Joey Ramone

popular name: Franco Ventriglia

date_of_death: November 28, 2012

age: 90

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Franco Ventriglia was an opera singer who sang bass in every major European opera house during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Serving in the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in the South Pacific during World War II upon return stateside Franco was working at his brother's filling station in Easton, Connecticut when Mario Pagano, a maestro de Canto at the American Theatre Wing Professional School heard from one of Ventriglia's coworkers about his singing talent. Ventriglia passed an audition and went on to attend the school on the G.I. Bill. After Pagano's death, Ventriglia and his wife Jean boarded the ocean liner SS Constitution for Italy. On board, after singing Ol' Man River for a group in first class, he met a businessman who asked him to contact Toti Dal Monte, a great coloratura soprano who also taught voice in Rome. Ventriglia took singing lessons from Dal Monte and eventually made his operatic debut in Palermo, singing in the Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He later sang with Luciano Pavarotti in La bohème and Rigoletto. He performed in Samson and Delilah at La Scala, a performance he considered the highlight of his career. He returned to the U.S. in 1978, where he continued to perform at venues including Carnegie Hall, and traveled to perform in southeast Asia, until his retirement in 2001 at age 79. Upon his death he was laid to rest at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, CT.

popular name: Aaliyah

date_of_death: August 25, 2001

age: 22

cause_of_death: Blunt force trauma (airplane crash)

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: In her heyday, it seemed like the Grammy-nominated singer was destined for a long career, having made the leap from music to modeling and acting. But sadly that career ended suddenly when she died in a tragically, yet totally preventable, plane crash in the Bahamas in 2001.

popular name: Rick Nelson

date_of_death: December 31, 1985

age: 45

cause_of_death: Plane crash

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: The youngest member of America's "perfect family," Rick Nelson parlayed the free publicity that the television show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett afforded into a successful musical career. With teen idol good looks and talent to match, Nelson's legacy began with such million-seller pop classics as "Poor Little Fool" and "Hello Mary Lou" and ended with the more introspective "Garden Party."