Charles “Chuck” Yeager with the Bell X-1.

Charles Elwood Yeager (February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — West Virginia native,
United States Air Force officer and record-setting test pilot,
Charles “Chuck” Yeager has died.

Yeager’s wife, Victoria, announced via Twitter that Yeager
passed away just before 9:00 p.m. Monday night.

The Lincoln County native, considered one of the greatest
pilots of all-time, was the first man to break the sound barrier
when he exceeded Mach 1 as he flew the experimental Bell
X-1 rocket plane over Edwards Air Force Base in California
in 1947.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (below).

Yeager also appeared in the 1983 film “The Right Stuff” and
Charleston’s Yeager Airport is named in his honor.

On October 11, 2002, former President Jimmy Carter wins the
Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find
peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance
democracy and human rights, and to promote economic
and social development.”

Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, served one term as
U.S. president between 1977 and 1981. One of his key
achievements as president was mediating the peace talks
between Israel and Egypt in 1978.

James Earl Carter Jr. turned 96 October 1st.

Morris Mac Davis (January 21, 1942 – September 29, 2020)

Country musician Mac Davis, known for writing enduring Elvis
Presley hits like “A Little Less Conversation“ and “In the Ghetto”
has died at age 78.

His longtime manager Jim Morey said in a statement on Facebook
that Davis died on Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn., after heart surgery
and was surrounded by family and friends.

On August 7, 1782, in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington,
the commander in chief of the Continental Army, created the “Badge for
Military Merit,” a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece
of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched
across the face in silver.

The badge was to be presented to soldiers for “any singularly meritorious
action” and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without
challenge. The honoree’s name and regiment were also to be inscribed
in a “Book of Merit.”

Washington’s “Purple Heart” was awarded to only three known soldiers
during the Revolutionary War: Elijah Churchill, William Brown and Daniel
Bissell, Jr. The “Book of Merit” was lost, and the decoration was largely
forgotten until 1927, when General Charles P. Summerall, the U.S. Army
chief of staff, sent an unsuccessful draft bill to Congress to “revive the
Badge of Military Merit.”

                                                           
    

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin (August 25, 1931 – July 24, 2020) 
   

Often called “the hardest working man in show business”, Regis Philbin was 
known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most hours on US television. His trademarks include his excited manner, his wit, and his irreverent ad-libs. He died of natural causes.