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Maudet Christian (b. 1904-08-04 / d. 1994-07-08) alias Christian-Jaque
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61
Born 1962-12-28. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
Konstantin Evgenievich Smeshko (Константи́н Евге́ньевич Смешко́) was a Russian military commander who was deputy chief of the Engineer Troops (starting in 2017) and a major general. He previously commanded the engineering troops of the Far Eastern Military District and those of the Southern Military District from 2012 to 2017. In 2015, he was responsible for cleaning the area of explosive objects on the territory of the Chechnya and the Ingushetia. For that, he was awarded the honour "Mastery in clearing of (to the Party of) mines in the Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia". He later also operated the demining near Deir ez-Zor, Syria in 2017. Killed in an unknown location allegedly due to the Himars strike in one of the multiple attacks carried out in December. His funeral ceremony was held in Moscow in last days of December 2024
60
Born 1964-07-13. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Unknown
Pascal Hervé was a French road racing cyclist. He competed in the individual road race at the 1992 Summer Olympics and raced as a professional from 1994 to 2001. At the time of his death Pascal resided in Montreal, where he was the co-owner of a training center that helps develop local athletes and amateurs of all ages. In between seasons, he held cycling trips in various locations such as the Pyrénées, the Vosges, the Alps, and, most recently, the region of Charlevoix. Hervé died at the age of 60. The cause of his death is unknown, although he reportedly underwent surgery last September for a stomach tumour. Hervé was expelled from the 1998 Tour de France in the Festina affair. Hervé tested positive for EPO after the prologue in 2001 Giro d'Italia.
86
Born 1937-12-28. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Ratan Naval Tata was an Indian industrialist and philanthropist. He served as the chairman of Tata Group and Tata Sons from 1991 to 2012 and he held the position of interim chairman from October 2016 to February 2017. In 2000, he received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in India, followed by the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second highest civilian honour, in 2008.
88
Born 1935-12-11. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Neil R. Grabois was an American mathematician and university administrator. He held positions as the dean, provost, and chair of the department of mathematical sciences of Williams College; as the thirteenth President of Colgate University, from 1988 to 1999; as Vice President at the Carnegie Corporation in New York; and as the dean of the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, where he served from 2010 until his departure in 2013. He died in his sleep.
87
Born 1937-03-16. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
John Hayden Woods FRSC was a Canadian logician and philosopher. He latterly held the position of Director of the Abductive Systems Group at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and was The UBC Honorary Professor of Logic. He was also affiliated with the Group on Logic, Information and Computation within the Department of Informatics at King's College London where he held the Charles S. Peirce Visiting Professorship of Logic position from 2001. Woods was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, life member of the Association of Fellows of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and President Emeritus of the University of Lethbridge.
47
Born 1976-06-04. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Murder
Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was a Russian opposition leader, anti-corruption activist and political prisoner.He founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in 2011. He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights. In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised after being severely poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. He accused President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service. In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while hospitalised in Germany. Following his arrest, mass protests were held across Russia. The next month, Navalny's suspended sentence was replaced with a prison sentence of over 2+1⁄2 years detention, and his organisations were later designated as extremist and liquidated. In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional nine years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial described as a shame by Amnesty International. Following the rejection of his appeal, Navalny was transferred to a high-security prison in June. In August 2023, he received another sentence of 19 years on extremism charges. In December 2023, Navalny went missing from prison for almost three weeks. He re-emerged in an Arctic Circle corrective colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. In 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died, which subsequently sparked protests in both Russia and various other countries. Accusations against Putin's government in connection with his death have been made by many Western governments and international organisations.
86
Born 1936-09-29. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Silvio Berlusconi (/ˌbɛərlʊˈskoʊni/ BAIR-luu-SKOH-nee; Italian: [ˈsilvjo berluˈskoːni]) was an Italian media tycoon, politician, and billionaire who served as the prime minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 to his death in 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. With a net worth of US$6.8 billion as of June 2023, Berlusconi was the third-wealthiest person in Italy at the time of his death. The state funeral of Berlusconi was held on 14 June 2023.
73
Born 1949-02-20. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Accident
Ivana Maria Trump (née Zelníčková) was a Czech-American businesswoman, media personality, socialite, fashion designer, author, and model. Ivana lived in Canada in the 1970s before relocating to the United States and marrying Donald Trump in 1977. She held key managerial positions in The Trump Organization as vice president of interior design, as CEO and president of Trump's Castle casino resort, and as manager of the Plaza Hotel. Ivana and Donald Trump were prominent figures in New York society throughout the 1980s. The couple's divorce, finalized in 1992, was the subject of extensive media coverage. Following the divorce, she developed her own lines of clothing, fashion jewelry, and beauty products which were sold on QVC London and the Home Shopping Network. She wrote an advice column for Globe called "Ask Ivana" from 1995 through 2010 and published several books including works of fiction, self-help, and the autobiography Raising Trump. Ivana died of blunt impact injuries to the torso after falling down stairs at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
84
Born 1937-05-15. Domain:Politics. Cause of death:Age
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Albright was the first woman to hold the post. Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Albright immigrated to the United States after the 1948 communist coup d'état when she was eleven years old. Her father, diplomat Josef Korbel, settled the family in Denver, Colorado, and she became a U.S. citizen in 1957. Albright graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 and earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1975, writing her thesis on the Prague Spring. She worked as an aide to Senator Edmund Muskie from 1976 to 1978, before serving as a staff member on the National Security Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski. She served in that position until 1981, when President Jimmy Carter left office. After leaving the National Security Council, Albright joined the academic faculty of Georgetown University in 1982 and advised Democratic candidates regarding foreign policy. Following the 1992 presidential election, Albright helped assemble President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. She was appointed United States ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, a position she held until elevation as secretary of state. Secretary Albright served in that capacity until President Clinton left office in 2001. Albright served as chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a consulting firm, and was the Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in May 2012. Albright served on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Albright died from cancer in Washington, D.C., at the age of 84.
61
Born 1960-04-07. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Murder
Yvan Colonna is a Corsican nationalist convicted for assassination. He is the son of Jean-Hugues Colonna, a former member of the National Assembly for the Socialist Party elected in the Alpes-Maritimes and a recipient of the French Légion d'honneur. On the 6th of February 1998 at 9:05 pm, the prefect of Corsica, Claude Érignac, was assassinated as he exited a theatre onto rue Colonna-d'Ornano in Ajaccio. He was shot receiving three 9 mm bullets in the neck, and died shortly thereafter. The weapon was shown to be one of the weapons stolen in the attack on the Gendarmerie Nationale station in Pietrosella on 6 September 1997. An enquiry followed, which resulted in the arrest of several militants. Interrogation pointed towards Yvan Colonna as the culprit. Police went to question him, but he had already fled. This sparked the biggest manhunt in French history, and Colonna was thought to have left the country, possibly for South America. However, an infrared camera set in the mountains of Corsica, near Vico as surveillance of a bergerie, a traditional Corsican stone hut, yielded evidence that Colonna was hiding here. He was arrested on the 4th of June 2003. Charged with assassination and being a member of a terrorist organisation, he was arraigned before the court of special cases in Paris from 12 November 2007. The court was in session until 12 December 2007. During his internment awaiting trial, he has repeatedly claimed innocence, and that he is the victim of unfair press coverage, convicting him before trial. On 13 December 2007, Colonna was pronounced guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He has since appealed. On 20 June 2011, Colonna's conviction was upheld on appeal. He was serving his life sentence in the Toulon-La Farlčde detention centre where he was assassinated by an other inmate. On 2 March 2022, Colonna was attacked in prison by Franck Elong Abé, an Islamist 36-year-old Cameroonian inmate, reportedly for "disrespecting Muhammad". In response, violent unrest broke out across Corsica. After spending three weeks in a coma at a hospital, he died of his wounds on 21 March 2022, at the age of 61.
81
Born 1940-07-30. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair was an English entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After spending several years as assistant editor of Instrument Practice, Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics in 1961, where he produced the first slim-line electronic pocket calculator in 1972 (the Sinclair Executive). Sinclair later moved into the production of home computers and produced the Sinclair ZX80, the UK's first mass-market home computer for less than Ł100, and later, with Sinclair Research, the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. The latter is widely recognised by consumers and programmers for its importance in the early days of the British and wider European home computer industry, as well as helping to give birth to the British video game industry. Among other honours, Sinclair was knighted in 1983 for his contributions to the personal computer industry in the UK. Sinclair was also recognized for several commercial failures, including the Sinclair Radionics Black Watch wristwatch, the Sinclair Vehicles C5 battery electric vehicle, and the Sinclair Research TV80 flatscreen CRT handheld television set. The failure of the C5 along with a weakened computer market forced Sinclair to sell most of his companies by 1986. Through 2010, Sinclair concentrated on personal transport, including the A-bike, a folding bicycle for commuters, and the Sinclair X-1, a revised version of the C5 electric vehicle but which never made it to market. Sinclair died in London following an illness related to cancer that he had for over a decade. He was 81 years old.
24
Born 1997-05-24. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Suicide
Olivia Rose Podmore was a New Zealand professional racing cyclist. She represented her country at the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2018 Commonwealth Games. Podmore died in Cambridge on the evening of 9 August 2021, aged 24. Her death is a suspected suicide and has been referred to the coroner. Hours before her death, she posted on Instagram about the pressures of high-performance sport. Podmore's funeral was held in Christchurch on 13 August 2021. Her death came less than 24 hours after the 2020 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, and as the New Zealand Olympic team returning from Tokyo were required to undergo 14 days in managed isolation and quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a second memorial service is planned to be held in Cambridge on 27 August 2021.
88
Born 1933-05-03. Domain:Science (Physics style). Cause of death:Age
Steven Weinberg was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. Weinberg died at age 88, at a hospital in Austin, where he had been treated for several weeks.
75
Born 1945-09-18. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Suicide
John David McAfee (/ˈmćkəfiː/ MAK-ə-fee) was a British-American computer programmer, businessman, and two-time presidential candidate. In 1987 he wrote the first commercial anti-virus software, founding McAfee Associates to sell his creation. McAfee resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining stake in the company. McAfee was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in a prison cell near Barcelona shortly after his extradition to the U.S. was authorized by Spain. On April 30, 2012, McAfee's property in Orange Walk Town, Belize, was raided by the Gang Suppression Unit of the Belize Police Department. At that time, McAfee was in bed with a girlfriend. A GSU press release stated that McAfee was arrested for unlicensed drug manufacturing and possession of an unlicensed weapon. He was released without charge. In 2012, Belize police spokesman, Raphael Martinez, confirmed that McAfee was neither convicted nor charged, only suspected. In January 2014, McAfee in Canada claimed that when the Belizean government raided his property, it seized his assets, and that his house later burned down under suspicious circumstances. On August 2, 2015, McAfee was arrested in Henderson County, Tennessee, on one count of driving under the influence and one count of possession of a firearm while intoxicated. In July 2019, McAfee and members of his entourage were arrested while his yacht was docked at Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, on suspicion of carrying high-caliber weapons and ammunition. They were held for four days before being released. On August 11, 2020, McAfee fabricated a hoax that he was arrested in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic, after refusing to replace a lace thong with a more effective face mask. McAfee later posted a picture of himself to Twitter with a bruised eye, claiming that it occurred during this arrest. However, the photo of the alleged arrest shows an officer with the German word for "police" on their uniform, so it could not have been an arrest in Norway. The Augsburg Police later confirmed McAfee unsuccessfully attempted to enter Germany on that day, but was not arrested. On November 12, 2012, Belize police began to search for McAfee as a "person of interest" in connection to the murder of American expatriate Gregory Viant Faull. Faull was found dead of a gunshot wound on November 11, 2012, at his home on the island of Ambergris Caye, the largest island in Belize. Faull was a neighbor of McAfee's. In a November 2012 interview with Wired, McAfee said that he had always been afraid police would kill him and refused their routine questions; he evaded the Belizean authorities. Belize's prime minister, Dean Barrow, called McAfee "extremely paranoid, even bonkers." McAfee fled Belize when he was sought for questioning concerning the murder. The magazine Vice accidentally gave away McAfee's location at a Guatemalan resort in early December 2012, when a photo taken by one of its journalists accompanying McAfee was posted with the EXIF geolocation metadata still attached. While in Guatemala, McAfee asked Chad Essley, an American cartoonist and animator, to set up a blog so that McAfee could write about his experience while on the run. McAfee then appeared publicly in Guatemala City, where he unsuccessfully sought political asylum. On December 5, 2012, McAfee was arrested for illegally entering Guatemala. Shortly afterward, he was placed under arrest, and a board to review McAfee's plea for asylum was formed. The committee denied his asylum, so he was taken from his holding facility to a detention center in order to await deportation to Belize. On December 6, 2012, Reuters and ABC News reported that McAfee had two minor heart attacks in a Guatemalan detention center and was hospitalized. McAfee's lawyer stated that his client had not suffered heart attacks, but had instead suffered from high blood pressure and anxiety attacks. McAfee later said he had faked the heart attacks while being held in Guatemala, to buy time for his attorney to file a series of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation to Belize, thus hastening the government's decision to send him back to the United States. On December 12, 2012, McAfee was released from detention in Guatemala, and deported to the United States. On November 14, 2018, the Circuit Court in Orlando, Florida, refused to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit against McAfee for Faull's death. In January 2019, McAfee announced that he was on the run from U.S. authorities, and living internationally on a boat following the convening of a Grand Jury to indict him, his wife, and four of his 2020 Presidential campaign workers on tax-related charges. At the time the IRS had not independently confirmed the existence of these charges. On October 5, 2020, McAfee was arrested in Spain at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for tax evasion. The June indictment, which was unsealed upon his arrest, alleged he earned millions of dollars from 2014 to 2018, but failed to file income tax returns. On October 6, 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint that further alleged that McAfee and his bodyguard promoted certain initial coin offerings in a fraudulent cryptocurrencies pump-and-dump scheme. According to the SEC, McAfee presented himself as an impartial investor when he promoted the ICOs, despite the fact that he was allegedly paid $23 million in digital assets in exchange for the promotions. On March 5, 2021, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York formally indicted McAfee and an executive adviser on these charges. McAfee was incarcerated in Spain, pending extradition to the United States. On June 23, 2021, the Spanish National Court authorized the extradition of McAfee to the United States, for criminal charges in Tennessee. McAfee died a few hours later. The New York extradition case was still pending in a lower Spanish court.
90
Born 1930-04-17. Domain:Society. Cause of death:COVID
Rémy Julienne was a French driving stunt performer, stunt coordinator, assistant director and occasional actor. He was also a rallycross champion and 1956 French motorcross champion. He was a veteran of over 1,400 films. Notable large film projects in which he arranged stunts, consulted or manufactured special stunt cars include The Italian Job and six James Bond films, five of which were directed by John Glen and three with his sons Dominique and Michel. His career suffered a setback in 1999, when a stunt went wrong during the filming of Taxi 2, written and produced by Luc Besson and directed by Gérard Krawczyk, causing the death of a cameraman Alain Dutartre and the serious injury of the cameraman's assistant. Julienne accused the production company of taking short cuts in safety equipment, which Besson denied. The case wound up on September 11, 2007, with Julienne receiving an 18-month suspended jail sentence and a €13,000 fine. The prosecutor accused Julienne of "not taking all the necessary measures for the security of the stunt in question" and notably to have "neglected the speed calculations of the car and the length of the jump". Besson's firm EuropaCorp was initially cleared of all charges in 2007. Instead, Julienne, was held solely responsible for the botched scene. But the Paris Court of Appeal reversed the ruling in June 2009, and ordered EuropaCorp pay €100,000. Julienne's jail sentence was reduced to six months, and his fine was reduced from €13,000 to €2,000 but he was required to pay the Dutartre family €50,000 in court costs. EuropaCorp producers were criticised for rejecting Julienne's offers to trial the car scene in question for a price, which the stuntman claims would have prevented the tragedy.
78
Born 1942-01-09. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Lee Kun-hee was a South Korean businessman who served as chairman of the Samsung Group from 1987 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2020, and is credited with the transformation of Samsung to the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, televisions, and memory chips. He was also a member of the International Olympic Committee. He was the third son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul. With an estimated net worth of US$21 billion at the time of his death, he was the richest person in South Korea, a position that he had held since 2007. He was convicted twice, once in 1996 and subsequently in 2008, for corruption and tax evasion charges, but was subsequently pardoned on both instances. In 2014, Lee was named the world's 35th most powerful person and the most powerful Korean by Forbes's list of the world's most powerful people along with his son Lee Jae-yong.
65
Born 1955-01-26. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Cancer
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen was an American musician, songwriter, producer, and inventor. He was the main songwriter and lead guitarist of the American rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded in 1972 with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Mark Stone, and singer David Lee Roth. He was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard. In 2012, he was voted number one in a Guitar World magazine reader's poll for "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Van Halen struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He began smoking and drinking at the age of 12, and he stated that he eventually needed alcohol to function. He entered rehabilitation in 2007, and later shared in an interview that he had been sober since 2008. Suffering from lingering injuries from past, high-risk, acrobatic stage performances and crashes, Van Halen underwent hip replacement surgery in 1999, after his chronic avascular necrosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1995, became unbearable. He began receiving treatment for tongue cancer in 2000. The subsequent surgery removed roughly a third of his tongue. He was declared cancer-free in 2002. He blamed the tongue cancer on his habit of holding guitar picks in his mouth, stating in 2015: "I used metal picks – they're brass and copper – which I always held in my mouth, in the exact place where I got the tongue cancer. ... I mean, I was smoking and doing a lot of drugs and a lot of everything. But at the same time, my lungs are totally clear. This is just my own theory, but the doctors say it's possible." In 2012, Van Halen underwent an emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis. Recovery time required due to the surgery led to postponement of Van Halen tour dates scheduled in Japan. Van Halen was later hospitalized in 2019 after battling throat cancer over the previous five years.
68
Born 1952-04-01. Domain:Philosophy. Cause of death:Age
Bernard Stiegler was a French philosopher. He was head of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which he founded in 2006 at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He was also the founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, Ars Industrialis, and the founder in 2010 of the philosophy school, pharmakon.fr, held at Épineuil-le-Fleuriel. His best known work is Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. He has been called “the most important French theorist to come after Derrida, and one of the most important thinkers worldwide about the effects of digital technology”. Between 1978 and 1983 Stiegler was incarcerated for armed robbery, first at the Prison Saint-Michel in Toulouse, and then at the Centre de détention in Muret. It was during this period that he became interested in philosophy, studying it by correspondence with Gérard Granel at the Université de Toulouse-Le-Mirail. His transformation in prison is recounted in his book, Passer ŕ l'acte (2003; the English translation of this work is included in the 2009 volume, Acting Out).
33
Born 1987-01-12. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Accident
Naya Marie Rivera was an American actress, model, and singer. She began her career as a child actress and model, appearing in national television commercials before landing the role of Hillary Winston on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Royal Family at the age of four (1991–1992). For the part she received a nomination for a Young Artist Award. After a series of recurring television roles and guest spots as a teenager, Rivera received her breakthrough role as an adult as Santana Lopez on the Fox television series Glee (2009–2015). For the role she received nominations for numerous awards. She was signed to Columbia Records as a solo artist in 2011 and released a single in 2013, "Sorry", featuring rapper Big Sean. On July 8, 2020, Rivera was declared a missing person after her four-year-old son, Josey, was found alone in Rivera's rented boat at Lake Piru. On July 13, it was announced that a body had been found at Lake Piru. The sheriff's department captain, speaking with the Los Angeles Times, said the body had been discovered floating in the lake by divers when the search resumed in the morning; the body was confirmed to be Rivera's at a press conference held later that day.
72
Born 1947-08-25. Domain:Music. Cause of death:Age
Keith Tippett was a British jazz pianist and composer. According to AllMusic, Tippett's career "..spanned jazz-rock, progressive rock, improvised and contemporary music, as well as modern jazz for more than half-a-century". He held " an unparalleled place in British contemporary music," and was known for "his unique approach to improvisation". Tippett appeared and recorded in many settings, including a duet with Stan Tracey, duets with his wife Julie Tippetts (née Driscoll), solo performances, and as a bandleader, and appeared on King Crimson albums. In 2018, he had a heart attack and pneumonia but returned to performing in 2019.
71
Born 1948-04-18. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Yasumasa Kanada was a Japanese computer scientist most known for his numerous world records over the past three decades for calculating digits of π. He set the record 11 of the past 21 times. Kanada was a professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan until 2015. From 2002 until 2009, Kanada held the world record calculating the number of digits in the decimal expansion of pi – exactly 1.2411 trillion digits. The calculation took more than 600 hours on 64 nodes of a HITACHI SR8000/MPP supercomputer. Some of his competitors in recent years include Jonathan and Peter Borwein and the Chudnovsky brothers.
75
Born 1944-04-04. Domain:Business. Cause of death:Age
Pierre-Alain baron De Smedt became the new president of the Federation of Belgian Enterprises (FEB) in 2011, succeeding Thomas Leysen. Until then he was vice-president of the same organization. De Smedt was a commercial engineer and graduated in economic and financial sciences from the ULB. From 2006 to 2011, De Smedt was also chairman of Febiac, the umbrella organization within the car industry and organizer of the Brussels Motor Show. Previously, he was IT Director at Solvay and Director at Bosch Belgium, as well as Managing Director at Volkswagen. As operations director at Renault, he was number two, under former Renault chairman Louis Schweitzer. He was also chairman of Autolatina, a Brazilian joint venture between Volkswagen and the American Ford. He also held directorships at Belgacom, the Antwerp car importer Alcopa, Avis and the National Portfolio Company. He was chairman of the board at Deceuninck, producer of PVC window profiles.
87
Born 1932-08-12. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Henry Howland Crapo was an American-Canadian mathematician who worked in algebraic combinatorics. Over the course of his career, he held positions at several universities and research institutes in Canada and France. He is noted for his work in matroid theory and lattice theory.
74
Born 1944-03-24. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Pneumonia
Ronald Lee Ermey was an American actor, voice actor, drill instructor and Marine. He achieved fame for his role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Ermey was also a United States Marine Corps staff sergeant and an honorary gunnery sergeant. Ermey was often typecast in authority figure roles, such as Mayor Tilman in the film Mississippi Burning, Bill Bowerman in Prefontaine, Sheriff Hoyt in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Jimmy Lee Farnsworth in Fletch Lives, a police captain in Se7en, plastic army men leader Sarge in the Toy Story films, Lt. "Tice" Ryan in Rocket Power, a prison warden in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, and John House in House. On television, Ermey hosted two programs on the History Channel: Mail Call, in which he answered viewers' questions about various military issues both modern and historic; and Lock n' Load with R. Lee Ermey, which concerned the development of different types of weapons. He also hosted GunnyTime on the Outdoor Channel. Ermey died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, from complications related to pneumonia on the morning of April 15, 2018, twenty-two days after his 74th birthday. His funeral was held in Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, January 18, 2019, where his ashes are buried.
82
Born 1935-10-29. Domain:Directing. Cause of death:Age
Isao Takahata (高畑 勲, Takahata Isao) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and producer. In 1985, he co-founded Studio Ghibli with his long-time collaborative partner Hayao Miyazaki and Miyazaki's collaborators Toshio Suzuki and Yasuyoshi Tokuma. Takahata earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of anime films, among them Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994), and My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999). His last film as director was The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), which was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Takahata had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and died at a hospital in Tokyo, at the age of 82. On May 15, 2018, a farewell ceremony for Takahata was held at the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. Hayao Miyazaki publicly spoke for the first time about Takahata's death, saying "I was convinced that Paku-san [Takahata's nickname] would live to be 95 years old, but he unfortunately passed away. It makes me think my time is also limited...Thank you, Paku-san.
91
Born 1927-02-20. Domain:Science (Math style). Cause of death:Age
Jacobus "Koos" Verhoeff was a Dutch mathematician, computer scientist, and artist. He is known for his work on error detection and correction, and worked on information retrieval. He has also held exhibitions of his mathematically inspired sculptures. He was best known for his check-digit Verhoeff algorithm, which is based on the dihedral group of order 10. He was the father of Tom Verhoeff, also a mathematician and computer scientist.
96
Born 1921-06-10. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
Oskar Gröning was a German SS Unterscharführer who was stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charge of the personal property of arriving prisoners. On a few occasions he witnessed the procedures of mass killing in the camp. After being transferred from Auschwitz to a combat unit in October 1944, Gröning surrendered to the British at the end of the war; his role in the SS was not discovered. He was eventually transferred to Britain as a prisoner of war and worked as a farm labourer. Upon his return to Germany, he led a normal life, reluctant to talk about his time in Auschwitz. However, more than 40 years later, he decided to make his activities at Auschwitz public after learning about Holocaust denial. He openly criticised those who denied the events that he had witnessed and the ideology to which he had subscribed. Gröning was notable as a German willing to make public statements about his experience as an SS soldier, which were self-incriminating and which exposed his life to public scrutiny. In particular, he confessed to stealing jewellery and currencies from gas chamber victims for his personal benefit. In September 2014, Gröning was charged by German prosecutors as an accessory to murder in 300,000 cases, for his role at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His trial began in April 2015, after the court had ruled that, at the age of 93, he was still fit to stand trial. The trial was held in Lüneburg, Germany. On 15 July 2015, he was found guilty of facilitating mass murder and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Following a number of unsuccessful appeals against the prison sentence, Gröning died on 9 March 2018 while hospitalized before he was set to begin his sentence.
52
Born 1965-11-05. Domain:Performing. Cause of death:Suicide
Jo Min-ki was a South Korean actor. He is best known for his roles in the television series Love and Ambition, East of Eden, Queen Seondeok, and Flames of Desire. He was also a noted photographer and published two books and held solo exhibitions,. In addition since 2010 he was an assistant professor at Cheongju University. Following high-profile accusations of sexual misconduct from numerous students, Jo was found dead at an underground parking lot in Seoul in an apparent suicide.
49
Born 1968-10-02. Domain:Sport. Cause of death:Cancer
She was a professional tennis player from the Czech Republic. She played a serve and volley game, an increasingly rare style of play among women during her career. She won the women's singles title at Wimbledon in 1998 and was runner-up in three previous Grand Slam tournaments. Novotná also won 12 Grand Slam women's doubles titles (completing the Career Grand Slam twice), four Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, and three Olympic medals. She reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2 in 1997, and held the No. 1 ranking in doubles for 67 non-consecutive weeks. From 2000 to 2002, Novotná was a commentator for Wimbledon for the BBC. From 2006 onwards, Novotná played the Ladies' Invitation Doubles tournament at Wimbledon; winning it in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2014.[28][circular reference] In 2010, her partner was Martina Navratilova. she helped Navratilova through her treatment for breast cancer. Novotná resided in Florida until 2010 when she returned to her native Czech Republic, building a house in the village of Omice, near her hometown of Brno, where she lived with her partner, former tennis player Iwona Kuczyńska. She died of cancer at the age of 49.
87
Born 1930-11-16. Domain:Society. Cause of death:Age
He was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva ("the beast") and il capo dei capi (Sicilian: 'u capu di 'i capi, "the boss of bosses"). Riina was held in a maximum-security prison in Parma with limited contact with the outside world in order to prevent him from running his organization from behind bars. Over US$125,000,000 in assets were confiscated from Riina, and his vast mansion was also acquired by the crusading anti-Mafia mayor of Corleone in 1997. The mansion was subsequently converted into a police office and opened in 2015. In total, Riina was given 26 life sentences and served his sentence in solitary confinement. Riina died one day after his 87th birthday, while in a medically induced coma after two operations in the prison unit of the Maggiore Hospital in Parma. The specific cause of death was not revealed. At the time of his death, he was still considered to be the head of the Cosa Nostra according to a magistrate. Riina was refused a public funeral by the church and Archbishop Michele Pennisi; he was privately buried in his hometown of Corleone.