James Doohan 1920 - 2005

The Canadian who played Scotty died today. Because of this I checked out his bio and learned he was a WWII Veteran with the Royal Canadian Artillery, was in the D-Day landing, and was shot 6 times.
Also:

He was given an honorary Degree in Engineering by the Milwaukee School of Engineering where apparently half of the students polled said they were inspired to study engineering by his role in "Star Trek" (1966)

A quite popular phrase to describe the feeling of wanting to be out of a bad situation is "Beam me up, Scotty." This phrase, by the way, was never actually said on the show.