to move up and down
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stands in a British tank during a visit to British forces in Fallingbostel, some 120km (70 miles) south of Hamburg, Germany. on Sept. 17, 1986. Thatchers former spokesman, Tim Bell, said that the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had died Monday morning, April 8, 2013, of a stroke. She was 87. (AP Photo/Jockel Fink)
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Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher dies at 87
Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, died this morning following a stroke.
A statement from her spokesman, Lord Bell, said that her children, Mark and Carol, announced that she had died “peacefully.”
Baroness Thatcher, 87, had been increasingly ill in the last few year and was rarely seen in public.
She transformed Britain by privatizing state entities, battling trade union power, and carrying out a brand of conservatism that would eventually be called “Thatcherism.”
She was admired on the right and despised on the left. (AFP PHOTO/Suzanne Plunket/PoolSUZANNE PLUNKETT/AFP/Getty Images; AFP / Getty Images)
Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury dead at 91
Ray Bradbury, the science fiction-fantasy master who transformed his childhood dreams and Cold War fears into telepathic Martians, lovesick sea monsters, and, in uncanny detail, the high-tech, book-burning future of Fahrenheit 451, has died. He was 91.
“Everything I’ve done is a surprise, a wonderful surprise,” Bradbury said during his National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement acceptance speech in. “I sometimes get up at night when I can’t sleep and walk down into my library and open one of my books and read a paragraph and say, ’My God, did I write that? Did I write that?’, because it’s still a surprise.” (Photo: The Associated Press)
David Frum on Christopher Hitchens: A man of moral clarity
Christopher Hitchens did not offer a model of what to think. He offered a model of how to think – and how to live. Fully. Fearlessly. Joyously. And then, alas too soon, of how to die: without bluster but without flinching, boldly writing until the fingers moved no more. (Photo: John Mahoney/Postmedia News)
Family Circus creator Bil Keane dead at 89
Born William Aloysius Keane, the American cartoonist taught himself to draw by mimicking The New Yorker-style cartoons published in that paper, and had his own first publication on the amateur page of the Philadelphia Daily News in 1936.
Iconic ’90s rapper Heavy D was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. on Nov. 8, just one hour after he was rushed to an L.A. hospital. He was 44.
Kelly McParland: Jack Layton’s passing is a Canadian tragedy
Jack Layton’s election night appearance, carrying his cane and enjoying the cheers that came with his achievement, was unquestionably his greatest moment as a politician. It raised so many possibilities the NDP had rarely contemplated, opening doors most thought were locked to them. And he managed it with such personal integrity and a touch of the commonplace, that much of the country referred to him simply as “Jack,” and didn’t begrudge him his moment.
It’s a tragedy that that shining accomplishment should be followed so swiftly by the cruelty of cancer and his disappearance from the scene. Canadian politics is a lot poorer for the passing of Jack Layton, as is Canada as a whole. He will be greatly missed. (Tyler Anderson/National Post)
Jackass star Ryan Dunn dies in car crash
Ryan Dunn, a co-star of the Jackass movie franchise, died Monday when a sports car he was driving careened off a highway in Philadelphia, Penn., and burst into flames, police said.
Dunn was driving a 2007 Porsche that police found in a wooded area in outer Philadelphia that was “fully engulfed in flames,” police in the West Goshen Township said Monday. An unidentified passenger also died in the crash.
The daredevil personality, 34, part of the crew in the top-grossing Jackass movie franchise that specialized in risky pranks and gross-out stunts, lived in nearby West Chester, Penn., police said. A police statement said a “preliminary investigation revealed that speed may have been a contributing factor to the accident.”
Photo: Jackass star Ryan Dunn (L), with Johnny Knoxville in the 2006 movie Jackass: Number Two. (Paramount Pictures)
Our visual tribute to Macho Man Randy Savage who died today in a car crash in Florida.
Tributes for the wrestling superstar poured in from his fellow wrestlers.
Regular dad was crack WWII code breaker
To his four kids, he was a regular dad with some irregular talents. Cliff Stewart could fix the family toaster in a blink. Radios, television sets, family cars — anything with wires that went on the fritz, and out came the tools.
“His ability to solve problems — his technical skills — he could always figure something out and make it work. He could literally fix anything,” said Tom Stewart, his eldest son.
To his family, Cliff Stewart was Dad, the super-whiz. But to his World War II comrades, Cliff Stewart was something else. Behind the extraordinary technical talents around the house was an extraordinary secret, a tale of intrigue and espionage that featured Mr. Stewart at the centre of it as a super spy and code breaker.
It was an occupation he never, ever, spoke about, not until the last years of a long life that ended when Mr. Stewart passed away at his home in suburban Charlottetown last weekend. He was 91.
Mr. Stewart’s spent time at Camp X, a top-secret training facility in southern Ontario where he honed his craft with budding assassins, demolitions experts, frogmen, forgers, a man called Intrepid and Ian Fleming, a British naval intelligence trainee and future author of the James Bond books.
