A chronology of those who died in 2012 | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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A chronology of those who died in 2012

Oct. 1

— Eric Hobsbawm, 95, one of Britain's most distinguished historians despite retaining an allegiance to the Communist Party that lasted long after many supporters had left in disgust, in London. He had pneumonia.

Oct. 2

— Nguyen Chi Thien,73, a Vietnamese dissident poet who spent nearly 30 years in communist prisons in his native country, in a Southern California after a long bout of lung illness.

Oct. 3

— Robert F. Christy, 96, a former California Institute of Technology professor who helped design the trigger mechanism for the atomic bombs used in World War II, in Pasadena, California of natural causes.

Oct. 5

— Keith Campbell, 58, a prominent British biologist who worked on cloning Dolly the sheep, in Nottingham, England. No cause of death was given.

— Stan Mudenge, 71, an academic and historian who was Zimbabwe's foreign minister for a decade, in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. No cause of death was given but he collapsed before giving a speech.

Oct. 6

— Chadli Bendjedid, 83, the former Algerian president who gave the country a multiparty political system before he was overthrown in a 1992 military coup in Algiers. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 8

Eric Lomax, 93, a former British prisoner of war whose moving tale of wartime torture and forgiveness was turned into a film, in Berwick-upon-Tweed in northern England. No cause of death was given.

— John Tchicai, 76, a Danish saxophonist and pioneer of free jazz in Europe, has died in Denmark. No cause of death was given but Tchicai has been in a coma since suffering a brain hemorrhage in June.

Oct. 9

— Paddy Roy Bates saw, 91 who occupied an abandoned wartime fort in the North Sea and declared it the sovereign Principality of Sealand, with its own passports, flag, anthem and stamps — and himself as its monarch, in Leigh-on-Sea, England. He had Alzheimer's disease.

Oct. 10

— Basil L. Plumley, 92, a renowned career soldier whose exploits as a U.S. Army infantryman were portrayed in a book and the movie "We Were Soldiers," in west Georgia. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 15

— Norodom Sihanouk, 89, the revered former king who was a towering figure in Cambodian politics through a half-century of war, genocide and upheaval, in Beijing where he was being treated for a variety of illnesses, including colon cancer, diabetes and hypertension.

Oct. 17

— Koji Wakamatsu, 76, a Japanese film director who ruthlessly challenged authority with the grotesque and sexual, in Tokyo after being hit by a car earlier in the month.

— Sylvia Kristel, 60, the Dutch actress in the hit 1970s erotic movie "Emmanuelle," that propelled her to international stardom, in the Netherlands. She had cancer.

— Stan Ovshinsky, 89, the self-taught American inventor who developed the nickel-metal hydride battery used in the hybrid vehicle industry, in suburban Detroit of complications from prostate cancer.

Oct. 19

Lincoln Alexander, 90, Canada's first black member of Parliament and former Ontario lieutenant-governor in Hamilton, Ontario. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 20

— E. Donnall Thomas, 92, an American physician who pioneered the use of bone marrow transplants in leukemia patients and later won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine, in Seattle. He had heart disease.

Oct. 20

— Paul Kurtz, 86, who founded an international centre devoted to debunking psychics and UFOs and promoting science and reason over what he viewed as religious myths, in Amherst, New York. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 21

— George McGovern, 90, a proud liberal who argued fervently against the Vietnam war as a Democratic senator and lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon in a landslide just as the Watergate burglary scandal that brought his downfall began, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. No cause of death was given.

— Yash Chopra, 80, a Bollywood movie mogul whose classic love tales made him the Indian film industry's "King of Romance," in Mumbai. He had contracted dengue fever and had kidney ailments.

— Alfred Kumalo, 82, a South African photographer whose work chronicled the brutalities of apartheid and the rise of Nelson Mandela, in Johannesburg of renal failure.

— Antoni Dobrowolski, 108, the oldest known survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp — a teacher who gave lessons in defiance of his native Poland's Nazi occupiers — in Debno, Poland. No cause of death was given.

— William Walker, 99, a Spitfire fighter pilot, whose poem is part of a national monument to his comrades in the Battle of Britain, in London. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 22

— Russell Means, 72, a onetime leader American Indian Movement who called national attention to the plight of impoverished tribes and often lamented the waning of Indian culture, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He had throat cancer.

Means, who died Monday from throat cancer at age 72, helped lead the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee — a bloody confrontation that raised America's awareness about the struggles of Indians and gave rise to a wider protest movement that lasted for the rest of the decade.

Oct. 23

— Wilhelm Brasse, 95, a former Auschwitz prisoner who survived the camp after the Nazis discovered he was a professional photographer and put him to work taking pictures of other prisoners, in Zywiec, Poland. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 25

— Aung Gyi, 93, a senior army officer who served briefly in Myanmar's post-coup military junta but later became a founder of the country's pro-democracy movement, in Yangon of cardiac arrest.

— Jacques Barzun, 104, a pioneering American cultural historian, reigning public intellectual and longtime Ivy League professor who became a bestselling author in his 90s with the acclaimed "From Dawn to Decadence," in San Antonio, Texas. No cause of death was given.

Oct. 26

— Richard Nelson Current, 100, a prolific and award-winning Abraham Lincoln scholar who for decades was a leader in his field and helped shape a more realistic view of the iconic president, in Boston. No cause of death was given.

— Natina Reed, 32, an R&B singer known as a member of the female group Blaque, in Atlanta after being struck by a car.

Oct. 27

— Hans Werner Henze, 86, a German composer whose prolific and wide-ranging work included a wealth of operas and 10 symphonies, in Dresden. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Oct. 29

— Jack Hood Vaughn, 92, whose long list of jobs included serving as director of the Peace Corps, U.S. ambassador to Panama and Colombia, as well as stints for the federal government across Latin America, in Tucson, Arizona of cancer.

— Cordelia Edvardson, 83, a Holocaust survivor and award-winning Swedish journalist who reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for three decades for the daily Svenska Dagbladet, in Stockholm after an undisclosed illness.

— Letitia Baldrige, 86, the White House social secretary during the Kennedy administration who came to be regarded as an authority on etiquette, in Bethesda, Maryland. No cause of death was given.

News from © The Associated Press, 2012
The Associated Press

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