George Mason University's
History News Network
HNN Teacher's Edition

Archive

May 2013 (5)
April 2013 (3)
March 2013 (11)
February 2013 (3)
January 2013 (7)
December 2012 (3)
November 2012 (7)
October 2012 (6)
September 2012 (5)
August 2012 (4)
July 2012 (4)
June 2012 (12)
May 2012 (7)
April 2012 (5)
March 2012 (3)
February 2012 (1)
January 2012 (3)
December 2011 (5)
November 2011 (3)
October 2011 (7)

Obituaries

This page lists the obituaries of people who made news during their lifetimes. Obituaries of historians can be found here.
  • WWII Doolittle Raider Tom Griffin dies at 96
    •
  • Van Cliburn, pianist and Cold War hero, dies at 78
    •
  • Ronald Dworkin, Scholar of the Law, Is Dead at 81
    •
    WWII Doolittle Raider Tom Griffin dies at 96

    SOURCE: WaPo(2-28-13)

    CINCINNATI — Maj. Thomas C. “Tom” Griffin, a B-25 bomber navigator in the audacious Doolittle’s Raid attack on mainland Japan during World War II, has died.

    His death at age 96 leaves four surviving Raiders.

    Griffin died Tuesday in a veterans nursing home in northern Kentucky. He was among the 80 original volunteers for the daring April 18, 1942, mission. When they began training, they were told only it would be “extremely hazardous,” coming in the aftermath of Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and a string of other Japanese military successes....
    2013-02-28 18:26
    Comments
    Van Cliburn, pianist and Cold War hero, dies at 78

    SOURCE: AP(2-27-13)

    For a time in Cold War America, Van Cliburn had all the trappings of a rock star: sold-out concerts, adoring, out-of-control fans and a name recognized worldwide. He even got a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

    And he did it all with only a piano and some Tchaikovsky concertos.

    The celebrated pianist played for every American president since Harry Truman, plus royalty and heads of state around the world. But he is best remembered for winning a 1958 piano competition in Moscow that helped thaw the icy rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

    Cliburn, who died Wednesday at 78 after fighting bone cancer, was "a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy," said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone. "He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met."

    The young man from the small east Texas town of Kilgore was a baby-faced 23-year-old when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow just six months after the Soviets' launch of Sputnik embarrassed the U.S. and inaugurated the space race.

    Cliburn returned to a hero's welcome and the ticker-tape parade — the first ever for a classical musician. A Time magazine cover proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."...
    2013-02-27 17:59
    Comments
    Ronald Dworkin, Scholar of the Law, Is Dead at 81

    SOURCE: NYT(2-14-13)

    Ronald Dworkin, a legal philosopher and public intellectual of bracingly liberal views who insisted that morality is the touchstone of constitutional interpretation, died Thursday in London. He was 81.

    The cause was leukemia, said Richard Revesz, the dean of the New York University School of Law, who announced the death. Professor Dworkin had been a member of the school’s faculty for many years and also taught at University College, London.

    Professor Dworkin was “the primary legal philosopher of his generation,” said Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School who now sits on the federal appeals court in New York. He was also one of the most closely read as a mainstay of The New York Review of Books, to which he contributed articles for decades....
    2013-02-15 15:33
    Comments