Robert Wadlow

popular name: Elizabeth Edwards

date_of_death: December 7, 2010

age: 61

cause_of_death: Metastatic breast cancer

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: During a lifetime of idyllic successes and crushing reverses, Elizabeth Edwards was an accomplished lawyer, the mother of four children and the wife of a wealthy, handsome senator with sights on the White House. But their 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash, cancer struck her at age 55, the political dreams died and, within months, her husband admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer. The scandal over the affair faded after his disclosure in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Edwards resurrected it in a new book and interviews and television appearances, telling how her husband had misrepresented the infidelity to her, rocked their marriage and spurned her advice to abandon his run for the presidency. Eventually John Edwards admitted he had fathered a child with the staffer. Soon afterward, he and Mrs. Edwards separated legally. Her story and John Edwards subsequent charges of campaign finance violations involving his mistress to the tune of $900,000 was fodder for tabloids for the better part of a year. Elizabeth Edwards gravesite is one of the top most-visited memorials at historic Oakwood Cemetery.

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".

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.