To the man that made a hard soul like Matt Damon's Will Hunting actually cry (NSFW, language)...
Williams touched a lot of souls, and a lot of hearts, and a lot of funny bones in his too short 63 years on this planet. "On this planet" is a nice way of mentioning Williams, who got his break as Mork from Ork, on the show "Mork and Mindy", a performance that was literally from another world.
I heard about the news in a text message from my sister. From there, I immediately went to Twitter, Facebook, Google and everywhere else to get my own confirmation, which was pretty much unnecessary since, if you hear it enough times on FB and Twitter, it has to be true.