Celebrity Meat Locker - Famous People Who Croaked This Week (Feb 25 - Mar 3)

This is a weekly series I'm considering starting up.  I'll be taking a look at celebrities and/or influential people who have died in the past week.  Some may consider it a bit morbid, but I like to think of it more like a weekly celebration of those who have passed on before us, and frankly some people are actually kind of interesting.

I'm going to try to update this at some point every weekend.  I'll try to include a little bit about the people's lives and why you should give a damn (or not).  Enjoy!

Don Knotts (81) - lung cancer

Best known for his defining role as Barney Fife in the 60s TV show The Andy Griffith Show, Knotts was a 5-time Emmy Award winner.  His real name was Jesse Donald Knotts.  His good friend, Andy Griffith, often called him Jesse.  Knotts was an accomplished ventriloquist early in his career.  Wakko from Warner Bros.' Animaniacs cartoon was a big fan of Don Knotts.

Darrin McGavin (83) - "natural causes"

He was the dad from "A Christmas Story"!  He also played the title character in Kolchak: The Night Stalker in the 70s and Adam Sandler's father in "Billy Madison".

Owen Chamberlain (85) - Parkinson's disease

Chamberlain was a particle physicist who discovered the anti-proton (for which he won the Nobel Prize).  Anti-protons very very rarely occur naturally, as they require energy equivalent to a temperature of 10 million degrees Celsius (aka really really HOT), but somebody obviously thought they were pretty cool and gave him a nice medal and lots of money.  Later in his career, Chamberlain also did work on something called the Time projection chamber, which sounds really cool, but is in fact quite boring as well.  See Mr. Chamberlain's picture for any additional questions.

Johnny Jackson (54) - stabbed in the chest