Thursday Thirteen 10/18/07

13 Not as Famous People Who Died in 2007

Anna Nicole & Pavarotti made headlines when they died. Did you know the following people are no longer with us?

1. 09/29/2007 Lois Maxwell-She was the original Miss Moneypenny and played the role in fourteen James Bond movies.

2. 09/21/2007 Alice Ghostley-She played Esmerelda on the TV series "Bewitched" and Bernice on the series "Designing Women", she also appeared in movies ("To Kill a Mockingbird") and on Broadway.

3. 09/06/2007 Madeleine L'Engle-An only child who was left out at school, Madeleine L'Engle began writing at age five, penning a story called Gurl, which she was unaware she spelled incorrectly. L'Engle has become one of the most prolific and popular authors of the twentieth century. Although she has written nonfiction, poetry, biblical criticism, essays, and plays, she is most closely associated with children's fiction, most notably A Wrinkle in Time (1962), for which she won the Newbery Medal in 1963.

4. 08/28/2007 Hilly Kristal-Founded CBGB, the famous nightclub in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. CBGB became the cradle for punk and art-rock in New York City in the 1970s. Playing at the venue was a bragging right for musicians and the inspiration for rock dives all over the world. Bands such as the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Sonic Youth had their start in its dank walls.

5. 07/10/2007 Doug Marlette-Creator of the comic strip "Kudzu" and acclaimed editorial cartoonist.

6. 07/07/2007 Jack Odell-Inventor of Matchbox cars and a self-trained engineer. He designed his first toy car for his daughter, Anne in 1952. Hard to swallow, battery and violence-free, quiet, and cheap to make, they were the perfect children’s toy. By 1962 he was producing a million toys a week. Matchbox Toys has made at least three billion toy vehicles in 12,000 models.

7. 06/21/2007 Bob Evans-He founded the company Bob Evans Farms, which was known particularly for its chain of restaurants and its sausage.

8. 06/05/2007 Edwin Traisman-Food scientist whose research helped create iconic foods like McDonald’s French fries and Cheez Wiz for Kraft Foods. After working at Kraft he bought four McDonald restaurants in Wisconsin. He suggested to the president of the McDonald’s chain that deep frying and then freezing French fries in order to supply all McDonald restaurants with French fries even when it was not potato season. Frozen fries are supplied to 31,000 restaurants worldwide today. He died of heart disease.

9. 04/30/2007 Tom Poston-He played Mr. Bickley on the TV series "Mork & Mindy" and George Utley on the TV series "Newhart", he was a longtime panelist on the game show "To Tell the Truth".

10. 04/25/2007 Bobby "Boris" Pickett-He did the "Monster Mash", and it was a graveyard smash!

11. 03/27/2007 Paul Lauterbur-Made the widespread application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology possible by devising a practical way to make images. Today, MRI is an important tool in modern medicine.

12. 01/08/2007 Iwao Takamoto-Japanese-American animator who created the canine detective Scooby-Doo. He learned animation in an internment camp in California during World War II. Takamoto worked on several Walt Disney films, including Lady and the Tramp and Peter Pan, before joining the Hanna-Barbera studio, the producer of Scooby-Doo, in 1961.

13. 01/05/2007 Momofuku Ando-Japanese entrepreneur who invented instant ramen noodles in 1958. He started selling the noodles from a shack outside his home and later called them Cup Noodles. His company, Nissin Food Products sold more than 46 billion cups and packs of noodles in 2006.

Information courtesy of Dead or Alive? and infoplease and of course wikipedia.