Jefferson Davis

popular name: Turenne

date_of_death: July 27, 1675

age: 63

cause_of_death: Killed by a cannonball at the battle of Salzbach

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne , commonly known as Turenne, was a French general and one of only six Marshals to have been promoted Marshal General of France. The most illustrious member of the La Tour d'Auvergne family, his military exploits over his five-decade career earned him a reputation as one of the greatest military commanders in modern history. Turenne's genius best represents the art of war in the 17th century. For the small, costly, and highly trained regular armies, and for the dynastic warfare of the age of Louis XIV, Turenne functioned as the ideal army leader. He showed little more than the nature of a simple and honorable soldier, endowed with much tact; but in the world of politics and intellect he seemed almost helpless in the hands of a skillful intriguer or casuist. His morals, if not beyond reproach, were at least more austere than those prevalent in the age in which he lived. He operated essentially as a commander of regular armies. He spent his life with the troops; he knew how to win their affection.

popular name: David A. Kennedy

date_of_death: April 25, 1984

age: 28

cause_of_death: Drug overdose - cocaine

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: David Kennedy was the was the fourth of eleven children to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy who had led a deeply troubled life since witnessing the assassination of his father on live TV as he was waiting for his father upstairs at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. In the spring of 1984, Kennedy completed a month-long stay at St. Mary's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. He flew down to Palm Beach, Florida, on April 19 for Easter, where several members of the Kennedy family had gathered. Kennedy checked into room 107 of the Brazilian Court Hotel and spent the next few days partying. On April 25th, at the insistence of concerned family members, staff went to check on his welfare and found him dead on the floor of his suite. An autopsy determined he had died on April 25, 1984, of an overdose of cocaine, the tranquilizer Mellaril, and the painkiller Demerol.

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.