December 29, 2014
PARIS (AFP) - From Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Robin Williams, here are some of the notable figures who died in the year just ending:
- 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.
