Grace Kelly

popular name: Germaine Tillion

date_of_death: April 18, 2008

age: 100

cause_of_death: Natural Causes

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Germaine Tillion was a French ethnologist, best known for her work in Algeria in the 1950s on behalf of the French government. She was member of the French resistance, she spent time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Germaine Tillion is one of only five women buried in Le Panthéon.

popular name: George Pickett

date_of_death: July 30, 1875

age: 50

cause_of_death: Liver disease

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Major General George Pickett was a career United States Army officer who became a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He attended the US Military Academy at West Point, accumulating a host of demerits and graduating last in his class in 1846 (as did General George Armstrong Custer in 1861). Pickett’s classmates included Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and George B. McClellan. He is best remembered for being one of the commanders at Pickett's Charge, the futile and bloody Confederate offensive on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg that bears his name and the wholesale execution of 22 soldiers (including a 15-year-old boy). A broken man after the war, his reputation was thoroughly rehabilitated and sanitized after his death by his third wife, LaSalle Corbell Pickett, whose writings turned the often incompetent general into an idealized “Lost Cause” hero.

popular name: Eddie Rickenbacker

date_of_death: July 23, 1973

age: 82

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker was called America’s Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the ‘luckiest man alive,’ however, since he survived — by his own count — 135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime. With 26 aerial victories, he was the United States' most successful fighter ace in the war and is considered to have received the most awards for valor by an American during the war. He was also a race car driver, an automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the long-time head of Eastern Air Lines. At one time he even owned and raced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Towards the end of his life as CEO of Eastern Air Lines, the company was the most profitable airline in the postwar era. However during the late 1950s Eastern Air Lines' fortunes declined, and Rickenbacker was forced out of his position as CEO in 1959. Rickenbacker also resigned as the chairman of the board in 1963, at the age of 73. After that, Captain and Mrs. Rickenbacker traveled extensively for a number of years and in the 1960s, Rickenbacker became a well-known speaker, sharing shared his vision for the future of technology and commerce. Upon his death, he was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.