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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 14-11-2005 15:04 Post subject: |
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Yes. A chat Thread, but a lot of those recently copping their whacks, who have received the accolade of an intimation on this Thread are sooo boring.
I look in, quite often, to see who is recently deceased and gone before, only to find that I really don't care about them, or for them.
It used to be only people that one actually wanted to be informed about, now...  |
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WhistlingJack Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Total posts: 4298 Location: The Sewers of The Strand Age: 9 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 14-11-2005 15:19 Post subject: |
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Well, you could look at it this way - if you really don't care for them, at least they'll only be mentioned the once...  |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 14-11-2005 15:22 Post subject: |
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| WhistlingJack wrote: | | Well, you could look at it this way - if you really don't care for them, at least they'll only be mentioned the once... |
True. |
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| gerardwilkie Great Old One Joined: 17 Oct 2001 Total posts: 851 Location: Scotland Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-11-2005 06:27 Post subject: |
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| Who'd have ever thought that the RIP thread would spark such debate . After all , it is a Chat thread , so not everyone might find each mention of interest , but those that do are likely to cause a discussion about that person or a particular topic , so it is up to each of us to be presented with the information and make his or her own mind up . |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 19-11-2005 17:47 Post subject: |
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| womaniac wrote: | | Pietro_Mercurios wrote: |
Yes. But, were those reasons, Fortean?
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This is the chat Forum. It's not as if everything that occurs here has major Fortean significance. |
Indeed. If there is strong feelings about this we could split the thread and keep this as a general RIP and have another one running in Fortean News Stories like Necrolog in the mag. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-12-2005 14:18 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | UK's 'oldest' man dies, aged 111
A Polish army veteran - thought to have been Britain's oldest man - has died at a nursing home in Cumbria.
Jerzy Pajaczkowski-Dydynski - known as George - who was 111, lived in Sedbergh until ill-health forced a move to a nursing home in Grange over Sands.
The former colonel was born in what is now the Ukraine, but was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1894.
He escaped the German invasion of Poland in 1940 and worked as a gardener in Scotland before moving to Cumbria.
His son-in-law Richard Thomas from Birks Fold, said he and other members of the family had seen the highly decorated veteran at the Boarbank Hall nursing home before he died on 6 December.
Mr Thomas said: "We saw him on the day he died. He had a very colourful and eventful life."
Mr Dydynski studied law at the University of Vienna, but when World War I broke out joined the Polish Army and saw service in the war between Russia and Poland in the 1920's.
He was still with the army when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but eventually managed to escape to Britain.
He spent months in hospital after falling ill on New Year's Eve 2003 and breaking his hip.
The colonel was born in Lwow on 19 July, 1894, and moved to Sedbergh from Edinburgh in 1993 with his now late second wife Dorothy.
The family said his long life was down to his positive outlook and, until recently, a daily half glass of Guinness.
He leaves 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
The colonel was called up to the Austrian Infantry in 1915 and became a sergeant before going to Montenegro and Albania where he fought against the Italians.
He married in 1924 but his first wife later died so he married again in 1946.
Family from Poland, Britain, the US, Australia and France are due to attend a funeral service at Sedbergh Parish Church on 12 December.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/4516532.stm
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At least he got to celebrate his eleventy first birthday!  |
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| ruffready Ruff says.. Joined: 06 Aug 2002 Total posts: 3318 Location: Florida Age: 3 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 06-01-2006 23:51 Post subject: |
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In Memoriam:
Ramona Bell
Art Bell's beloved wife of fifteen years, Ramona, died unexpectedly last night after an asthma attack. At present, the exact cause of Mrs. Bell's death has not been determined. It apparently took place during her sleep.
Until her death, Art and Ramona Bell had not been apart a day since they were married. Mrs. Bell had suffered from asthma for years, and took her normal steps to control the attack, which occurred sometime last night in Laughlin, Nevada where the Bells were taking a brief vacation. Ramona Bell was 47 years old.
Our deepest condolences to Art and his family. |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-01-2006 20:12 Post subject: |
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| Mighty_Emperor wrote: | | womaniac wrote: | | Pietro_Mercurios wrote: |
Yes. But, were those reasons, Fortean?
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This is the chat Forum. It's not as if everything that occurs here has major Fortean significance. |
Indeed. If there is strong feelings about this we could split the thread and keep this as a general RIP and have another one running in Fortean News Stories like Necrolog in the mag. |
Done.
Original thread is still here:
www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9805 |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 07-06-2006 21:10 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Karl Pflock Passes Away
I just received very sad news from Brad Sparks that Karl Pflock, whom I was happy to count as friend these past couple of years (I first interviewed him back in September, 2001), and whom I respected greatly, passed away at 3:16 P.M.Mountain Time on June 5, 2006, at his home in Placitas, New Mexico. As most know, Karl had been battling ALS.
This is a great loss for ufology, and for those who knew Karl.
My most heartfelt and sincere condolences to his family.
Rest in peace, Karl.
Paul Kimball |
http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2006/06/karl-pflock-passes-away.html
More:
www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/pflock-dies/ |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 07-06-2006 21:12 Post subject: |
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Also:
| Quote: | Area UFO expert Dr. Harley Rutledge, 80, dies
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
TJ GREANEY ~ Southeast Missourian
In 1980 he published "Project Identification," which took a scientific approach to cataloguing UFO activity.
Dr. Harley Rutledge, 80, former chairman of the physics department at Southeast Missouri State University and UFO expert, died Monday at the Missouri Veterans Home.
Rutledge first joined the physics department at the university in 1963. He was department chairman there from 1964 to 1982. He retired from teaching in 1992.
Rutledge first gained national notoriety through an organization he launched in 1973 called "Project Identification." The project was a response to a flurry of UFO sightings near Piedmont, Mo. Over the next six years, Rutledge and crews of students, scientists and amateur enthusiasts spent 150 nights scanning the skies in Franklin County with cameras, audio recorders, telescopes and tools measuring electromagnetic field disturbances. The efforts were funded in part by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
In 1980 he published a book also called "Project Identification," which took a scientific approach to cataloguing the UFO activity. He tracked the velocity, distance and size of the objects he caught on video and said he was careful not to let his own hypotheses get in the way of the data.
"I don't want to scare anyone and the one way not to do that is by trying to explain these phenomena," said Rutledge in 1979.
"I treat reports of UFOs like bottles of medicine without labels. I can't use the medicine without the label, but I can put it on the shelf until I get a label for it."
In 1989, Rutledge claimed to have seen 164 UFOs during his life. At the end of this research he claimed to have 700 photographs of UFOs either taken by him personally or by associates.
His fame as a passionate investigator of the unexplained led him to be a featured expert on CNN and quoted in a Time-Life book on UFOs and an astrology textbook. He was also a lively interview subject featured on the radio talkshow circuit.
His unfulfilled dream, though, was to come face to face with an extraterrestrial.
"I've seen just about everything there is to see, but I haven't seen one of those little creatures," he said in an interview in 1988.
Dr. Art Soellner, a friend and colleague in the physics department, remembered Rutledge's ability to simplify complex science.
"What I remember most was that he was a very good teacher," said Soellner. "He had a way of working with the students that stood out. I had an office behind his classroom, and he was teaching a physical science general education course, which usually means a lot of students aren't too interested. But he got them involved and I could often hear he got good chuckles out of them."
Soellner also recalled that Rutledge was integral in building up the physics department at the university from a faculty of four when he was first hired to nine when he left.
During the past three years Rutledge had been suffering from Alzheimers. He is survived by his wife, Ruth. They were married for 52 years and have five children. |
www.semissourian.com/story/1155552.html |
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| gerardwilkie Great Old One Joined: 17 Oct 2001 Total posts: 851 Location: Scotland Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-12-2007 17:27 Post subject: |
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From the BBC :
| Quote: | Da Vinci rights row author dies
Co-authors Leigh (l) and Baigent had to pay a hefty legal bill
Richard Leigh, one of two writers who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism the publishers of the global best-seller the Da Vinci Code, has died aged 64.
US-born Leigh, who had lived in Britain for many years, had been suffering from a heart condition.
Leigh, along with Michael Baigent, claimed themes from their work The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail were plagiarised by author Dan Brown.
They lost their lengthy, high-profile case in 2006 and again later at appeal.
The High Court in London ruled in April 2006 that US writer Brown had not copied the work of the two authors. The Court of Appeal in London upheld that ruling in March 2007.
Leigh and Baigent were told to pay 85% of publisher Random House's costs of almost £1.3m.
After the verdict Leigh said: ""We lost on the letter of the law. I think we won on the spirit of the law, to that extent we feel vindicated."
Dan Brown said authors should be free to draw from historical sources
Following the case's dismissal in 2006, Brown said the verdict showed that Baigent and Leigh's claim was "utterly without merit".
The outcome cleared the way for a film based on The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year.
Baigent and Leigh's book, which was published in 1982, has sold some two million copies around the world, and was a best-seller when it was first released.
Leigh was born in New Jersey in 1943 to a British father and Austrian mother. He worked as a university lecturer in the US and Canada, before settling in he UK.
He and Baigent also co-authored The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, The Messianic Legacy, The Temple and the Lodge, Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade against Hitler, The Elixir and The Stone, and The Inquisition.
He also wrote fiction, Erceldoune and other Stories, and the semi-autobiographical Grey Magic.
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| WhistlingJack Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Total posts: 4298 Location: The Sewers of The Strand Age: 9 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 06-12-2007 17:14 Post subject: Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula, Prince Kretzulesco |
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| Quote: | Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula, Prince Kretzulesco
Baker turned 'prince of Transylvania'
Published: 26 November 2007
Ottomar Berbig, baker and antiques dealer: born Berlin 10 October 1940; adopted 1990 as Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula, Prince Kretzulesco of Transylvania and Wallachia; married (one son); died Schenkendorf, Germany 19 November 2007.
Thankfully, perhaps, Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula, Prince Kretzulesco, did not have the blood of Count Dracula in him. In fact, he spent his early life as Otto Berbig, a German baker, and a good one, according to the customers who loved his Berliner, or jam doughnuts. It was only after he was adopted into the Dracula family, by one of the famous Count's great-great-something grandchildren, that he began exploring the idea of sucking blood.
This modern-day Dracula may have been somewhat eccentric but he realised that the family name might best be used in this day and age to encourage people to give blood – in what we now consider acceptable fashion – to the Red Cross. He organised "blood-sucking parties" (supervised by the German Red Cross) at the 46-room Dracula castle in Schenkendorf, near Berlin. Rejecting family tradition, he did not use his teeth, although he would emerge from a coffin to get visitors in the mood and served blood-coloured schnapps and "Dracula sausages".
He declared the castle and surrounding 38 acres of land to be the independent "Principality of Dracula", where he sought, unsuccessfully, to set up a regime of low taxes and less bureaucracy. His efforts to issue his own blood-coloured passports, car registration plates and postage stamps were thwarted by the surrounding state of Brandenburg, whose government, with an uncharacteristic sense of humour, threatened a "garlic defence" against his aims for independence.
Otto Berbig had given up the bakers' trade and was dealing in antiques when, in the 1970s, one of Count Dracula's last descendants, the elderly and childless Princess Ekaterina Olympica Kretzulesco Caradja, walked into his shop seeking to sell some family heirlooms. Apparently the princess was amazed by the resemblance of Berbig, with his black, curly hair and rambling moustache, to her family and by his "Transylvanian-ness". She was convinced he must be related to the family, and so adopted him as her son, bestowing upon him the title Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracula, Prince Kretzulesco of Transylvania and Wallachia. What antiques dealer could have turned down such a title?
The princess herself, who died in the 1990s, insisted, with a reasonable amount of documentary evidence to back her up, that she was a direct descendant of Vlad III of Wallachia, who lived from 1431 until 1476 and was widely known as Vlad the Impaler because of his tendency to skewer enemy Turks he captured. It was said that he liked his morning bread dunked in the blood of an enemy soldier. The writer Bram Stoker used Vlad as the basis for his character Count Dracula.
In recent years, Kretzulesco had received widespread press coverage in the German media for his fight against a drinks' distributor who came out with a new wine labelled "Dracula". He lost in a Munich court, which ruled that he had no legal rights to the Dracula name, brand or image. He similarly failed in a fight against a schnapps of the same name.
His attempts to get into the pop music market were also unsuccessful and these various financial setbacks meant that, last year, he had to sell his castle. He died in a humble flat, apparently broke. His infant son, Ottomar junior, widely known as Otti Dracula, takes on the family name.
Phil Davison
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited |
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| WhistlingJack Joined: 29 Oct 2003 Total posts: 4298 Location: The Sewers of The Strand Age: 9 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 05-07-2008 17:26 Post subject: Lyall Watson |
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| Quote: | Lyall Watson
Last updated: 7:18 PM BST 02/07/2008
Adventurer whose books about the paranormal promoted New Age ideas and who introduced Uri Geller and sumo wrestling to Britain.
Lyall Watson, who died on June 25 aged 69, was an adventurer, explorer and the author of New Age books about the paranormal, including the bestselling Supernature (1973); he introduced the psychic showman Uri Geller to British television audiences, and in the 1980s imported sumo wrestling to the West, presenting coverage of sumo tournaments on Channel 4.
A radical thinker operating at the margins of accepted science, Watson was an apparent polymath who might have sprung fully-formed from a Victorian adventure by Jules Verne or H Rider Haggard.
A dapper, shimmering figure, often dressed for the tropics in a safari suit of white linen, he led the first scientific journey up the Amazon river, and was the first white person seen by headhunters in Papua New Guinea.
Supernature, his most successful book, dealt with mysterious and inexplicable natural phenomena. It became a 1970s student essential, and was acclaimed for its stimulating treatment of exotic and unexpected scientific facts and discoveries.
As a populariser of science snapping up unconsidered nerdy trifles, Watson ranged over astrology, paranormal phenomena, alchemy, circadian rhythms, palmistry, dreams and much else.The book went into 10 reprints in as many weeks, topped the bestseller list for 50 weeks, sold 750,000 copies in paperback and was translated into eight languages.
His open-mindedness was refreshing, said one reviewer in The Daily Telegraph; another upbraided him for being "embarrassingly credulous" in accepting a claim that plants responded to the killing of a live shrimp thrown into boiling water.
A botanist, zoologist, biologist, anthropologist and ethologist, at 23 Watson was director of Johannesburg Zoo, and subsequently became an expedition leader, a television producer and Seychelles commissioner for the International Whaling Commission. Describing himself as a "scientific nomad", he considered conventional science simply inadequate to explain much human experience.
Watson followed Supernature with a book about the nature of death, the afterlife and the supernatural, The Romeo Error (1974), and this, too, became a bestseller.
In his sixth book, Lifetide (1979), Watson made what was believed to be the first published use of the term "hundredth monkey".
This phenomenon referred to a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when an allegedly "critical mass" point is reached. Watson was writing about several studies done in the 1960s by Japanese primatologists of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata).
Claiming that the scientists were "reluctant to publish [the whole story] for fear of ridicule", Watson wrote that he had to "gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened".
Watson's tale was that an unspecified number of monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea. But the addition of a further monkey – the so-called hundredth – apparently carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of critical mass, because by evening almost every monkey was doing it. Moreover the habit seems to have jumped natural barriers and to have appeared spontaneously in monkey colonies on other islands and on the mainland.
Although it seemed a good story, the part about spontaneous transmission, at least, was not true. Watson, however, was blamed only for "myth-making" rather than confabulation. "It is a metaphor of my own making," he admitted in 1986, "based on very slim evidence and a great deal of hearsay. I have never pretended otherwise." Although the hundredth monkey theory occupied only a few paragraphs of his total output, it bulked disproportionately large in critical studies of his work. Watson himself remained unrepentant, however, and declared on his website: "I still think it's a good idea!"
Malcolm Lyall-Watson was born on April 12 1939 in Johannesburg, the eldest of three brothers. His Scottish father was an architect and his mother, a radiologist, was descended from Simon van der Stel, the first Dutch governor of the Cape.
Young Mo learned to read from a 457-page copy of Birds of South Africa, and on his first day at school already knew 800 species of bird by heart.
In a world in which adults were preoccupied with the Second World War, young Lyall grew up running wild in the bush, and was taught by Zulu and Kung bushmen before being sent as a boarder to Rondebosch Boys' High School, Cape Town.
An exceptional scholar, he started at the University of the Witwatersrand aged 15 and by the age of 19 held degrees in Botany and Zoology. While still in South Africa, he added degrees which included the study of Geology, Chemistry, Marine Biology, Ecology and Anthropology, before moving to London, where he completed a doctorate in Ethology (animal behaviour) at London University under the supervision of Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, and then curator of mammals at London Zoo.
Having thus made himself virtually unemployable (as he wryly noted), he joined BBC Television as a producer and reporter on Tomorrow's World, abandoned his given name of Malcolm, started a consultancy, designed and directed zoos, ran a safari company in Kenya and founded a marine national park in the Seychelles.
In 1973 he shared a television studio with the fork-bending psychic Uri Geller, whom he claimed to have discovered, and who was making his first live TV appearance. It had been Watson's suggestion, in the wake of Supernature, that the BBC fly Geller from the United States to demonstrate his apparent powers of psychokinesis.
Although Watson had struggled for two years to persuade a publisher to take his book, the success of Supernature threw him into the spotlight. He began lecture tours and was picked up by the Japanese as a cult hero.
In Japan huge billboards were erected showing him lying on a raft drinking a local beer while being poled along by a beautiful woman. His annual visits to the country kindled an interest in the tradition of sumo wrestling, and he studied the art and met top fighters and their management teams.
Watson lobbied to get a series of championship fights presented at the Albert Hall in London: the touring party and entourage filled two Jumbo jets to capacity. He presented the Sumo series for Channel 4, giving a running commentary on the fights. Although few expected the traditional Japanese sport to attract more than a few hundred viewers, in the event it rapidly drew audiences of many thousands.
He started work on his first book, Omnivore (1972), in the early 1960s, and produced 25 titles in all, covering an eclectic range of subjects including the nature of crowds and a history of the wind. His last, The Whole Hog (2004), explored the history and potential of pigs.
Watson had an endlessly enquiring mind and never lost the habit of questioning received wisdom. Restless and nomadic, he travelled widely throughout his life, visiting Antarctica numerous times as an expedition leader and researcher. He introduced into his own body a tapeworm called Fred which, he claimed, unfailingly protected him from stomach disorders abroad. At various times he lived in America, South Africa, England and latterly Ireland, rising at six every morning to write for three hours before starting his day.
Although Supernature opened many doors for Watson – he dined at Buckingham Palace and with the Japanese royal family – he remained a very private man, protective of his personal space. His enquiring mind never relaxed, and he was always on the lookout for the unusual, and the truth behind the obvious.
In 1985 Watson was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Golden Ark by the Netherlands in honour of his conservation work on the International Whaling Commission.
Although he had no children, he indulged his five nieces on their 18th birthdays by taking them anywhere in the world they wanted to go. On the first of these trips – to Egypt – a diner in a restaurant offered Watson 200,000 camels for the hand of his eldest niece, Katherine. After a lengthy, pregnant pause, Watson successfully called the admirer's bluff when he replied that her price was her weight in gold.
Lyall Watson married, in 1961, Vivienne Mawson (dissolved 1966); his second wife, Alice Coogan, predeceased him in 2003.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008. |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 05-07-2008 20:02 Post subject: |
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Lyall Watson - a true Fortean.
A pity he had to die before I learned so much about him. |
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