When I heard this morning about the death of George Martin, I was immediately saddened that there wouldn’t be any more Song of Ice & Fire books after all. Then I discovered it was the Beatles producer who died, not the writer.
In fact, recently there’s been a lot of minor celebrity deaths which made me do a double-take. For instance:
And I’m also reminded of the time I found out Steve Howe was killed in a car accident, thinking: Aw man, Steve Howe died! Oh wait, phew, it wasn’t Steve Howe the Yes guitarist, it was the former Dodgers pitcher…aw man, Steve Howe died!
Any other celebrity deaths you mistook for someone more notable when you first heard about it?
I once misread a chyron on CNN and thought that Patrick Stewart had died in a plane crash.
Turned out it was the golfer, Payne Stewart. I still feel slightly guilty about how happy I was to learn that Payne Stewart had died. But Patrick Stewart had just signed on to be Professor X in the X-Men movies!
Yep. They dispatched a plane or two to try to contact them visually. He reported that he could see frost on the windows, an indication of cabin pressure loss. They couldn’t do anything except wait for it to crash.
I’ve mentioned this accident to people, and they just shrug it off. To me, it was akin to the Apollo 13 accident, when they had to slingshot around the moon, and no one knew if they’d survive the trip since there would be no radio contact.
That’s how I imagine the Apollo disaster, anyway. I was a small child when that happened, and don’t recall knowing about it until the movie.
This is merely death adjacent. I had read with cloak-and-dagger glee when Scalia died that the owner of the ranch/death site was John Poindexter. Turned out to be A John Poindexter, not THE John Poindexter, former NSA habitué. I could’ve almost tasted the cigar. :smack:
