Died at 58 years old: comparatively too soon

The Hour-GlassBeing 58 years old, nearly 59, it’s compelling to flip the hour glass and reflect on those whose lives spanned 58 years and no more.


Marcus Aurelius  Roman emperor, Stoic philosopher – natural causes

Edna Vincent St. Millay  poet – heart attack

James Joyce  Irish writer – perforated ulcer

George Harrison  Beatle  “All Things Must Pass” – lung cancer

Hugo Chavez  President of Venezuela – cancer

Gertrude Bell  English writer, traveller, spy – apparent overdose of sleeping pills

Paul Atkinson (guitarist)  The Zombies – liver and kidney disease

Vidkun Quisling  collaborator Axis forces WWII – executed by firing squad

Richard Burton  actor  –  brain hemorrhage

Kit Carson  frontiersman – abdominal aortic aneurysm

Tim Russert  TV journalist – heart attack

Barry White – musician – kidney failure

Niccolo Machiavelli   historian, philosopher  – unspecified  – He was in declining health the last year of his life.

Andy Warhol  artist – post operative cardiac arrhythmia after routine gallbladder surgery

Gustave Flaubert  French writer – suffered from venereal disease most of his life, died of a cerebral hemorrhage

Sun Yat-sen  Chinese revolutionary – liver cancer

Bertolt Brecht   German poet, playwright – heart attack

Charles Dickens   English novelist – stroke

Paddy Chayefsky  American playwright, screenwriter  –  cancer

George B. McClellan  American Civil War general  – Democratic presidential nominee 1864 – heart attack

Pompey  military and political leader, late Roman Republic  – stabbed to death

R. J. Reynolds, Jr.  son of founder of tobacco company, businessman and philanthropist – oxygen overdose, suffering from emphysema

Alan Watts  writer, interpreter of Eastern Philosophy –  heart failure

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