Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Death is not a full stop but a coma which punctuates life to glorification. Well, the 222nd day of the Gregorian calendar, seems to have punctuated lives of prominent people most dear in our society. The mother earth on the other end has continually craved for the substance these great achievers had, eventually robbing us our very best. I must admit that this is my worst day in my 365 day package. It’s the day I lost my pretty Indian girlfriend. A moment of silence. RIP Avnita.
Although many view August 10 as a dark day, great people have also literally shared a cake on this day. The likes of Jimmy Dean, Antonio Banderas, Justin Theroux, and Angie Harmon among others.
10. Eydie Gorme
She was a popular TV and nightclub singer who also performed in a double act with her husband, Steve Lawrence. The duo enjoyed successful solo careers with Gorme being ranked number 10 in Britain in 1962 with popular jams ‘YES, MY DARLING DAUGHTER’ and the US top 10 hit the following year with ‘BLAME IT ON THE BOSSA NOVA.’ The later earned her a Grammy nomination for best female vocal performance and became something of a trademark song.
She was born Edith Gormezano in the Bronx, New York City from a Turkish mother and a Sicilian father but both were Sephardic Jews. She was brought up in an English and Spanish dialect which made her work as a Spanish interpreter with the United Nations after graduating from high school. However, Eydie Gorme had a passion for the entertainment business. By 1959 she was singing with Tommy Tuckers band, then moved to Tex Beneke’s ensemble before striking out on a solo career in 1959. She died on August 10, 2013.
9. Tony Wilson
He was a popular broadcaster, music mogul, social activist, a proud northerner, football fan, writer, and exhibitionist. He was known as plain Tony Wilson or ‘Mr. Manchester’, both as an extremely opinionated, populist Granada television presenter and as an idiosyncratic Manchester music impresario who decided his life to making the city internationally famous for its music, Nightlife and pop culture. From the moment he appeared on television and especially after he combined his daily Granada duties with his antics as the self-appointed ringleader of the Manchester music business, he was someone you loved, or hated, or loved and hated at the same time.
He was born in Salford, Lancashire on 20th February 1950.After passing his 11-plus, he won a place at Catholic Boys’ De La Salle Grammar school in Salford and immediately fell in love with literature and language after a performance of Hamlet at Stratford-upon-Avon. He died on 10th August 2007 aged 57 years from a heart attack after being diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year.
8. Carmita Jimenez
She was a popular Puerto Rican singer who was considered a diva in Puerto Rico. During the 1960s, Jimenez became a popular figure on Puerto Rico’s television and enjoyed great renown. She then moved to Peru to internationalize her career in the entire South America. As she came back to Puerto Rico in 1968 she landed her section on WAPA-TV’S popular lunchtime show,’El show Del Mediodfia’. Later in the 1970s, her two songs song, ‘La Generacion De Hoy (Today’s Generation) and ‘La Vida En Rosa’ (Life in Pink) became number one hits.
She was born on August 3, 1939, in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico where she started her singing career at a young age of six, on the radio show, ‘El Abuelito Welch’. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1985, but it was until 2002 that she publicly broke the news to the world. She had courageously battled with it for seventeen years. She died a peaceful death on August 10th 2003 in her home in Caguas, Puerto Rico.
7. Kristen Nygaard
He was a Norwegian computer scientist, politician, and inventor of the Object-Oriented programming language ‘Simula’. He was the first individual to be given an honorary doctorate by Aalborg University, Denmark in 1991. He was also the first to receive the Rosing Prize, awarded by the Norwegian Data Association for exceptional professional achievements, alongside Ole-Johan Dahl.
He was also actively involved in Norwegian politics in the 1960s and was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Norwegian Liberal Party and chairperson of the party’s strategy committee. He was the coordinator of many youth organizations that worked against Norway’s inclusion in the European Union in 1972 referendum. In 2000, he was made the Commander of the Royal Norwegian order of St. Olav by the King of Norway. His legacy lived on after the University of Oslo and the University of Aarhus both named a building after him.
Kristen Nygaard was born on August 27, 1926, in Oslo Norway. He got married to Johanna Nygaard in 1951 and had three children. He died in August 10, 2002, at the age of 75 from a heart attack.
6. Isaac Hayes
He was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. His album, ‘Hot buttered soul topped the Billboard R&B chart for ten weeks. His hit song ‘soul man’ and his score for the 1971 film ‘shaft’ are legendary contributions to modern music. The theme from shaft received the Academy Awards for a Best Original Song in 1972, making him one of the first African-Americans to win an Oscar, three Grammy Awards, and a Golden Globe award. He also voiced the character ‘chef’, the cafeteria cook and self-professed ladies’ man who became a mentor to the students, of South Park in the TV comedy series ‘South Park’
Isaac Lee Hayes was born on August 20, 1942, in a tin shack in Covington, Tennessee, about 40 miles North of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after the demise of his mother and departure of his father. He was married four times and had 12 children. He died of a stroke in August 10, 2008, after he was found unconscious at his home in Memphis by his family members.
5. Robert H. Goddard
Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard was an American Engineer, professor, physicist and inventor who is considered as the father of modern rocket propulsion. In 1926, Goddard had constructed and successfully tested the first rocket using liquid fuel at Auburn, Massachusetts. He was the first scientist who not only realized the potentialities of missiles and space flight but also contributed directly in bringing them to practical realization. His other contributions and achievements involved the use of vanes in the rocket motor blast for guidance and developed gyro control apparatus for rocket flight in 1932, shot a scientific payload in a rocket flight in 1929, Proved that a rocket will work in a vacuum and that it needs no air to push against. He also received U.S patent for a multi-stage rocket in 1914.
He was born on October 5, 1882, in Worcester, Massachusetts. On June 21, 1924, he married Ester Christine Kisk, a secretary on Clark University’s president’s office. The couple had no children. Dr. Goddard, later on, died on August 10, 1945, after being diagnosed with throat cancer.
4. Adela Rogers St. Johns
She was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She was the first woman to cover a police beat and the first allowed into the press box at sporting events. She was known as everything from ‘the world’s greatest girl reporter’ to ‘mother confessor of Hollywood.’
As the world’s greatest reporter for Hearst newspaper, she covered the Lindbergh baby kidnaping trial of Bruno Hauptmann, the abdication of King Edward VIII, the assassination of Senator Huey Long, the long count Dempsey-Tunney boxing match and Washington politics during the Roosevelt Administration.
As‘Mother Confessor of Hollywood’, she wrote frank celebrity interviews, profiles and articles for photoplay. She came up with the first movie magazine devoted to quenching the seemingly unquenchable curiosity of a newly star-struck nation.
She was born on May 20, 1894, in Los Angeles. Her father was one of the California’s leading trial lawyer. Her ‘sunset’ came on August 10, 1988, in Convalescent Hospital in Arroyo Grande, near San Luis Obispo. She was 94!
3. Michael Houser
He was the founding member and lead guitarist of the Georgia-based jam band ‘widespread panic’ alongside John Bell. He pursued an atmospheric 11-year lead guitar style that lingered behind primary melodies with the band releasing seven studio albums with Capricorn and three live sets. He is also credited for writing many of the band’s most popular songs, including; ‘porch song’, ‘airplane’, ‘Ain’t life grand,’ ‘blue Indian’ and ‘vacation.’
Michael Houser was born on January 6, 1962, in Boone, North Carolina. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the spring of 2002. He died on August 10, 2002, in Georgia, United States. He was survived by his wife, Barbette and their two children.
2. Jakob F. Fries
Jakob Friedrich Fries was a German post-Kantian philosopher. He was known for his contribution to the Kantian tradition in his theory of justification and the manner in which he addressed the paradoxes of Immanuel Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’ in the ‘critique of pure reason.’ In his works, he introduced ‘Ahndung’ (presentiment) as our mind’s ability to perceive the presence of the divine in nature and the human spirit, beyond the capacity of our finite reason. He, later on, concluded that this special faculty formed the essential link between knowledge and faith and had an important role in the development of the modern philosophy of religion seeking to transcend the limitations of rationalism without replacing it with supernatural explanations.
He was born on August 23, 1773, in Barby, Germany. Studied theology at the Moravian brethren at Niesky and philosophy at the Universities of Leipzig and Jena where he, later on, became a professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. He died on August 10, 1843, at the age of 70.
1. Salvatore Vigano
Salvatore Vigano was an Italian choreographer, dancer, and composer. He is considered the father of a new kind of performance in highly dramatic ballets based on Historical and mythological themes and Shakespearean plays called,’coreodramma’.In this kind of performance, the pantomime served the dance, and the ensembles were very significant. He was a ballet master, having done more than 40 ballets in Vienna and collaborated with Beethoven on the ballet ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’. Other Ballet he performed included; ‘Gli strelizzi’ based on an insurrection in the late 17th century among the guards of the Russian tsar Peter the Great, ‘Otello ‘which he performed in 1818 and ‘I titani’ which explored man’s greed for gold, in 1819.
He was born on March 25, 1769, in Naples, Italy in the family of dancers and was the nephew of the composer, Luigi Boccherini who helped him in his music composition. Salvatore Vigano died on August 10, 1821, in Milan.