Richie Havens, the folk singer who is best remembered for being the opening act at the famed 1969 Woodstock Festival, and who had a career of singing songs of hope, protest, and change, died today at the age of 72 of a heart attack, reports his family via NBC News.

The Brooklyn-born artist made an art out of playing folk songs on his acoustic guitar, a latter-day Woody Guthrie if you will, but with a bit more bite and a slight hand in social commentary. Two songs have immortalized him, both shown in the Woodstock film which showcased his appearance – “Handsome Johnny” and “Freedom.” Both songs spoke of the polarizing and opinionated hotbed of controversy from many sides and points of view about the Vietnam War, which was splintering The United States at the time. With a simple strumming method which still had much energy and verve to it, Havens was a highlight at the festival, which at its peak was attended by over 250,000 people.

Storm Thorgerson, one of the key figures in album art graphic design, and who created some of the most iconic album covers in rock history, including ones for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, died today at the age of 69. The artist died peacefully after having battled cancer for a long time, according to The Guardian.

The English-born Thorgerson had a storied career with the many album covers he created, but the signature one that may be the standout is the simple, yet stark and highly memorable triangular prism, emitting a rainbow of colorful lines set against a jet black background which made up the cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, an album which became one of the biggest sellers of all time and just recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.

One of the most interesting and dynamic things about the Star Wars franchise is that it is an absolute reservoir of trivia and tidbits that its fans eat up and spit out in a rabid sense. It’s a virtual geek’s paradise of information. Like The Beatles, there aren’t many other pop cultural institutions that are so drawn and quartered to the last minute detail by its minions of followers.

So that said, we are sad to report that Richard LeParmentier, who appearing in the first Star Wars film, has died. LeParmentier is best known for playing Admiral Motti in the Star Wars: A New Hope and who was also the first character shown on screen being force-choked by Darth Vader for his defiant behavior towards him. Motti – who put his confidence behind the Empire’s new “technological terror,” the Death Star – was a character who actually had the balls and audacity to and stand up to the Darth Lord of the Sith’s authority, creating a sequence which made the iconic cinematic villain exclaim one of the most memorable lines of the franchise. When Motti tells Vader that his “sad devotion to that ancient religion” hasn’t help him retrieve the stolen Death Star plans, the Sith Lord responds by Force-choking the cocky Admiral, calmly stating, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Jonathan Winters, who made an art out of improvisational comedy and had a successful career for decades with it, died on Thursday of natural causes in his home in Montecito, CA. He was 87.

Winters was like a comedic chameleon, effortlessly able to suss up physical caricatures of all types and stripes almost at will; he could instantaneously become stereotypical figures at once, sometimes at a rapid-fire clip, but he may be best remembered as the character of Maude Frickert to first generations of audiences who discovered him, the at- first-glance innocuous-looking grandmother who then had a tongue that could cut through steel if pressed. Winters positively relished that role and played it with full comedic aplomb as his quick wit solidified the character and audiences howled across the country.

Annette Funicello, the former Mouseketeer who gained fame during the 1960s with a series of Beach Party films with fellow co-star and heartthrob of the era singer Frankie Avalon, died today after complications from multiple sclerosis, according to USA Today. She was 70 years old.

Funicello was part of the very first wave of kids who got their start in the acting profession on The Mickey Mouse Club, a program that has run in various incarnations for decades since its premiere in the 1950s, and has also showcased the starts of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling. After that program, the child actress became a sort of symbol and icon for teenagers across the country with the various versions of the Beach Party films, innocuous vehicles which focused on teenagers in idyllic, light comedic situations, in which song and dance numbers punctuated the somewhat pedestrian narratives. In an early 1960s that was just on the crest of becoming a radical, rebellious decade, filled with unrest and political, social and artistic changes, Funicello’s Beach Party movies represented the tail end of the harmless on the surface, light hearted, safe haven of the 1950s and how teenagers were mainly represented and viewed by the public.