Short answers, pulled from the story.
Eddie Cochran was born on the 3rd of October 1938, in Albert Lea, Minnesota, to Alice and Frank R. Cochran. His family was of Scottish descent and originally from Oklahoma. The city of Albert Lea renamed a street in his honor on the 10th of June 2022.
Eddie Cochran died on the 17th of April 1960, Easter Sunday, at St. Martin's Hospital in Bath, England. He was fatally injured the previous night when the taxi carrying him, Gene Vincent, Sharon Sheeley, and tour manager Patrick Tompkins crashed into a concrete lamppost at Rowden Hill in Chippenham, Wiltshire. He was 21 years old.
Paul McCartney performed Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock" for John Lennon on the 6th of July 1957, at St. Peter's Church. Lennon was so impressed that he invited McCartney to join his skiffle group the Quarrymen, which later became the Beatles. McCartney had specifically chosen the song because he believed knowing its chords and lyrics would impress Lennon.
Cochran is credited as one of the first rock-and-roll artists to use an unwound third guitar string to bend notes up a whole tone. He passed this technique on to British guitarist Joe Brown, who then used it to secure significant session work. Cochran also pioneered multitrack recording, distortion, and overdubbing techniques, even on his earliest singles.
Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, both friends of Cochran, were killed in a plane crash on the 3rd of February 1959. Cochran was badly shaken by their deaths and recorded a tribute song called "Three Stars", written by disc jockey Tommy Dee, within two days of the tragedy. His voice broke during the spoken passages about Holly and Valens, and he developed a premonition that he too would die young.
Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2017. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 84 on its 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Albert Lea, Minnesota renamed a street Eddie Cochran Street in 2022, and Bristol, England, honored him with a blue plaque at the Bristol Hippodrome on the 23rd of May 2023.