Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Benazir Bhutto

بینظیر بھٹو

Pakistan

1953 – 2007 (54 years old)

Pakistani politician who made history in 1988 as the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority nation, serving twice as Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Garhi Khuda Bakhsh (Sindh), Pakistan

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Arts & Music

7

Oscar Peterson

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson

Canada

1925 – 2007 (82 years old)

Canadian jazz piano titan celebrated as the 'Maharaja of the Keyboard', world-renowned for his dazzling speed, flawless blues articulation, and celebrated trio recordings.

Mississauga, Canada

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2

Nils Liedholm

Sweden

1922 – 2007 (85 years old)

Swedish playmaker and manager affectionately known in Italy as 'Il Barone', who won four Serie A titles as a player with AC Milan and captained Sweden in the 1958 World Cup final.

Cuccaro Monferrato, Italy

2 Full Record →

🕯️ 2,480

Al Oerter

Alfred Adolf Oerter Jr.

United States

19 September 1936 – 1 October 2007 (71 years old)

Alfred Adolf 'Al' Oerter Jr. was an American track and field titan who became the first athlete in history to win the gold medal in the same individual event at four consecutive Olympic Games (Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960, Tokyo 1964, Mexico City 1968). Remarkably, he entered none of the four Olympics as the world record holder or favorite, yet set an Olympic record in every single one.

Fort Myers, Florida, United States

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8

🕯️ 330

Colin Steele McRae

Great Britain

1968 – 2007 (39 years old)

Scottish rally driver who became the youngest World Rally Champion in 1995, famed worldwide for his flat-out, maximum-attack driving style.

Lanark, Great Britain

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Literature & Poetry

5

Resistance & Human Rights

Driss Chraïbi

إدريس الشرايبي

Morocco

1926 – 2007 (80 years old)

Pioneering Moroccan author who detonated modern North African Francophone literature with his explosive 1954 debut novel 'The Simple Past' (Le Passé simple), challenging patriarchal despotism and colonial hypocrisy.

Casablanca, Morocco

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9

🕯️ 940

Lucie Aubrac

Lucie Bernard (Lucie Aubrac)

France

29 June 1912 – 14 March 2007 (94 years old)

Iconic French history teacher and resistance fighter who co-founded the Libération-Sud network and led daring armed commando assaults to liberate imprisoned resistance comrades from Gestapo prisons in Lyon.

Issy-les-Moulineaux, France

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Humanitarian & Peace

8

🕯️ 1,890

Abbé Pierre

Henri Antoine Grouès

France

5 August 1912 – 22 January 2007 (94 years old)

Abbé Pierre (Henri Grouès) was a French Roman Catholic priest, WWII Resistance fighter, and deputy who founded the international Emmaüs movement in 1949 to combat homelessness and poverty. During the deadly winter of 1954, his famous radio broadcast 'Insurrection of Goodness' mobilized the French nation to build emergency shelters, making him France's most beloved moral icon for decades.

Esteville, Seine-Maritime, France

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3

Clay Regazzoni

Gianclaudio Giuseppe Regazzoni

Switzerland

1939 – 2006 (67 years old)

Beloved Swiss Ferrari Formula One driver 'Clay' who won five Grands Prix, helped Scuderia Ferrari win three World Constructors' Championships, scored Williams' first-ever F1 victory, and pioneered motorsport for paraplegics.

Porza (Lugano), Switzerland

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🕯️ 2,760

Ferenc Puskás

Puskás Ferenc (Purczeld)

Hungary

1 April 1927 – 17 November 2006 (79 years old)

Ferenc Puskás was a prolific Hungarian forward whose thunderous left-foot strikes and captaincy guided the legendary 'Mighty Magyars' through a 31-match unbeaten run, winning Olympic gold in 1952. Defecting after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he joined Real Madrid at age thirty-one, scoring 242 goals in 262 games and winning three European Cups.

Budapest, Hungary

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Resistance & Human Rights

8

🕯️ 2,740

Red Auerbach

Arnold Jacob Auerbach

United States

20 September 1917 – 28 October 2006 (89 years old)

Arnold Jacob 'Red' Auerbach was a legendary basketball coach and executive who constructed the Boston Celtics dynasty, winning nine NBA championships as head coach (including eight consecutive from 1959 to 1966) and sixteen total as coach and general manager. Famous for lighting his trademark 'victory cigar' on the bench when a win was assured, he broke major racial barriers in the NBA.

Washington, D.C., United States

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17

🕯️ 1,290

Anna Politkovskaya

Анна Степановна Политковская

United States

30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006 (48 years old)

Anna Politkovskaya was a celebrated Russian investigative journalist, writer, and human rights defender whose courageous reporting for Novaya Gazeta exposed war crimes, torture, and state-sponsored atrocities during the Second Chechen War. Despite enduring arrests, mock executions, and poisoning attempts, she unmasked authoritarian abuses until she was assassinated in her Moscow apartment building in October 2006.

Moscow, Russia

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🕯️ 2,050

Bob Mathias

Robert Bruce Mathias

United States

17 November 1930 – 2 September 2006 (75 years old)

Robert Bruce 'Bob' Mathias was an American multi-sport prodigy who became the youngest Olympic decathlon champion in history in 1948 at age seventeen, just four months after taking up the ten-event discipline. At Helsinki 1952, he became the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic decathlon title, winning by a record margin of 912 points before serving four terms in the US House of Representatives.

Fresno, California, United States

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Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Pasha

Literature & Poetry

15

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Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Pasha

نجيب محفوظ

Egypt

11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006 (94 years old)

Preeminent Egyptian literary giant and first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1988), whose monumental Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk) and Children of Gebelawi captured the alleys and soul of Egypt over seven decades.

Giza (Cairo), Egypt

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Arts & Music

2

Bismillah Khan

उस्ताद बिस्मिल्लाह ख़ान

British India

1916 – 2006 (90 years old)

Legendary Indian classical musician who elevated the shehnai from a modest wedding folk instrument to the premier concert classical stage, awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2001.

Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), India

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Arts & Music

7

Cheikha Rimitti

الشيخة ريميتي (سعدية الغيزانية)

Algeria

1923 – 2006 (83 years old)

Fierce and legendary Algerian vocalist acclaimed as the 'Grandmother of Raï' (Godmother of Raï), who defied social conventions for six decades to sing raw, uncensored songs of female desire, poverty, and liberation.

Val-de-Marne, France

7 Full Record →