Following a five-year battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s, legendary N.C.A.A. basketball coach Pat Summitt died on Tuesday. She was just 64 years old.

The streets felt emptied Saturday afternoon, after the news broke that Bill Cunningham would no longer be out in them, taking photographs of people and their clothing. Cunningham died at the age of 87, apparently about as well as one could have hoped—quickly, after a stroke, less than three weeks after his last set of…

Lois Duncan, the beloved young adult author* who wrote as many as 48 books and spent the last 30 years searching for the true killer of her youngest daughter, died this week at home in Florida. She was 82.

The record-breaking career of 87-year-old Jane Little, the world’s longest-serving orchestra musician, came to an end on Sunday when the 5'3 bassist collapsed onstage during the Atlanta Symphony’s performance of “Broadway’s Golden Age.” The song she was playing, fittingly enough, was “There’s No Business Like Show…

Katherine Dunn, the author of the darkly beautiful, disturbing, surreal carnival novel Geek Love, died on May 11 at age 70. Her son told Willamette Week the cause was complications from lung cancer.

In a gut-wrenching eulogy published by Time, comedian Patton Oswalt mourns his wife, the acclaimed crime writer Michelle McNamara, who passed away suddenly on April 21, 2016.

Prince, the musician who helped define the latter half of the 20th century with his eclectic blend of funk and transgressive sexuality, died Thursday at Paisley Park, his Minnesota property. He was 57.

Despite our fascination with the lives of people who have been deemed societally “important” because of accomplishments, fame and riches, the nitty-gritty of how and why we know what we know about them often gets swept under the rug. Vanessa Gould’s documentary Obit, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival,…

Adult film actress Amber Rayne died in her sleep over the weekend, AVN reports. Rayne, 31, was one of several high profile adult actresses who accused James Deen of sexual assault over the winter. Rayne spent over a decade in the adult industry.

Eleni Pinnow wrote an obituary after the death of her sister Aletha Meyer Pinnow on February 20. In Eleni’s words, Aletha died “from depression and suicide.” The obituary quickly went viral, because people were touched by Eleni’s message: Aletha was so much more than her pain.

In a week already rife with loss, Brian Bedford—theater great and voice of Robin Hood (i.e. the first cartoon animal you ever looked at and thought “I would definitely hit that”)—has passed away at the age of 80.

Fernande Grudet, the controversial figure—better known by the name “Madame Claude”—who operated high-end call girl rings for powerful clientele throughout the latter half of the 20th century, has passed away in Nice, France, at the age of 92. “Two things in life sell: food and sex,” Claude once said. “And I was not…

Olene S. Walker, who was sworn in as Utah’s first and (so far) only woman governor in 2003, has died at the age of 85.

Adele Mailer was an artist and actor. Fairly or not, she is most often mentioned in connection with her ex-husband, writer Norman Mailer, who infamously stabbed her during a party at their own apartment in 1960. She died of pneumonia on Sunday in Manhattan at the age of 90.

San Francisco celebrity and legendary stripper Carol Doda has died from complications of kidney failure at the age of 78. Doda was one of the first dancers in San Francisco to dance topless, sparking a trend that would ultimately change the city.

Clothing designer Arnold Scaasi, who dressed Barbra Streisand and Barbara Bush, Mary Tyler Moore and Joan Crawford, has died at 85. “I am definitely not a minimalist!” he explained of his approach. “Clothes with some adornment are more interesting to look at and more fun to wear.”

Shruggie Guy, also known distastefully as the smugshrug or kaomoji, died on Wednesday after being beaten to death by a generation of overeager Internet users and their parents.

On Sunday evening, Bobbi Kristina Brown died at the age of 22 surrounded by family and friends. Brown, the daughter of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, had been in the hospital in a medically-induced coma for the past six months after she was found unconscious in her bathtub on January 31. She was moved into hospice…

Christian Audigier, the man who in the mid-2000s dressed an astonishing number of people in fake tattoo-and-rhinestone t-shirts, died this week in Los Angeles at the age of 57, reports LATF. In January, he had been diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome, also referred to as “bone marrow failure disorder.” He leaves a…

Amanda Peterson, the actress best known for her role as Cindy Mancini in 1987’s Can’t Buy Me Love, has passed away at the age of 43 in her Colorado home. The cause of death is still unknown.