EUGENE, Ore. — Longtime KKNU (NEW COUNTRY 93.3), radio personality Bill Barrett has entered hospice care after a long
battle with cancer.

New Country’s Tim Fox tells us Barrett was diagnosed with a
recurrence of cancer back in April of this year.

Barrett had hosted the morning show on 93.3 for decades with
Fox and Tracy Berry (below) before he retired last year.

UPDATE: Barrett passed away Wednesday afternoon
                 August 17th.

Bill (left) with his fellow Country Radio Hall of Fame
Class of 2018 members Tracy Berry and Tim Fox.

The Double Eagle II completed the first transatlantic balloon flight
when it landed in a barley field near Paris, 137 hours after lifting 
off rom Presque Isle, Maine. The helium-filled balloon was piloted
by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman and flew
3,233 miles in the six-day odyssey.

Three American airmen arrive in Paris after crossing the
Atlantic in their air balloon ‘Double Eagle II. They are Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman.

While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s
Yukon Territory on August 16, 1896, George Carmack
reportedly spotted nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His
lucky discovery sparked the last great gold rush in the
American West.

Hoping to cash in on reported gold strikes in Alaska,
Carmack had traveled there from California in 1881. After
running into a dead end, he headed north into the isolated
Yukon Territory, just across the Canadian border.

In 1896, another prospector, Robert Henderson, told
Carmack of finding gold in a tributary of the Klondike
River. Carmack headed to the region with two Native
American companions, known as Skookum Jim and
Tagish Charlie.

George Washington Carmack
(September 24, 1860 – June 5, 1922)

Klondike Gold Rush Campsite.

River.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Singer Madonna Louise Ciccone is 64 years young today.

The singer, songwriter, and actress is referred to as the "Queen
of Pop". Rolling Stone listed her among its greatest artists and
greatest songwriters of all time.

Apocalypse Now, the acclaimed Vietnam War film directed by
Francis Ford Coppola, opened in theaters around the United
States on August 15, 1979.

The film, inspired in part by Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella
Heart of Darkness, among other sources, told the story of
an Army captain (played by Martin Sheen) and crew of men
who are sent into the Cambodian jungle to kill a U.S. Special
Forces colonel (Marlon Brando) who has gone AWOL and is
thought to be crazy. Apocalypse Now, which co-starred Robert
Duvall and Dennis Hopper, became notorious for its long,
difficult production, which included budget problems, shooting
delays due to bad weather on the Philippines set, a heart attack 
for Sheen and a nervous breakdown for Coppola.  
                                             

Francis Ford Coppola became 83 in April.