They also served...

Some RIPs:

Vaclav Havel: president, playwright, poet and friend of Lou Reed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/18/vaclav-havel

Joe Simon (standing, with Jack Kirby): "one of the architects of the golden age" of the comic book and co-creator (with Kirby) of Captain America, a WASP superhero, written and drawn by two American Jews, to fight Hitler before America even entered the war.

Get the fucker, Cap!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/joe-simon

Christopher Hitchens: author, essayist, journalist, polemicist, gadfly and "left-wing" intellectual (until he supported the war in Iraq and pissed off a lot of people with more limited defintions of "left" and "right").

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/16/christopher-hitchens-dies-aged-62