Our Daily Dead

Iwao Takamoto, as Stuart Heritage over at Heckler Spray says “the Real Mr. Scooby-Doo”, has died of heart failure in Los Angeles at age 81.

Let us explain…no, there is no time. Let us sum up….

The oh so recently departed Joseph Barbera along with Mr. Hanna founded a cartoon studio. At the Hanna-Barbera studio worked the most excellent Mr. Iwao Takamoto. Got it so far? Good.

Now then as Mr. Heritage continues it was Takamoto who “…was directly responsible for breathing life into some of the most memorable cartoon dogs ever - he was an animator on ‘Lady and the Tramp’ and ‘One Hundred And One Dalmatians’, and created Muttley and Astro from ‘The Jetsons’…” AND one fine young pup called Scooby-Doo.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Scooby-Doo, died, Los Angeles, Joseph Barbera, Hanna-Barbera, Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred And One Dalmatians, Muttley, Astro, The Jetsons

Momofuku Ando the inventor of the Ramen noodle and thereby sustainer of millions of college students has died at age 96. Mr. Ando founded the Nissin Food Products company in 1948 seeking to answer the serious food shortages faced by a post-war nation.

“Peace prevails when food suffices,” he said.

The Chicago Tribune article also says that “…the focus on convenience, taste, shelf life and price turned Nissin into a $3 billion multinational corporation with 29 subsidiaries in 11 countries.”

And honestly we are sure the noodles are still good, but you should know that Mr. Ando ate a lunch meal of noodles with his employees just before taking ill.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Ramen, college student, died, Nissin

Boris Gudz died in Moscow on December 27, 2006 at the tender age of 104. Boris Gudz was not only the oldest living Soviet spy, he was also the last surviving participant in Trest (операция “Трест”), one of the most brilliant counter-intelligence operations in espionage history, that lured the celebrated British agent Sidney Reilly among many others to their doom. Lessons for the KGB.

The Russian-born Reilly - said to have been an inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond and later known as “the ace of spies” - was an extraordinarily colourful figure: businessman, womaniser, and inventor of bizarre schemes to overthrow the infant Soviet state. He was lured across the Finnish border, captured and taken to Moscow, where he was imprisoned at the Lubyanka prison.

Reilly was later shot in Sokolniki Park on November 3, 1925 supposedly on direct order from the ever tender Stalin. Gudz had only a modest role in all this playing a courier for Eduard Opperput, one of the Russian agents responsible.

Technorati Tags: Boris Gudz, died, Moscow, spy, Trest, Sidney Reilly, KGB, James Bond, womaniser, Lubyanka, Sokolniki Park, Stalin