Notable deaths in 2014
- By Azhar Khan -
- Dec 29, 2014
January
– 11: Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, 85, in a hospital near Tel Aviv after eight years in a coma.
– 20: Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, 80, in Bologna, after a long illness.
– 27: US folk singer Pete Seeger, 94, at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
– 28: Oscar-winning Austrian actor Maximilian Schell, 83, after a sudden illness.
February
– 2: Oscar-winning US actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, in his New York apartment of a drug overdose.
– 10: Shirley Temple Black, the iconic American child star of the 1930s, 85, in her California home.
– 25: Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, 66, in Mexico of a heart attack.
March
– 8: Belgian avant-garde opera director Gerard Mortier, 70, at home in Brussels after battling cancer.
– 13: Sierra Leone’s former wartime president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, 82, at his Freetown home.
April
– 6: Veteran US actor Mickey Rooney, 93, after a long illness.
– 7: Peaches Geldof, the socialite daughter of Band Aid founder Bob Geldof, at her home in Britain, 25, of a heroin overdose.
– 17: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel-winning Colombian author, 87, at home in Mexico City.
– 21: Win Tin, one of the founders of Myanmar’s pro-democracy opposition, 84, in a hospital in Yangon.
– 29: British actor Bob Hoskins, 71, in hospital following a bout of pneumonia.
May
– 25: General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last communist leader, 90, in a Warsaw hospital.
– 28: Celebrated African-American author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou in her home in North Carolina, 86.
July
– 7: Alfredo Di Stefano, the Real Madrid legend regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, aged 88.
– 7: Former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, 86, who helped end the Cold War as the Soviet Union’s last foreign minister after a long illness.
– 11: Tommy Ramone, born Tamas Erdelyi in Budapest and the last original member of punk band The Ramones, of cancer in New York at the age of 65.
– 13: US conductor and composer Lorin Maazel, 84, at his Virginia home from pneumonia.
– 13: South African Nobel Prize-winning writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer, 90, at home in Johannesburg.
– 16: US blues legend Johnny Winter, 70, in a hotel near Zurich.
August
– 11: US Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams, 63, of suicide at his home in California.
– 12: Legendary US actress Lauren Bacall, 89, after suffering a stroke at her home in New York.
– 19: American photojournalist James Foley, 40, the first of a series of Westerners to be beheaded by Islamic State jihadists.
– 24: Richard Attenborough, British actor, producer and director, aged 90 after a long illness.
September
– 7: Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko “Shirley” Yamaguchi, 94, of heart failure at her home in Tokyo.
– 12: Ian Paisley, the former Northern Irish first minister and firebrand Protestant leader, aged 88, after a long illness.
October
– 4: Haiti’s former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, of a heart attack, aged 63.
– 20: Total oil boss Christophe de Margerie, 63, in a plane crash in Moscow.
– 28: Zambian President Michael Sata, 77, in London where he was receiving medical treatment.
November
– 5: French gypsy guitarist, Manitas de Plata, 93, in a retirement home in the south of France.
– 19: Mike Nichols, the Oscar-winning US film director, 83, of cardiac arrest.
– 20: Spain’s Duchess of Alba, who had more titles than any other aristocrat on earth, in her Seville palace, aged 88, after pneumonia.
– 26: Famed Lebanese singer and actress Sabah, 87, in the hotel where she lived outside Beirut.
– 27: Australian cricket batsman, Phillip Hughes, 25, from injuries sustained when he was hit by a ball in a domestic game in Sydney.
– 27: British detective writer P. D. James, at home in Oxford at the age of 94.
December
– 5: Queen Fabiola of Belgium, 86, widow of King Baudouin, after a long illness.
– 22: Joe Cocker, the legendary British singer of blues and rock, of lung cancer aged 70 at his home in Crawford, Colorado.
Source: AFP