Ronnie Peterson (14 February 1944-11 September 1978) was a hero of mine when I was growing up, in part because we shared a birthday. To this day he is Sweden's most successful race car driver in Formula 1, even though he never won the world championship.

He died on the Monday morning following the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, from an brain embolism caused by a small globule from his marrow traveling up to his brain. I remember that I heard about the accident on Sunday evening, but all they said was that he had two broken legs and was conscious, which didn't sound so bad, so I was surprised to hear he'd died when I came home from school on Monday. Many years later I read his wikipedia entry, and found out that his wife Barbro killed herself in December of '87.