aka "Kinchloe" of Hogan's HeroesSir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008[2]) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name.
...In 1986 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.[15]
In 1988 he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, having originally contracted polio in 1959, and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter.[11]
In September 2007, he provided a video greeting for NASA's Cassini probe's flyby of Iapetus (which plays an important role in 2001: A Space Odyssey).[16]
In the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to British cultural interests in Sri Lanka".[17] The same year he became the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004 and he also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.
On 26 May 2000 he was made a Knight Bachelor[18] "for services to literature" at a ceremony in Colombo.[19] The award of a knighthood had been announced in the 1998 New Year Honours,[20] but investiture of the award had been delayed, at Clarke's request, because of an accusation, by the British tabloid The Sunday Mirror, of paedophilia, which was, however, found to be baseless by Sri Lankan police and retracted by the paper soon after.[21][22][23][24][25][26]
In December 2007 on his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans bidding them good-bye.[27]
Clarke died in Sri Lanka on 19 March 2008 after suffering from breathing problems, according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides.[28][29][11]
These are today's "Bizarre Chicago" videos. I also took some great alley videos, and I'm continuing to compile stills of the dogs and the alleys for slide shows I'll be working up sometime in the "sometime between now and when Terre Haute Indiana freezes over" future.
Some of these I've posted to Multiply's video section, but I thought it'd be nice to post them together on the blogs.
