Celebs we lost in 2021

A huge number of famous faces have passed away this year

Robert Downey Sr. (died July 7th, aged 85)

Celebs we lost in 2021 1
Credit: Robert Downey Jr. / Instagram

Filmmaker and actor Robert Downey Sr. died at his home in Manhattan on July 7th after battling Parkinson’s disease for over five years. He was 85.

“Last night, dad passed peacefully in his sleep after years of enduring the ravages of Parkinson’s,” Downey Sr.’s son, Robert Downey Jr., wrote in an Instagram tribute. “He was a true maverick filmmaker and remained remarkably optimistic throughout. According to my step mom’s calculations, they were happily married for just over 2000 years. Rosemary Rogers-Downey, you are a saint, and our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

Downey Sr. served in the army, played minor-league baseball, was a Golden Gloves champion, and off-off-Broadway playwright, all before he was 22 years old. As a director, his best-known work was the 1969 underground film Putney Swope, a satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world. His notable acting credits, on the other hand, include the 1985 action crime film To Live and Die in L.A., the 1997 drama movie Boogie Nights, and the 2000 fantasy comedy flick The Family Man.

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Interesting facts about BTS
  • The group name, “BTS” stands for the Korean expression Bangtan Sonyeondan which translates to “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”. Band member J-Hope said that they chose this name because it represents BTS’s desire “to block out stereotypes, criticisms, and expectations that aim on adolescents like bullets.” But that isn’t the only meaning behind the name. In 2017, BTS said, as part of their new brand identity, that their name would also stand for Beyond the Scene” which extended their name to mean “growing youth BTS who is going beyond the realities they are facing, and going forward.”
  • BTS was originally intended to be a hip-hop group, similar to YG Entertainment’s 1TYM. This was because Big Hit Entertainment CEO Bang Si-hyuk met with RM and was very impressed by his rapping talents. However, Bang Si-hyuk changed his mind and decided that today’s youth needed “a hero who can lend them a shoulder to lean on, even without speaking a single word.”
  • BTS has said that all of the following musicians have inspired their music; Post Malone, Eminem, Seo Taiji and Boys, Nas, Kanye West, Drake, Charlie Puth, Danger, and Queen.
  • The band’s first English-language single, “Dynamite”, was released on August 21st. Its video broke the YouTube record for the most viewed music video premiere, grabbing the attention of three million viewers, and it set a new record for the most viewed video on the first day of release. “Dynamite” is also the first music video on YouTube to surpass 100 million views in less than one day.
  • BTS has been often labeled as “easily the biggest and most successful name in K-pop in the world” that can “do things no other name in their genre can.” Time magazine has gone as far as calling them the “Princes of Pop.”