Lawrence, the Guardian, and the New York Times have all noted that two drummers for the Bee Gees have died in the past few days.
Dennis Bryon, 76, the Bee Gees’ drummer starting in 1973, died on Nov. 14, according to Blue Weaver, who played in the band Amen Corner with Mr. Bryon. He announced his death on Facebook on Thursday, but gave no cause of death for Mr. Bryon.
Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the band’s first professional drummer, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 78, according to Evan Webster and Sue Camilleri, who work on The Best of The Bee Gees Show, a tribute band. Mr. Petersen died from a fall, they said.
Mr. Petersen, who joined the Bee Gees in 1967, played on the band’s first four albums. He started playing in the The Best of The Bee Gees Show five years ago, Mr. Webster said.
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Mr. Petersen played on a string of hit ballads from 1967 to 1970, including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” He was also a child actor, known for his role in the 1956 film “Smiley,” which was the origin of his nickname, among a few other movies in the late ’50s.
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Mr. Bryon, born in Cardiff, Wales, was a part of the Bee Gees for many of its greatest hits in the 1970s, including “Stayin’ Alive,” “How Deep is Your Love,” “You Should Be Dancing,” “More Than a Woman” and the rest of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. He started playing drums when he was 14.
Arthur Frommer, travel book guy.
Mr. Frommer built an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels and other services on the bedrock of his first book, published in 1957, which sold millions of copies in annually updated editions until 2007. (It was “Europe From $95 a Day” by then.)
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“This is a book,” he wrote, “for American tourists who a) own no oil wells in Texas, b) are unrelated to the Aga Khan, c) have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation.”
Thomas E. Kurtz, one of the great men of history. He co-created the BASIC computer language.
At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall on the Dartmouth campus, the time-sharing system and BASIC were put to a test. A professor and a student programmer typed a simple command, “RUN,” into neighboring Teletype terminals and watched as both received the same answer simultaneously. It worked.