April 15 | John Jacob Astor IV

July 13, 1864 – April 15, 1912: Age 47

John Jacob Astor IV was born into one of the richest families in America, his great-grandfather being the first John Jacob Astor who made a fortune in furs and real estate. Once you've got that much money it's hard not to make more, and Astor himself made additional fortuntes in real estate. He also wrote science fiction (including a story set in 2000 about life on Saturn and Jupiter) and invented things (like a bicycle brake and a turbine engine).

He divorced his wife in 1909 after she had an affair, a scandal in itself. Society was further shocked and titillated when he announced, two years later, his married to a woman who, at 18, was two years younger than his own son. In order to wait out the maelstrom of gossip, Mr. and the new Mrs. Astor took an extended tour to Europe and Egypt. During this extended trip, Mrs. Astor became pregnant, and the couple made arrangements to return to America so that the child could be born there. They booked first-class passage on the RMS Titanic.

When the Titanic hit an iceberg and began sinking, Astor did not believe there was any serious danger, but helped his wife into a lifeboat as a precautionary measure. He gave his own place in the lifeboat to stranger, a woman, saying, “The ladies have to go first.” When his pregnant wife tried to get out too, he said, “Get in the lifeboat, to please me.” He lit a cigarette and said, “Good-bye dearie. I’ll see you later.” He stood back, lit a cigarette, and tossed his gloves to his wife. She survived; he, famously, did not.

When he body was recovered it was covered in soot and blood, leading to speculation that he was killed by the funnel when it collapsed as the ship went down. He was identified by his initials, sewn into his jacket. He was carrying $2,500 in American cash plus a further £225 in British currency, as well as his gold pocket watch. His son, Vincent, wore the watch for the rest of his life.

Source: Wikipedia; Forbes, Malcolm, They Went That-a-Way, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1988.

March 28 | Virginia Woolf

January 25, 1882 - March 28, 1941: Age 59

Virginia Woolf was an English writer whose novels and essays had a lasting impact on English literary style. She was a member of the very influential Bloomsbury group, a collection of writers, artists, and thinkers who explored and promoted radical ideas about feminism, sexuality, and pacifism.

Woolf suffered her first nervous breakdown as a teenager after her mother and her sister both died within two years of one another. Her father's death when she was just over 20 had the same effect. She was also sexually abused as a child by her half-brother. Throughout her life, her temperament was delicate and she endured regular, debilitating periods of depression.

In March 1941 she was living in the country, trying to avoid having another nervous breakdown. Not that she had much of a choice: her home in London had been destroyed in bombing raids. Feeling another breakdown was inevitable, and not wanting to endure it, she wrote a suicide note to her husband Leonard, weighted her pockets with stones, and walked into a river near her home. Her body wasn't found for nearly three weeks.

"I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been."

Source: Wikipedia

February 20 | Zachary Breaux

June 26, 1960 - February 20, 1997: Age 36

Zachary Breaux, a New York-based jazz guitarist, was building sandcastles on a beach in Miami with his wife and daughters when he heard Eugenie Poleyeff calling for help. She had been swimming along the shore when she was suddenly caught in a riptide. A riptide or rip current is a relatively narrow "slice" of water that has a strong current away from the shore. It's nearly impossible to spot, and many swimmers are imperilled when they are caught and dragged far from shore while they exhaust themselves trying to escape. It is as though the sea inexplicably decides to snatch them away.

Breaux rushed to the woman's aid while his wife ran to find a lifeguard. He was a vigorous man and an excellent swimmer, having already saved a man from drowning in Italy ten years before, and probably confident he could help her. Both swimmers, however, were overcome by the current, and thrashed helplessly while it carried them farther from shore. A number of other men rushed to their aid, but some of them, too, to be rescued when lifeguards fetched from another beach some distance away finally arrived. Breaux and Poleyeff were given CPR on shore, but it was too late: both were dead.

Sources: Wikipedia, Reader's Digest

February 18 | George Plantagenet

October 21, 1449 - February 18, 1478: Age 28

George Plantagenet seems to have been a rather ordinary man, with ordinary weaknesses, plunged into an extraordinary situation — that is, the dynastic mess already referred to on these pages recently with his great-great-great uncle, Richard II, and his neice, Elizabeth of York. Seems like February was a bad time to be royalty in Britain in the 15th century.

George Plantagenet, a.k.a. the Duke of Clarence, was the younger brother of Edward IV, the guy who deposed Henry VI, who was the grandson of the guy who deposed Richard II. In fact the only person who got the throne by direct inheritance during the 15th century who wasn't deposed and/or murdered was Henry V, who died of dysentery 9 years after he became king. And of the seven monarchs who ruled Britain in that century, a majority — Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII — got the throne by means other than conventional inheritance. (Given the quality of life of those who had it... why?)

Back to George. It's very simple really, he got embroiled in some kind of plot against his brother Edward. Edward had him imprisoned and condemned to death. Legend has it that he was given his choice of execution methods, and he famously chose to be drowned in a butt of malmsey, that is, a giant keg of wine. Apparently he was fond of the stuff. It sounds like urban legend, but Shakespeare knew a good story when he saw one (as do I) and wrote it into Richard III. In fact Plantagenet's body was exhumed many years later and although not even the CSI guys can prove drowning from a skeleton, it was clear he had not been beheaded, the usual method of execution for those of noble birth.

By the way, I have a little souvenir booklet purchased in Britain many years ago that shows all the lines of succession of Britain's monarchs. I have had to refer to it so frequently in this past two weeks that it now practically falls open at the page showing the line between Edward III (Richard II's grandfather) and Henry VII.

Sources: Wikipedia; Montague-Smith, Patrick, The Royal Line of Succession

February 7 | Josef Mengele

March 16, 1911 - February 7, 1979: Age 67

Mengele was the notorious physician at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was among the physicians who supervised the selection of prisoners arriving, deciding who would die quickly, who would be a slave, and who would be selected for human experiments. He was known as the "Angel of Death" ("Mengele" contains "Engel", the german word for "angel". He used his work at Auschwitz to continue his research on heredity, and had a special interest in twins, trying to prove that various diseases were caused by racial inferiority. Those selected for "special work detail" with Mengele were better housed and fed than the others, and temporarily safe from the gas chambers, but most of his victims died due to the experiments he performed or of later infections. According to his assistant/slave, a prisoner with a medical degree and was an experienced pathologist, Mengele simply did not consider his subjects to be fellow human beings.

At the end of the war he was captured by Americans, but gave his name as "Fritz Hollman" and worked as a farmhand. Eventually a friend helped him escape to Argentina, where he worked as a construction worker. Soon he came into contact with influential German expatriates there and began to enjoy a good life. By 1960, however, fear of capture drove him to Paraguay just a few weeks before the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Jerusalem for trial as a war criminal. They had intended to capture Mengele as well, but he had already fled. Run by a dictator of German heritage (Alfredo Stroessner), Paraguay was safer.

He was already infected, however, with a sense of anxiety, and this anxiety haunted him for the rest of his life. He crossed into Brazil and went into hiding under an assumed name, living with a Neo-Nazi admirer there. He moved out into the country and worked as a manager of a farm. His mental state deteriorated; he became depressed, angry, and self-centred. Always fearing capture, he rejected a proposal to relocate in Bolivia in 1974 and moved instead to a bungalow in a suburb of São Paolo, where his son Rolf visited him in 1977. According to his son (who was anti-Nazi and had never known his father), Mengele was unrepentant, claiming he "had never personally harmed anyone in his whole life."

His health deteriorated, Mengele died two years later while swimming in the sea. He either drowned accidentally or as a result of a stroke. He was buried under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", the identity he had used since 1976.

He did manage to elude his enemies, at least the external ones. In 1985 police found evidence of his hiding place and death at the house of one of his friends in Germany. His body was exhumed in 1985 and positively identified by forensic experts. Later, in 1992, a DNA test confirmed the identification beyond a doubt.

Sources: Wikipedia, Mengele: The Complete Story

January 10 | Spalding Gray

June 5, 1941 - ca. January 10, 2004: Age 62

Spalding Gray was an actor, screenwriter, and playwright who is best known for his film Swimming to Cambodia, a film version of a monologue he wrote based on his experiences as an actor in the film Killing Fields.

The interesting thing about Gray was that he was an actor, and then he wrote a monologue about being an actor playing a real person, and then he made a film about him presenting a monologue about being an actor playing a real person. Later he wrote a novel that was based on his real life experiences growing up, and then wrote and performed a monologue about his experiences writing the novel based on his experiences growing up.

Check out a clip from Swimming to Cambodia here.

In June 2001 he was in a car crash while on holiday in Ireland. His injuries were severe, and he began to from depression. In January 2004 he went missing. Because of his state of mind, and a previous suicide attempt in 2002, the presumption was that he was dead. In March, the body showed up in the East River. He had apparently jumped off the side of the Staten Island Ferry.

Find out what it feels like to find Spalding Gray's body by reading this brief article in Esquire magazine, written by the young man who found him. I particularly like the last paragraph, which I will quote here:

I got in touch with his wife, and I mentioned that I'd never try to exploit my discovery. She said, "No, please, do whatever you like. You don't have to be tasteful. This is Spalding Gray. All he ever talked about was his own death."

Sources: Wikipedia, Esquire

December 30 | Grigori Rasputin

January 22, 1869 – December 30, 1916: Age 47

Rasputin was a Russian mystic who had a considerable following among the nobility of early 20th century Russia. After an unexceptional childhood, he spent a few months in a monastery, married, and had three children. In 1901 he made a pilgrimage to various places, including Greece and Jerusalem. By 1903 he had arrived in St. Petersburg, where he began to develop a reputation for healing and prophesy. In 1905, he was in Siberia when he got word that the son of the Tsar, who was hemophilic, was bleeding after a fall from a horse. Rasputin was able to provide some relief through prayer and practical advice like "Don't let the doctors bother him too much, let him rest."

Every time the boy had an injury, the boy's mother called on Rasputin, and he got better. She came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin, and his influence over the royal household grew.

A group of Russian nobles, viewing this influence as too great a threat, invited Rasputin to dinner and served him cakes and red wine laced with cyanide. Although they put enough poison to kill many men in the food, Rasputin appeared unaffected. One of the assassins, panicking, pulled out a gun and shot him in the back. Then they ran out of the palace, leaving the body alone.

It was a cold night, however, so one came back to get a coat, and he leaned over to check on the body. Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed him by the throat, whispered “You bad boy” in his ear, threw him across the room, and tried to run away. The other assassins, however, had returned, and they shot him three more times. He fell down but still wasn’t dead, so they hit him until he stopped moving, wrapped his body in a sheet and threw it in the freezing river.

When he body was recovered and autopsied it was found he had still been alive when thrown in the river: he either drowned or died of hypothermia.

No conversation of Rasputin can be complete without this: turn up the volume and click here.

Sources: Wikipedia

December 17 | Harold Holt

August 5, 1908 - December 17, 1967: Age 59

Harold Holt was an Australian politician who was elected Prime Minister in 1966. He had a long political career, but is remembered mostly for his support of Australian and American involvement in the Vietnam War (the Tony Blair of his day?), and for his mysterious disappearance.

He was an experienced swimmer and skindiver, but was suffering from health problems. He had collapsed the year before from "vitamin deficiency", leading some to suspect heart troubles, and was on strong painkillers for the flare-up of an old shoulder injury. On December 17 he went with friends to Cheviot Beach on the eastern arm of Port Phillip Bay, an area with heavy surf, strong currents, and dangerous rip tides. He insisted on plunging into the water despite warnings from his friends, and quickly disappeared from view. They raised the alarm immediately and for the next two days that area of the coast was combed in one of the largest search operations in Australian history. They never found him.

Rumours about his disappearance being faked abounded, with stories ranging from running away with a mistress, to being picked up by a Chinese submarine, to being abducted by a UFO. There were also rumours that it was suicide. The most likely explanation, however, is that Holt was caught in the strong undertow and carried out to sea, where he drowned.

Source: Wikipedia, Sydney Morning Herald

CPR Annie | L'inconnue de la Seine

Late 19th Century: Age <20

At the end of the 19th century, the body of a young girl was pulled from the Seine. She appeared healthy and there were no marks of violence on her, so it was assumed she had drowned herself. The custom in those days was to put unidentified bodies on display at the Paris morgue, and the public were invited to come by to view them in the hope that somebody might recognized one of the corpses. Nobody did. But a morgue worker was impressed enough by her beauty that he made a plaster cast of her face.

Weirdly enough, word of her beauty spread. Many copies of the cast were produced, and it caught the public imagination. Although her identity was never discovered, Camus, Rilke, and Nabokov were three of at least a dozen writers who wrote her or her mask into their novels, plays, and short stories. It became the "thing" to have a cast of her face, presumably to hang on the wall, stare at, and sigh romantically about the cruelty of life and the mysteriousness of her smile. According to one critic, "a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her." Another says, "The Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s."

If the face looks familiar, perhaps you have taken a First Aid course. A commonly-used CPR teaching dummy, "Rescue Annie" (also called "CPR Annie" and "Resusci Anne"), was developed in 1958 using her face as the model.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Girl from the Seine

October 12 | Audrey Mestre

August 11, 1974 - October 12, 2002: Age 28

Audrey Mestre was a French world record-setting free diver who died in an attempt to set a world record of 171 metres.

In the sport of freediving, the diver descends vertically under water as far as possible, then reascends to the surface, on just one breath. This is achieved using a weighted sled tethered to a strong line. Holding on to the sled, the diver shoots downward to a give depth. At the bottom the diver uses a small air tank to inflate a balloon and, holding the balloon, shoots back up to the surface. Safety divers in scuba equipment are positioned at regular intervals and at the bottom to assist in case of mishap.

Nitrogen narcosis, the condition that makes deep diving risky for scuba divers, is not a problem because descending and ascending on one breath leaves no time for nitrogen to build up in the bloodstream. However training for the sport is necessary to make it possible for go without air for three minutes, and to survive surviving high ambient pressure that would normally cause permanent damage to the lungs.

The first part of the dive went as expected, but at the bottom of the dive Mestre discovered that the small tank that was to be used to fill the balloon for the ascent was nearly empty. The safety diver used some of his own air to partially fill the balloon, allowing her to leave the bottom, but it wasn't enough to get her all the way back up, and she lost consciousness about 100 feet below the surface. Safety divers positioned part way up managed to get her the rest of the way, but not before she had been without oxygen for nearly nine minutes. She never regained consciousness. Her death was ruled an accident.

A year after her death one of her friends and team members came out publicly to accuse her husband, also a free diver and in charge of the team, of negligence at best and, at worst, deliberately planning his wife's death. Nobody seems be clear whose responsibility it was to fill the tank for the ascent balloon. Other safety measures that might have saved her life — a doctor at the surface, spare air tanks at stations on the way up — were not in place. The husband and the team member have published competing books, each with their own version of events. The dispute is emotional, rancorous, rather sad, and quite interesting.

Sources: Wikipedia, US News, The Last Attempt

October 1 | Rose O'Neal Greenhow

1817 - October 1, 1864: Age 47

Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a passionate secessionist. She was also a spy for the Confederate cause. Her status in pre-war Washington as a popular hostess in society positioned her beautifully to gather information on government plans, troop movements, and even Washington city fortifications send them to the Confederate government. She was particularly good at this work because she lived in a society where women were assumed to be ineffective and unintelligent.

When the Union became aware of her activities (she is credited with winning the Battle of Manassas and helped the South win the Battle of Bull Run) she was placed under arrest and send to the the Old Capitol Prison, where her youngest daughter was allowed to stay with her. The picture at the bottom of this entry shows them in prison. However, even in prison she was able to pass messages, so the Union government deported her to Virginia.

There she was greeted as a heroine. President Jefferson Davis sent her to Europe on a diplomatic mission. There she met with various aristocrats, was received at the court of Napoleon III, met Queen Victoria, and became engaged to an English Earl. She also wrote and sold her memoirs, amassing a considerable sum for them. Returning home was dangerous: all the southern ports were blockaded by the Union Navy. The ship she sailed on was chased by a Union gunboat, and ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear river.

Greenhow took her money — $2,000 in gold, intended to aid the Confederate cause — and two companions into a rowboat and escaped. However a wave capsized the little boat and, weighed down by the gold, Greenhow drowned. Her body washed ashore a few days later and was found by a Confederate soldier, who stole the gold; but when he realized whom he had stolen it from he handed it over to the Confederate government. She received full military burial, and her grave is still decorated every year on Confederate Memorial Day, which is May 10 in North Carolina.



Sources: Wikipedia, americancivilwar.com