Guy Newman Smith (21 November 1939 – 24 December 2020) was an English writer. He wrote pulp fiction-style horror. He also wrote non-fiction, softcore pornography, and children's literature. Smith was born in Hopwas, Staffordshire. He wrote the novel versions of many Disney animated movies.
Smith died on December 24, 2020 at the age of 81.
Davie Sneddon
David Sneddon MBE (24 April 1936 – 24 December 2020) was a Scottish football player and manager. He managed Kilmarnock to their 1979 Tennent Caledonian Cup victory. Sneddon played once for the Scotland national under-23 football team in 1958.
He was awarded an MBE in 2014.
Sneddon died on 24 December 2020 at the age of 84.
Minoru Makihara
Minoru Makihara (January 12, 1930December 13, 2020) was a British-born Japanese business executive. He was the chief executive of the Mitsubishi Corporation from 1992 to 1998 and chairman from 1998 to 2004. He was born in London.
Makihara died on December 13, 2020 in Tokyo from heart failure at the age of 90.
John Cremona
John Joseph Cremona (January 6, 1918 – December 24, 2020) was a Maltese politician and lawyer. He was the Attorney General of Malta during independence talks in 1964. He helped write the Constitution of Malta. He was the chief justice of Malta from 1971 to 1981.
Cremona died at the age of 102 on December 24, 2020.
Siv Widerberg
Siv Widerberg (12 June 1931 – 24 December 2020) was a Swedish writer and journalist. She received "doctor honoris causa" from the University of Umeå. She was born in Bromma, Sweden. She was a member of the Swedish Academy for Children's Books.
Widerberg died on 24 December 2020 in Stockholm, aged 89.
Reginald Foster (Latinist)
Reginald Thomas Foster (November 14, 1939 – December 25, 2020) was an American Catholic priest and friar of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. From 1970 until his retirement in 2009, he worked in the Latin Letters section of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican.
Foster died on December 25, 2020 at the age of 81.
Dab (dance)
Dabbing, or the dab, is a simple dance move in which a person drops their head into their bent upwardly angled arm, while raising the opposite arm out straight in a parallel direction.
Since 2015, dabbing has been used as a playful manner, becoming a youthful fad and Internet meme.
The move looks like someone sneezing into their elbow.
Milka Babović
Milena "Milka" Babović (27 October 1928 – 26 December 2020) was a Croatian sprint and hurdles runner and journalist. Babović was born in Skopje and grew up in Sarajevo, but moved to Ruma and Belgrade. She came in fifth place at the 1954 European Championships.
She was a journalist for "Narodni sport". She was a multiple-time president of the sport journalist section of the Croatian Journalist Association and was a member of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee.
Babović died of COVID-19 in Zagreb on 26 December 2020 at the age of 92.
Brian Binley
Brian Arthur Roland Binley (1 April 1942 – December 2020) was a British Conservative Party politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton South from 2005 to 2015. Binley was born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
Binley died in December 2020 at the age of 78.
George Blake
George Blake (' Behar; 11 November 1922 – 26 December 2020) was a British spy. He worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He became a Communist and decided to work for the KGB while a prisoner during the Korean War.
His crimes as a double agent was discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison. He escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 and fled to the Soviet Union.
Blake died on 26 December 2020, aged 98, in Moscow.
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Spy Ring was a group of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. It was active from the later 1930s until at least into the early 1950s.
None was ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring became public slowly, since the 1950s. Their most damaging achievement was to pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.
The sudden flight of Donald Maclean (cryptonym: Homer) and Guy Burgess (cryptonym: Hicks) to the Soviet Union in 1951 was the first public news.
In 1961, defector Anatoliy Golitsyn provided information which pointed to Kim Philby. Philby (cryptonyms: Sonny, Stanley), fled the country in 1963. He spent the rest of his life in Moscow.
After Philby's flight, British intelligence got confessions from Anthony Blunt (cryptonyms: Tony, Johnson) and then John Cairncross (cryptonym: Liszt), who were the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt, and 1990 for Cairncross.
The group became known as the Cambridge Five. All five spies met as students or teachers at Cambridge University.
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to 1979, was a British art historian and spy. In 1964, he confessed to having been a spy for the Soviet Union and was part of the spy group the Cambridge Five.
Chic McLelland
Chic McLelland (24 March 1953 – 26 December 2020) was a Scottish football player and manager. He played for Aberdeen, Motherwell, Dundee and Montrose. His playing career lasted from 1973 to 1990. His managing career lasted from 1990 to 1991.
McLelland was born in Glasgow. He died on 26 December 2020 at the age of 63.
Tito Rojas
Julio César Rojas López (June 14, 1955 – December 26, 2020) known as Tito Rojas a.k.a. "El Gallo Salsero" was a Puerto Rican salsa singer. He was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico. His career began in 1972. He was known for his albums: "Tres Mujeres" (1987), "Sensual" (1990), "Vida" (2010), "Independiente" (2011) and "El Viajero" (2014).
Rojas died on December 26, 2020, at the age of 65, after suffering a heart attack in Humacao.
Humacao, Puerto Rico
Humacao () is a municipality in Puerto Rico.
Nomvuzo Shabalala
Nomvuzo Francisca Shabalala (1960 – 26 December 2020) was a South African politician. She was a member of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party. From 2011 to 2016 she was the deputy mayor of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality. In 2018, Shabalala was elected a member of the National Assembly.
Shabalala died on 26 December 2020 at the age of 60. The cause of death was problems caused by COVID-19.
Kadambur R. Janarthanan
Kadambur R. Janarthanan (22 October 1929 – 26 December 2020) was an Indian politician and trade unionist. He was born in Tamil Nadu, India. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1984. He left the parliament in 1996 only to serve again from 1998 to 1999.
Janarthanan died on 26 December 2020 at the age of 91.
Leader of the Opposition (Scotland)
The Leader of the Opposition is an informal term given to the leader of the largest party not in government in the Scottish Parliament. Since 11 August 2020, this has been Ruth Davidson of the Scottish Conservative Party.
Ruma
Ruma () is a town and municipality in the Srem District of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Serbia. As of 2011, 30,076 people lived there.
More Cowbell
"More Cowbell" is a comedy sketch. It is a part of "Saturday Night Live". It was first shown on television on April 8, 2000. The sketch is shown as a fake episode of "Behind the Music". It is about the real band Blue Öyster Cult making a sound recording for the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". Will Ferrell is shown in the sketch as a man playing the cowbell. He plays the cowbell very loud and annoys the members of Blue Öyster Cult. Christopher Walken is in the sketch as a music producer that keeps asking for the cowbell to be louder.
Many people thought that it was one of the best sketches of Saturday Night Live. "Rolling Stone" named it the 9th best sketch of Saturday Night Live. "More Cowbell" became a catchphrase in popular culture.
Rastamouse
Rastamouse is a British animated program on CBeebies.
The show was created in 2011.