Keytasker

At the rate this list is going, about five months from now we'll have 49 picks dead, and this poll will simply be Jimmy Carter vs. That's All Folks! And when that moment comes, the safest thing to do will still probably be to vote That's All Folks!

2025 is probably time to start including James Watson.

I'm not even sure of that anymore. If I've learned anything from the immortals thread, it's that certain jokers simply refuse to die, no matter how old, sick, and decrepit. It wouldn't shock me if two years from now, this thread is full of frantic posts saying "surely, surely, 2026 has to be the year he finally croaks!"

But really though - what actually are the rules as to what counts as 12/31/2023 and what counts as 1/1/2024? Seems like there are annoying drawbacks either way. If you go by local time of the decedent, you could get a situation where someone in Australia dies a few hours before someone in California. Despite dying second, only the Californian would count as a death for the old year, and the Australian would count as a death for the new year. But if you go by London time, there's the obvious problem that the exact time of death is often never reported. So if an American is only ever reported as dying "in the early evening" of the 31st, there's no way to know if it's before or after London's midnight.

If Jimmy Carter visited Deathlist:

1. Marita Camacho Quiros 2. Zhang Lixiong 3. Ma Shitu 4. Song Ping 5. James Clayton Flowers 6. John Hemingway 7. Lou Conter 8. Sister Jean 9. Rachel Robinson 10. Caren Marsh Doll 11. Paul Ignatius 12. Chen-Ning Yang 13. Glynis Johns 14. Eva Marie Saint 15. Russell Nelson

"Final chapter" eh? Apparently, there was still the epilogue, afterword, appendix, acknowledgements, bibliography, endnotes, index, colophon, and dust jacket left to suffer through.

Paul Ignatius turns 103 today. He was Secretary of the Navy toward the end of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Notably, he was in charge when America lost the USS Pueblo to North Korea. He's probably the highest ranking pre-Kissinger American government officer still alive.

Shocking twist: Bob Barker did not, in fact, survive the Russian rocket.

With Al Quie's death, Merwin Coad of Iowa is now the only living person to serve in Congress during the 1950s. As such, Coad is the last Congressman to vote on the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the last from the creation of NASA, and the last from the Eisenhower presidency. He's an, uh, interesting character Buckley's death leaves only two Senators still alive who served prior to the election of Joe Biden in 1972. They are Fred Harris of Oklahoma, and Bob Packwood of Oregon. Those with long memories may recall that Packwood is, like Coad, also a rather scummy character.