Walter Cunningham, an astronaut who was the last surviving member of the 1968 Apollo 7 mission, died on Tuesday at 90. The Iowa-born Cunningham served in the US Navy and Marine Corps before joining NASA in 1963 and eventually taking part in the Apollo program’s first crewed (and first televised) flight.

NASA confirmed Cunningham’s death and added that he was "instrumental to our Moon landing's program success.” According to the Houston Chronicle, Cunningham died in a local hospital of complications from a fall.

Apollo 7 was NASA’s first spaceflight after the 1967 Apollo 1 tragedy, where a fire killed three astronauts during a rehearsal test. This led to a longer-than-usual training period, as NASA shelved human-crewed spaceflight for 21 months following Apollo 1. The crew spent many long hours studying the spacecraft's design and construction of the Apollo command and service modules (CSM) to help avoid a repeat tragedy, which could have been perilous for the astronauts and the program. Finally, the crew splashed down on Earth on October 22, 1968, after nearly 11 days in space. Apollo 7 further tested NASA’s equipment and helped pave the way for Apollo 11, where the first humans walked on the moon.

NASA

Cunningham retired from NASA in 1971 and tried his hand at public speaking, radio hosting, offshore engineering, commercial real estate and venture capital investing. Unfortunately, he also became an outspoken climate change denier. Speaking to Forbes in 2013, Cunningham went through a laundry list of fossil-fuel industry talking points, framing modern NASA as an organization controlled by the media while claiming climate-change science was closer to demagoguery than fact. (For the record, climate change is real, and we're running out of time to avoid catastrophe.)

“I definitely believe that we lived in the good old days,” Cunningham said in a 1999 NASA interview. “We lived in the golden age of manned spaceflight. We’ve been in space now for over 40 years. The first 40 years of aviation, we went from just barely flying to jet transport, you know. And now, we haven’t moved that far since we went into space. The days through Apollo will be remembered; there’ll never be another time like that again. Even when we go to Mars, it will be different. And I feel just fortunate that I was a small part of this particular time in spaceflight.”

TikTok and parent company ByteDance have been accused of negligence after the death of a 10-year-old who allegedly attempted a challenge she saw on the app. According to the wrongful death suit, Nylah Anderson was found unconscious in her bedroom in Pennsylvania on December 7th. She was taken to hospital but died after five days in pediatric intensive care.

Nylah's mother Tawainna claimed her daughter attempted the "blackout challenge," which encourages people to hold their breath or otherwise asphyxiate themselves until they pass out. Nylah saw a video about the challenge on the For You page "as a result of TikTok's algorithm," the suit said, according to NBC News. "The TikTok defendants’ algorithm determined that the deadly blackout challenge was well-tailored and likely to be of interest to 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, and she died as a result."

"I want to hold this company accountable," Tawainna said at a press conference. "It is time that these dangerous challenges come to an end, that other families don't experience the heartbreak we live every day."

TikTok said in a statement that the "disturbing" blackout challenge, "which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend. We remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss.”

The deaths of several other children have been attributed to the challenge. In April 2021, 12-year-old Colorado boy Joshua Haileyesus died after being on life support for 19 days. His family claimed he attempted the challenge. Italy last year temporarily blocked TikTok for users who were unable to verify their age after the death of a girl who allegedly undertook the challenge.

In March, it emerged that a group of attorneys general is investigating TikTok over the potential harms that its app can cause to children and "what TikTok knew about those harms."

David Bennett, the first human to successfully undergo a heart transplant involving a genetically modified pig heart, has died, according to The New York Times. He was 57. It’s unclear if his body rejected the organ doctors implanted in January. “There was no obvious cause identified at the time of his death,” a spokesperson for the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the hospital that performed the procedure, told the outlet. Physicians plan to carry out a full evaluation before publishing their findings in a peer-reviewed journal.

When Bennett’s transplant was first announced, doctors treated the news with cautious optimism. And for a time, it looked like that feeling was warranted. Not only did Bennett’s body not immediately reject the organ, but he was also able to take part in physical therapy and spend time with his family. And while he was never discharged from the hospital, he did survive two months with the genetically modified organ beating in place of his human heart.

Even if doctors determine the cause of death was organ rejection, that’s no small milestone. Stephanie Fae Beauclair, one of the most famous patients to undergo a xenotransplantation procedure, survived for 21 days before her body rejected her adopted baboon heart. Part of the reason doctors were hopeful the procedure would work is that there’s a dire organ shortage in the US and many others parts of the world. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, about 17 Americans die every day waiting for an organ transplant.

One of the more influential figures of the turn-of-the-millennium internet has died. According to Kotaku, former Something Awful forum moderator Fragmaster has revealed that site founder Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka has died at 45. Fragmaster didn't ask for details surrounding the death, but Kyanka's second wife later said the creator committed suicide.

"Lowtax" launched Something Awful in 1999. It's a mix of blog posts (including comedy and reviews), but it's best known for forums that had an outsized impact on internet culture. It spawned well-known moments like the Zero Wing"all your base" meme and Slender Man, and played an important role in EVE Online's growth (SA's fleet, Goonsquad, has participated in defining battles). It even indirectly fostered 4chan — Chris "Moot" Poole plugged 4chan on SA and was inundated with cat photos, including the legendary "I can haz cheezburger."

Kyanka's last years were problematic. He was accused of domestic violence in 2020, and sold the site to administrator Jeffrey of YOSPOS in October that year. Jeffrey would go on to ban Kyanka from his own site in March 2021. However, there's little doubt that Kyanka's best-known project had a significant effect that will last for years to come.

In the U.S., the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK).