Farrah,John Ritter,Mother Theresa all died within a few days or same day as their more famous partners in death.
Ricky Henderson became the all-time base stealer(declaring “I am the greatest”)the same day Nolan Ryan threw his 7th no-hitter.Sorry Ricky
What else?
Rickey
Well, I think that the deaths of Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis got upstaged by that bastard JFK.
Both of which are more of a tragedy.
No joke…Mother Teresa and Princess Di died within one (or two) week(s) of each other.
Too lazy to cite it, but if you look it up, you’ll see it’s true.
I think it was just one week.
ETA: Ah fuck it, I looked it up…
…and it WAS in the same week.
Princess Di died August 31st 1997
Mother Teresa died September 5th 1997
Which is why i mentioned it in the OP
I started to ask who died near John Ritter but I decided to be a good citizen and look it up. A lot of people. He died September 11, 2003.
Edit to add, but it was 2 years later. Was there someone else besides the Sept. 11 deaths?
I think Mad’s referring to Johnny Cash upstaging John Ritter by dying the day after. I felt like they both had equal notoriety owing to the fact that John Ritter’s death was wholly unexpected.
That was actually referenced in a book I’m reading, but I see I was beaten to it. The advice given by the character in the book, IIRC, is “Never die on the same day as someone more famous”.
Thanks Bacon Salt. (mmmm, Bacon Salt…sigh…too bad it has ingredients I can’t eat, or I’d buy out the company store.)
Lyndon Johnson died January 22, 1973. His funeral would have been big news except that the Pairs Peace Accord to end the Vietnam War was announced on January 23 and signed on January 27.
That Gary Condit thing was a huge news story in the weeks leading up to 9/11. Afterwards it was basically never mentioned again.
Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin (March 5, 1953).
Punk Rocker Darby Crash’s suicide was “upstaged” by John Lennon’s death.
Warren Zevon died a few days before Johnny Cash…but I wonder how big of a deal would have been made about him anyway.
Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jim Henson both died on the same day in 1990. Coincidentally, it was my fourteenth birthday.
I’m not sure who eclipsed whom there, but as a teenager, it certainly seemed like Davis was getting much more attention than Henson.
Not exactly an upstaging, but related:
The British comedians Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd both died within hours of each other in April 1992, although Hill’s death was not discovered for some time.
When Howerd died, several newspapers ran canned quotes from Benny Hill mourning the passing of his “great, great friend”. Cue embarrassed retractions when the news broke that Hill had, in fact, probably died before Howerd…
ETA: Wikipedia actually lists Hill’s date of death as the day after Howerd’s, but that’s not what I heard at the time. His body was discovered later, so the exact time of death isn’t known.
Kurt Vonnegut died just hours before the Virginia Tech massacre started.
Although Wikipedia says April 11, I believe Vonnegut’s death was announced late on the 15th.
On January 21, 1968, a US B-52 Stratofortress crashed in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs. This should have been earth-shattering news, except for several other things that eclipsed it. The Battle of Khe Sanh started the same day. Then, on the 23rd, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, which more-or-less took over the headlines. On the 25th, an Israeli submarine sank in the Mediterranean Sea, followed by a French sub sinking in the Med on the 27th. Finally, on the 30th, the Tet Offensive started, culminating in the Viet Cong attack on the US embassy in Saigon.
'Twas a bad month all the way around.
Well from the World War II front:
5 June 1944 - The Americans liberate Rome.
6 June 1944 - The Allies invade Normandy on D-Day.
Edit to add:
6 December 1941 - The Soviets counter-attack the Germans, driving them back from Moscow.
7 December 1941 - The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.