Rats

On this day seven years ago, we were visited for the last time by the worst baseball pitcher, biggest Willie McCovey fan, and least-likely-to-ever-actually-kick-the-ball field-goal kicker of his generation, not to mention a certain shortstop-playing, World War II fighter-piloting, world famous hockey player of a dog.

In one of the saddest coincidences imaginable, Peanuts' beloved creator, Charles Schulz, died of a heart attack at 9:45 p.m. on February 12, 2000, the night before his final strip appeared in newspapers across the country. Schulz had reluctantly announced his retirement the previous December due to the fact that he had cancer and his chemotherapy had made it impossible for him to continue. In the end, Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years without interruption and appeared in over 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries.