LIST: Notable deaths in 2019
Toni Morrison. Image: PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP
From Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison to iconic fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, here are some of the notable deaths of 2019:
January
– 21: Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala, 28, was killed when the plane he was flying in crashed into the Channel.
– 26: French film composer Michel Legrand, who won three Oscars and scored such classics as “Yentl” (1983), died aged 86.
February
– 7: Veteran British actor Albert Finney, winner of three Golden Globes, passed away aged 82.
– 16: Bruno Ganz, the Swiss actor best known for his role as Adolf Hitler in “Downfall” (2004), died from cancer aged 77.
– 19: Haute couture legend Karl Lagerfeld, long-running artistic director of Chanel, died aged 85.
– 21: Stanley Donen, U.S. director of such beloved Hollywood classic as “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), was 94 when he died.
– 28: U.S.-German composer and conductor Andre Previn, winner of 10 Grammys and four Oscars, died aged 89.
March
– 4: U.S. actor Luke Perry died after a stroke at the age of 52.
– 4: Frontman of British rave band The Prodigy, Keith Flint, was found dead aged 49.
– 29: Pioneering female French film director Agnes Varda passed away aged 90.
April
– 17: Ex-Peruvian president Alan Garcia, 69, killed himself as the police were about to arrest him on bribery charges that he denied.
May
– 13: Hollywood legend Doris Day died aged 97.
– 16: Ieoh Ming Pei, Chinese-American architect of iconic modern structures such as the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, was 102 years old when he passed away.
– 20: Austria’s three-time Formula One world champion Niki Lauda died aged 70, eight months after a lung transplant.
– 22: British children’s author and illustrator Judith Kerr died aged 95.
June
– 1: Star Spanish football striker Jose Antonio Reyes, 35, was killed in a car crash.
– 15: Italian film-maker and opera director Franco Zeffirelli died aged 96.
– 17: Islamist Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, ousted in 2013 after one year of divisive rule, died in prison aged 67.
– 17: American heiress and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt passed away aged 95.
July
– 6: Brazilian musician and songwriter Joao Gilberto, a pioneer of bossa nova, died aged 88.
– 16: South African singer Johnny Clegg died at 66 years old from cancer.
– 17: Andrea Camilleri, the Italian novelist who created Sicilian detective Montalbano, passed away aged 93.
– 22: Former Chinese premier Li Peng, a hardliner in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, died at 90.
– 25: The world’s oldest president, Tunisian Beji Caid Essebsi, died aged 92, just ahead of the end of his first mandate.
August
– 5: Author Toni Morrison, the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, died aged 88.
– 10: U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, 66, was found dead in jail from an apparent suicide while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking girls for sex.
– 12: Ivory Coast singer DJ Arafat died in a motorbike crash aged 33.
– 16: U.S. actor Peter Fonda, best known for “Easy Rider” (1969), died from lung cancer aged 79.
September
– 3: German photographer Peter Lindbergh, credited with launching the careers of supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, died aged 74.
– 6: Zimbabwe’s autocratic leader Robert Mugabe, ousted by the military in 2017 after 37 years in power, died aged 95.
– 9: Pioneering Swiss-born documentary photographer Robert Frank passed away at 94.
– 19: Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the first leader to be toppled in the 2011 Arab Spring, died in exile in Saudi Arabia aged 83.
– 26: Jacques Chirac, French president from 1995 to 2007, died aged 86.
– 30: Celebrated American opera singer Jessye Norman died in hospital aged 74.
October
– 17: Alicia Alonso, Cuban ballet legend who taught well into her 90s, passed away at the age of 98.
– 17: U.S. Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings died at 68 and was the first African-American lawmaker to lie in state in the Capitol building.
– 22: Belgian Paralympic champion Marieke Vervoort, suffering from a degenerative muscle disease, ended her life through euthanasia aged 40.
– 26: Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in his late 40s, blew himself up during a raid by U.S. special forces in Syria.
November
– 24: Clive James, the Australian broadcaster, writer, critic and poet, died aged 80 after a long battle with leukemia.
– 30: One of the leading conductors to emerge from the former Soviet Union, Latvian Mariss Jansons, 76, died of cardiac arrest at his home in Saint Petersburg.
December
– 8: Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker passed away aged 92.
– 14: Danish-French actress Anna Karina, muse of New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, died of cancer aged 79.
– 21: French fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro, died aged 86.
– 23: Algeria’s military chief, General Ahmed Gaid Salah, died from a heart attack aged 79. NVG
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