Barney Hill

popular name: Elizabeth Edwards

date_of_death: December 7, 2010

age: 61

cause_of_death: Metastatic breast cancer

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: During a lifetime of idyllic successes and crushing reverses, Elizabeth Edwards was an accomplished lawyer, the mother of four children and the wife of a wealthy, handsome senator with sights on the White House. But their 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash, cancer struck her at age 55, the political dreams died and, within months, her husband admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer. The scandal over the affair faded after his disclosure in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Edwards resurrected it in a new book and interviews and television appearances, telling how her husband had misrepresented the infidelity to her, rocked their marriage and spurned her advice to abandon his run for the presidency. Eventually John Edwards admitted he had fathered a child with the staffer. Soon afterward, he and Mrs. Edwards separated legally. Her story and John Edwards subsequent charges of campaign finance violations involving his mistress to the tune of $900,000 was fodder for tabloids for the better part of a year. Elizabeth Edwards gravesite is one of the top most-visited memorials at historic Oakwood Cemetery.

popular name: Berrien Upshaw

date_of_death: January 12, 1949

age: 47

cause_of_death: Suicide - leaped from building

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Berrien "Red" Upshaw was a mean, nasty, ill-tempered loser and wife beater - and those were some of his good qualities. But he did have one quality that served him well - he was known as a suave and charming man to the ladies. His charm wooed a young Margaret Mitchell and she married Berrien “Red” Kinnard Upshaw, an ex-football player from a prominent Raleigh (North Carolina) family, on September 2nd 1922. But after after 4 months Upshaw took off to the mid-west and engaged in bootlegging and other illegal pursuits. He returned back to Margaret but the family wanted nothing to do with him. The marriage was annulled two years later and Margaret married John Marsh (Red's best man at the wedding). Margaret went on to write the best-selling novel Gone With The Wind while Upshaw continued to drink heavily, was institutionalized briefly in the early 1940s and leaped to his death from the 2nd story of a Salvation Army flop-house in Galveston, Texas in 1949. In the end, Berrien Upshaw was so disliked, even by his own family, that his family in the last line of his brief obituary specifically requested no flowers be sent.

popular name: Huguette Clark

date_of_death: May 24, 2011

age: 104

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Huguette Clark was an American heiress, philanthropist, and recluse, born on June 9, 1906, in Paris, France. She was the daughter of U.S. Senator and copper magnate William A. Clark, one of the wealthiest men of the Gilded Age, and his much younger second wife, Anna La Chapelle. Raised in extraordinary wealth, Huguette inherited a vast fortune and numerous properties, including mansions in New York, California, and Connecticut. Despite her immense wealth, she lived a remarkably private life, withdrawing from public view for decades. In her later years, she chose to live in a hospital room in New York City, despite owning several luxurious homes. Fascination with her reclusive lifestyle grew after her death on May 24, 2011, at the age of 104. Her life story, marked by eccentricity, secrecy, and a bitter legal battle over her estate, captured public interest and was chronicled in the bestselling book Empty Mansions.