We look back on those who died in 2010.
Paul Alberts (64), South African photographer.
Brian Alexander (77), South African comedian also known as the Wandering Hobo.
Malcolm Allison (83), English football player and manager.
Ali Hassan al-Majid (68), Saddam Hussein’s cousin, also known as Chemical Ali, hanged by the Iraqis for poison-gas attacks that killed more than 5 000 Kurds in 1988.
Beryl Bainbridge (77), British novelist.
Thobile Bam (48), ANC member of the provincial legislature in the Eastern Cape and former Umkhonto weSizwe operative.
Ivy Bean (104), British internet personality celebrated as the oldest person in the world on both Facebook and Twitter.
Eugénie Blanchard (114), oldest person in the world at the time of her death.
Albertha Magdalena Bouwer (90), Afrikaans journalist and author, best known for her children’s books.
Robert Byrd (92), the longest-serving senator and congressman in United States history.
Claude Chabrol (80), French film director and founder of cinema’s new wave movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Charlie the Chimpanzee (52), the chain-smoking chimp who lived in Bloemfontein’s Mangaung Zoo.
Bettie Cilliers-Barnard (95), South African abstract artist.
Jill Clayburgh (66), American actress, best known for her performance as Erica in An Unmarried Woman.
Hendrik Coetzee (35), South African kayaker, following an attack by a crocodile in the Congo.
Gary Coleman (42), former child star, who played Arnold Jackson in the American sitcom Diff’rent Strokes.
Ann Colvin (88), anti-apartheid activist and member of the Black Sash.
Bob Courtney (86), Springbok Radio personality.
Bruce Coyne (57), brother of the late Fiona, apparently by his own hand.
Fiona Coyne (45), South African actress and host of the local version of game show The Weakest Link.
Rich Cronin (36), lead singer of pop-rock group LFO, of leukaemia.
Dino de Laurentiis (91), Italian film producer best known for Barbarella, the 1976 remake of King Kong and two Hannibal Lecter films.
Sheena Duncan (77), anti-apartheid activist and leader of the Black Sash.
Blake Edwards (88), American moviemaker who directed The Pink Panther series and The Party.
Herb Ellis (88), American jazz guitarist.
Johan Ferrier (99), last governor and first president of Suriname after it gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975.
Eddie Fisher (85), American singer, formerly husband to Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds.
John Forsythe (92), American actor, appeared in Bachelor Father and Dynasty and was the voice of Charlie in the television show Charlie’s Angels.
Dick Francis (89), British jockey and writer of crime novels set mainly in the world of horseracing.
Hotep Galeta (69), South African jazz pianist and educator.
Miep Gies (100), Dutch humanitarian who hid Anne Frank and her family during World War II and discovered and preserved Anne’s diary after the Franks were arrested.
Paul Gray (38), bassist for American metal band Slipknot, of an accidental morphine overdose.
Bob Guccione (79), founder and former publisher of American Penthouse magazine.
Bertha Gxowa (75), anti-apartheid activist, an organiser of the 1956 women’s march and a member of the 1994 Parliament.
Corey Haim (38), Canadian actor and Hollywood teen idol in the 1980s, of an accidental overdose.
Susanne Hart (83), Austrian-born humanitarian, veterinarian and author from the Lowveld.
Rodney Hartman (71), veteran South African cricket writer and sports journalist.
James “Jimi” Heselden (62), British entrepreneur who bought the Segway company in 2010, of injuries sustained apparently after falling off a cliff while riding one of the motorised standing scooters.
Robert Hodgins (89), British-born South African artist.
Richard Holbrooke (69), American diplomat, ambassador and special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Patrick Hopkins (56), South African journalist and writer.
Dennis Hopper (74), American actor and film director.
Lena Horne (92), American singer, actress and civil rights activist.
Andy Irons (32), champion surfer, born in Hawaii.
Lolly Jackson (53), Congo-born South African businessman, owner of strip-club chain Teazers, murdered in Kempton Park.
Mahomed Jajbhay (52), South African high court judge.
Robbie Jansen (61), Cape jazz musician.
Zheng Ji (110), Chinese biochemist, founder of modern nutrition science in that country and the world’s oldest professor.
Jill Johnston (81), American feminist who wrote Lesbian Nation in 1973 and was a leader of the 1970s lesbian separatist movement.
Lech Kaczynski (60), president of Poland, killed in a plane crash in Russia with his wife, Maria (67), and other high-ranking Polish public figures.
Ruben Kruger (39), former Springbok rugby player, of brain cancer.
Herbert Roy “Tiger” Lance (70), South African Test cricketer from 1962 to 1970, also a first-class hockey and football player.
Tholakele Madala (73), founding judge of the Constitutional Court.
Mark Madoff (46), American businessman, son of fraudster Bernie Madoff.
Zenani Mandela (13), Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter, in a car accident after attending the opening concert of the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Benoît Mandelbrot (85), French-American mathematician, known as the father of fractal geometry.
Joe Matthews (81), ANC and IFP veteran, former deputy security minister and father of Naledi Pandor.
Rue McClanahan (76), American actress, best known as Blanche Devereaux in The Golden Girls.
Bill McLaren (86), rugby commentator for the BBC for more than six decades, known as the “voice of rugby”.
Malcolm McLaren (64), former manager of the Sex Pistols, musician, singer-songwriter and performer.
Alexander McQueen (40), British fashion designer, hanged himself in his wardrobe in his London home.
Fatima Meer (81), academic and writer, founding member of women’s anti-apartheid organisation Fedsaw, led the 1956 women’s march on the Union Buildings.
Busi Mhlongo (62), award-winning virtuoso singer, dancer and composer in a range of South African musical styles.
Retlabusa Mokonyane (23), controversial son of Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane, reportedly by suicide.
Walter Fredrick Morrison (90), American inventor of the Frisbee.
Ezra Ngcukana (55), South African jazz icon.
Leslie Nielsen (84), Canadian-born comic actor best known for his roles in the 1980s comic spoof movies Airplane! and The Naked Gun series.
James Nkambule (37), Mpumalanga politician and member of Cope who blew the whistle on political assassinations in the province, of causes unknown.
Lewis Nkosi (73), South African writer and one of the last remaining voices from the 1950s group of writers from Drum magazine.
Siphiwo Ntshebe (35), South African opera singer.
Paul the Octopus (2), German “psychic” octopus who correctly “predicted” the outcome of all Germany’s games in the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Arthur Penn (88), American film director and producer, directed Bonnie and Clyde.
Lynn Redgrave (67), British actress.
Frances Reid (95), American soap star, played Alice Horton, the family matriarch in Days of Our Lives, for 42 years.
Éric Rohmer (89), French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher, part of the new-wave movement.
JD Salinger (91), reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye.
Juan Antonio Samaranch (89), Spanish sports official and president of the International Olympic Committee from 1980 to 2001.
Modest “Bobbejaan” Schoepen (85), Flemish musician, comedian, actor and founder of his own amusement park, Bobbejaanland, who took his nickname from the song, Bobbejaan Klim die Berg.
Harry Schwarz (85), South African politician, diplomat and lawyer.
Molefi Sefularo (52), South African deputy health minister, in a car accident.
Erich Segal (72), professor of Greek and Latin literature, screenwriter and author of the bestselling novel, Love Story, as well as of the screenplay of the hit movie of the same name.
Marina Semyonova (102), the first Soviet-trained prima ballerina.
Gibson Jama Sibanda (66), founding member of the Zimbabwean opposition party MDC and former president of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions.
Nico Smith (81), Dutch Reformed Church minister and anti-apartheid figure who chose to live in the Pretoria township of Mamelodi during the 1980s.
Ted Sorensen (82), speechwriter to former US president John F Kennedy who helped draft the “Ask not what your country can do for you” speech.
Crispian St Peters (71), British pop singer-songwriter best known for his hits Pied Piper and You Were on My Mind.
Joseph Stein (98), American playwright who wrote Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba.
Patricia “Pat” Stevens (64), American actress best known for her role as Nurse Baker in M*A*S*H.
Matthew Stewardson (35), former Idols and KTV presenter.
Gloria Stuart (100), actress who played Claude Rains’s sweetheart in The Invisible Man and the 100-year-old Rose in Titanic.
Joan Sutherland (83), Australian dramatic soprano opera singer.
Bobbi Sykes (67), Aboriginal rights activist, author and poet.
Shannon Tavarez (11), one of the stars of Broadway’s The Lion King, died of leukaemia.
Eugene Terre’Blanche (71), leader of the right-wing AWB, murdered on his farm in Ventersdorp, allegedly by two of his workers.
Frederick van Zyl Slabbert (86), academic, political analyst and leader of the opposition in the apartheid-era Parliament.
Francisco Varallo (100), Argentine football player and the last surviving participant of the inaugural Fifa World Cup in 1930.
Don van Vliet (69), also known as Captain Beefheart, American musician.
Alfonso “Al” Williamson (79), comic-book artist best known for his work on series such as Star Wars and Flash Gordon.
Charles “Charlie” Wilson (76), Texas congressman whose behind-the-scenes campaign during the Soviet war in Afghanistan become the subject of a book and a movie, Charlie Wilson’s War.
Khoisan X (55), also known as Benny Alexander, South African political activist and former general secretary of the PAC.
Umaru Yar’Adua (58), president of Nigeria.
View more highlights of the year that was in our special report here: