Edward M. Kennedy, Senator from Massachusetts, has died at age 77. After a rocky youth (including scandals of cheating and reckless driving), Kennedy followed his brothers into politics, making health care his cause, and eventually went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Anticipating his own death, he had been trying to create a quick transition for his replacement as a vote on health care reform rapidly approached.
posted by ocherdraco on Aug 25, 2009 - 659 comments

Getting Off The Mat - After losing 15 years of his life to drug addiction and prison, Richard Jensen was reborn as a 36-year-old college wrestler.
posted by thisisdrew on Aug 4, 2008 - 15 comments

American audiences remember Akira Kurosawa as the genius of the samurai epic, a past master who used the form both to revise and revive Western classics - Shakespeare with Ran and Throne of Blood, Dostoevsky with Red Beard and The Idiot, Gorky with The Lower Depths - and to give splendid and ultimately immortal life to new archetypes, as in The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo. But Kurosawa also made films of his own time. His masterpiece, in fact, was the quiet story of a gray Japanese bureaucrat dying in post-war Tokyo, and of his attempt to do something of lasting good before he leaves. The film is Ikiru ("To Live"; 1952). [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Jan 29, 2008 - 46 comments

Harvard professor Allan Brandt has a book out, The Cigarette Century, detailing the rise of the cigarette in 20th century America and its continuing spread worldwide. Excerpted here, reviewed here. The same title was used on a very similar work in American Heritage magazine in 1992 that is also worth a look.
posted by TedW on Jul 13, 2007 - 34 comments

Tammy Faye Messner Bids Her Fans Goodbye. Down to 65 pounds and unable to continue treatment for cancer, Tammy Faye Messner, one of the most colorful figures in religious broadcasting, has posted a goodbye letter to fans on her Web site.
posted by parmanparman on May 10, 2007 - 139 comments

The Australian cigarette health warnings have pretty much filtered down to every retail packet that's bought now. They're pretty gruesome and some smoking acquaintances cover them up with stickers. I thought I'd have a look around and see what other countries warnings were like. None of them were pulling any punches except for Uruguay.
posted by tellurian on May 17, 2006 - 118 comments

Josh Clayton-Felt, lead singer of 90's alterntive rock band School of Fish spent the last few years of his life battling his record company (A&M cum Universal) and his last few weeks fighting a highly aggressive cancer that rendered him comatose just weeks after its December, 1999 discovery. When he lost his fight with cancer in January, 2000, the rights to the third re-recording of his final album had just been returned to him. Dreamworks released it earlier this month to favorable reviews. It can also be heard in its entirety here.
posted by Sinner on Feb 20, 2002 - 15 comments

Mordecai Richler dead at 70. Noted Canadian man of letters, political commentator, frequent imbiber and author of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "Solomon Gursky Was Here," "Oh, Canada! Oh, Quebec!," and "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang." He was undergoing cancer treatment.
posted by galachef55 on Jul 3, 2001 - 5 comments