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Today's Irish times announced the death of Matteo Matubara (better known among Trinity students as Matt the Jap). He was one of Trinity College's best known eccentric personalities, and few students who attended the college would have been unfamiliar with the sight of Matteo shuffling across front square. There were many rumours among students about his life and background, and the Irish Times notice only hints at the possibilities. More rumours/witness accounts are available on boards and politics.ie. (thanks ConorN.)

Robert Adler, the father of the Remote Control (along with Eugene Polley) died on February 15th 2007. He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1913 where he was educated. During the war, he emigrated to the US, where he got a job working in the Research division of Zenith Electronics Corporation working on television technology.

Zenith pioneered the work on television remote controls. Their earliest remote controls were wire-based - such as Lazy Bones, developed in 1950. In 1955, Eugene Polley developed the Flashmatic, a wireless remote that directed light at photo cells located at the corners of the TV. Unfortunately, the photo cells also reacted to direct sunlight. Adler's solution was to develop a remote that used ultrasound. His Space Command remote control unit was very simple - the buttons struck one of four aluminium rods inside the unit, like a xylophone, to generate ultrasonic signals - it didn't need even batteries. Adler and Polley were honoured with an Emmy Award in 1997 for their work on creating the wireless remote control. As for taking the blame for the phenomena of the couch potato he said, "People ask me all the time, 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say, 'That's ridiculous!' It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

George Armistead Smathers, a former senator in the U.S. died January 20th 2007. His political career had several dubious events, such as his offer to bail Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail during the civil rights campaign - but only if he left the state. During his 1950 senate campaign against the incumbent Sen. Claude Pepper it was claimed that he uttered the following in a speech: "Do you know that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert?

Joseph Roland "Joe" Barbera died December 18th, 2006. He was one of the founders of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon production company (with William Denby "Bill" Hanna, 1910-2001).

Together they produced Tom and Jerry (while still at MGM), the Flintstones, Top Cat, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Smurfs, and Dexter's Laboratory.