John Sessions (11 January 1953 – 2 November 2020), born John Marshall, was a British actor and comedian. He was known as a regular performer on comedy improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as co-creator, co-writer and co-star of the sitcom Stella Street, as a panellist on QI, and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and Hollywood.
Orenthal James Simpson (born July 9, 1947), commonly referred to as O. J. Simpson, is an American former football running back, actor, and broadcaster. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills, and is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time. Once a popular figure with the American public, Simpson's professional success was overshadowed by his trial and controversial acquittal for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.
Simpson played college football for the USC Trojans, where he won the Heisman Trophy as a senior, and was selected first overall by the Bills in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. During his nine seasons with the Bills, Simpson received five consecutive Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selections from 1972 to 1976. He also led the league in rushing yards four times, in rushing touchdowns twice, and in points scored in 1975. In 1973, he became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, earning him NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP), and is the only NFL player to do so in a 14-game regular season. Simpson holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1. After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, Simpson pursued an acting and broadcasting career. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
In June 1994, Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders of Brown and Goldman. He was acquitted in a lengthy and internationally publicized trial, but found liable for the deaths three years later in a civil suit from the victims' families. To date, Simpson has paid little of the $33.5 million judgment (equivalent to $61 million in 2022).
In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, and charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment, with a minimum of nine years without parole. He served his sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center near Lovelock, Nevada. He was granted parole on July 20, 2017, which was the minimum sentence. He was released on October 1, 2017. In December 2021, Simpson was granted early release from his parole by the Nevada Division of Parole and Probation.
John Goodwin Tower (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was an American politician and military officer who represented Texas in the United States Senate from 1961 to 1985. He was the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since Reconstruction. Tower is known for leading the Tower Commission, which investigated the Iran-Contra Affair in the Reagan administration.
Born in Houston, Texas, he served in the Pacific Theater of World War II. After the war, he worked as a radio announcer and taught at Midwestern University (now Midwestern State University) in Wichita Falls. He switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the early 1950s and worked on the 1956 presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tower lost Texas's 1960 Senate election to Democratic Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, but performed relatively well compared to his Republican predecessors. With the Democratic victory in the 1960 presidential election, Johnson vacated his Senate seat to become Vice President of the United States. In the 1961 special election, Tower defeated Johnson's appointed successor, Bill Blakley. He won re-election in 1966, 1972, and 1978.
Upon joining the Senate in 1961, Tower became the first Republican Senator to represent a state in the South since 1913. He was the only Southern Republican in the Senate until Strom Thurmond switched parties in 1964. A political conservative earlier in his career, Tower staunchly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Starting in 1976 with his support of Gerald Ford rather than Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican primaries, Tower began to alienate many fellow conservatives. He became less conservative over time, later voicing support for legal abortion, gay rights, and opposing President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983.
Tower retired from the Senate in 1985. After leaving Congress, he served as chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union and led the Tower Commission. The commission's report was highly critical of the Reagan administration's relations with Iran and the Contras. In 1989, incoming President George H. W. Bush chose Tower as his nominee for Secretary of Defense, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate. After the defeat, Tower chaired the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Tower died in the 1991 Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 crash.
Torkjell Berulfsen (born 20 January 1943) is a Norwegian television personality.
He is the son of the linguist Bjarne Berulfsen. He took his education at the University of Oslo, graduating in the English language. He worked at the University College London from 1967 to 1968, and was later an editor of a Norwegian-English dictionary. He started working for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in 1971, and has presented many television and radio shows. He won Gullruten awards in 2002 and 2007.
Marcelo Mendonça Rossi (born 20 May 1967) is a Brazilian Catholic priest widely known and popular in the country for his novel approaches to ministering to the faithful. He is also a writer and a singer, and he uses music intensely in his Masses. He has recorded several music CDs, hosts several radio and TV programs on many stations, and has appeared as an actor in two movies with religious themes. All of these endeavors have been big hits in the media, but Father Rossi donates all the proceeds to Catholic charities and his own parish.
Anders Heger (born 10 July 1956) is a Norwegian publisher and writer, and is one of the six children of Wanda Hjort Heger and Bjørn Heger.
In 1982, Heger started Radio Nova, the first student radio in Norway. In 1985, he wrote a book about the juridical process against the Norwegian writer Agnar Mykle, and in 1999 wrote Et diktet liv, a biography about Agnar Mykle, which received the Brage Prize (comparable in Norway to a Pulitzer Prize). Heger's grandfather, Johan Bernhard Hjort, was Mykle's defense attorney.
Heger became director of the Norwegian publishing company Cappelen (owned by the Swedish mediahouse Bonnier) in 1991. Heger is described in the media as "the most powerful man in the bookpublishing industry in Norway".His interests include cross-country skiing.
Lee Roy Pettit (October 29, 1916 – July 31, 1994), known professionally as Ramblin' Jimmie Dolan, was a Western swing musician born in Gardena, California. He is best remembered for his hit single, "Hot Rod Race" on Capitol Records, which reached No. 7 on the Billboard country chart in February 1951. Dolan himself wanted to be remembered for his contributions in entertaining troops in the Pacific Theatre, especially the Philippines during World War II. He reached the rank of Chief Petty Officer filling the function of a radioman. He returned from the war with a ready built fan base and his charisma soon had him in demand at dance halls throughout the west. During the 1940s he hosted and played on numerous radio stations. In the early 1950s he was a pioneer of television in the Seattle area where he was the general manager of its first television station as well as one of its stars. He had a television show for children as well as an adult variety show, for which he won the award for Best Western TV show of 1951. He then had a long running radio show in San Francisco. On an airline flight he met United Airlines Stewardess Charline Bales, a graduate of the University of Idaho. They were married for 13 years. He is survived by a daughter, Patricia and a granddaughter Aria. During the late 1980s he was contacted by the former president of his fan club, recently widowed. They met again, both being free and lived happily together until his death.
Trond Brænne (31 July 1953 – 16 March 2013) was a Norwegian actor, author and radio personality, best known for his many theater and television roles. He was also a decorated writer of children's songs and literature.
