March 31 | Brandon Lee

February 1, 1965 – March 31, 1993: Age 28

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..." — Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was working on the film set of The Crow when he died. Cast as the star, the scene called for him to enter his apartment to find a gang of baddies raping his girlfriend. One of the thugs was to shoot him.

Unknown to the crew, when the gun had been fired prior to the scene it had malfunctioned, and the cartridge had lodged in the barrel. Normally when firing a blank, nothing comes out of the barrel, but when the other actor fired at Lee the previous cartridge lodged in the barrel was propelled out with enough force to penetrate Lee's spine. He went down immediately and was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to revive him and he was pronounced dead.

The Crow was finished with the encouragement of Lee's family, and was a huge hit with a loyal following. Had Lee lived, he would have been a very big star.

The quote at the top was recited by Lee in his last interview before his death; it is now on his tombstone.

Source: Wikipedia

March 27 | Mary of Burgundy

February 13, 1457 – March 27, 1482: Age 25

When her father died suddenly in 1477, Mary of Burgundy became the Duchess of a huge and immensely rich slice of Europe. She was his only child.

Louis of France was beside himself with desire to acquire her estates, in particular the free county of Burgundy, which was not subject to direct French rule. He attempted to negotiate a marriage between her and his son, Charles. She declined, but since he was preparing to use an army to back up his wooing, she turned to her Netherlands subjects for help. They in turn extracted from her certain political rights, which she granted.

She decided to marry the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, a young man with enough power and money to help her oppose the French king's designs. They had three children, one of whom died the year he was born. The other two were still infants and Mary only 25 when she met her own end: she was falconing with her husband; her horse tripped and landed on top of her, breaking her back. She died several days later.

Source: Wikipedia

March 2 | Marjorie Bruce

December, 1296 - March 2, 1316: Age 19

Marjorie Bruce was the eldest daughter of Robert Bruce, who was crowned Robert I of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence against Edward I of England.

Just a few months after her father was crowned, Marjorie was taken prisoner by an enemy of her father, along with her stepmother, two aunts, and another lady. She was nine years old. The prisoners were delivered to Edward I, who sent her and one aunt to a convent. Her stepmother was confined to a manor house in Yorkshire and the other two ladies were actually put in a cage and displayed to the public. Edward considered confining the nine-year-old Marjorie to a cage as well, but was persuaded not to.

Edward I died a year later but his son, Edward II, continued Marjorie's confinement for about 8 years (the ladies in the cage were moved to a convent after 4 years). She was released in 1314 in a prisoner exchange. Of course back in Scotland, as the daughter of a king, she was still virtually a prisoner, and was given to Walter Stewart as wife in reward for his valour in battle. The picture above is of the imagined meeting with new husband, drawn centuries after the fact. There is no known portrait of her in existence.

Two years later, while pregnant, Marjorie's horse startled while she was out riding and she fell to the ground. She went into labour and delivered a son prematurely, dying a few hours after the birth. The child, however, survived, and eventually ascended to the throne as Robert II. She is, in fact, the direct ancestor of the subsequent monarchs of both Scotland and England, including our own Queen Elizabeth.

Source: Wikipedia

January 28 | Christa McAuliffe

September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986: Age 37

Krista McAuliffe was selected by NASA to be part of the 25th Space Shuttle Mission. Her job would be to teach lessons to children all over the world from space. She and her backup, Barbara Morgan, took a year's leave of absence from teaching in order to train as astronauts as well as promote the Teacher in Space Project to the public.

The launch was originally scheduled for January 22, but was delayed for a number of reasons, including bad weather predictions. Challenger would have launched on January 27 but for the final delay, this time to have then-Vice President George Bush (Sr.) stop by to watch.

January 28 was an unusually cold morning, and concerns were expressed about the effects of the cold on the rubber O-rings that sealed the rocket boosters. Those who did so were overruled, and the launch went ahead.

One minute after launch, a small plume of flame appeared on one of the boosters. Nobody noticed at the time, and 68 seconds after launch the final air-to-ground communication from Challenger was heard: "Roger, go at throttle up." At 72 seconds, one of the boosters pulled away from the shuttle, and probably caused a sudden sideways movement. The cabin recorder has the voice of Pilot Michael Smith saying "Uh oh" a half-second after this. A second later, the breakup of Challenger began. It veered from its course and was torn apart by the abnormal aerodynamic forces.

The crew cabin detached in one piece and slowly tumbled and within 10 seconds was free-falling toward the earth. The "post-breakup trajectory" was nearly three minutes, and oxygen consumption (calculated by the unused air supply) indicates that the cres were probably still alive. How long they remained conscious is not known; If the cabin lost pressure, they would have passed out in a few seconds. The cabin hit the ocean surface at 207 mph (337 kph), creating deceleration of more than 200g. If they were still alive before it hit, they were not alive after.

The report of a biomedical specialist, released in July of the same year, stated:

The findings are inconclusive. The impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface was so violent that evidence of damage occurring in the seconds which followed the explosion was masked. Our final conclusions are:

* the cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined;
* the forces to which the crew were exposed during Orbiter breakup were probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury; and
* the crew possibly, but not certainly, lost consciousness in the seconds following Orbiter breakup due to in-flight loss of crew module pressure.

There was no possibility of crew escape; the shuttle had not been designed with that need in mind.

McAuliffe's backup, Barbara Morgan, watched as the shuttle took off, cheering and clapping for her friends. You can see a clip of this on YouTube. At about 1:40 into the clip you hear a male voice say "That's not right". Gordon reacts, her hands flying up under her chin, and in a few seconds she leaves the shot. Those few seconds tell a story in body language.

Morgan continued to work with NASA on educational projects. Twelve years later, in 1998, Morgan became a full-time professional astronaut, and flew on a space shuttle mission to the International Space Station in August 2007. One need not imagine her thoughts at that time; they are available on YouTube.

December 16 | Nina Hamnett

February 14, 1890 - December 16, 1956: Age 66

Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist who lived a flamboyant, Bohemian lifestyle that included bisexuality, promiscuity, a bestselling autobiography, libel suits, and lots of alcohol. She once danced naked on the table of a café in Paris, a feat I personally find admirable. She hung out with the greatest and most avant-garde artists of the age, including Modigliani, Picasso, Diaghilev, and Cocteau.

Her bestselling autobiography, Laughing Torso, irritated Aleister Crowley so much that he sued her for libel over her allegation that he was a black magician. He lost the suit; the judge didn't believe that the allegation wasn't true. However it was a lose-lose situation for Hamnett: if he were not a black magician, she might lose the suit; if he were, as the judge seems to have believed, wouldn't he make a very unfortunate enemy? She did, however, outlive him (he died in 1947).

As it happens, her life went into decline after the lawsuit. She was a heavy drinker and spent a lot of the latter half of her life in bars, reminiscing about the good days. In 1956 she fell from her apartment window and was impaled on the fence 40 feet below. It is not certain whether it was a drunken accident or an attempt at suicide; if it were the latter, it was successful, as she died. Her last words were, "Why don't they let me die?"

At right: One of her works, Der Sturm, c. 1913.

Source: Wikipedia, Art and Illusion

November 2 | Thomas Midgley, Jr.

May 18, 1889 - November 2, 1944: Age 55

Thomas Midgley had more impact on the ozone layer than any other single organism on the planet. That's because, as a scientist in the 1930s, he discovered dichlorodifluoromethane, a chlorinated fluorocarbon (CFC) which he named Freon. This substance was to become widely used in heat pumps, refrigerators, and aerosol sprays, and to set up a cycle of ozone depletion. Ozone is a molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms. Its presence in the upper atmosphere filters harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. Since 1980 the ozone in the upper atmosphere has depeleted, resulting in overall thinning of the ozone layer year-round, as well as drastic thinning of the ozone layer over the polar regions during the spring (called the "ozone hole"). The depletion is caused by CFCs that have been steadily pouring into to atmosphere since the 1930s. CFCs are not banned in many countries, and plans are to ban them worldwide by 2010.

That wasn't Midgley's only contribution to the atmosphere: he also discovered that adding ethyl (tetra-ethyl lead) to gasoline made engines run more efficiently. This discovery resulted in the rapid development of better engines which, among other things, gave the US a decisive advantage in air combat during WWII. Workers who had extensive contact with the compounds often suffered from health effects: even Midgley himself had to take a leave of absence when his lungs became affected by working with lead. However it wasn't until the 1970s, many years after his death, that wider public concerns about air pollution surfaced, and in the 1990s leaded gasoline was banned in America for many (but not all) uses. Plans are to ban it completely by 2008, however it is still widely sold and used in the Third World.

Midgley contracted polio when he was 51, resulting in severe disability. Ever the scientist, he developed a system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. On November 2, 1944 he became entangled in the ropes and died of suffocation.

Sources: Wikipedia, Invent Now Hall of Fame

October 18 | Jon-Erik Hexum

November 5, 1957 - October 18, 1984: Age 26

Jon-Erik Hexum was an actor and model. His good looks branded him as a "hunk", much to his dismay: he wanted a more interesting career than the one that a sex-symbol reputation tends to yield.

In 1984 he was filming a show called Cover Up, where he played a leading role as a fashion model who was really an undercover CIA agent. His co-star Jennifer O'Neill chewed him out on-set at one point because he was constantly fiddling with guns, playing with them as though they were toys. She would know: she had accidentally shot herself in the abdomen two years earlier while checking if a gun were loaded.

After finishing a scene in which he fired a revolver with blank rounds, there was a long delay. Bored by the delay, as a lark, he put the gun to his temple and said "Let's see if I get myself with this one." He didn't know that the blanks used on film sets are actually dangerous at close range. The paper wadding that seals the gunpowder into the shell is fired out of the barrel at a velocity that can injure at close range. The wadding struck him in the temple with enough force that a piece of his skull was shattered and propelled into his brain. After five hours of surgery and six days on a respirator, he was pronounced brain dead.

Source: Wikipedia

September 15 | Harry K. Daghlian, Jr.

1921 - September 15, 1945: Age 24

Harry Daghlian was a physicist working on the Manhatten Project at Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico. On the evening of August 21, 1945, he was slowing adding tungsten to an apparatus containing a sphere of plutonium, using the audible clicks of a monitor to avoid adding them too quickly. When at one point he heard the clicks speed up, he pulled back his hand, but lost his grip on the brick, which fell into the center of the apparatus. Instinctively he knocked the brick away, avoiding a meltdown, but his hand was inside the blue glow of the plutonium and began to tingle. He dismantled the apparatus to something more stable and was driven to hospital.

Daghlian immediately experienced swelling and numbness, and within 90 minutes acute nausea set in. He vomited almost continually for a day, but after a couple of days of nausea and hiccups his appetite returned. Within 3 days blisters started to apear on his hands. Over the next two weeks these spread all over his body, inside and out. He died just over three weeks after the accident, in great pain.

A security guard who was in the same room about 12 feet away during the accident had no acute symptoms of radiation sickness, but his blood pressure went up and he felt a bit tired for a couple of days. He lived on in apparent good health, even having two children, however he died of leukemia at the age of 62, probably a long-term result of his exposure 33 years before.

Although the accident took place six days after Japan’s surrender, the activities at Los Alamos were still a deep secret, so it was reported he had died of “chemical burns”.

Sources, America’s First Peacetime Atom Bomb Fatality, Wikipedia.

September 14 | Isadora Duncan

May 27, 1877 - September 14, 1927: Age 50

Isadora Duncan was one of the greatest dancers in history. Her individualism and free style changed cultural history. Born in America, she lived most of her life in France.
I say that she changed cultural history – not just the history of dance, but much more. Here is what she wrote in 1903: "I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements, but to make their own, I shall not force them to study certain movements, I shall help them to develop those movements which are natural to them.

There will always be movements which are the perfect expression of that individual body and that individual soul: so we must not force it to make movements which are not natural to it but which belong to a school.

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.”

In 1927 while touring in Europe, she was visiting friends in Nice, France. As she was being driven off in a sports car in Nice, France, by a young Italian mechanic, her last words were, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à l’amour.” (Originally her friend, Mary Desti, reported that she had said "Je vais à la gloire" in order to avoid the embarrassment of the implication that she was on her way to a date with the handsome mechanic. What she actually said was revealed later.) Her scarf, long enough to wind around her neck and trail dramatically out of the car, got caught in one of the car’s wheels. Duncan was dragged out of the car, hit the pavement, and died.

Sources: Wikipedia, Women in History

September 4 | Steve Irwin

February 22, 1962 - September 4, 2006: Age 44

“Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, a popular Australian naturalist and TV personality, was killed at 44 by a stingray’s barb piercing his chest and heart. He was snorkeling in shallow water at the Great Barrier Reef, filming some scenes for a segment in a television show he was co-hosting with his daughter. His colleagues, who witnessed and filmed the accident, explain that the ray probably felt threatened by Steve’s proximity, but that it was a “one-in-a-million thing” that he was stung.

Although the film of the accident was never released to the public, his colleague John Stainton described it, stating, "Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here [in the chest], and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone." He was pronounced dead by medical staff when they arrived shortly after.

From Wikipedia: “It is thought, in the absence of a coroner's report, that a combination of the toxins and the puncture wound caused Irwin to die of cardiac arrest, with most damage being inflicted by tears to arteries or other main blood vessels. A similar incident in Florida a month later in which a man survived a stingray barb through the heart showed that Irwin may have caused his own death by removing the barb.”

Sources: Wikipedia, Australia Zoo

September 2 | Russ Columbo

January 14, 1908 - September 2, 1934: Age 26

Russ Columbo, born Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolpho Colombo in New Jersey, was the son of Italian immigrants. By his early 20s he was a famous crooner, on a par with Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee. He was a famous radio presence and beginning to get top billing in films. He is quoted in a press release as saying, "At 26, I find that I have just about everything I want from life and am pretty happy the way things have turned out for me."

On September 2, 1934, still 26 years old, he was visiting a close friend who had a pair of antique dueling pistols. The friend liked to use the pistols to strike matches, but this time trick went disastrously wrong. The pistol used still had some gunpowder and an antique bullet in it. The bullet ricocheted off the desk and hit Columbo in the left eye, lodging in the back of his brain. Although he lost consciousness immediately he lived another six hours.

One of the strangest things about Columbo's death is that his family were able to hide it from his mother for the remaining ten years of her life. She was 68 at the time and had a heart condition; her doctors advised the family not to give her the bad news for fear of sending her off as well. She was told he had married Carole Lombard (who really was his girlfriend) and had left for Europe for a honeymoon. Thus began a bizarre conspiracy of fake postcards and telegrams and an elaborate story about a European tour that kept getting extended. Newspapers that reported Lombard's marriage to Clark Gable were carefully edited before being brought into the home. As Mrs. Colombo was aging, nearly blind, and English was not her first language, the charade seems to have worked. She died in 1944, ten years after her son, without ever having been given the news.

On a completely different note, there is an excellent movie, made in Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, that is) called "Since Otar Left" that tells a similar story about a family keeping the news of a death secret. It's a great film and worth renting if you can find it.

Sources: Classic Images, Wikipedia, Sicilian Culture

Click here to watch and listen to Columbo in Broadway Through A Keyhole, released in 1933