http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0830-lopez-romero-20150829-column.html



In June, Juan Romero did something he hadn't done in decades. He celebrated his birthday, going out to dinner with his family in San Jose.

"I always dreaded when June was coming up," said Romero, 65, who has struggled for most of his adult life to let go of his crippling memory of an American tragedy.

It happened just after midnight on June 5, 1968. Robert F. Kennedy had won the California presidential primary and made his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Romero was a 17-year-old busboy.

A Roosevelt High School student who had moved north from Mexico at the age of 10, Romero recalled the photos of President John F. Kennedy that hung alongside those of Pope John XXIII in the homes of Mexican families.

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On each anniversary of RFK's death, Romero takes flowers to a memorial in downtown San Jose, where Kennedy delivered a speech during his winning primary run. Romero misses Kennedy, or at least what Kennedy seems to have represented as a statesman and presidential candidate. He misses him all the more in the midst of a current campaign in which the hottest topic is a proposal to build a higher wall between Mexico and the United States.

"He made me feel like a regular citizen," Romero says of the night he delivered room service to Kennedy. "He made me feel like a human being. He didn't look at my color, he didn't look at my position ... and like I tell everybody, he shook my hand. I didn't ask him."

Romero has always believed the best way to honor Kennedy is to live a life of tolerance, to work hard, to take care of family, and to not be a burden.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/jack-davis-legendary-mad-magazine-ec-comics-artist-dead-91-article-1.2728531

Jack Davis, the iconic cartoonist who fleshed out the grisly horror titles at the heart of the ‘50s crusade against comics and humored the readers of Mad Magazine, has died, Athens, Georgia's WGAU radio reported.

He was 91.

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Davis eventually found even greater fame when he started contributing work for another of Gaines’ fledgling publications — a humor magazine called “Mad.” He contributed to the first 30 issues, and then returned in the mid ‘60s and became a mainstay for several decades.

His wacky doodlings couldn’t be contained on the page: Davis contributed a number of memorable movie posters to cinemas, including “American Graffiti,” “Animal House,” “It’s a Mad, Mad World” and Woody Allen’s “Bananas.”

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http://www.kwwl.com/story/32524457/tim-lahaye-author-of-left-behind-end-times-novels-dies

By The Associated Press
The author of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels about the return of Jesus and the rapture has died.

A publicist for the Rev. Tim LaHaye says the novelist died Monday in San Diego, California, days after suffering a stroke. He was 90 years old.

LaHaye and his partner Jerry B. Jenkins wrote 16 volumes in the "Left Behind" series, which sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, bringing Christian prophecy and the apocalypse into mainstream bookstores.

LaHaye was a Baptist minister who started an Atlanta-area church and several Christian schools, and wrote dozens of non-fiction and advice books. He was active in conservative political groups and instrumental in the creation of the Moral Majority.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Andrea_Doria#Final_voyage

<snip>

As Stockholm and Andrea Doria were approaching each other head-on, in the heavily used shipping corridor, the westbound Andrea Doria had been traveling in heavy fog for hours. The captain had reduced speed slightly from 23.0 to 21.8 knots (42.6 to 40.4 km/h), activated the ship's fog-warning whistle, and had closed the watertight doors, all customary precautions while sailing in such conditions. However, the eastbound Stockholm had yet to enter what was apparently the edge of a fog bank and was seemingly unaware of it and the movement of the other ship hidden in it. The waters of the North Atlantic south of Nantucket Island are frequently the site of intermittent fog as the cold Labrador Current encounters the Gulf Stream.

As the two ships approached each other, at a combined speed of 40 knots (74 km/h), each was aware of the presence of another ship, but was guided only by radar; they apparently misinterpreted each other's course. No radio communication was made between the two ships, at first.

The original inquiry established that in the critical minutes before the collision, Andrea Doria gradually steered to port, attempting a starboard-to-starboard passing, while Stockholm turned about 20° to its starboard, an action intended to widen the passing distance of a port-to-port passing. In fact, they were actually steering towards each other – narrowing, rather than widening, the passing distance. Compounded by the extremely thick fog that enveloped the Doria as the ships approached each other, the ships were quite close by the time visual contact had been established. By then, the crews realized that they were on a collision course, but despite last-minute maneuvers, they could not avoid the collision.

In the last moments before impact, Stockholm turned hard to starboard and was in the process of reversing her propellers, attempting to stop. Andrea Doria, remaining at her cruising speed of almost 22 knots (41 km/h) engaged in a hard turn to port, her captain hoping to outrun the collision. Around 11:10 pm, the two ships collided, Stockholm striking the side of Andrea Doria.

Impact and penetration[edit]

When Andrea Doria and Stockholm collided at almost a 90° angle, Stockholm's sharply raked ice breaking prow pierced Andrea Doria's starboard side about one-third of her length from the bow. It penetrated the hull to a depth of nearly 40 feet (12 m), and the keel. Below the waterline, five fuel tanks on Andrea Doria's starboard side were torn open, and they filled with thousands of tons of seawater. Meanwhile, air was trapped in the five empty tanks on the port side, causing them to float more readily, contributing to a severe list. The ship's large fuel tanks were mostly empty at the time of the collision, since the ship was nearing the end of her voyage, but all the empty fuel tanks did was further increase the list.

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SS Andrea Doria the morning after the collision with the MS Stockholm in fog off Nantucket Island: The hole in her starboard side from the collision with Stockholm is clearly visible.