Tag: DragonKing Dark

A staple of the popular Fast and The Furious movie franchise, actor Paul Walker still likely had a tremendous film career ahead of him when he was tragically killed at the age of 40 in a car accident in California.

The grisly details of the fiery car crash were blasted all over the celebrity news websites in 2013 when the car he was a passenger in crashed at a high rate of speed and burst into flames.

As one of our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history we will look at the movie career of Walker, his death, and what may have lay ahead for the popular actor. 

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We continue our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history podcast series with a look at the shocking, sudden, accidental death of television star “The Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin.

Irwin gained worldwide fame with his various TV shows and specials looking at the animal kingdom and his work with the Australia Zoo. He was charismatic and lovable. While on a trip filming footage for one of his specials and his daughter’s new show, he became one of the few known human fatalities from a stingray strike.

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Our continuing series on the 100 darkest moments in pop culture history takes a look at a moment where that completely affected professional baseball.

The “Black Sox scandal” was a gambling and game-fixing scandal where members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series.

Despite acquittals in a trial, judge (and eventual MLB commissioner) Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball. The punishment was eventually defined by the Baseball Hall of Fame to include banishment from its hallowed halls. Despite requests for reinstatement in the decades that followed (particularly in the case of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson), the ban remains.

On this week’s DragonKing Dark, let’s examine the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919.

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Our series of 100 darkest moments in pop culture history continues this week with the murder of John Lennon.

The Beatles were icons of pop music. Having broken up years earlier, the individual members of The Beatles had gone on to various other solo projects. John Lennon had already had a brilliant solo career and was now staging a comeback when a deranged fan shot him down in cold blood in front of his New York City apartment.

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Legendary baseball star Roberto Clemente spent much of his time involved in charity work. Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, was struck by a massive earthquake on December 23, 1972. Clemente arranged emergency relief flights. He soon learned, however, that the aid packages on the first three flights had been diverted by corrupt officials of the Somoza government, never reaching victims of the quake.

Clemente decided to accompany the fourth relief flight, hoping that his presence would ensure that the aid would be delivered to the survivors. The airplane he chartered, a Douglas DC-7 cargo plane, had a history of mechanical problems. It had an insufficient number of flight personnel, was overloaded by 4,200 pounds, and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Isla Verde, Puerto Rico immediately after takeoff due to engine failure.

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DragonKing Dark continues our look at 100 of the darkest moments in pop culture history by looking at the killing of legendary singer Sam Cooke.

On December 11, 1964, singer Sam Cooke was gunned down in Los Angeles, California. The original story and the one most commonly told is the 33 year old had taken a 22-year-old girl to a seedy motel and attempted to rape her, but she then escaped carrying his clothes, he chased after her, and they got into a physical altercation with the motel manager who then shot and killed him. Since his death in 1964, the story has gotten more complicated.

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