Dead Celebrity Alert

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Vicki Van Meter, celebrated for piloting a plane across the country at age 11 and from the U.S. to Europe at age 12, has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Crawford County coroner said. She was 26.

Van Meter died Saturday and her body was found in her Meadville home on Sunday.

Her brother said she battled depression and opposed medication, but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems. …

Van Meter made national headlines in 1993 and 1994 when she made her cross-country and trans-Atlantic flights accompanied only by a flight instructor. Her instructors said she was at the controls during the entirety of both flights.

As a sixth-grader in September 1993, Van Meter flew from Augusta, Maine, to San Diego over five days. She had to fight strong headwinds and turbulence that bounced her single-engine Cessna 172 and made her sick. … Read full obituary

Steve Fossett, the wealthy, record-setting adventurer who for years blithely sailed, soared and drove through all manner of danger before disappearing in September during what was meant to be a routine short flight, was declared dead Friday by a Chicago court. He was 63…

At 8 a.m. on Sept. 3, 2007, Mr. Fossett took off alone from the Flying-M Ranch, near Yerington, Nev., in a Citabria Super Decathlon, a single-engine two-seater. He was scheduled to be back by noon but never returned. That evening, a search was begun, with airplanes and a helicopter scouring the wild terrain on the Nevada-California border over which he had disappeared. …

The search was called off after several weeks. In late November, Mr. Fossett’s wife, Peggy, petitioned the court to have her husband declared dead. The value of his estate is said to exceed eight figures, Ms. Downie said. … Read full obituary

Sir Edmund Hillary, the beekeeper from Auckland who conquered Mount Everest and went on to become one of the greatest adventurers of the 20th century, has died at the age of 88. Hillary, who reached the peak of Everest in 1953, days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, only admitted being the first man to reach the top of the world’s highest mountain after the death of his climbing companion, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, in 1986.

It was May 29 1953 when he and Norgay scaled the peak. He later told his fellow explorer at base camp, “Well George, we knocked the bastard off.”

A quiet man whose laid-back demeanor seemed at odds with his risky explorations, Hillary led numerous other explorations over the next two decades, including journeys to the South Pole, six Himalayan ascents, a search for the fabled Yeti and the source of the Yangtze river. He led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958 and in 1958 participated in the first mechanised expedition to the South Pole. … Read full obituary

A man hailed as one of Britain’s greatest polar explorers has died. Sir Wally Herbert became the first person to reach the North Pole on foot without motorised transport in 1969.

The 72-year-old, from Laggan near Aviemore, had suffered from diabetes and heart trouble and died in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. …

Sir Wally, who was knighted in 1999, was an author and artist.

The adventurer completed his epic 15-month, 3,800-mile (6,115km) journey, with three colleagues and four dog-sled teams. … Read full obituary

BRISTOW — A Bristow native considered the father of modern hot-air ballooning died Thursday.

Paul “Ed” Yost perfected the concept of using propane heat to fill a balloon to make it fly and be maneuverable. He died of natural causes at this home in Taos, N.M. He was 87.

Bristow celebrated Yost’s accomplishments in 2002 during a Veterans’ Aviation and Hot Air Balloon Weekend. A monument was erected in Yost’s honor. He was a World War II veteran.

The aviation pioneer refined the modern-day balloon. This included using nonporous heat-resistant synthetic fabrics, maneuvering vents and deflation systems for landings that made untethered balloon flight possible. He made the first free flight in 1960, and he piloted the first balloon flight across the English Channel three years later. … Read full obituary

Harold Froehlich, the innovative Minnesota engineer who helped design the deep-diving mini-sub used to explore the Titanic, has died at the age of 84.

Froehlich died of heart failure in his home state of Minnesota on May 19, The New York Times reported.

Froehlich was an engineer who helped design the Alvin, a deep-diving exploratory submarine developed in the 1960s to recover hydrogen bombs for the military and later used to explore shipwrecks, including the Titanic. … Read full obituary

Jimmy Hall, a fearless man of adventure who had just been named the host of Discovery Channel’s popular series “Shark Week,” died in a base-jumping accident in Canada. …

Ironically, in a video tribute seen on youtube, Hall fondly talked about the extreme sport where thrill seekers freefall from a fixed surface before using a parachute to glide to the ground.

Hall was in between shoots for “Shark Week” when he went base jumping off one of the worlds steepest cliff’s in arctic Canada. Sadly that became Hall’s final adventure. … Read full obituary

One of the first U.S. astronauts and only the fifth American in space, Walter Schirra, has died at age 84. The U.S. space agency NASA says he had been suffering from cancer, but has provided no further details. …

Schirra is best remembered as one of the original seven astronauts who helped take America’s fledgling space program from its first tentative steps all the way to the moon.

Among his colleagues in that group were Alan Shepherd, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American and second human to orbit Earth after Russia’s Yuri Gagarin. …

Schirra also commanded the Apollo 7 mission in 1968, the first piloted flight in the Apollo series that landed men on the moon the next year.

As a result, he is the only U.S. astronaut to have flown in NASA’s first three space projects, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. …

After 10 years as an astronaut, Walter Schirra retired from NASA in 1969 to become a commentator on space missions for a U.S. television network and eventually serve on the board of directors for several corporations. … Read full obituary

A renowned rock climber and author who scaled peaks around the world fell 500 feet to his death in Yosemite National Park, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Todd Skinner was rappelling Monday after he and a partner worked on pioneering a new route near Bridalveil Fall, said Adrienne Freeman, a park spokeswoman. …

Skinner, 47, of Lander, Wyo., was celebrated for having climbed hundreds of rock faces from Canada’s Yukon Territory to the Himalayas using a technique called free climbing, in which climbers ascend upward using no artificial aid to climb — only a rope to protect against falls. … Read full obituary

Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, has died after being struck by a stingray barb in Queensland.

Mr Irwin, 44 died after the stingray barb went through his chest while he was shooting a documentary off Port Douglas.

The Queensland Police Service has confirmed Mr Irwin’s death. In a statement, it said Mr Irwin collapsed after being stung by a stingray at Batt Reef, off Port Douglas, about 11am.

After being struck, Mr Irwin’s crew called for medical treatment and the Emergency Management Queensland Helicopter responded, but he was dead before the treatment arrived. …

Mr Irwin — known worldwide as the Crocodile Hunter - is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry “Crikey!”.

The father of two’s Crocodile Hunter program was first broadcast in 1992 and has been shown around the world on cable network Discovery.

He also starred in movies and has developed the Australia Zoo wildlife park, north of Brisbane, which was started by his parents Bob and Lyn Irwin. … Read full obituary

The controversial mountaineering legend, Heinrich Harrer, died peacefully over the weekend; he was in his nineties. Harrer is likely most known by younger climbers through the film, Seven Years in Tibet, which was based on his life.

In 1938, Harrer joined the German-Austrian climbing expedition that conquered Eiger’s North Face. The following year he was part of a disasterous expedition by a German Nazi team trying to climb Nanga Parbat, according to Deutsche Welle. The team did not summit and was arrested by British forces. These were the early days of WWII.

Rumors swirled around Harrer’s involvement with the Nazis. Sixty years later, Harrer confirmed that he had been part of the Nazi expedition and was an officer in the paramilitary group, the Schutzstaffel, a post he was given after meeting Hitler and, he said, that was due to the Eiger feat. Harrer claimed that his involvement with the Nazis was solely based on the Nanga Parbat expedition and that he had a “clear conscience” as to his role with the organization. … Read full obituary