CHUCK NORRIS: Dead at 86

Chuck Norris, who parlayed his martial arts skills into a career as a TV and movie actor and best-selling author, has died at age 86. His family announced his passing in a statement saying, “It is with heavy hearts that our family shares the sudden passing of our beloved Chuck Norris yesterday [Thursday] morning. While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace.”

• Carlos Ray “Chuck” Norris was born in Ryan, Oklahoma on March 10th, 1940.
• After a stint in the United States Air Force, Norris won many martial arts championships and later founded his own discipline, Chun Kuk Do.
• He started training celebrities in martial arts and one of them, Steve McQueen, encouraged him to pursue acting.
• Norris’s first credited acting role was in his friend Bruce Lee‘s film The Way of the Dragon. His breakthrough leading role was 1979’s Good Guys Wear Black.
• Norris starred in a string of martial arts action films in the 1980s, with the Missing in Action trilogy about prisoners of war still in Vietnam being his biggest success.
• In 1993 he moved to TV with Walker, Texas Ranger. The show lasted eight seasons and has stayed in syndication since production wrapped up in 2001.
• In 2005 Norris became one of the earliest internet memes when writer Ian Spector started making up “Chuck Norris Facts,” which were outlandish claims about Norris’s abilities as an on screen tough guy. The first one is believed to be “Chuck Norris was once bitten by a king cobra; after ten excruciating minutes, the cobra died.” Norris first sued Spector for copyright infringement when a book of the facts was published in 2008. But Norris later embraced the popularity of the meme and started appearing on TV shows and movies to play off of them.
• Norris was also a best-selling author of seven books.
• Late in his career Norris used his fame in advertising, with his infomercials for Total Gym popping up at all hours of the day on local TV.
• Norris is survived by his wife Gena O’Kelley, his five children and many grandchildren.

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Ariel Newbold

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