https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/blues-brothers-guitarist-matt-guitar-murphy-dead-at-88-w521611

Matt "Guitar" Murphy, guitarist for the Blues Brothers and noted sideman for blues legends like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim, died Friday at the age of 88.

Murphy's death was first announced in by his nephew Floyd Murphy Jr, who performed alongside his uncle. "He was a strong man that lived a long long fruitful life that poured his heart out in every guitar solo he took," Floyd Jr. wrote of Matt Murphy in a Facebook post (via Deadline). No cause of death was provided. In 2002, Murphy suffered a stroke that forced the guitarist into semi-retirement.

A veteran of the legendary Chicago blues scene of the Forties and Fifties, Murphy worked alongside artists ranging from Ike Turner (as members of Junior Parker's Blue Flames) and Etta James to blues musicians like James Cotton, Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Murphy is best remembered as the indispensable guitarist in the 1980 comedy classic The Blues Brothers; in the film, soul food chef Murphy and his waitress wife Aretha Franklin have a disagreement about him reuniting with the Blues Brothers, resulting in Franklin's iconic "Think" performance:

http://www.hsvvoice.com/news/20180522/newmans-remember-witnessing-kennedy-assassination---part-i

By JEFF MEEK / Managing editor

Posted May 22, 2018 at 12:01 AM

Dallas residents Bill and Gayle Newman went about everyday life like thousands of others in Texas until that fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963. That afternoon they witnessed, up close, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza.

From that day until today, they are sought after to interview about the horrifying experience, which they did for me on May 3 in their Texas home.

<snip>

Bill:

“As he came towards us, about 100 plus feet away from us the first shot rang out, like a boom, boom, about like that. I thought to myself that’s a pretty poor joke, somebody throwing firecrackers beside the car. I remember seeing his arms go up like he was trying to protect his face. As the car got closer to us you could tell something was wrong. You could even see the protruding eyes of Governor Connally and the blood on his shirt,” Bill told me.

“And just as the car passed in front of us the third shot rang out and I remember seeing the side of President Kennedy’s head blow off. At the time I thought his ear blew off. It was just a ball of white going up and you could see the red and he fell over into Mrs. Kennedy’s arms more or less.“

</snip>

http://www.hsvvoice.com/news/20180527/newmans-remember-witnessing-kennedy-assassination---part-ii

Gayle:

“As the (President’s) car turned I heard two noises and thought they were firecrackers and thought it was pretty rude to do something like that. I didn’t realize anything was wrong until they got directly in front of us when that third shot rang out. You could see bits of flesh flying up in the air. Bill turned to me and said ‘That’s it. Hit the Ground.’ So we put the children on the ground and shielded them with our body. I was sort of frozen, Bill looked around and saw more than I did. I was just terrified,” Gayle said.

She recalls no reaction from the children at the time. Pictures show them looking around. “They didn’t cry or anything like that,” said Gayle.

As mentioned last week, Gayle, too, was called to testify at the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans. She was scared about leaving town on her own. “I had to go by myself. Bill had the flu. They (the New Orleans authorities) told me to be sure that the persons that picked me up showed their identification,” she said.

Gayle checked into a hotel and later left for the trial. There she was asked where she was during the shooting and what happened.

Later, with another eyewitness, she went to see Bourbon Street. The next morning, she and Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Zapruder (the man who famously filmed the assassination) went in the same car to the airport to return to Dallas. On the way, a tractor-trailer truck slammed into their car at an intersection. Officers arrived and thankfully no one was seriously hurt. One officer said to them that had they been killed, the incident would have been headline news. And probably their names would have been added to the JFK assassination-related “mysterious deaths” list.

</snip>

http://www.wyff4.com/article/wyff-news-4-anchor-photojournalist-tragically-killed-when-tree-falls-on-suv/20945002

POLK COUNTY, N.C. —
WYFF News 4 anchor Mike McCormick and WYFF News 4 photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer died Monday when a tree fell on their SUV.

The accident happened on Highway 176 in Polk County while they were covering the impact of heavy rain in that area.

Video: Polk County authorities give update on accident
Tryon Fire Chief Geoffrey Tennant said the engine of the SUV was running and the transmission was in drive when authorities arrived at the scene about 2:30 p.m.

He said the tree that fell on the SUV was about 3 feet in diameter and had stood back off the road.

Tennant said the ground was saturated and the tree's root system failed.

"I have never seen an event like this one," Tennant, who has been in fire service in Polk County for 44 years, said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge#History



History

Construction

The bridge was conceived by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling in 1852, who spent part of the next 15 years working to sell the idea. He had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky. While conducting surveys for the bridge project, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes, he developed a tetanus infection that left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death in 1869, not long after he had placed his 32-year-old son, Washington Roebling, in charge of the project.

In February 1867, the New York State Senate passed a bill that allowed the construction of a suspension bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Two months later, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Company was incorporated. The company was tasked with constructing what was then known as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge.

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began in 1869. The bridge's two towers were built by floating two caissons, giant upside-down boxes made of southern yellow pine, in the span of the East River, and then beginning to build the stone towers on top of them until they sank to the bottom of the river. Compressed air was pumped into the caissons, and workers entered the space to dig the sediment, until the caissons sank to the bedrock. The whole weight of the bridge still sits upon 15-foot-thick southern yellow-pine wood under the sediment.

Many workers became sick with the bends during this work. This condition was unknown at the time and was first called "caisson disease" by the project physician, Andrew Smith. Washington Roebling suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of "caisson disease" shortly after ground was broken for the Brooklyn tower foundation on January 3, 1870. Roebling's debilitating condition left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand.

As chief engineer, Roebling supervised the entire project from his apartment with a view of the work, designing and redesigning caissons and other equipment. He was aided by his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, who provided the critical written link between her husband and the engineers on site. Warren Roebling studied higher mathematics, calculations of catenary curves, strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years helping to supervise the bridge's construction.

When iron probes underneath the caisson for the Manhattan tower found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Roebling halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness. He later deemed the sandy subsoil overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9.1 m) below it to be firm enough to support the tower base, and construction continued.

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in The Great Bridge (1972), the book by David McCullough, and in Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film by Ken Burns. Burns drew heavily on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator. It is also described in Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, a BBC docudrama series with an accompanying book.

Opening
The New York and Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883. Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester A. Arthur and Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower.Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at the latter's home, after the ceremony. Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and in fact rarely visited the site again), but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. Since the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the only one across the East River at that time, it was also called East River Bridge.

On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost US$15.5 million in 1883 dollars (about US$393,964,000 in today's dollars) to build, and an estimated 27 men died during its construction.

On May 30, 1883, six days after the opening, a woman falling down the stairway caused a stampede, which was responsible for at least twelve people being crushed and killed.[37] On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world—50% longer than any previously built—and it has become a treasured landmark. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. The paint scheme of the bridge is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although it has been argued that the original paint was "Rawlins Red".

At the time the bridge was built, engineers had not discovered the aerodynamics of bridge construction. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s, well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, known as Galloping Gertie, in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished or been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh—by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables.