Tag: R.I.P.
R.I.P. Claude Levi-Strauss
by Eva Holland | 11.03.09 | 1:11 PM ET
The famed structural anthropologist has died at 100. We blogged about his 100th birthday—and some of his travel-related accomplishments—just under a year ago:
Travel lit readers know him in part from his 1955 travel memoir of sorts, Tristes Tropiques, which begins with the memorable line, “I hate travelling and explorers.” More importantly, as NPR points out, Levi-Strauss “changed the world’s perception of so-called ‘primitive’ tribes in Asia, Africa and America.”
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Yahoo! BuzzR.I.P. Kiddieland
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 11:49 AM ET
The 80-year-old Illinois amusement park won’t be reopening next summer, USA Today reports. It’s a shame to see another vintage park closing its doors.
R.I.P. Gourmet
by Eva Holland | 10.05.09 | 4:02 PM ET
The 69-year-old magazine, which has published many fine foodie travel stories over the years, will be ceasing publication along with several other magazines cut this week at Conde Nast. Here’s just one travel classic from the Gourmet archives, David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster.
R.I.P. Patrick Swayze
by Eva Holland | 09.14.09 | 8:55 PM ET
The actor has died at age 57, after a two-year battle with cancer. Swayze starred in the surfing favorite “Point Break,” and his biggest success, “Dirty Dancing,” recently made our list of great summer vacation movies.
R.I.P. Orient Express
by Eva Holland | 08.25.09 | 10:09 AM ET
Don’t worry: The modern, private luxury line to Venice is still going strong. But, as we’ve noted before, the last true descendant of the original Orient Express was a line from Strasbourg to Vienna—and that service has just been cut. The Independent’s Simon Calder offers an obituary:
As an announcement of a momentous death foretold, it is remarkably economical. “Train 468/469,” reports the September edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable “Strasbourg to Wien [Vienna] will finally be withdrawn.” Between those two phrases is the most momentous pair of words in European rail travel: Orient Express. Seventy-five years after the publication of Agatha Christie’s bestselling crime novel, Murder on the Orient Express, the train that epitomised trans-European travel for more than a century is finally being killed off.
R.I.P. John Hughes
by Eva Holland | 08.06.09 | 5:45 PM ET
Hughes, who wrote “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” has died of a heart attack at age 59. Other travel movie favorites from the prolific writer-director included “European Vacation,” “Christmas Vacation,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “The Great Outdoors”—the last two made our lists of great travel race movies and great summer vacation movies, respectively, while we gave “Vacation” the World Hum Travel Movie Club treatment for its 25th anniversary last summer.
For my part, I’ll never be able to visit Chicago without thinking of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” another Hughes classic.
R.I.P. Sandy van Ginkel, Montreal Architect
by Eva Holland | 07.27.09 | 10:36 AM ET
The Dutch-born architect and city planner, who is credited with saving the Old Montreal we know today from development, died earlier this month at 89. In the late 1950s, van Ginkel “almost single-handedly persuaded the good burghers of Montreal to abandon plans for an expressway that would have cut through the old city, destroying much of its heritage and the ambience that still draws tourists and visitors,” writes the Globe and Mail’s Sandra Martin.
R.I.P. Frank McCourt
by Eva Holland | 07.20.09 | 10:29 AM ET
The author of “Angela’s Ashes,” the Pulitzer-winning memoir about his impoverished Irish childhood, has died at 78. The Limerick Leader looks back at McCourt’s last visit to his childhood home, when he tagged along on the “Angela’s Ashes” walking tour, while Book Bencher Cressida Leyshon remembers editing the first excerpts of the unpublished manuscript for The New Yorker.
R.I.P. Julius Shulman
by Jim Benning | 07.16.09 | 5:37 PM ET
REUTERS/Fred Prouser/Files The famed Los Angeles architectural photographer died yesterday at his home in Laurel Canyon at the age of 98. Among his most iconic photographs: a shot of Pierre Koenig’ Case Study House #22—the photo within the photo here.
Dwell magazine put it well: “His photography helped define mid-century modernism and no one can claim more credit for documenting, and in some ways inventing, what post-war California cool looked and felt like.”
R.I.P. Michael Jackson
by Jim Benning | 06.25.09 | 8:20 PM ET
He was a truly global pop star. Exhibit A: Our slideshow of Michael Jackson around the world.
Exhibit B: Jeffrey Tayler’s brand new World Hum essay, Michael and Me: Strangers in Moscow.
Exhibit C:
R.I.P. Farrah Fawcett
by Eva Holland | 06.25.09 | 4:05 PM ET
REUTERS/Staff The actress has died at 62 after a three-year battle with cancer. Among many other roles, she starred in the cross-country road trip race movie, The Cannonball Run.
R.I.P. Ali Akbar Khan, Indian Musician
by Jim Benning | 06.25.09 | 1:31 PM ET
REUTERS/Adam Tanner The Bengali-born musician, who died last week at the age of 87, was regarded by many as a genius who helped popularize Indian classical music around the globe. He played the 25-string sarod.
When he arrived in the U.S. half a century ago, many he encountered were confounded by his origins.
He told Asia Week:
“When I came in ’55, because I was in Indian dress, people on the street in New York came out of the bars and shops and followed us. They asked me, ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’ When I said, ‘India,’ some of them didn’t even know where it was. Or others who knew I was a musician asked funny questions like, ‘How can you play music in India with all the tigers and snakes and monkeys you have to fight off?’”
Here he performs via YouTube:
R.I.P. Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, South Pole Physician
by Jim Benning | 06.24.09 | 3:16 PM ET
REUTERS/Ho New
Dr. Jerry Nielsen FitzGerald captured the world’s attention in 1999.
She was at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station when she discovered a lump in her breast. Isolated by bad weather, she followed instructions over the internet to perform a biopsy on herself and then began cancer treatment with drugs delivered in an air-drop. In so doing, she came to personify courage in the face of adversity.
Her sister-in-law told CNN: “She would want to be remembered for the adventure and, you know, living every day, and not just the sickness.”
Her cancer went into remission but reappeared in 2005, her husband told the Associated Press. She died at the age of 57.
R.I.P. Neda Agha-Soltan
by Eva Holland | 06.23.09 | 1:04 PM ET
The woman who has become a symbol of Iran’s ongoing protests after her death was caught on video has been identified as Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, a student in Tehran. A tidbit from the compelling Los Angeles Times profile:
She took private classes to become a tour guide, including Turkish-language courses, friends said, hoping to someday lead groups of Iranians on trips abroad. Travel was her passion, and with her friends she saved up enough money for package tours to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand.
(Via Andrew Sullivan)
R.I.P. John Joseph Houghtaling: ‘Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed’ Inventor
by Michael Yessis | 06.22.09 | 9:46 AM ET
Houghtaling invented the coin-operated vibrating bed, which delivered 15 minutes of “tingling relaxation and ease” and, according to the New York Times obit, “shook postwar America, or at least those Americans who stayed overnight in midprice motels.” He was 92.
R.I.P. Edith ‘Jackie’ Ronne: ‘First U.S. Woman on Antarctica’
by Michael Yessis | 06.18.09 | 10:48 AM ET
Edith “Jackie” Ronne was 28 years old when she set foot on Antarctica in 1947. It was a journey she never intended to take.
She was, according to the Washington Post, talked into joining the expedition by her explorer husband so she could, among other things, write stories about the expedition for the North American Newspaper Alliance and the New York Times. As part of the expedition team, she became the first U.S. women on Antarctica and, along with Canadian Jennie Darlington, the first woman to spend a winter on the continent. (The first woman on Antarctica: Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen, in 1935.)
Ronne was 89.
Here’s the trailer for the documentary about the expedition she joined:
R.I.P. Millvina Dean, Titanic Survivor
by Eva Holland | 06.01.09 | 12:22 PM ET
REUTERS/Simon Kreitem The last survivor of the Titanic’s sinking has died at 97. Dean was just two months old when she was placed in one of the ship’s lifeboats with her mother and brother; she once said of her celebrity status: “Until the wreckage of the Titanic was found in 1985, nobody was interested in me. Who expects to become famous at that age?”
Morning Links: R.I.P. Escapes Section, the ‘Dirtiest City in Europe’ and More
by World Hum | 05.04.09 | 8:10 AM ET
- In Washington D.C. tonight, World Hum columnist Eric Weiner will speak with World Hum contributor Pico Iyer about Iyer’s book, “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.” Tickets are $25 and an RSVP is required.
- A pilot walked away unhurt after his Cessna crash-landed onto “a cushioning group of portable lavatories.”
- For the second year in a row, London has been voted the dirtiest city in Europe in a TripAdvisor poll. The British capital also took the prizes for worst cuisine and worst-dressed locals. Ouch.
- This weekend saw the New York Times go Escapes section-free. (Via @LunaticAtLarge)
- Outside contributing editor Ian Frazier has some advice for all the young adventurers out there: old guys rule.
- Breaking news from the Onion: the unheralded sherpa who led Neil Armstrong to the moon has died at age 71.
- CNN rounds up five roadside “world’s largest” attractions; “Travelers enjoy the noncorporate, somewhat ragged nature of these eclectic attractions,” says an interviewee.
- Today in swine flu news: roughly 70 Mexican passport-holders have been detained and quarantined in China, regardless of their possible exposure to the virus; the Mexican government is sending a plane to retrieve its citizens.
- The Big Picture tackles human landscapes from above.
- Feeling overlooked on the world stage, South Korea is launching a national branding campaign. The Los Angeles Times has an idea for a slogan: “South Korea: Way better than you think it is.”
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R.I.P. Paul Harvey
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.09 | 10:20 AM ET
The radio legend joined me on many a road trip, filling the wide-open spaces of the U.S. with what the Washington Post calls his “authoritative baritone voice.” I rarely took a long drive without tuning in a crackling A.M. station and hearing Harvey deliver “the rest of the story.” Among the noteworthy achievements of his broadcasting career: He apparently invented the word “skyjacker.” He was 90.
R.I.P. Conchita Cintron, Woman Matador
by Jim Benning | 02.19.09 | 11:38 AM ET
The Peruvian matador’s debut performance dates back to 1937. She died in Lisbon at the age of 86.
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