Charles Blondin

popular name: Élisabeth de Demidoff

date_of_death: March 27, 1818

age: 41

cause_of_death: Unkown

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Baroness Elizaveta Alexandrovna Stroganova was a Russian aristocrat of the Stroganov family. By birth she belonged to the highest nobility of the capital. Elizabeth's father was the owner of the Taman and Kynovsky factories and more than half a million acres of land. Her mother Elizaveta Alexandrovna Zagryazhskaya was a lady in waiting and a famous beauty of Catherine II's court. At age 17 she married Count Nikolai Nikitich Demidov and they had two children - Pavel (Paul) (1798–1840) and Anatoly (Anatole) (1812–1869). They were of completely different characters and often lived apart. She was beautiful, light and witty, and her husband more introspective, and so they soon grew bored with each other and they separated and she returned to live in Paris, where she died in 1818 and was buried in the Père Lachaise where she rests in the cemetery's largest mausoleum.

popular name: Elizabeth Glaser

date_of_death: December 3, 1994

age: 47

cause_of_death: Complications from AIDS

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Elizabeth Glaser was an actress, educator, activist, author, and founder of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser. In fact, it was Elizabeth Glaser’s fight to save her HIV-positive children led to her creation of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation to save children worldwide from the devastation of AIDS. Shortly after her marriage to actor Paul Michael Glaser, while giving birth to Ariel, Elizabeth hemorrhaged and was transfused with seven pints of blood. It wasn't until four years later that Elizabeth found out that she had been infected with the AIDS virus through the blood transfusion, and passed it on through her breastmilk to Ariel, who later died at the age of seven years old. The couple also had a son, Jake, who was infected with the virus in utero. Upon the death of her daughter, Glaser raised awareness of pediatric AIDS and pushed to extend availability of the drug AZT to children. In 1988, Glaser founded the Pediatric AIDS Association. In 1992, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention, criticizing the government’s failure to address the AIDS crisis. Her 1991 book, In the Absence of Angels, was praised for its honest discussion of losing a child. Glaser lost her battle with AIDS in 1994.

popular name: Nancy Martin

date_of_death: May 25, 1857

age: 24

cause_of_death: Yellow Fever

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Silas Martin was a successful sea captain and trader. The one thing he hated about his job was missing his family for long stretches of time. So when his son John and daughter Nancy (Nance to her friends) asked to accompany their father on his next voyage he did not hesitate to add them to the crew. When they set sail in early 1857, Nance took ill about three months into the trip. Silas detoured and sailed into Cardenas, Cuba in search of medical care but it was too late - Nancy succumbed shortly upon arrival. Rather than having Nancy buried on foreign soil or buried at sea, Captain Silas was determined to return to Wilmington for a proper burial with her family. The issue was how to keep the body preserved for the voyage home. They decided on a large rum barrel as a makeshift coffin filled with liquor to preserved the body. The thought of her body sloshing around in a cask during rough seas was too much for her father and brother, so it was decided that a chair would be placed in the cask, nailed in place and Nance seated and tied into the chair to keep her secure. Rather than disturbing the remains, upon returning to Wilmington, Silas had Nance buried in the cask in the port city’s Oakdale Cemetery.