Charles Blondin

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.

popular name: Barney Hill

date_of_death: February 25, 1969

age: 46

cause_of_death: Brain hemorrhage

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Betty and Barney Hill lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where Betty was a social worker and Barney was a postal worker. The couple were catapulted into the international spotlight when in September 1961 they claimed to have been abducted by aliens in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The two were returning home to Portsmouth from a trip to Montreal, Canada, when as they were driving in the middle of the night, they saw lights approaching from the sky. What followed is said to be the first well-documented, "feasibly legitimate" UFO abduction in history. The couple claimed that they saw bipedal humanoid creatures in the window of a large spacecraft that landed in a field. They claimed they were followed by a spaceship and eventually accosted, kidnapped, examined, and then released by its extraterrestrial crew. The event has since become the best documented and most famous case of alien abduction in the history of UFO-ology. The story of the Hills grew big enough to prompt a best-selling book by John Fuller entitled "The Interrupted Journey", inspire a television movie called "The UFO Incident" starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. Over time their story was subjected to a brutal debunking by multiple people including the famous intellectual Carl Sagan.

popular name: Julia Lennon

date_of_death: July 15, 1958

age: 44

cause_of_death: Blunt force trauma - stuck by automobile

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Julia Lennon was the mother of English musician John Lennon, who was born during her marriage to Alfred Lennon. After complaints to Liverpool's Social Services by her eldest sister Mimi Smith (née Stanley), she surrendered the care of her son to Mimi. She later had one daughter after an affair with a Welsh soldier, but pressure from her family made her place the baby for adoption. Later she had two daughters, Julia and Jackie, with John "Bobby" Dykins. She never divorced her husband, preferring to live as Dykins' common-law wife for the rest of her life. She was known as being high-spirited, impulsive, and musical, and for having a strong sense of humour. She taught her son John how to play the banjo and the ukulele. She kept in almost daily contact with him, and when he was in his teens he often stayed overnight at her and Dykins' house. John was traumatised by her sudden death and wrote several songs about her, including "Julia," "Mother," and "My Mummy's Dead." Biographer Ian MacDonald wrote that she was, "to a great extent ... her son's muse".