# The news of whose death shocked you most? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 17, 2007, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359 "2007-03-17T19:21:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/81 "2007-03-19T01:16:13Z")
John Lennon John Belushi Keith Moon Robert Shaw ---
**Author:** ![Nic2004](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4491bb/32.png) [@Nic2004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nic2004)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/82 "2007-03-19T02:50:56Z")
[QUOTE=Fiveroptic] **Gilda Radner** - I’d just finished reading her autobiography in which she sounded so damn hopeful at the end that she’d beaten cancer. A couple weeks later, we got the news. [/QUOTE] Oh, how could I have missed listing Gilda? She was such a sweet person. I had my _reeeally_ bad motorcycle wreak in '89 and during my four month stay in the hospital they wheeled me into the “Common Area” were there magazines and such. It was there I saw the cover of a magazine showing her and Gene Wilder and I read of her death and her up-beat and playful mood in the hospital before she died. Then later they showed the SNL episode with her and Steve Martin doing a fantasy dance routine in a crowded lounge. It was heart breaking. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/83 "2007-03-19T03:59:39Z")
JFK Karen Carpenter John Denver ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/84 "2007-03-19T04:49:52Z")
John Lennon. Thought about him around the clock for weeks afterward. ---
**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/85 "2007-03-19T05:04:54Z")
[QUOTE=DMark] …I was also watching television in the living room a few days later, alone, and saw Jack Ruby get shot. I ran to tell my parents and they couldn’t believe it. [/QUOTE] I’m thinking you meant to say Oswald. If not, the late Earl Warren has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/86 "2007-03-19T05:14:20Z")
Princess Di freaked me out. I mean if SHE could die, hell, _ANYONE_ could! Phil Hartman and Steve Irwin both rattled me quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/87 "2007-03-19T05:17:52Z")
Um, I hate to sound totally retarded… but until this thread I had no idea Madeleine Kahn was dead :X Well shit. That sucks! ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/88 "2007-03-19T13:01:57Z")
Yitzhak Rabin. I was really gutted. I had this feeling, probably shared by many others in Israel and elsewhere, that a horrible line had been crossed for the first time. Princess Diana - I was taken aback by my own reaction as I’d always been scathing about her, the cult of Di and the media obsession, when she was alive. It has to be to do with the reasons other posters here have mentioned - the fragility of life, even if you’re a mega-celeb. However, I think the media really overplayed the public reaction. I lived in England at the time and was out and about that same day and there was no sense of public grief. If anything, I overheard people making irreverent jokes like “dead as a Dodi” about it. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/89 "2007-03-19T13:04:16Z")
When they announced two celebrities had died and the first one was Sammy Davis Jr I thought “I expected that.” Then they announced Jim Henson. I freaked out. The performance was repeated many years later with Johnny Cash and John Ritter. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/90 "2007-03-19T13:16:30Z")
Thanks for the reminder–add John Denver to mine. ---
**Author:** ![VanillaGorilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@VanillaGorilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VanillaGorilla)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/91 "2007-03-19T13:39:51Z")
Swedish prime minister **Olof Palme** for me. I was too young to really understand who he was at the time, but I very clearly remember the event. Other than that, **Kurt Cobain** , who was my idol, and also, to a lesser extent, **Shannon Hoon** , of Blind Melon. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/92 "2007-03-19T13:52:40Z")
Of course, the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert, and then Martin Luther King Jr. were all shockers. I was just a kid in the 1960s – we were pretty numb by the end of the decade. More recently, shocking celebrity deaths would include: Anna Nicole Smith Richard Jeni Chris Farley John Candy ---
**Author:** ![Flipshod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f19dbf/32.png) [@Flipshod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flipshod)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/93 "2007-03-19T13:57:11Z")
Kurt Cobain Carl Sagan Michael Hedges Frank Zappa Milton Friedman John Denver ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/94 "2007-03-19T14:02:37Z")
[QUOTE=pbbth] The most recent (and most upsetting) though would have to be John Inman. I cried when I read about it, even though he was 71 and you kind of expect people that age to be ready to go. I grew up watching British Comedy night on PBS. Are You Being Served was always one of my favorite shows. The fact that he will never say, “I’m free!” again makes me feel kind of empty inside. He was one of the funniest men on the planet and I will mourn his loss for a very long time. It feels like I have lost a fantastically hilarious gay grandfather. I hope he died knowing how important he was to so many people. [/QUOTE] He’s DEAD? :eek: Syd Barrett’s death didn’t shock me, but I do remember thinking that if he _did_ die, he might not be considered important enough to be covered in American media, although that turned out not to be the case. Now I see that that was indeed true about John Inman, although I’m less surprised at not having heard about it. ---
**Author:** ![Boggette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@Boggette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boggette)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/95 "2007-03-19T14:38:00Z")
Dale Earnhardt. I watched that race live. Went home from the party thinking nothing of it. Had no idea he was dead until Mom called and told me. It just didn’t appear to be that bad a wreck. Took weeks to sink in. I kept expecting someone to say, “ha ha! Just kidding”. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/96 "2007-03-19T14:40:18Z")
**John Bonham** and **John Lennon**. Less than a year apart and hugely influential on my musical tastes, I learned of each’s death while strolling across the exact same patch of yard of a college rental house while returning from class by a roommate. **Princess Di** was pretty unforgettable, both because princesses aren’t supposed to go like that and because of the way the story slowly unfolded. We were on vacation, in a restaurant, and the entire place was glued to the TV. I’ll second **Earnhardt** too. I came in from outside and my wife said he’d been killed. I said “No, it was just a minor wreck, he’s okay.” See, he’d had an earlier fender bender but kept going. Then, I realized what had actually happened. It amazes me still, just didn’t look _that_ bad. ---
**Author:** ![look\_ninjas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b2d939/32.png) [@look\_ninjas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_ninjas)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/97 "2007-03-19T14:48:01Z")
James Brown. He was far from young, and his health was getting poor, but part of me just honestly thought he’d go on forever. It really, really took me aback. I was also pretty shocked to find out that [Michael Gilden](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0318402/) had committed suicide. He wasn’t a big name in acting (which isn’t very surprising; there aren’t a lot of Movie Stars with dwarfism), but he was featured pretty heavily in a book called In the Little World, and it seemed like he and Meredith were doing pretty well at the end of it all. I guess it just didn’t last. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/98 "2007-03-19T15:23:53Z")
[QUOTE=dangermom] Jim Henson, Douglas Adams, and the Challenger thing. [/QUOTE] Same here, I’d say I was hit hardest by the loss of D.N.A., for a man I never had the honor of meeting, he sure as heck shaped my young life with the HHGTTG series So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish ---
**Author:** ![Arrimus\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@Arrimus\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrimus_2)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/99 "2007-03-19T15:46:20Z")
Phil Hartman ---
**Author:** ![krisolov](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/krisolov/32/3724_2.png) [@krisolov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/krisolov)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2007, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359/100 "2007-03-19T15:52:38Z")
…and noone has mentioned Jerry Garcia?? I knew his health had been deteriorating for years, but this one hit me pretty hard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-news-of-whose-death-shocked-you-most/396359.md?page=6)