FotB Joe D pointed out in comments the death of Harrison Ruffin Tyler at the age of 96.
He was the grandson of president John Tyler. It is actually a kind of interesting story: he was born to Lyon Gardiner Tyler, John’s son. Lyon was 75 when he was born. John Tyler was 63 when Lyon was born.
Bruce Logan, who did a lot of movie special effects. Among his credits: he blew up the Death Star.
Mr. Logan — who was also a cinematographer and director — recalled that he could not film the Death Star’s detonation as if it were happening on Earth.
“When you shoot an explosion conventionally, with the camera straight and level, with forces of gravity and atmospherics acting on it, what you get is a mushroom cloud which doesn’t look like it’s exploding in outer space,” he wrote on Zacuto.com, a film equipment website, in 2015.
To achieve the needed effect, Mr. Logan manned a high-speed camera, which was surrounded by a sheet of plywood, with a hole cut out for the lens and a sheet of glass covering it. With the camera pointed upward, Joe Viskocil, a pyrotechnics specialist, set off a series of miniature bombs overhead, which created the illusion of the explosions occurring in zero gravity in outer space.
The bombs’ ingredients included black powder, gasoline, titanium chips and napalm — and the only protection the crew had was a grip holding a fire extinguisher.
“I do remember wiping some burning napalm off my arm,” Mr. Logan told the Manhattan Edit Workshop, a postproduction school, in 2019.
Ed Gale, actor. Other credits include “Chopper Chicks in Zombietown”, “Land of the Lost”, and “Phantasm II”.
Peter Kwong, actor. Other credits include “Theodore Rex”, “Homeboys in Outer Space”, and “Renegade”.
(Hattip on the last two to Lawrence.)