October 29, 2012

2012Letitia Baldrige, American etiquette expert and author (born 1926)^[†]

Letitia "Tish" Baldrige was an American etiquette expert, public relations executive and author who was most famous for serving as Jacqueline Kennedy's Social Secretary.

2012J. Bernlef, Dutch author, poet, and songwriter (born 1937)^[†]

Hendrik Jan Marsman, better known by his pen name, J. Bernlef, was a Dutch writer, poet, novelist and translator, much of whose work centres on mental perception of reality and its expression. He won numerous literary awards, including the Constantijn Huygens Prize in 1984 and the P. C. Hooft Award in 1994, both of which were for his work as a whole. His book Hersenschimmen features on the list of NRC's Best Dutch novels.

2012Kenneth G. Ryder, American academic (born 1924)^[†]

Kenneth Gilmore Ryder was the 4th president of Northeastern University, a post he held from 1975 to 1989. Ryder began his career in education as a history teacher in 1949 and moved into administration in 1955. As president of Northeastern, he contributed to the growth of the student population to nearly 50,000 students, a $43 million fund-raising drive, and the construction of nine campus buildings.

2012Wallace L. W. Sargent, English-American astronomer and academic (born 1935)^[†]

Wallace Leslie William Sargent was a British-born American astronomer and the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy at California Institute of Technology.

2012Jack Vaughn, American boxer and diplomat (born 1920)^[†]

Jack Hood Vaughn was the second director of the United States Peace Corps, succeeding Sargent Shriver. Vaughn was appointed Peace Corps director in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson and was the first Republican to head the agency.

2012Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing hundreds, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.^[†]

Hurricane Sandy was an extremely large and devastating tropical cyclone which ravaged the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late October 2012. It was the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spanning 1,150 miles (1,850 km). The storm inflicted nearly US$70 billion in damage, and killed 254 people in eight countries, from the Caribbean to Canada. The eighteenth named storm, tenth hurricane, and second major hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, Sandy was a Category 3 storm at its peak intensity when it made landfall in Cuba, though most of the damage it caused was after it became a Category 1-equivalent extratropical cyclone off the coast of the Northeastern United States.