2011 marked the 10th year anniversary of R&B singer Aaliyah's death in a plane crash that killed eight others, including the pilot who was unlicensed and had cocaine in his system, after finishing her video for "Rock the Boat." She was 22. At the time of her death, she had just begun her acting career and had received a Grammy nomination for best female R&B vocalist. It's sad and rather counterproductive to think where a force a like Aaliyah would be now, ten years later. But she's not the only one. Let's look at some tragic casualties in music, movies and literature and wonder what they would have done if they had lived a little longer:
Buddy Holly. Bespectacled Holly influenced the rock 'n roll music of later musicians as diverse as The Beatles, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones with his hits like "That'll Be the Day" and "Dearest." Like Aaliyah, Holly died at the age of 22 in a plane crash. Holly chartered a small plane to take him from his Clear Lake, Iowa performance to Moorehead, Minnesota, inviting Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson to join him. The crash has since been dubbed "The Day the Music Died."
Jim Henson. Jim Henson revitalized and changed the landscape of puppetry forever with his enduring television series, The Muppets and Sesame Street. In early May of 1990, Henson came down with flu-like symptoms, a sore throat and fatigue. He visited a physician who prescribed aspirin for Henson's symptoms, but on May 15, Henson started coughing up blood and having trouble breathing. He was admitted to the hospital but died 20 hours later, at the age of 53. His official cause of death was organ failure caused by a streptococcal infection.
David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace was a professor and the extremely-influential works of postmodernism like Infinite Jest and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself in 2008, when he was 46. According to his father, the author had struggled with depression for more than 20 years, but antidepressants had allowed him to be productive in his life. He started experiencing side effects from the medicine, however, and weaned himself off of it and the depression returned. When he returned to his original medicine, it had lost its effectiveness, making his depression the most severe it had ever been.
Who do you think died too tragically young?