John Mark Karr did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. That was the announcement made on 28 August 2006 by Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy.Despite the DA’s earlier suspicions, and despite Karr’s claim to reporters that he “was with JonBenet when she died,” Karr’s DNA did not match with DNA found at the scene of the crime.
The International Astronomical Union has stripped Pluto of its status as a planet. Pluto fails to meet the IAU’s new guidelines for planets, mainly because its orbit overlaps with Neptune’s. Suddenly our solar system has only eight official planets.
Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who took the famous photo of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, has died at age 94.
We’ve added two profiles in the sad and increasingly strange case of JonBenet Ramsey: one of the victim herself, and one of her alleged killer, John Mark Karr. His arrest in Thailand, and his apparent confession that he was “with JonBenet when she died,” have added a bizarre note to what was already a very confusing story. Our JonBenet profile has links to some of the most detailed historical sites about the case, while the Karr profile focuses on news outlets in Colorado and elsewhere that are providing steady updates.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro is still in the hospital but expected to recover, according to his sister. He handed the reins of power temporarily to his brother Raul before surgery this week.Fidel Castro has been in power for 47 years, since 1959. How long is that?
It looks as if we finally have a date for the release of The Who’s new album, titled (remarkably) Who2. Pete Townshend says in this interview that October 23 is the magic day.
A recent letter from a reader in Maine questioned our birth date for director John Ford. We had 1895, but after some detailed review we now think the reader was right: Ford was born in 1894.Ford himself, it seems, liked to claim 1895 as his date of birth. That being the case, it’s no surprise that many sources online and off list his birth date as 1895. But the case for 1894 has been pretty well settled in the last two decades by some thoughtful biographers.
A new Superman film opens this week in U.S. theaters: Superman Returns, starring newcomer Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel.However, Who2 tech guru Mike Duffy points out a superhero movie that never got made and still looks great: Grayson. It’s one fan’s heroic take on Batman’s “faithful ward,” Dick Grayson.
Our friends at Answers.com asked us to look into the real age of Curtis Jackson, AKA 50 Cent. We have his birth year as 1975, while many other sources say 1976.
Now that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have had their baby, let’s put an end to the tabloid naming of celebrity couples — in this case, Brangelina.The absurd trend started with Bennifer for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, and reached its artistic peak with TomKat for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Brangelina is just grasping at straws.
We’ve had some trouble pinning down the birth date of Latina superstar Shakira. Many good sources list her as February 9, 1977, but other sources, just as good, have her as February 2, 1977.
Who2 adopted a brand new look on April 2nd. We hope you like it.This is our first redesign in over two years, and it accomplishes several important tasks for us. We finally have one standard template for all of our profiles, loops, and related pages. This will help readers understand and use Who2 more easily.We’ve chosen new colors and a new, more readable typeface. Headlines are now in a more attractive (we might even say stylish) sans-serif typeface.
A Who2 user writes:”I was looking at a profile of an actor… the name is irrelevant. In the “vital statistics” category you list birthday, birthplace, and DEATH. The actor is very much alive, as the death section did not have a date under it.
An alert reader recently suggested that we had Susan Lucci’s birth year wrong.Lucci, who has played Erica Kane on TV’s All My Children for the last three decades, once said in an interview in Cigar Aficionado that she enjoys being mysterious about how old she is, so we knew we’d have our work cut out for us.
Who do you believe: Stevie Wonder or his mother?A few weeks back we profiled Stevie Wonder, the old-school musical giant whose latest album, A Time To Love, won six Grammy nominations. There was one sticking point: his name. The Stevie Wonder stage name is no mystery — he got it when he signed with Motown as a child whiz kid and began performing as Little Stevie Wonder. (A few years later he dropped the “Little,” but the Wonder stuck.)
New Year’s Eve naturally makes one think of Dick Clark, host since 1972 of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. (How long ago was 1972? A recent Associated Press story by David Bauder said Clark’s show was created “as a hipper alternative to Guy Lombardo.”) Clark missed the 2004 broadcast after having a stroke, but is returning for the 2005 show in a reduced capacity, co-hosting with heir apparent Ryan Seacrest.
Johnny Carson, Rosa Parks, Terri Schiavo and Gilligan… just a few of the celebrities who passed away in 2005. Here’s our complete list.
To honor the advent of the latest Harry Potter movie — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — we’ve profiled a raft of Harry Potter teens.
Who2’s longstanding editorial policy is to avoid linking pay-per-view sites or those that require paid subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, often has meaty content, but what good is it to the average Who2 user if they have to pay a $99 annual fee to read one article?
Reader Lenore Schuller writes in: “Why have you skipped December 6th?” She refers to the Who2 birthday index, in which every day of the year has at least one celebrity birthday… except for December 6th. Out of our 2500+ profiles, no famous person was born on that day.We’ve resisted (so far) the urge to hunt down one famous person born on that day and profile them. December 6th will just have to make it into the database on its own merits.