Sunday Morning at the Obituary Page

 A few obits to note:

From the equine world, Distorted Humor, a top sire and sire of the  Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide, Drosselmeyer, and many other top raceshorses, was euthanized at the age of 33.  This age is extremely old for a thoroughbred, and the decision was made to euthanize when he was too infirm as a result of being so old.

Snip:

Distorted Humor helped WinStar scale new heights as a breeding operation and the esteemed stallion was represented by a plethora of top horses in an exceptional career at stud. All told from 23 crops, Distorted Humor sired 174 black-type winners, 76 graded stakes winners, and his runners have amassed earnings of more than $175 million worldwide.

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Grateful Dead guitarist and founding member Bob Weir, 78, died yesterday after a battle with cancer.

Snip:

Weir joined the Dead as a teenager when they were forming in San Francisco in the early 1960s. The 17-year-old was nicknamed “the kid.” He had first met lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia shortly before when he joined a jug band which evolved into The Warlocks, the original name of the Grateful Dead.

They were a fixture on the Haight-Ashbury scene in the 1960s and 70s. In the 60s, they were interconnected with the San Francisco LSD scene, playing drug-fueled hours at Ken Kesey’s “Acid Tests.”

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Last and not least is the death of the infamous crackpot Erich von Daniken, who came up with all kinds of nonsense about the pyramids of Egypt and Mayan civilizations and how they were constructed by aliens, among other things, in his 1968 tome Chariots of the Gods.  He was 90 years old.

Snip:

Von Däniken rose to prominence in 1968 with the publication of his first book “Chariots of the Gods,” in which he claimed that the Mayans and ancient Egyptians were visited by alien astronauts and instructed in advanced technology that allowed them to build giant pyramids.

The book fueled a growing interest in unexplained phenomena at a time when thanks to conventional science man was about to take its first steps on the Moon.

“Chariots of the Gods” was followed by more than two dozen similar books, spawning a literary niche in which fact and fantasy were mixed together against all historical and scientific evidence.