January 26: basketball legend Kobe Bryant
Shock wave on January 26 when the news of the death of American star Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash near Los Angeles, at the age of 41, was announced.
Five-time NBA champion with the Lakers, he died along with eight other people, including one of his daughters, Gianna.
The man nicknamed "Black Mamba" was one of seven players to have scored more than 30,000 points in a career.
Retired from the prosecution since 2016 after twenty seasons of touching the heights of world basketball as few have done before him, Bryant is the only one to have his two jerseys, at numbers 8 and 24, hanging from the ceiling of the Staples Center, in the company of other legends of the franchise, such as Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Shaquille O'Neal.
Basketball legend Kobe Bryant, who died on January 26, won 5 NBA league titles, all with the Los Angeles Lakers, and played 18 times in 20 years at the All Star Games.
© Lucy Nicholson, Reuters
January 31: the "queen of suspense" Mary Higgins Clark
American Mary Higgins Clark was one of the world's best-selling writers.
She died at the age of 92 on January 31, surrounded by her family.
Born in New York, in the Bronx, on December 24, 1927, into a modest family of Irish descent, Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark says she caught the handwriting virus at the age of 7.
Family tragedies will convince her that the worst can always happen and it is this moment when everything changes that she likes to describe in her books.
As a little girl, she lost her father at the age of 10.
Adult, she lost her husband, she was only 35 years old and five children.
After a difficult start to her career, she managed to string together the bestsellers.
Mary Higgins Clark has written some fifty books with some 100 million copies, including over 80 million in the United States, since her first big hit in 1975, "The Watch House".
Author Mary Higgins Clark (left) at the 16th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on May 1, 2011 in Los Angeles, California.
© David Livingstone, AFP
February 5: Hollywood's Last Sacred Monster Kirk Douglas
His chin dimple and crooked smile were as legendary as his films: actor Kirk Douglas, icon of Hollywood's golden age, died on February 5 at the age of 103.
The American actor has become a legend of American cinema for his role in the film "Spartacus".
Despite his miserable childhood, or perhaps because of it, this Jewish ragpicker son who fled Russia had eyes only for the cinema.
After enlisting in the Navy during World War II, he landed small roles before finally meeting success with a role of fierce boxer in "The Champion".
A great seducer and committed actor, over the course of his long career, he will make a hundred films ... without winning any Oscar.
He will have to wait until 1996 to win an honorary Oscar for all of his work.
Actor Kirk Douglas arriving to receive an award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival during a gala fundraiser in his honor, July 30, 2006. © Phil Klein, Reuters
February 25: Hosni Mubarak, the raïs who reigned
over Egypt for
thirty
years
Former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, 91, died on February 25 at the Galaa military hospital in Cairo.
In his youth, he planned to devote his life to the military.
Instead, he ruled the country with an iron fist from 1981 to 2011, before being overthrown in the "Nile Revolution".
The popular uprising of 2011 is suppressed in blood.
He was imprisoned for six years, sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity and conspiring to kill demonstrators.
He was finally acquitted in 2017. Flags at half mast, cannon shots, Egypt returned him military honors the day after his death.
Hosni Mubarak, pictured here in 2011, ruled Egypt from 1981 to 2011. © Khaled Desouki, AFP
March 24: Cameroonian saxophonist and singer Manu Dibango
Cameroonian music giant, singer and saxophonist born Emmanuel N'Djoké Dibango, better known as Manu Dibango, died on March 24.
The Cameroonian artist was swept away at the age of 86 by the coronavirus.
The musician will have crossed the ages, the styles, and the "supports": 78 turns, vinyl, CD, digital, the discography of the legend of the jazz tells by itself a whole history of the music of post-war and of the decolonization.
Emmanuel N'Djoke Dibango, known as Manu Dibango, saxophonist and Franco-Cameroonian world jazz singer, during his concert on June 29, 2018 at the Ivory Abidjan hotel.
© Sia Kambou, AFP
March 31: Pape Diouf, Franco-Senegalese football personality
Pape Diouf sadly became on March 31, 2020 the first official victim of Covid-19 in Senegal.
President Macky Sall paid tribute to a "great committed leader and [a] gray eminence of football".
First a journalist in the 1980s, he then became a successful agent from the 1990s, dealing with the interests of big names in football such as Joseph-Antoine Bell, Marcel Desailly, Basile Boli, William Gallas, Samir Nasri or Didier Drogba, among other players.
Estimated leader of OM from 2005, Pape Diouf was one of the major players in French football, renowned for his passes with his Lyon counterpart Jean-Michel Aulas, and his high-level language.
The former president of the Olympique de Marseille Pape Diouf after the announcement of his candidacy for mayor of Marseille on February 4, 2014 © Anne-Christine Poujoulat, AFP
May 12: The monument of French cinema Michel Piccoli
Sacred monster on screen, very modest in life, actor Michel Piccoli has died at the age of 94.
When asked what he thought of the expression "sacred monster", Michel Piccoli replied "monster, I accept, sacred, that worries me a little. Let's say monster ... points of suspension".
After a career of nearly sixty years, the French comedian has embodied darkly extravagant characters as well as seducers upset by "the things of life".
With him turns a page of French and even European cinema, as well as an era: that of the Thirty Glorious Years, the films of Sautet and Buñuel, meals that drag on for hours and men discussing cigarettes.
French actor Michel Piccoli at a ceremony honoring American director Frederick Wiseman, during the 71st Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2014 at Lido di Venezia.
© Gabriel Bouys, AFP
July 6: Ennio Morricone, the maestro with 500 film scores
The best-known and most prolific film music author died at the age of 91 in a Roman clinic from a fall.
Born in Rome in 1928, Ennio Morricone rose to prominence in the early 1960s by composing scores for films by his childhood friend Sergio Leone.
The famous Italian composer leaves more than 500 songs including the famous soundtracks of the films "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" or "Once Upon a Time in the West".
He refused to be reduced to these few successes.
It must be said that his unique style, an atypical mix of heady melodies and unusual arrangements based on whistles and various noises, has raised him to the top of the most demanded film music composers, in Italy, in Europe and in Europe. Hollywood, where he had refused to go into exile, preferring to stay in Rome, his city of heart.
The Italian composer Ennio Morricone on July 3, 2017 in Rome TIZIANA FABI AFP / Archives
July 28: the ardent defender of women Gisèle Halimi
Lawyer, politician, writer and activist, Gisèle Halimi was much more for the feminist cause.
Died at the age of 93, she had fought throughout her life to defend the legalization of abortion and the criminalization of rape.
Born July 27, 1927 in La Goulette, Tunisia, into a poor, Jewish family, she broke free from the patriarchal order very early on by going on hunger strike at the age of 10 because she refused. to perform household chores from which his brothers are exempt.
Her first feminist victory before many others.
A committed lawyer, she became known in particular during the emblematic Bobigny trial in 1972, where she defended a minor tried for having aborted following rape.
On the occasion of this media trial, the general public discovers this woman with the always impeccable appearance who makes quote an areopagus of literary and scientific personalities who came to denounce a lawsuit from another age.
Some plead for the icon of the feminist struggle to join Simone Veil at the Panthéon.
French lawyer Gisèle Halimi on November 14, 2003 in Paris Jack GUEZ AFP / Archives
September 23: Juliette Gréco, free and committed artist
The great lady of French song, Juliette Gréco, bowed out on September 23 at the age of 93.
A friend of poets and musicians, she alone embodied the spirit of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Over the years, she toured extensively abroad, retaining the same convictions and the same political commitments.
The interpreter of "Undress me" has survived time and fashions.
Young singers have written him songs in his latest albums such as Olivia Ruiz, Benjamin Biolay, Abd Al Malik or Miossec.
"Passion, fight, love and intense fun", said the singer to sum up her life.
The singer Juliette Gréco during a concert at the "Printemps de Bourges", April 24, 2015 GUILLAUME SOUVANT AFP / Archives
October 31: The unforgettable secret agent Sean Connery
Seven-time James Bond, British actor Sean Connery died on October 31 at the age of 90 in the Bahamas.
Born in the greatest poverty of a suburb of Edinburgh, Sean Connery knows many odd jobs before becoming an actor.
It was by taking on the role of 007 for the first time in "Dr No" in 1962, that he embraced success.
A long career followed, crowned with numerous awards including an Oscar, two Bafta and three Golden Globes.
In 1989, People magazine named him "sexiest man alive", while he was happily turning 60.
He retired in 2003, remaining immensely popular.
In 2013, he was voted Americans' favorite British actor.
Actor Sean Connery on August 25, 2008 in Edinburgh Ed JONES AFP / Archives
November 26: "The hand of God" and football legend Diego Maradona
At the age of 12, Diego Maradona dreamed aloud at the microphone of Argentine TV: "I have two dreams: to play the World Cup with Argentina, then to win it."
He accomplished them.
The Argentine legend died on November 25 from cardiac arrest.
The “Pibe de oro” or “golden kid” was for many the greatest Argentinian player of all time.
Under the colors of the national team for seventeen years (1977-1994), the legendary number 10 scored 50 goals in 115 matches.
On the ground, the artist fascinates, in the private, the worried character.
His cocaine addiction is the reason for his career.
Soiled by scandals, under a two-year suspension for a new positive test in 1994, he officially left the world of football, at age 37, on his birthday.
From rowdy statements to detoxification cures, it multiplies health problems.
But for Argentines and football lovers, the legend is still there.
Diego Maradona greets the audience on stage, July 5, 2017 in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples © Carlo Hermann AFP
December 2: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, reformer of France from 1974 to 1981
Figure of French political life, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing died on December 2 of Covid-19, at the age of 94.
Elected to the Élysée Palace in May 1974 at the age of 48, he became the youngest French president since Louis Napoléon-Bonaparte.
Incarnation of the center-right, he breathed new life into power by carrying out a number of reforms such as lowering the majority to 18 years, legalizing abortion or the creation of a State Secretariat for Status of Women, entrusted to journalist Françoise Giroud.
A convinced European, he is also a man of letters.
In 2003, he was elected to the French Academy, obtaining a valuable place with the "Immortals".
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing answers journalists' questions during a press conference on June 26, 1980 at the Elysee Palace in Paris - AFP / Archives
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR