"Wrigley deeded 42,135 acres of the island from the Santa Catalina Island Company to the Catalina Island Conservancy that he had helped to establish in 1972. This gave the Conservancy control of nearly 90 percent of the island. The balance of the Santa Catalina Island Company that was not deeded to the Conservancy maintains control of much of its resort properties and operations on the island. It still owns and operates many of the main tourist attractions in Avalon, including the Catalina Visitors Country Club, Catalina Island Golf Course, Descanso Beach Club and the Casino Ballroom. Actress Natalie Wood drowned"
"in the waters near the settlement of Two Harbors under questionable circumstances over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 1981. Wood and her husband, Robert Wagner, were vacationing aboard their motor yacht, ""Splendour,"" along with their guest, Christopher Walken, and ""Splendour"" captain, Dennis Davern. In 2011, thirty years after the actress' death, the case was reopened, partially due to public statements made by Davern. In May 2007, Catalina experienced the 2007 Avalon Fire. Greatly due to the assistance of 200 Los Angeles County fire fighters transported by U.S. Marine Corps helicopters and U.S Navy hovercraft, only a few structures were destroyed,"
"cat was named Flapjack. The couple lives in Westport, Connecticut and they also have a vacation home on Block Island, Rhode Island. Walken was one of the last few people to see Natalie Wood alive before her drowning on November 29, 1981, near Santa Catalina Island, California, while on a Thanksgiving weekend boating trip. In 2011, Walken hired a lawyer when authorities reopened the Wood case, while the LAPD said, ""Walken is not a suspect."" The case was closed and termed an accidental death until June 2012, when the investigation was reopened and the cause of death was changed to"
"Death of Raymond Zack On Memorial Day, 2011, 53-year-old Raymond Zack, of Alameda, California, walked into the waters off Robert Crown Memorial Beach and stood neck deep in water roughly 150 yards offshore for almost an hour. His foster mother, Dolores Berry, called 9-1-1 and said that he couldn't swim and was trying to drown himself. There are conflicting reports about Zack's intentions. City of Alameda firefighters and police responded but did not enter the water. The firefighters called for a United States Coast Guard boat to respond to the scene. The boat the Coast Guard sent drafted too deep"
"her aground on 21 September 1981 on the rocky northern shore of Calayan Island, in the northern Philippines. Ammunition ship USS ""Mount Hood"" (AE-29), as she neared Subic Bay that day, slated for a period of upkeep, received orders to ""get underway again that evening to coordinate rescue operations"" at the scene of the tragedy. Consequently, ""Mount Hood"", working in concert with Philippine Navy units ""in a most adverse weather environment,"" retrieved 49 bodies in two days of operations, and ultimately sailed for Manila to turn them over to Philippine authorities, rescuers no longer hearing tapping from inside the ship"
"he replaced Weissmuller in the Tarzan films, and the two men became good friends. The weekend before Barker's death in 1972, he had visited Stader at the Stader home in Malibu, California, and complained of chest pains. Stader made Barker promise to consult a physician. Barker saw a doctor in New York City but shortly afterwards collapsed on a street and died. In June 1954, two of Stader's friends vanished off the coast of Catalina Island when their speed boat sank eleven miles from the island. Stader swam for nine hours to shore to summons help, but his companions, considered"
"Long Beach and Catalina Island is one of the busiest off the US coast. Richard Van Pham Richard Van Pham is a US citizen (originally from Vietnam) who survived three and a half months adrift in the Pacific Ocean from late May to September 2002. 62-year-old Pham set out from Long Beach, California on his 26-foot sail boat ""Sea Breeze"" (a Columbia 26 Mark I) heading for Catalina Island in late May 2002 - which should have taken about three hours. He lived on the boat in between fishing trips. During the journey he claimed a sudden storm wrecked his"
"his ship against Ship Rock. The wreckage of the schooner was a favorite of divers for many years before finally breaking up beneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean. On July 2, 2012, captain Eddie Weinberg died at the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach. The salvaged stern and mast from the Diosa Del Mar was on display at the Isthmus on Catalina Island, California, for a number of years. The salvage of the keel was done by Don and Ed Huseman. Diosa del Mar is located at . Ship Rock is located 3 miles east of the Isthmus on Catalina"
"person to swim across Lake Ontario, but gave up after becoming ill a few hours into her swim. Other unsuccessful attempts included the Strait of Juan de Fuca and two tries at the Irish Sea (her last major swim attempt in 1960). She gave product endorsements and served for many years as the spokesperson for Catalina Swimwear. She taught swimming at a number of venues and worked with Esther Williams to design movie swimming sequences. She also worked as a credit counselor and as a stockbroker. She died of leukemia in San Diego in 1995; her ashes were scattered into"
"Lake Arrowhead. Surfers later found his body floating on the water. Apparently he fell off the boat while having a heart attack at age 66. Norris was survived by his wife, Harlyne Norris (nee Martin) and his two children, Bradley Norris and Dale Norris. Dale died in 2008. Kenneth True Norris Jr. Kenneth True Norris Jr. (August 16, 1930 – September 21, 1996) was an industrialist and philanthropist who lived in Huntington Beach, California. Norris was born August 16, 1930, in Los Angeles, California, to Kenneth True Norris Sr. (born July 8, 1899 in East St. Louis, Illinois, died March"
"suggested suitable gases. Keller successfully tested his idea in Lake Zurich, where he reached a depth of , and Lake Maggiore, where he reached a depth of . On Dec. 3, 1962, he set a new world record when he reached a depth of off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, California, together with Peter Small. This major achievement was overshadowed by the tragic end of the mission: Keller was lucky to survive while Peter Small and Chris Whittaker, a young UCLA student and supporting diver, lost their lives. In the following years, navies and hospitals bought decompression chambers constructed"
"tank and did not allow any of the team to check that the tank had been charged. Mestre was not recovered to the surface until nine minutes into her dive, she had a pulse at the surface, but there were no medical doctors available to treat her and minutes were wasted with Ferreras attempting to resuscitate her in the water. An ESPN documentary documentary film written and directed by Alison Ellwood in 2013 had live video footage of the incident and interviews with crew members and staff [3] Audrey Mestre was cremated, her ashes scattered at sea. In 2002, she"
"Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 1981. Wood and her husband, Robert Wagner, were vacationing aboard their motor yacht, ""Splendour,"" along with their guest, Christopher Walken, and ""Splendour"" captain, Dennis Davern. In 2011, thirty years after the actress' death, the case was reopened, partially due to public statements made by Davern. In May 2007, Catalina experienced the Island Fire, a large wildfire. Largely due to the assistance of 200 Los Angeles County fire fighters transported by U.S. Marine Corps helicopters and U.S Navy hovercraft, only a few structures were destroyed, though of wildland were burned. In May 2011, another wildfire started near"
"machine gun fire and depth charges from the plane, the U-boat was forced to remain on the surface. Catalina ""FP-313"" of 265 Squadron flown by Flying Office C Ernest Robin was called to attack, sinking the U-boat with all hands by depth charges. On 20 August 1944 Flight Lieutenant William Stewart Lough's Catalina ""FP104/H"" caught German submarine U-862 on the surface in the Mozambique Channel and attacked it. A depth charge was dropped but missed and the Catalina was hit by fire from the submarines anit-aircraft gun. The plane flew back over the submarine and crashed into the sea in"
"by Catalina pilots pressing home their attacks on U-boats in the face of heavy fire: Flying Officer John Cruickshank of the RAF, in 1944, for sinking ""U-347"" (although the submarine is now known to have been ""U-361"") and in the same year Flight Lieutenant David Hornell of the Royal Canadian Air Force (posthumously) against ""U-1225"". Catalinas destroyed 40 U-boats, but not without losses of their own. A Brazilian Catalina attacked and sank ""U-199"" in Brazilian waters on 31 July 1943. Later, the aircraft was baptized as “Arará”, in memory of the merchant ship of that name which was sunk by"
"Diosa del Mar The Diosa del Mar (Spanish: ""Goddess of the Sea"") was a wooden schooner that sank off of the coast of Catalina Island at 2:25 pm on July 30, 1990. The two-masted wooden schooner was designed by A. Cary Smith and built in 1898 by the firm of A.C. Brown and Sons of Tottenville, New York. It was originally christened ""Uncas"" after the famous chief of the Mohegan tribe. Through various owners, the name was subsequently changed to ""Wal Gar"", ""Bonnie Doone"", and finally ""Diosa del Mar"". In ""Lloyd's Register of American Yachts"" it appears as ""Bonnie Doone"""
"been swimming in the deep end of the pool. Gaines, 34, a resident of Los Angeles, was last seen alive sitting on a raft in the pool; she could not swim. The incident was called ""a double accidental drowning"" by the police. Two days later, an investigator told reporters that there was no indication of ""foul play"". Guitarist Ronnie Wood wrote that Kellgren probably died from electric shock while trying to fix some underwater speakers in his pool, and that Gaines drowned trying to save him. Kellgren was survived by his wife Marta, their two children Devon and Mark, his"
"newspaperman Hjalmar Sankari (died March 1938 in the Aragon Retreats), an editor of the New York daily ""Eteenpäin"", who wrote an article to his newspaper of the incident. According to Sankari, some of the volunteers were singing the ""Internationale"" while they were drowning with the ship. The death toll was over two hundred dead, although some sources cite more than three hundred. According to the Madrid newspaper ""ABC"", the ship carried 312 passengers and 64 crew members of which 4 died. 60–65 volunteers lost their lives, but only 25 names are known. The Republican government tried to censor news of"
"while loading items onto his boat. It was initially reported that he suffered a seizure, but it is unclear whether the seizure was a result of the fall or if it was caused by a medical condition. It was later revealed that Guist suffered a heart attack. Guist was pronounced dead at a Morgan City hospital,[3][4] and later determined by the Ascension Parish coroner his death was of natural causes. Guist was 47 years old at the time of his death. The Voodoo Bayou episode of the History Channel's Swamp People, originally aired on May 17, 2012, was dedicated in"
"multiple voyages would surely not have done so. Captain Lord died on 24 January 1962, aged 84, almost half a century after the sinking of the ""Titanic"". He is buried in Wallasey Cemetery, Merseyside. Stanley Lord Stanley Phillip Lord (13 September 1877 – 24 January 1962) was captain of the SS ""Californian"", a ship that was in the vicinity of the RMS ""Titanic"" the night it sank on 15 April 1912 but which did not come to its assistance. Lord was born on 13 September 1877 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. He began his training at sea when he was thirteen,"
"Natasha Gregson Wagner Natasha Gregson Wagner (born September 29, 1970 in Los Angeles, California) is an American actress, the daughter of film producer Richard Gregson and actress Natalie Wood. Gregson Wagner is the daughter of American actress Natalie Wood (1938–1981) and British producer Richard Gregson (born 1930). Her godmother was actress Ruth Gordon. Her parents separated when she was ten months old, and later divorced. Her mother remarried actor Robert Wagner in 1972, and together they had a daughter, Courtney Wagner (born 1974). Her aunt is Lana Wood. On November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island. After"
"concentration camps in Luzon. The rocky northern coast line of the Calayan Island was the scene of a disaster when the warship ""Datu Kalantiaw"", which had served during World War II and subsequently under the Philippine flag, was hit by Typhoon Clara. The ship ran aground on 21 September 1981. Rescue and recovery operations were launched by the ammunition ship USS ""Mount Hood"" together with the Philippine Navy units ""in a most adverse weather environment,"" and could recover only 49 bodies of the 79 who perished (presumably other 30 bodies were not recovered) which were taken to Manila to be"
"the Isthmus Yacht Club and was fought by 120 firefighters transported by barge from Los Angeles. It was extinguished the next day after burning . Catalina is the starting point for the Catalina Channel swim, the second jewel in the Triple Crown of open water marathon swimming, along with the English Channel and Manhattan Island. In 1927, a 17 year old Canadian swimmer, George Young, became the first person to complete a crossing from Catalina Island to the mainland of California in a time of 15:44.30. Since then, over 500 men and women have completed the 20.1 mile swim from"
"on May 21, 1919 in Palm Springs, California. Lamar Johnstone Edward Lamar Johnstone (March 15, 1884 – May 21, 1919) was an American silent film actor and director. Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Johnstone starred in 82 films as an actor between 1911 and his death in 1919. He often starred alongside Dorothy Gibson, an actress who survived the sinking of the ""Titanic"". Johnstone directed three films; one in 1913 called ""Truth in the Wilderness"", starring Charlotte Burton, ""The Turning Point"" (1914), and ""The Unforgiven"" (1915). In the 1916 serial ""Secret of the Submarine"", Johnstone got to fly Juanita Hansen in"
"into the water while trapping others inside the cabin. The vessel then foundered. The accident occurred within sight of Montauk Lighthouse, approximately one nautical mile (1.15 miles; 1.85 km) north off the point in the area known as Endeavor Shoals. Two private fishing boats, ""Betty Ann"" and ""Bingo II"", were the first to respond and rescue passengers. The U.S. Coast Guard picket boat that responded approximately one hour later was only able to rescue one passenger found clinging to ""Pelican""′s hull. In all, 45 passengers and crew, including Captain Carroll were killed. The hull, foundering beneath the waves, was first"
"and personally certified thousands of divers and instructors. Tillman died on his 76th birthday, in 2004, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Albert Tillman Albert Tillman (January 16, 1928 – January 16, 2004) was an American educator and underwater diver. Tillman was born in Los Angeles, California. He became interested in marine and underwater life when, at age 10, he peered through a pair of goggles in the waters off Redondo Beach, California. He soon became a free diver and served in the United States Coast Guard at the end of World War II, where he had the opportunity to dive around"
"entire crew of ""U-156"" were killed in action by depth charges from a U.S. PBY Catalina aircraft (VP-53/P-1; Lieutenant E. Dryden), east of Barbados. The Catalina dropped four Mark 44 Torpex water-bombs at 13:15 from an altitude of to which straddled ""U-156"". Two bombs were observed to hit the water to starboard and just aft of ""U-156"", lifting it and breaking it in two, followed by an explosion. At least eleven survivors were seen swimming in the water. The Americans dropped two rubber rafts and rations, and five men were seen to reach one of the rafts. The USS ""Barney"""
"the reef area. The exhausted diving crew, after being in the water for two days, and the sailboats left Catalina Island elated, having achieved a successful salvage operation that no one else had been able to accomplish. The tank and 20-ton keel were then towed 24 miles by the Cal 39 Perkins 4108 50-hp diesel engine across the Catalina Channel to Long Beach Harbor. Diosa del Mar The Diosa del Mar (Spanish: ""Goddess of the Sea"") was a wooden schooner that sank off of the coast of Catalina Island at 2:25 pm on July 30, 1990. The two-masted wooden schooner"
"Phil Harris (fisherman) Phillip Charles ""Phil"" Harris (December 19, 1956 – February 9, 2010) was an American captain and part owner of the crab fishing vessel ""Cornelia Marie"", which is featured on Discovery Channel's documentary reality TV series ""Deadliest Catch"". He suffered a massive stroke while offloading ""C. opilio"" crab in port at Saint Paul Island, Alaska, on January 29, 2010. Despite extreme improvements in his condition, Harris died on February 9, 2010 at the age of 53, while suffering a pulmonary embolism in the hospital. The episode of ""Deadliest Catch"" featuring the Captain's death aired on July 20, 2010,"
"position , by a US PBY Catalina from VP-53 captained by Lieutenant E. Dryden. The aircraft dropped four Mark 44 Torpex-filled depth charges at 13:15 from an altitude of to which straddled the submarine. Two were observed to hit the water to starboard and just aft of ""U-156"", lifting it and breaking it in two, followed by an explosion. At least eleven survivors were seen swimming in the water. Two rubber rafts and rations were dropped, and five men were seen to reach one of the rafts. was dispatched from Trinidad to rescue the survivors; the search was abandoned on"
"maritime patrol aircraft from No. 18 Group RAF were directed to sweep the Home Fleet's route back to its base. The British patrol aircraft prevented Group Trutz from attacking the Home Fleet. At 21:48 on 17 July, a Consolidated B-24 Liberator assigned to No. 86 Squadron detected and sank ""U-361""; none of the submarine's crew were rescued. Eight minutes later a No. 210 Squadron Consolidated PBY Catalina piloted by Flying Officer John Cruickshank spotted ""U-347"" on the surface. The submarine's anti-aircraft guns damaged the Catalina, killing the navigator and wounding Cruickshank as well as three other crewmen, but the pilot"
"survivors, many of whom were seriously wounded, were exposed to the elements, hunger, thirst, and repeated shark attacks. Eight days after the sinking, ten survivors were found by a PBY Catalina search aircraft and retrieved from the water. The survivors reported that Frank, Joe and Matt died instantly, Al drowned the next day, and George survived for four or five days, before suffering from delirium as a result of hypernatremia (though some sources describe him being ""driven insane with grief"" at the loss of his brothers); he went over the side of the raft he occupied. He was never seen"
"SS Californian SS ""Californian"" was a British Leyland Line steamship that is best known for its inaction during the sinking of the RMS ""Titanic"" on 15 April 1912, despite being the closest ship in the area. The United States Senate inquiry and British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry into the sinking both concluded that the ""Californian"" could have saved many or all of the lives that were lost, had a prompt response been mounted to the "" Titanic's "" distress rockets. The U.S. Senate inquiry was particularly critical of the vessel's Captain, Stanley Lord, calling his inaction during the disaster ""reprehensible"". Despite"