JANUARY
Phil Spector, who revolutionized 1960s pop music with his “Wall of Sound” but who was jailed for murder in 2009, dies on Jan. 16, aged 81.
A week later, Larry King, the braces-sporting American talk host who interviewed everyone who was anyone, dies at 87.
Photo: AFP
FEBRUARY
Veteran Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, star of The Sound of Music, dies on Feb. 5 aged 91.
George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state who helped end the Cold War but contributed to conflict by advocating pre-emptive strikes, passes the next day at 100.
Photo: AFP
Argentina’s former president Carlos Menem dies at 90 on Feb. 14.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the last great poet of the Beat Generation, passes eight days later aged 101.
Papua New Guinea’s “father of the nation” Sir Michael Somare, its first prime minister, dies aged 84 on Feb. 26.
MARCH
Reggae legend Bunny Wailer passes away on March 2 aged 73.
South African Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, 72, dies on March 12.
Madagascar’s former leader Didier Ratsiraka, instigator of a socialist revolution on the Indian Ocean island, dies aged 84 on March 28.
APRIL
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, the 99-year-old husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, dies on April 9.
American rapper DMX, 50, dies the same day. Bernie Madoff, mastermind of the largest financial scam in history, dies in jail in North Carolina on April 14 aged 82.
Two days later British actress Helen McCrory — who starred in Peaky Blinders, Harry Potter and The Queen — dies of cancer aged 52.
Chad’s President Idriss Deby, 68, dies from battle wounds the day after his election for a sixth term on April 20.
Legendary German soprano Christa Ludwig, 93, passes away on April 24.
Fashion designer Alber Elbaz, of Lanvin fame, dies in Paris aged 59 from Covid-19 the same day.
MAY
Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, of unknown age, is killed during infighting between rival factions of the extremist group on May 19.
JUNE
“Africa’s Gandhi” Kenneth Kaunda, 97, Zambia’s founding president, dies on June 17.
Former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after the World Trade Center attack of 2001, dies aged 88.
JULY
Richard Donner, director of the first Superman movie and as well The Goonies, dies on July 5 aged 91.
Two days later much-loved Bollywood veteran Dilip Kumar passes away at 98.
AUGUST
The leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, 48, is killed by French forces on Aug. 17.
Former Chadian president Hissene Habre dies a week later from COVID-19 at 79. He was serving a life sentence in Senegal for crimes against humanity.
Charlie Watts, the drummer of the Rolling Stones, dies aged 80 on Aug. 24.
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, dies on Aug. 29. The Belgian was 79.
The same day Lee “Scratch” Perry, the wildly influential Jamaican singer and producer of Bob Marley, dies aged 85.
SEPTEMBER
Renowned Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, 96, who scored the 1964 film Zorba the Greek and resisted military dictatorship in Greece, dies on Sept. 2. Actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Breathless and one of postwar French cinema’s biggest names, dies aged 88 on Sept. 6.
Michael Williams, who played Omar in the cult US television series The Wire, dies the same day of an accidental overdose aged 54 in New York.
The founder of Peru’s Maoist Shining Path rebel group, Abimael Guzman, 86, dies in prison on Sept. 11.
Algeria’s longest-serving president Abdelaziz Bouteflika dies on Sept. 17 aged 84.
OCTOBER
Kenya’s world record-holding runner Agnes Tirop, 25, is stabbed to death at her home on Oct. 13. Her husband is later charged with her murder.
Colin Powell, a US war hero and the first Black secretary of state whose reputation was sullied by the invasion of Iraq, dies from complications from COVID-19 aged 84 on Oct. 18.
NOVEMBER
FW de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa, dies aged 85 on Nov. 11. He freed Nelson Mandela from prison and later shared a Nobel Peace Prize with him.
Zambia-born bestselling novelist Wilbur Smith, 88, who chronicled dramatic adventures on the African continent, passes away two days later.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would