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On another series I enjoy, a steampunk tale of spunky British ladies who have come to the Wild West looking for their father. Mysterious Devices is the name and there are going to be 6 books in the series. I just re-read the first three and finished number 4, The Engineer wore Venetian Red last night. Started # 5 today, The Judge wore Lamp Black. One of the characters likes to draw so she has colors in all the titles. Wish I could link one of the covers, they are very clever and pretty. I love the era of steampunk, the clothes and all the funky gadgets, another way to enjoy my Anglophile interests and have a fun escape. Edited by Rhyta
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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

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The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, by Timothy Winegard.

This has been fascinating so far! I picked up two other books from the library today that I probably won't start for a week since this I'll still be into this tome. A few tidbits so far:

 

While primarily dealing with the mosquito's role in transmitting malaria, there are another 12 to 15 other diseases given to humans by these lovely ladies (only the females bite). Among them are yellow fever, dengue fever, typhoid, Chagas disease, trypansomas (sleeping sickness), and various forms of encephalitis, West Nile being foremost.

 

Due to a number of swamps and marshes around the city, which made fine breeding grounds for mosquitos, Rome was a particular hot bed for these maladies. It made for a curse (condemning many a citizen to a febrile death) as well as a blessing (visiting the same condemnation to various invaders, including the Carthaginians and the Huns). Numerous plans to drain these fetid areas were just that, plans, until actually started on by Mussolini.

 

Along with people, buildings, and other things, late ancient Rome dealt with a lot of sh*t. One of

author Timothy Winegard's refernces mentions a survey of 4th Century Rome which cites 144 public latrines collecting some 5 tons of human excrement daily.

Edited by pjbear05
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Jerome K Jerome - Three Men in a Boat

Is there a funnier book ever written? I`ve spent about twenty years pushing my agenda that Three Men in a Boat is absolutely hilarious, in a genuine side-splitting, gasping for air and unable to speak kind of way. I have a first edition from 1888, which is really fragile :codger:

If I`m feeling in need of a laugh, reading about packing suitcases in the wrong order, or carrying cheeses on a train will always hit the spot :lol:

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Edited by blueschica
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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Yeah Burton liked a drink. In fact he was a legendary drinker. He was one of the Four Hellraising Horseman of the Alcolpocalypse, Burton, O'Toole, Harris and Reed, they could drink a town dry of booze in one night! :lol:

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Oh yeah the Richard Burton Diaries are a book, I think it was only published about 10 years ago. It's about 700 pages.

 

How did you like The Spy That Came in From the Cold?

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Oh yeah the Richard Burton Diaries are a book, I think it was only published about 10 years ago. It's about 700 pages.

 

How did you like The Spy That Came in From the Cold?

 

A lot better when I was older and read the book! When I saw it at the movies, I was pretty little and it was boring. I didn't know that about Oliver Reed. :( I loved him in the Three and Four Musketeers, he was so handsome!

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Oh yeah the Richard Burton Diaries are a book, I think it was only published about 10 years ago. It's about 700 pages.

 

How did you like The Spy That Came in From the Cold?

 

A lot better when I was older and read the book! When I saw it at the movies, I was pretty little and it was boring. I didn't know that about Oliver Reed. :( I loved him in the Three and Four Musketeers, he was so handsome!

Oliver Reed used to challenge other actors to drinking competitions on set. And even on his last film he was doing this and that's how he died.

 

Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999. According to witnesses, he drank eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessy cognac, in a drinking match against a group of sailors on shore leave from HMS Cumberland at a local pub. His bar bill totalled a little over 270 Maltese lira (almost 450 GBP; about 590 USD). After beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling, Reed suddenly collapsed, dying while en route to hospital in an ambulance. He was 61 years old.

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Oliver Reed used to challenge other actors to drinking competitions on set. And even on his last film he was doing this and that's how he died.

 

Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999. According to witnesses, he drank eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessy cognac, in a drinking match against a group of sailors on shore leave from HMS Cumberland at a local pub. His bar bill totalled a little over 270 Maltese lira (almost 450 GBP; about 590 USD). After beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling, Reed suddenly collapsed, dying while en route to hospital in an ambulance. He was 61 years old.

 

 

Wow, I knew he died during filming but didn't know the particulars. He was a rough tough guy, RIP

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Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark Bradley

 

 

It was really good! The man running to be president of the United Mine Workers Union (and clean it up) was murdered in his house, along with his wife and daughter, on New Year's Eve 1969. It wasn't far from where we lived in Pittsburgh at the time and I kind of remember it on the news as a child. The full story was interesting ( The United Mine Workers made the Teamsters look like amateurs in corruption.)

 

 

The Richard Burton Diaries : ...Thursday 14th, Beverly Hills Hotel

 

Those who had told us that Lucille Ball was ‘very wearing’ were not exaggerating. She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour. She is not ‘wearing’ to us because I suppose we refuse to be worn. I am coldly sarcastic with her to the point of outright contempt but she hears only what she wants to hear.

 

She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show which she has been doing and successfully doing for 19 years. Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate up-staging and cutting out other people's laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so. A machine of enormous energy, which driven by a stupid driver who has forgotten that a machine runs on oil as well as gasoline and who has neglected the former, is creaking badly towards a final convulsive seize-up.

 

I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her. After tonight I shall make a point of never seeing her again.

 

The hitherto impeccably professional Joan Crawford was so inhibited by this behemoth of selfishness that she got herself stupendously crocked for the actual show and virtually had to be helped to her feet and managed, not without some satisfaction I dare say, to bugger up the whole show.

I said very loudly after yawning prodigiously and being asked by the director, a nice but not overly brilliant man called Jerry Paris, whether I was tired or bored or what, that I was not particularly any of those things but was puzzled as to why anybody who didn't have to for financial reasons et al. would submit themselves to this mindless routine week after week for 19 years. Miss Ball and her apology of a husband who was sitting beside me said nothing at all. The husband is a man called Gary Morton, who laughs at all her ‘takes’ etc. however often she does them and whether well or not.

 

Very interesting! I had to stop and think about the connection for a long time. At first I thought it was just you :P and them I remembered Richard Burton was from coal country in Wales. Is the Richard Burton Diaries a book? My mom loved him. I was teeny and she dragged me to see The Spy That Came In From the Cold to see him. Thank goodness she waited until Cleopatra was on TV, it's like 800 hours long. :lol:

 

It's a little ironic for him to write about Joan Crawford being wasted, though, no??? Some days Johnny Depp reminds me of Burton. Such huge talents but apparently both had/have big alcohol problems.

Oh yeah the Richard Burton Diaries are a book, I think it was only published about 10 years ago. It's about 700 pages.

 

How did you like The Spy That Came in From the Cold?

 

A lot better when I was older and read the book! When I saw it at the movies, I was pretty little and it was boring. I didn't know that about Oliver Reed. :( I loved him in the Three and Four Musketeers, he was so handsome!

Oliver Reed used to challenge other actors to drinking competitions on set. And even on his last film he was doing this and that's how he died.

 

Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999. According to witnesses, he drank eight pints of German lager, a dozen shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey and a few shots of Hennessy cognac, in a drinking match against a group of sailors on shore leave from HMS Cumberland at a local pub. His bar bill totalled a little over 270 Maltese lira (almost 450 GBP; about 590 USD). After beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling, Reed suddenly collapsed, dying while en route to hospital in an ambulance. He was 61 years old.

Wow, talk about going out on your shield!
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