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Not widely known people who died however recently

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James Mollison - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jackson Pollock’s controversial Blue poles valued at $500 million

The most publicly derided acquisition in modern Australian art history has proved to be one of the nation’s bargains of the century.
www.smh.com.au
Fifty years ago, Mollison caused a public storm when the-then prime minister Gough Whitlam authorised the purchase of Blue poles, showcasing Pollock’s “drip” technique, for what was then a world record price for an American painting.
Blue Poles ; Jackson Pollock · 1952 (1952) · Enamel and aluminium paint with glass on canvas · 212.1 cm × 488.9 cm (83.5 in × 192.5 in).
 
This guy would have died many years ago but I thought the story was worth highlighting.

While other explorers may claim credit for discovering the North Pole, an unsung and largely forgotten former sharecropper has as good a case as anyone.
L

Matthew Henson: The US' unsung Black explorer​


Located just outside Washington DC in Montgomery County, Maryland, the 116-acre Matthew Henson State Park Stream Valley Park is a leafy, wooded oasis surrounded by suburban sprawl. As you enter, the hum of traffic soon fades away, and all hikers, joggers and bikers can see are grass and trees. A 4.2-mile paved trail gently curves through the forest, before an elevated wooden boardwalk carries it above a wetland. Birds chirp overhead, and deer and wild turkeys are a common sight.

You could walk this trail every day and never know who Matthew Henson was – unless you stopped at a certain trailside sign that displays a bulleted timeline of Henson's life:

• 1866: Born in Charles County, Maryland.
• 1879-1884: Joins the crew of the ship Katie Hines as a cabin boy and explores the world.
• 1887: Joins Robert E Peary to assist in the survey of Nicaragua for a possible canal.
Then, in the middle of this biography, there's a surprising detail:
• 1909: Reaches the North Pole with Peary and plants the American flag.


Born into a family of sharecroppers, Henson later set sail for the North Pole (Credit: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy)

The sign is topped with a photograph of Henson wrapped in furs, a hood pulled over his head. His brow is soberly furrowed, and he wears a bushy mustache. His appearance fits the archetype of the polar explorer in every way but one: Henson was Black

"As a kid growing up in school, I never heard of Matthew Henson," said JR Harris, who is also African American and serves on the board of directors of the Explorers Club, which has inspired some of the world's greatest adventurers. "A lot of people assume that Matthew Henson was somebody I looked up to back in the day, and that's just not true. All we heard was that the North Pole was discovered by Robert Peary."

Matthew Henson: The US' unsung Black explorer

While other explorers may claim credit for discovering the North Pole, an unsung and largely forgotten former sharecropper has as good a case as anyone.
www.bbc.com

 
Today’s column is a tribute to Ivan Moscovich, a legend in the world of puzzles, who died last week aged 96.
Born in 1926 in Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia, Ivan was interned in two Nazi labour camps and four concentration camps (including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen) during the Second World War. He always said that what saved him was his ability to think creatively, and that his endless drive to come up with new ideas was an after-effect of his war-time trauma.

Ivan emigrated to Israel after liberation. A meeting with the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős inspired him to invent his first puzzle toy – and he never looked back. He licensed more than 100 toys and games and was still launching new products well into his 90s: his most recent being 30 Cubed. In 2020 he won the lifetime achievement award from the US toy and game industry.

In Israel, he came up with the idea for a new kind of science museum, in which visitors were able to interact with exhibits. He was founder and director of the Museum of Science and Technology, which opened in Tel Aviv in 1964, and which featured many objects he designed. The museum inspired Frank Oppenheimer, who used many of Ivan’s ideas when he opened the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which is perhaps the world’s best-known hands-on science museum.


Ivan with his harmonograph Photograph: Moscovich family archive
Ivan also popularised the harmonograph – a drawing machine based on two pendulums that creates beautiful swirly loops. Art from his machine – “harmonograms” – have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the US and Europe.

Ivan later moved to the Netherlands, where he wrote dozens of puzzle books, the best-known being his Big Book of Brain Games. In my selection above I chose puzzles that skewed towards the physical, since Ivan was such a genius at creating playful objects.

Can you solve it? Chicken or egg

Brain games from a master puzzler
www.theguardian.com
 
Died in the cycling race Tour de Suisse. Fell down a ravine. As a lowly tem member you don't really matter. Race is continuing and his team is even going to continue as if nothing important happened.

Team managing director Milan Erzen said the team would continue the race in honour of Mäder.

Cyclist Gino Mäder dies after ravine crash during stage five of the Tour de Suisse

Swiss rider Gino Mäder has died after crashing into a ravine on the descent towards the finish line in Thursday's stage five of the Tour de Suisse, his team Bahrain Victorious said on Friday.
www.abc.net.au
 
I cam across this story and thought it interesting enough to drop into this thread. Great insight into Australia culture.

Les Kew Ming – the fighting footballer​


by Robert Allen

During the height of the ‘White Australia’ policy, one man overcame adversity on the battle field and prejudice on the football field to become a hero of both. Robert Allen tells the story.


Leslie Henry Kew Ming was not the first footballer of Chinese descent to play Australian football, but he was one of the best and certainly one of the most influential.


He was born in St Arnaud in 1897, the eldest of five children. His father Kew Ming Lok had emigrated from China’s Kwangtung Province, and his mother Louisa Cum Moon was born of Chinese and Scottish parents. Kew Ming Senior ran market gardens, shops and then hotels around St Arnaud, and after he died Louisa continued as proprietor of the All Nations Hotel in North St Arnaud.

Australian Football - Les Kew Ming – the fighting footballer

australianfootball.com

 
Good story.
 
"Days of wine and roses" "Gone with the wind" "Faithful in my fashion"

Probably some of the most well remembered lines we have heard. So who originally wrote these lines ? What was the life of the poet who penned these words?

Check out Ernest Dawson.

Ernest Dowson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent​

Jad Adams​


4.11
46 ratings7 reviews
Ernest Dowson, a major poet of the Victorian Decadent period, alcoholic, and severe depressive, died in 1900 at 32. He created much of his best work while suffering from tuberculosis. The most tragic of his generation, his life is a story of doomed love and adversity. Adams explores how the poet's strange delights and sexual excesses were worked into his lyrical verse.

Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson,…

Ernest Dowson, a major poet of the Victorian Decadent p…
www.goodreads.com
 
I was checking out ReEnergise to see what was new. They noted that one of their early developers had passed away. I thought his story was well worth sharing. A practical visionary.

Obituary

​

Richard Cochrane obituary​


Richard Cochrane co-founded the company quietrevolution, developing and marketing a wind turbine he had invented

Jo Woodman
Thu 29 Jun 2023 19.47 AESTLast modified on Sat 29 Jul 2023 03.34 AEST


My brother, Richard Cochrane, who has died aged 49 of motor neurone disease, was a passionate advocate for renewable energy – equal parts inventor, teacher and champion for the natural world. He lived by his values: to make the world a better place for future generations and inspire others to do so too.

Richard Cochrane obituary

Other lives: Exeter University professor who was a passionate advocate for renewable energy
www.theguardian.com
 

E.J. Potter's "Whizzer" Drag Bike

The concept of this iconic machine was born during high school. E,J. Potter got the idea stuck in his head that a small-block Chevy engine looked like a Harley motor from the end, only longer.
www.museumofamericanspeed.com

E. J. Potter - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
 
Last edited:
Folk singer Roger Whittaker, famous for his 1969 hit song Durham Town and expert at whistling, has died at the age of 87.
His other hits included The Last Farewell and New World in the Morning, and he sold nearly 50 million records around the world, his website said.
Born in Kenya to English parents, he went to the UK for studies. After starting in folk clubs, he went on to success with the Skye Boat Song, a duet with Des O'Connor in 1986.
He was also able to sing in several languages.
 
He sounds terribly impressive but I have never heard of him, hence the thread choice I suppose.
 
John Roncz was probably not widely known outside the aviation and yachting community, but his aerofoil designs were revered over many years.
Roncz was one of the most prominent aerodynamicist of the twentieth century.
He designed the sail for the racing yacht Stars and Stripes, which won the 1988 America’s Cup, and configured Steve Fossett’s Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft, as well as several of Burt Rutan designs.
In a career lasting almost fifty years, Roncz thoroughly researched airfoils and boundary layer aerodynamics, developing several CFD tools and techniques, contributing greatly to the modern understanding of airfoil performance.
John’s extensive work in software development has led the way in which many CFD simulations work. He was instrumental in developing many current simulation techniques which reduce both the cost and time required to optimise aerodynamic design.;
I will be forever grateful to Roncz for the super efficient wing on my RV9A aircraft.
Mick
 
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