Don Cornelius, the host and founder of influential music show Soul Train, was found dead this morning in his Los Angeles home. He was 75 years old.

Bil Keane, the creator of America's worst cartoon for sober people/best cartoon for high people "Family Circus," has died. Keane's anodyne, willfully unfunny and baffling cartoons led writer Daniel Radosh to ask, in reaction to the deaths of noted artists and celebrities, "Why Not Bil Keane?" God has finally listened to you, Daniel.

Heavy D, the overweight lover, Mr. Big Stuff, head of Heavy D & The Boyz, and a dude pretty much beloved by everyone everywhere, has died at the age of 44, according to TMZ and other outlets. He reportedly collapsed at home in Beverly Hills this afternoon, was rushed to the hospital, and died a short time after.

Never retire: almost six weeks to the day after delivering his last cranky essay on 60 Minutes, writer and commentator Andy Rooney is dead of complications following minor surgery. He was 92, and had delivered exactly 1,097 of his trademark on-air bitch sessions.

Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia, died of colon cancer in New York on Friday. He was in his 80s. It's thought that "reputed conservative" Prince Nayef will be the new heir.

Derrick Bell, a leading racial thinker and law school professor, has died at the age of 80. Besides being an accomplished author, founder of critical race theory, and the first tenured black law professor at Harvard, Bell was famous for quitting jobs on principle: as a young man, he quit a job at the Justice Department rather than resign from the NAACP; and later, he gave up a teaching job at Harvard in order to protest their minority hiring record. From the NYT:

Steve Jobs, who as Apple's founder and twice CEO revolutionized the use of computers, phones, and music players before popularizing digital tablets, died today after a seven year battle with pancreatic cancer and related ailments. He was 56.

Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., who served as president and then chairman of television ratings powerhouse A.C. Nielsen Company, died Monday from complications related to Parkinson's disease. He was 92.

Gawker friend Aaron Jamison—who approached his own terminal cancer with a wry and sometimes morbid sense of joy, starting with his plan to sell ads on his own cremation urn to help defray the costs of his medical bills—passed away last weekend. His wife Kristin has written an appreciation of her husband that can be read here. Aaron's blog, in all of its inspirational glory, can still be found here.

Remember the "15 minute rule" in college where if a professor wasn't there 15 minutes after class was supposed to start, you were allowed to leave? Well, some students at University of Pennsylvania got the extreme version of that, when their class was canceled because the professor died.

Tom Wilson, the illustrator who invented the hapless Ziggy character for American Greetings, passed away Friday from complications due to pneumonia. He was 80.

Edgar Meyer Cullman Sr., a legendary cigar magnate who ran the General Cigar Company, manufacturer of Macanudos and a wide range of cigars, died on Sunday at the age of 93. His Times obituary is great, and he comes from a long line of tobacconists:

Civil rights crusader Stetson Kennedy died this weekend at his home in Florida at the age of 94. Kennedy, a lifelong Floridian, author, and investigative journalist, infiltrated and exposed the Ku Klux Klan back when that really meant something.

Gene Leonhardt, whose odd threats in defense of his daughter Jessi "Slaughter" spawned several internet in-jokes, has died of a heart attack at 53. In March, he was arrested for punching Jessi, who now lives in foster care. [via @Beschizza]

In 1964, two black teenagers disappeared as they were hitchhiking in Mississippi. Two months later, their bodies turned up in a river. From the NYT:

As pleasing as it is to imagine that the wheel on Wheel of Fortune has existed forever, before even the game show, like the monolith in 2001, it was in fact designed by a human: Ed Flesh, who died on Friday at age 79 in California. Flesh was something of a game show specialist—besides Wheel of Fortune he was also the art director for Jeopardy!, The $25,000 Pyramid and Name That Tune—but he also designed the sets for talk shows and soap operas during his multi-decade career. He leaves behind David Power, his partner of 44 years. [THR]

If you thought Sam Mazzola, the "exotic-animal owner" whose bear killed one of its trainers last year, had already used up his lifetime allotment of tabloid headlines, think again! Mazzola was found dead on Sunday, "wearing a leather mask with the eyes and mouth zipped shut and a two-piece metal sphere covering his head." Apparently, he choked on a sex toy.

Sherwood Schwartz, the TV producer that created two of the most oddly enduring sitcoms in TV history, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island has died at 94. He passed away last night in his sleep.

Nick Charles, one of the first sports journalists on cable news, died at age 64 on Saturday following a battle with bladder cancer. Charles anchored Sports Tonight on CNN for 17 years before moving to Showtime in 2001. [CNN]

Peter Falk, the actor who won four Emmys for playing endearingly exasperating detective Columbo on the hit TV series by the same name, died Thursday night at his Beverly Hills home. He was 83. In recent years he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, but a cause of death was not announced. Here's "one more thing" to remember him by.