May 30, 2012

2012John Fox, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter (born 1957)^[†]

John Fox was an American comedian.

2012Andrew Huxley, English physiologist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1917)^[†]

Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley was an English physiologist and biophysicist. He was born into the prominent Huxley family. After leaving Westminster School in central London, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, on a scholarship, after which he joined Alan Hodgkin to study nerve impulses. Their eventual discovery of the basis for propagation of nerve impulses earned them the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963. They made their discovery from the giant axon of the Atlantic squid. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, Huxley was recruited by the British Anti-Aircraft Command and later transferred to the Admiralty. After the war he resumed research at the University of Cambridge, where he developed interference microscopy that would be suitable for studying muscle fibres.

2012Gerhard Pohl, German economist and politician (born 1937)^[†]

Gerhard Pohl was a German politician and a member of the East German CDU. He served as Minister of Economics from April to August 1990, in the cabinet of Lothar de Maizière.

2012Jack Twyman, American basketball player and sportscaster (born 1934)^[†]

John Kennedy Twyman was an American professional basketball player and sports broadcaster. Twyman is a namesake of the NBA's Twyman–Stokes Teammate of the Year Award. Twyman was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.

2012Former Liberian president Charles Taylor is sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War.^[†]

Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean to its south and southwest. It has a population of around 5.5 million and covers an area of 43,000 square miles (111,369 km2). The official language is English. Over 20 indigenous languages are spoken, reflecting the country's ethnic and cultural diversity. The capital and largest city is Monrovia.