February 2, 2012

2012Joyce Barkhouse, Canadian author (born 1913)^[†]

Joyce Carman Barkhouse was a Canadian children's writer best known for writing historical fiction. She is the aunt of Margaret Atwood, with whom she co-wrote the children's book Anna's Pet. Barkhouse achieved her greatest recognition for her novel Pit Pony.

2012Frederick William Danker, American lexicographer and scholar (born 1920)^[†]

Frederick William Danker was a Christ Seminary–Seminex Professor Emeritus of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Illinois. Danker was a noted New Testament scholar and the pre-eminent Koine Greek lexicographer for two generations, working with F. Wilbur Gingrich as an editor of the Bauer Lexicon starting in 1957 until the publication of the second edition in 1979, and as the only editor from 1979 until the publication of the 3rd edition, updating it with the results of modern scholarship, converting it to SGML to allow it to be easily published in electronic formats, and significantly improving the usability of the lexicon, as well as the typography.

2012George Esper, American journalist and academic (born 1932)^[†]

George Esper was an American journalist and academic known for his work as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press during the Vietnam War.

2012Dorothy Gilman, American author (born 1923)^[†]

Dorothy Edith Gilman was an American writer. She is best known for the Mrs. Pollifax series. Begun in a time when women in mystery meant Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and international espionage meant young government men like James Bond and the spies of John le Carré and Graham Greene, Emily Pollifax, her heroine, became a spy in her 60s and is very likely the only spy in literature to belong simultaneously to the CIA and the local garden club.

2012James F. Lloyd, American pilot and politician (born 1922)^[†]

James Fredrick Lloyd was an American military officer, businessman, and politician who served three terms as Democratic United States Representative from 1975 to 1981.

2012The ferry MV Rabaul Queen sinks off the coast of Papua New Guinea near the Finschhafen District, with an estimated 146–165 dead.^[†]

MV Rabaul Queen was a passenger ferry owned by the Papua New Guinea company Rabaul Shipping. The ship, built in Japan in 1983, operated on short runs in that country, before being brought to Papua New Guinea in 1998 and plying a regular weekly route between Kimbe, the capital of West New Britain, and Lae, the capital of the mainland province of Morobe.