CHICAGO (WICS/WICD) — Illinois and Bears great Dick
Butkus passed away on Thursday.
The Chicago Bears confirmed the news of the passing.
The team said Butkus died in his sleep overnight at his
home in Malibu, California.
In August 2001, Butkus underwent quintuple bypass
surgery to remove blockages in his arteries.
At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson
was acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged
wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson’s “dream team” of lawyers
employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors
that Simpson’s guilt had not been proved “beyond a reasonable
doubt,” thus surmounting what the prosecution called a
“mountain of evidence” implicating him as the murderer.
Tim Wakefield, one of the masters of the knuckleball pitch who
won two World Series titles with the Boston Red Sox, has died.
It was revealed earlier in the week that Wakefield was battling
brain cancer.
(FOX NEWS)
PORTLAND, Ore. — Neka, the oldest member of the
Oregon Zoo’s African lion pride, had a seizure and
died Friday night at age 16.
Zoo officials stated that wild female lions rarely live
past 16 years old.
Neka with one of her cubs.
At 5:45 PM on September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James
Dean was killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche
he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection.
The driver of the other car, 23-year-old California Polytechnic
State University student Donald Turnupseed, was dazed but
mostly uninjured; Dean’s passenger, German mechanic Rolf
Wütherich was badly injured but survived.
Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released
at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant”
opened shortly afterward), but he was already on his way to superstardom—and the crash made him a legend.
James Dean loved racing cars, and in fact he and his brand-
new, $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were on their way
to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco.
