a long-running dispute with another world-renowned innovative surgeon in Houston, Dr. Michael DeBakey, over the implant operation. A spokeswoman for Texas Children's Hospital, where Cooley's son-in-law acts as surgeon in chief, said Cooley died in his Houston home on Friday morning, surrounded by his four daughters.
Cooley, who estimated he operated on about 100,000 people, developed many techniques used in cardiovascular surgery and received honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award. "Nothing can compare with the activity of the human heart," Cooley, who grew up wanting to be a dentist like his father, once told an interviewer. "And besides that, it's always had a special connotation in our society, or in our life. It's been the seat of the soul and the seat of emotions. "But now we find that it really is a tough little organ. It can tolerate a great deal and it certainly has been revealed that it can be corrected in many ways and even replaced by organ transplantation."
Famed heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley leaves memorial services for Enron founder Ken Lay at the First United Methodist Church in Houston
Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States in 1968, a year after South African Dr. Christiaan Barnard had done the first one in the world. Cooley also broke ground with surgical methods to fix congenital heart anomalies in infants and children and methods for repairing and replacing diseased heart valves and went on to found the Texas Heart Institute. On April 4, 1969, with no donor heart available for a dying patient, Cooley implanted an artificial heart in Haskell Karp, a 47-year-old man from Illinois. The device kept Karp alive for 65 hours until a human heart became available. Cooley transplanted the human heart to Karp but the patient died a day later.
The procedure led to trouble because Cooley had used an artificial heart developed in the laboratory of his former partner DeBakey without his approval. Cooley, who had worked with DeBakey at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, argued that he implanted the heart device in an urgent bid to keep his patient alive until a human heart was available for transplant. DeBakey called what Cooley did an unethical "childish act" in order to claim a medical landmark, as well as a theft and a betrayal. The device had been tested in animals but had not been approved for use in people. The U.S. government ordered an investigation and the American College of Surgeons censured Cooley. The controversy prompted Cooley to leave Baylor.
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Jones' representative, Judy Miller Silverman, said Jones died Friday at a Cooperstown, New York, hospital after battling pancreatic cancer. Loved ones and members of her retro-soul band, the Dap-Kings, were among those surrounding her, Silverman said. The story of Jones' battle with cancer, first diagnosed in 2013, was told in Barbara Kopple's documentary, "Miss Sharon Jones!" released earlier this year. Though she triumphantly returned to the stage in 2015 after the cancer went into remission, Jones late last year announced its return. Still, Jones mounted another comeback with the defiant single "I'm Still Here" and hit the road again this summer with the Dap-Kings even while undergoing chemotherapy. "You got to be brave," a debilitated Jones told the Associated Press in July , in between tour stops. "I want to use the time that I have. I don't want to spend it all laid up, wishing I had done that gig."
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings perform at the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn. Jones, a big-voiced soul singer who performed with high energy onstage has died at age 60 in New York, after battling pancreatic cancer.
Jones' death was immediately noted on social media and throughout the music industry. The British producer Mark Ronson, who brought the Dap-Kings in to play backing band to Amy Winehouse on her breakthrough album, "Back to Black," said, "Sharon Jones had one of the most magnificent, gut-wrenching voices of anyone in recent time." The youngest of six children, Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Georgia. Her family lived in nearby North Augusta, South Carolina, across the Savannah River from the birthplace of James Brown. Jones, who would grow into a dynamic, show-stopping performer, grew up idolizing the Godfather of Soul and would later be frequently tagged as "the female James Brown." But for decades, such a fate was unimaginable. On "I'm Still Here," she sings of being turned down by music executives for being "too short, too fat, too black and too old."
After growing up in Brooklyn (her mother moved to escape an abusive husband), Jones regularly sang gospel at her church, performed for years in a wedding band and sang back-up for various session bands. To make ends meet, she worked as a corrections officer at the Rikers Island jail complex and was a bank security guard. But in one recording session, she caught the attention of Gabriel Roth and Philip Lehman. The two, blown away by Jones' fiery voice, made her the lead singer of their newly formed Dap-Kings and launched the Bushwick, Brooklyn-based label, Daptone Records, around her unlikely star power. They debuted with 2002's "Dap-Dippin' With Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings," released when Jones was 46. Three more albums followed in the ensuing decade, and two compilations. Standouts included a soulful rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and the single "100 Days, 100 Nights," in which she belts: "100 days, 100 nights to know a man's heart/ And a little more, before, he knows his own."
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Actor and songwriter Paul Williams, who is the president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, confirmed that his brother, Mentor Williams, died on Wednesday morning after battling lung cancer. Paul Williams, who is 76, said he was with his brother when he died at home in northern New Mexico. “It seemed the closer we got to his death the more absolute joy he claimed to feel,” the elder Williams said. “He was an amazingly kind, big-hearted cowboy.”
Mentor Williams’ Drift Away was sung by pop artist Dobie Gray in 1973 and reached No. 5 on the Billboard charts that year. Gray, who died in 2011, had prior hits, including the 1964 pop song In-Crowd, but had been in desperate need of another break in the early 1970s after reaching a lull in his career. He teamed up with Williams. The songwriter had produced Drift Away for another artist, but it did not pan out. “He took a singer who the music industry had kind of considered yesterday’s news and he cut a classic album with him,” Paul Williams said.
With Gray’s soulful delivery and the signature line in the chorus “Give me the beat, boys, free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock ’n’ roll, and drift away,” the song quickly became a hit. It not only became a radio mainstay for decades but a remake by Uncle Kracker in 2003 reintroduced the song to a new generation. A year after Gray’s version came out, Williams produced the album Feelings, which included the songs Sunday Driver and LA Cowboy.
Williams also worked on movie soundtracks. For the 1979 Muppet Movie, he mixed and engineered the tune Rainbow Connection, which was written by his older brother. In the movie, Kermit the Frog sings the sentimental song by a swamp. “I asked him to come in and to mix the album for me,” Paul Williams said. “All of a sudden, it was this crisp wonderful recording with Kermit singing about rainbows.” Williams, who went to high school in Albuquerque, made his home in Taos, a picturesque mountain and ski town. He had been drawn to the area for its natural beauty, culture and cuisine, his brother said.
Award-winning songwriter Mentor Williams dies at 70 - Taipei Times
Sure can, Waltky, this is the Dobie Gray version, probably the best known, here you go:Can anybody put up a youtube video of Drift Away?...
Lake, who died of cancer at 69, was instrumental in bringing classical influences, epic length, mythic scope and 1970s excess into rock 'n' roll, winning millions of fans before punk swept in and spoiled the party. Manager Stewart Young said in a statement that Lake died Wednesday after "a long and stubborn battle with cancer." Born in the southern English seaside town of Poole in 1947, Lake founded King Crimson with guitarist Robert Fripp in the late 1960s. The band pioneered the ambitious genre that came to be known as progressive rock. He went on to form ELP with keyboardist Keith Emerson and drummer Carl Palmer. With Lake as vocalist and guitarist, ELP impressed crowds at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, in a lineup that also featured Jimi Hendrix and The Who.
The band released six platinum-selling albums characterized by songs of epic length, classical influence and ornate imagery, and toured with elaborate light shows and theatrical staging. One album was a live interpretation of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." It reached the top 10 in both Britain and the United States, a feat that seems astonishing now. Another, "Tarkus," contains a 20-minute track telling the story of the titular creature, a mythic armadillo-tank. Emerson, Lake and Palmer's 1973 album "Brain Salad Surgery" included a nearly 30-minute composition called "Karn Evil 9" that featured a Moog synthesizer and the eerie, carnival-like lyric: "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends."
They filled stadiums and sold records by the millions, but ELP and other prog-rock bands such as Yes and the Moody Blues suffered a backlash with the arrival of punk in the mid-to-late 1970s. They were ridiculed as the embodiment of pomposity and self-indulgence that rock supposedly eschewed. ELP broke up in 1979, reunited in 1991, later disbanded again and reunited for a 2010 tour. Emerson died in March from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Santa Monica, California.
Palmer, the group's sole survivor, said "Greg's soaring voice and skill as a musician will be remembered by all who knew his music." "Having lost Keith this year as well has made this particularly hard for all of us," Palmer said. "As Greg sang at the end of 'Pictures At An Exhibition', 'death is life.' His music can now live forever in the hearts of all who loved him." Lake's songs as a solo artist include "I Believe in Father Christmas," an enduring seasonal staple first released in 1975. In 2005, he answered a reader query to The Guardian about songwriting royalties, saying it was "lovely" to get a royalty check for his Christmas hit each year but that the money "isn't quite enough to buy my own island in the Caribbean." He urged readers to request the song from their local radio stations each year - and promised to invite everyone to his island if he was ever able to get one. He is survived by his wife Regina and daughter Natasha.
News from The Associated Press
Esma Redzepova died in Skopje following a short illness, according to hospital and family sources. Redzepova represented Macedonia in Eurovision 2013 and sung the opening credits for the 2006 film Borat. But she boasted a career spanning more than five decades, during which she battled racism and prejudice of various kinds.
Esma Redzepova performs in Switzerland in 2006, dressed in a bright green turban
Redzepova spoke out for the rights of Roma women, and against the criticism of her career and choice to marry and collaborate with composer Stevo Teodosievski, who was not from the Roma community. Her humanitarian work, which extended to fostering 47 children over her lifetime, led her to be nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to the Roma Times.
Redzepova, who performed at venues across the world over the course of her career, was first acclaimed as the Queen of Romany Song in 1976, at a world festival of Romany music held in India. Known for her extravagant outfits and perfectly-controlled powerful voice, she had a rich repertoire of hundreds of songs, mixing traditional Roma and Macedonian music with contemporary sound, including pop and electro music, working closely with young artists across the Balkans.
Esma Redzepova, Macedonia's 'Romany music queen', dies at 73 - BBC News
Lawrence Manley Colburn, a helicopter gunner in the Vietnam War who helped end the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese villagers by U.S. troops at My Lai, has died. He was 67. Lisa Colburn, speaking with The Associated Press on Thursday evening, said her husband of 31 years was diagnosed with cancer in late September and died Tuesday. "It was very quick," she said by phone from her Canton, Georgia, home near Atlanta. "He was a very peaceful man who had a great desire for there to be a peaceful world." She also called him "a compassionate person who was a hero in many people's eyes."
Colburn was the last surviving member of a U.S. Army crew that ended the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968. According to accounts, pilot Hugh Thompson landed the helicopter between unarmed villagers and American troops and ordered Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta to cover him. Thompson then persuaded members of Charlie Company to stop shooting. The company's soldiers had begun shooting that day even though they hadn't come under attack, authorities later said. They added that it quickly escalated into an orgy of killing that claimed as many as 504 civilians — most of whom were women, children and the elderly.
My Lai Massacre survivor Do Ba, 48, left, stands with former U.S. Army officer Lawrence Colburn, 58, during the 40th anniversary of the incident in My Lai, Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam.
In an initial Facebook post, Lisa Colburn confirmed the death and wrote: "As most of you know, Larry has been very ill for a while but his suffering ended today, 12/13/16/." She added: "Your friendship meant a lot to him." She added the she and their son, Connor, "appreciate your love and support during this difficult time." Trent Angers, the biographer for Thompson, who wrote "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story," said Colburn played an indispensable role in stopping the massacre at My Lai. "He stood up, shoulder to shoulder with Hugh and Glenn, to oppose and stand down against those who were committing crimes against humanity. Without his assistance, Hugh might not have done what he did," Angers said.
Colburn and Thompson were nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 2001 for their actions and received the Soldier's Medal, the highest U.S. military award for bravery not involving conflict with the enemy. Thompson, who lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, died in 2006. Andreotta was killed in the Vietnam War three weeks after My Lai. A memorial service for Colburn is planned Saturday, Jan. 7, at the Darby Funeral Home in Canton, Georgia, the funeral home said on its website. It said that in addition to his wife and son, Colburn is survived by three sisters.
Veteran Lawrence Colburn Dies; Helped End Vietnam's My Lai Massacre | Military.com
Dr Heimlich died at a hospital in the US city of Cincinnati early on Saturday following complications from a heart attack he suffered on Monday, his family says. Dr Heimlich invented the lifesaving technique, which uses abdominal thrusts to clear a person's airway, in 1974. In May he used the technique himself to save a woman at his retirement home. He dislodged a piece of meat with a bone in it from the airway of an 87-year-old woman, telling the BBC: "I didn't know I really could do it until the other day." Dr Heimlich was director of surgery at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati when he devised the technique.
In a statement released to the media, Dr Heimlich's family said he had been "a hero to many people around the world". "From the time Dad began his medical career in New York City, to the time he practised as a thoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, he was committed to coming up with simple, effective ideas that helped save lives and significantly improved people's quality of life," it said. The anti-choking manoeuvre was not Dr Heimlich's only success. In 1962 he developed the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve which was credited with saving many soldiers' lives in the Vietnam War and is still used for patients undergoing chest surgery.
Who has the Heimlich manoeuvre saved?
Since the technique was introduced in 1974 it is believed to have saved the lives of more than 100,000 people in the US alone. They include former President Ronald Reagan, pop star Cher, former New York mayor Edward Koch and Hollywood actors Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Carrie Fisher, Jack Lemmon and Marlene Dietrich.
In 2014 actor Clint Eastwood was credited with saving the life of a golf tournament director in California who was choking on a piece of cheese. In the UK, celebrity promoter Simon Cowell was reportedly saved by comedian David Walliams, who carried out the Heimlich manoeuvre on him after a mint became stuck in his throat.
Heimlich manoeuvre inventor dies aged 96 - BBC News
The actor reportedly realised the fellow party guest couldn't breathe and performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on him. The technique requires a rescuer to carry out abdominal thrusts on a choke victim to dislodge the blockage.
A first aider will initially establish the person is choking. They may be holding their throat, turning red in the face, and attempting to cough.
Before any abdominal thrusts are attempted, the rescuer will first resort to back blows. The person choking will be bent forwards slightly, while the rescuer supports them by putting one arm across the patient's shoulders. The five blows are delivered with an open hand between the shoulder blades. While the rescuer delivers the blows, they will make sure to look at the patient's mouth and not their back. If the object is not dislodged, the rescuer will proceed to five abdominal thrusts.
The rescuer will place their arms under the arms of the victim and hold them around their chest. The rescuer is looking to place their hands at the centre of the abdomen in order to artificially manipulate the diaphragm into producing a cough that will dislodge the object.
Who, What, Why: How easy is it to do the Heimlich manoeuvre? - BBC News
Debbie Parkhurst, 45, said she was eating an apple at home last Friday when a piece became lodged in her throat and she began to choke. Ms Parkhurst said she pounded on her own chest but could not move the piece. Toby joined in, jumping on her chest and dislodging the apple, then licking her face so she would not pass out.
Chat shows
Ms Parkhurst, who lives in the town of Calvert, said she was convinced Toby was not playing and was trying to perform his own version of the Heimlich. The manoeuvre, named after Dr Henry Heimlich, who first recorded it in 1974, aims to clear airways with abdominal thrusts. Ms Parkhurst, who works with jewellery, said two-year-old Toby got serious after her own efforts failed. "The next thing I know, Toby's up on his hind feet and he's got his front paws on my shoulders," she told Associated Press. "He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest."
Ms Parkhurst is recovering from chest and stomach wounds from Toby's jumping. "I literally have paw print-shaped bruises on my chest. I'm still a little hoarse, but otherwise I'm OK," she said. "They say dogs leave a paw print on your heart. He left a paw print on my heart, that's for sure. "The doctor said I probably wouldn't be here without Toby. I keep looking at him and saying, 'You're amazing'." Ms Parkhurst and Toby have now been asked on to numerous US chat shows.
BBC NEWS | Americas | Dog saves US owner with Heimlich
Tributes have been paid to a US woman with colon cancer whose appearances in a six-game series of wins on the popular quiz show Jeopardy were first broadcast eight days after she died. Cindy Stowell was recorded appearing in the show between August and September. The science content developer, 41, needed to take painkillers to do so, at one point becoming so weak that her voice was barely audible. The show's producers say she bravely gave her prize money to cancer groups.
Cindy Stowell, right, appears on the Jeopardy! set with Alex Trebek in Culver City, California.
'Lifelong ambition'
"When she taped her episodes in August and September of this year, she had stage four cancer, and she lost her battle with the disease on 5 December," the Jeopardy! website says. "Cindy won her first game, unseating reigning seven-game champ Tim Aten and claiming $22,801, then went on to win the remaining three games that day. "She returned [to Texas] for a short break before the next tape session on 13 September, when she won two more games and brought her final total to $103,801."
Jeopardy host Alex Trebek concluded the show on Wednesday with a tribute to Cindy. "Appearing on the show was the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition for that lady," he said. "What you did not know is that when we taped these programmes with her a few weeks ago, she was suffering from stage four cancer. "Sadly, Cindy Stowell has passed away. So from all of us here at Jeopardy our sincere condolences to her family and her friends." The winning contestant was shown a recording of three of her appearances on the show while in hospital.
Tributes paid to Jeopardy winner who died before quiz broadcast - BBC News
Sellers shared his astronaut’s perspective on climate change in Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary, “Before the Flood,” released this fall. He told DiCaprio that seeing the earth’s atmosphere as a “tiny little onion skin” from space helped him gain a fuller understanding of the planet’s delicacy. He also wrote a New York Times op-ed about grappling with the meaning of his life’s work after learning he had terminal cancer. In both the film and the op-ed, he was optimistic, arguing that he expected human ingenuity to rescue the planet from a dire future of runaway global warming.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (from left) Leonardo Dicaprio, Piers Sellers and Fisher Stevens attend the premiere of National Geographic Channel's "Before The Flood," at the United Nations headquarters, Oct. 20, 2016. Sellers, a climate scientist and former astronaut died Dec. 23. He was 61.
Sellers optimistic
“Piers devoted his life to saving the planet,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. “His legacy will be one not only of urgency that the climate is warming but also of hope that we can yet improve humanity’s stewardship of this planet.” In the op-ed, Sellers wrote that the best way he could imagine spending his final months was to continue working, despite knowing he would not live to see the worst of climate change or the harnessing of possible solutions. “New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate. There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks,” Sellers wrote. “History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots.”
Three tours in space
The British-born Sellers was deputy director for sciences and exploration at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He started working for NASA as a scientist in 1982 and joined its astronaut corps in 1996. He made three flights to the International Space Station, the last in 2010. “When I was a kid, I watched the Apollo launches from across the ocean, and I thought NASA was the holy mountain,” Sellers said earlier this year when Bolden presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal, the agency’s highest honor. “As soon as I could, I came over here to see if I could climb that mountain.”
Piers Sellers, NASA Climate Scientist, Former Astronaut, Dies at 61
State TV in Vulovic's home country of Serbia said she was found dead in her apartment in Belgrade. The cause of death was not immediately known. Vulovic was working on a Yugoslav Airlines Douglas DC-9 on 26 Jan 1972 when a suspected bomb brought the plane down among mountains in Czechoslovakia. All 27 other passengers and crew died. According to investigators, Vulovic was trapped by a food cart in the plane's tail section as it plummeted to earth in freezing temperatures. The tail landed in a heavily wooded and snow-blanketed part of a moutainside, which was thought to have cushioned the impact.
Vulovic was rescued by Bruno Honke, a woodsman who heard her screaming in the dark while the debris came down around them. It was suspected that a bomb was planted inside the jet during a stopover in Copenhagen, Denmark, but nothing was ever proven and no arrests were made. After arriving in hospital, Vulovic fell into a coma for 10 days. She had a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae and she had broken her pelvis, several ribs and both legs. "I was broken, and the doctors put me back together again," she told the New York Times in 2008. "Nobody ever expected me to live this long."
Vesna Vulovic, an ex-air stewardess, and survivor of a fall from 10,000 meters when in 1972 her plane was blown up in mid-fight by a bomb
The fall gained Vulovic a place in the Guinness Book of Records of 1985 for the highest fall survived without a parachute. The stewardess was temporarily paralysed from the waist down by the fall but in time she made a near-full recovery and returned to work for the airline in a desk job. She never regained any memory of the accident or of her rescue, she said, and she continued to fly as a passenger. "People always want to sit next to me on the plane," she said.
The spectacular survival story won Vulovic celebrity in Serbia, where she channelled her fame into campaigning for political causes. She was fired from her job at the airline in 1990 after taking part in protests against President Slobodan Milosevic but avoided arrest. She continued for two more decades to fight against nationalism. "I am like a cat, I have had nine lives," she told the New York Times. "But if nationalist forces in this country prevail, my heart will burst."
Vesna Vulovic, stewardess who survived 33,000ft fall, dies - BBC News
