Last Farewells 2013
1. Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first woman prime minister, died of a stroke in London on April 8, at the age of 87. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, in office from 1979 to 1990. A Soviet journalist called her the "Iron Lady," a nickname she enjoyed and which summed up her uncompromising politics and leadership style.
2. Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon, died at his home in Johannesburg on Dec. 5, at the age of 95. Mandela led the country's transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after spending 27 years in prison for his political activities.
3. Irish actor Peter O'Toole, star of the 1962 film classic Lawrence of Arabia, died on Dec. 14, aged 81. The role earned him the first of eight Oscar nominations, while the most recent was for Venus, in 2006.
4. Prince Johan Friso, second son of the former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, died on Aug. 21 after 18 months in a coma following a skiing accident. He was 44. He was hit by an avalanche while skiing in Lech, Austria, in February 2012, and was buried under snow for around 15 minutes before being rescued and resuscitated.
5. Jorge Rafael Videla, de facto president of Argentina from 1976 to 81, died in jail on May 17, aged 87. A senior army commander, he came to power in the military coup that deposed Isabel Peron. In 1985, following the return of democratic government, Videla was convicted of numerous homicides, kidnapping, torture, and other crimes committed during the dictatorship.
6. British novelist Doris Lessing died at her home in London on Nov. 17, aged 94. The oldest person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature - in 2007 when she was 88 - her subjects ranged from politics and race to science fiction. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, drew on life in colonial South Africa where she grew up, was married and divorced twice, and had three children, before leaving to start a new life in England in the 1950s.
7. American actor Paul Walker, best known for his role as Brian O'Conner in the action movie franchise, The Fast and The Furious, died in a high-speed car accident in Los Angeles on Nov. 30, shortly after attending a charity event for victims of Typhoon Haiyan. He was 40.
8. Seamus Heaney, acclaimed by many as the best Irish poet since WB Yeats, died in Dublin on Aug. 30, following a short illness. He was 74. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." I
9. British physiologist Sir Robert Edwards, whose pioneering IVF technique helped bring more than five million children into the world, died on April 10, aged 87. Along with surgeon Patrick Steptoe, Edwards successfully developed the technique of in-vitro fertilization, which led to the birth of the world's first test-tube baby.
10. British biochemist Frederick Sanger, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice, died in hospital in Cambridge, aged 95, on Nov. 19. His work on the structure of the protein insulin led to his 1958 award, while later research into the base sequences of nucleic acids saw him share the 1980 prize.
11. Veteran British broadcaster Sir David Frost died on Aug. 30, aged 74, after suffering a heart attack while on board a cruise ship where he was due to give a speech. After graduating from Cambridge, Frost rose to prominence in the UK in 1962 as the host of a new satirical program, That Was the Week That Was.
12. Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant and ruthless general who led the outgunned Vietnamese to victory first over the French and then the Americans, died in Hanoi on Oct. 4, aged 102.
13. US singer and former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed died from liver disease at the age of 71, on Oct. 27. Reed was considered one of the most influential singers and songwriters in rock music, whose best-known songs included Perfect Day and Walk on the Wild Side.
14. Joan Fontaine, one of the most successful film actresses of the 1940s and 50s, died in California on Dec. 16 at age 96. Fontaine, the younger sister of fellow star Olivia de Havilland, was cast as the lead in Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, Rebecca, opposite Laurence Olivier, before winning an Oscar as a vulnerable wife in the movie Suspicion in 1942.
15. James Gandolfini, the US actor best known for his role as a therapy-seeking mob boss in The Sopranos, died from a heart attack on June 19, while on holiday in Italy. He was 51. He won three Emmy awards for his role as Tony Soprano, a mafia boss struggling to balance his criminal career and family life.
16. Renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe died on March 21, aged 82. One of Africa's best known authors, his 1958 debut novel Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism in Africa, sold over 10 million copies and is the most widely read book in modern African literature. In 2007 he was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in honor of his literary career.
17. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died on March 5, aged 58, following a two-year battle with cancer. The former paratroop commander waged a continual struggle for his socialist ideals, defeating a coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's vast oil wealth to his political advantage.
18. Reeva Steenkamp, a well-known South African model and girlfriend of Paralympic gold medallist Oscar Pistorius, was shot dead in the bathroom of Pistorius's apartment in a gated housing complex in Pretoria in the early hours of Feb. 14, Valentine's Day. She was 29 years old.
Source: ARAB NEWS