Contact with feces or urine from an infected multi-mammate rat is the primary way Lassa fever spreads. At least 43 people have died and 450 people are ill in a Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria, according to the World Health Organization. Lassa fever, an acute viral hemorrhagic illness, is endemic […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2014, author and poet Maya Angelou, who published more than 30 books, including 1969’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a best-selling memoir about the racism and abuse she experienced growing up, dies at 86 at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In addition to […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2014, broadcast journalist and TV personality Barbara Walters retires from ABC News and as co-host of the daytime program “The View.” In a landmark career that spanned some 50 years on air, the 84-year-old Walters blazed a trail for women in TV news. On Walter’s May […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2014, 16 Nepali mountaineering guides, most of them ethnic Sherpas, are killed by an avalanche on Mt. Everest, the Earth’s highest mountain. It was the single deadliest accident in the history of the Himalayan peak, which rises more than 29,000 feet above sea level and lies […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2014, Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose novels include “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera,” dies at his Mexico City home at age 87. The Colombian-born Garcia Marquez, a master of magical realism, a writing style that blends reality […]
Continue ReadingLoot valued at $20 million lies off the coast of Staten Island, and Ken Hayes is on the hunt for the sunken silver bullion Among the old-timers casting for stripers along the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey talk tends to return to a few well-thumbed topics. The […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman, considered one of the most talented and versatile actors of his generation, dies of an accidental drug overdose at age 46 in New York City. During his career, the prolific performer appeared in more than 50 movies, including “Capote,” “Doubt” and “The […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, 19 firefighters perish while battling a wildfire near Yarnell, Arizona. All were members of the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew, an elite group of wildland firefighters that was part of the Prescott (Arizona) Fire Department. It was the deadliest day for U.S. firefighters since the […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, 34-year-old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Wallenda wasn’t wearing a safety harness as he made the quarter-mile traverse on a 2-inch-thick steel cable some 1,500 […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, James Gandolfini, the actor best known for his role as New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano on the TV series “The Sopranos,” which debuted in 1999 and ran for six seasons, dies of a heart attack while vacationing in Rome, Italy. He was 51. The […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, Esther Williams, a champion teenage swimmer who went on to star in a series of hugely popular aquatic-themed movie-musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, dies at age 91 in Beverly Hills, California. Born on August 8, 1921, in Inglewood, California, Williams learned to swim as […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, legendary country singer and songwriter George Jones, whose numerous hit songs include “White Lightning,” “Walk Through This World With Me” and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” dies at age 81 in Nashville. In a career that spanned nearly 60 years, Jones had more than 140 […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days later, after an intense manhunt that shut down the Boston area, police captured one of the bombing suspects, 19-year-old […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, Margaret Thatcher, the first–and so far only–female prime minister of the United Kingdom, dies in London at age 87 from a stroke. Serving from 1979 to 1990, Thatcher was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. She curbed the power of Britain’s labor […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 2013, one of America’s best-known and most influential movie critics, Roger Ebert, who reviewed movies for The Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, dies at age 70 after a battling cancer. In 1975, Ebert started co-hosting a movie review program on […]
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