This Day in History

Steve McQueen dies

On this day in 1980, the actor Steve McQueen, one of Hollywood’s leading men of the 1960s and 1970s, aged 50 dies in Mexico.
 McQueen had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer often related to asbestos exposure in 1979 and was undergoing experimental treatment for cancer. It was later believed that the ruggedly handsome actor, who had an affinity for fast cars and motorcycles, might have been exposed to asbestos by wearing racing suits.
Born on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana he had a troubled youth that included time in reform school and served in the US Marine Corps in the late 1940s. He then studied acting and began competing in motorcycle races. He debuted with a tiny role in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman. McQueen went on to appear in the camp classic The Blob (1958) and gained fame playing a bounty hunter in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which originally aired on CBS from 1958 to 1961.
During the 1960s, McQueen appeared as a cool, loner hero in a list of films that included the Western The Magnificent Seven (1960); The Great Escape (1963); and The Sand Pebbles (1966), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In one of his most popular movies, which featured a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco, 1968’s Bullitt, he played a detective. That same year, the actor was an elegant thief in The Thomas Crown Affair.
McQueen became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors and starred in hit films in the 1970s such as Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway (1972) with Ali MacGraw, to whom McQueen was married from 1973 to 1978; Papillon (1973), with Dustin Hoffman; and The Towering Inferno (1974), with Paul Newman, William Holden and Faye Dunaway.
Tom Horn and The Hunter, both released in 1980, were his final movies.

Magic Johnson, HIV fighter

Also on November 7, in 1991, basketball legend Magic Johnson holds a press conference to announce that he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and is retiring from the LA Lakers. From then on, he said, he would focus on staying healthy and on helping people—especially young people—understand the importance of practicing safe sex. “You think it can never happen to you,” he said, “that it happens only to other people.” But “if it can happen to Magic Johnson, it can happen to anybody.”
In 1991, most people didn’t understand the difference between HIV and AIDS, and they thought that either one was a certain death sentence. When Johnson’s fans and friends heard the news, many were convinced he would die within a year or two. They were stunned and heartbroken. Johnson himself tried to be optimistic, but even he wasn’t sure what the news meant. “I’ll live,” he said. “I won’t die. And if I do die, I’ll be happy. I’ve had a great life.”
Shunned from the basketball court through others’ fear of contagion, Johnson went into business. He built Magic Johnson movie theaters, Starbucks coffee shops, and Fatburger franchises in troubled inner-city neighborhoods. He wrote a book on safe sex.
In 1996, he decided to try another comeback. Teammates and opponents were happy to have him. At age 37 he was heavier and slower than he’d been in his prime but still an intimidating player. He played with the Lakers for 44 games in 1996, and then retired for good. He’s still alive.