Actor Robert Blake died last week at home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family. He died peacefully of heart disease at 89.

I am very sad to have to report that legendary actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch died Wednesday at 82 following a brief illness. She had avoided the spotlight in recent years, but remained active by running a successful wig business.

Today is the official Martin Luther King Day holiday, although his actual birthday, January 15, 1929, fell on Sunday.

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, the 81st anniversary of the “date which will live in infamy.”

All of us here are very sad to report that the queen of country music, Loretta Lynn, died this morning at 90. Her family said she passed away peacefully in her sleep at home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any female head of state and the second longest of any monarch, after France’s King Louis XIV.

Queen Elizabeth was everything that exemplified the best of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, a rarefied sense of human decency that already seems like an archetype from an earlier age.