Dead Celebrity Alert

Wellington Zoo’s oldest resident, Nippy the gibbon, has died. Nippy has lived at Wellington Zoo since he arrived as a one-year-old in December, 1949. …

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GRAZ, Austria: Austrian media say the country’s oldest known woman has died at age 110.

Public broadcaster ORF has reported that Hermina Dunz died Saturday in the southern city of Graz.

The city’s mayor, Siegfried Nagl, said Dunz celebrated her 110th birthday Feb. 24, and that she was in remarkably good shape for a woman of her age. …

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The oldest African elephant in an American zoo has died.

Petal, who was 52 and lived most of her life at the Philadelphia Zoo, was found lying in her stall by workers Monday morning. She usually slept standing up. …

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March 19, 1913 - February 14, 2008

Country and Western singer and entertainer dubbed ‘Australia’s first cowboy’, who became the world’s oldest recording artist

Smoky Dawson was one of Australia’s most enduringly popular entertainers. He was a western singer before it was coupled with country and was dubbed Australia’s first cowboy. He went on to become the world’s oldest recording artist. He made his first record, I’m a Happy Go Lucky Cowhand, in 1941 and his last, Homestead of My Dreams, in 2005, when he was 92, although a DVD featuring new performances was completed just before his death. …

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July 24, 1900 - May 27, 2008

Franz Künstler was not overimpressed with the sudden attention he attracted at the very end of his extraordinarily long life. Living quietly in the small German town of Niederstetten, in Baden-Württemberg, he was discovered to be one of the very few former First World War soldiers still alive, and the only one who had fought in the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. …

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… In 1950, Henderson and 12 other black parents in Topeka challenged the city’s segregated school system. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in the case overturned segregation in the country’s public schools. …

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Ollie Johnston, the last of the “Nine Old Men” who animated “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Fantasia,” “Bambi” and other classic Walt Disney films, died Monday. He was 95. …Read full obituary

RAF pilot who was shot down, sent to Stalag Luft III and took part in the Great Escape of 1944 … Read full obituary

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TOKYO - Kaku Yamanaka, Japan’s oldest person, has died of old age in central Japan, officials said Saturday. She was 113. …

Born on Dec. 11, 1894, Yamanaka became Japan’s oldest person when Tsuneyo Toyonaga, 113, died in February. …

Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, is recognized as the world’s oldest person at age 114, according to Guinness World Records. … Read full obituary

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War who also fought for the independence of Turkey

The last Turkish veteran of the First World War, Yakup Satar, who has died at the age of 110, fought at the Second Battle of Kut in the Mesopotamian campaign. He was captured there by the British in February 1917, as Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Maude’s British and Indian army drove the Ottoman Empire’s forces back up the Tigris from Basra towards Baghdad. … Read full obituary

REDDING, Calif. — Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82. …

Jacobs retired in 1992 from KTVU-TV in Oakland, where he worked 34 years as a reporter, anchor and news director. … Read full obituary

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) — Earl Butz, the U.S. secretary of agriculture who was forced to resign after telling an obscenity-laced racist joke in 1976, died yesterday in Washington. He was 98 and the oldest living former Cabinet member. …

Butz was named to head the Department of Agriculture in 1971 by President Richard Nixon. He remained in the Cabinet under President Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. … Read full obituary

RAF pilot who was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III …

Squadron Leader B. A. “Jimmy” James, MC, survivor of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, was born on April 17, 1915. He died on January 18, 2008, aged 92 … Read full obituary

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TOLEDO, Ohio — J. Russell Coffey, the oldest known surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, has died. The retired teacher, one of only three U.S. veterans from the “war to end all wars,” was 109. … Read full obituary

Australia’s oldest Olympian Eileen Wearne died last week aged 95, the Australian Olympic Committee announced today.

Wearne, who died on Friday, competed in athletics at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. … Read full obituary

New Zealand’s oldest surviving film star, Witarina Harris, has died at the age of 101.

In 1928, aged 22, she was picked by Universal Pictures to play the starring role of Princess Miro in the silent movie Under The Southern Cross, later known as The Devil’s Pit. … Read full obituary

Berres, a talented defensive catcher, struggled to get a chance in the Major Leagues and in 1933, after boosting his average to .294 with Birmingham in the Southern Association, he got the call from Brooklyn. … Read full obituary

KOLKATA [Calcutta]: A giant aldabra tortoise thought to be around 250 years old has died in the Kolkata zoo of liver failure, zoo authorities said on Thursday.

The tortoise had been the pet of Robert Clive, the famous British military officer in colonial India around the middle of the 18th century … Read full obituary

LONDON, Nov. 21 (AP) — Alfred Anderson, the last surviving soldier to have been present when the guns fell silent along the Western Front in the spontaneous “Christmas Truce” of World War I, died Monday in Newtyle, Scotland. He was 109. … Read full obituary

WORTHINGTON, Ohio — America’s oldest person (search), a 114-year-old woman who voted in every election since women earned the right in 1920 and had the thinnest file in her doctor’s office, has died.

Verona Johnston died Wednesday at home in Worthington, said her daughter, Julie Johnson.

“She just wore out,” Johnson said. … Read full obituary

Princess Alice, aunt of Queen Elizabeth II and the oldest member of the British royal family, has died aged 102, Buckingham Palace said Saturday. … Read full obituary

Jack Lockett, Australia’s oldest man, marched off to join his World War I comrades when he died peacefully in a Bendigo hospital at 111.

Victoria lost its last fighting soldier of the 1914-1918 conflict at 11.15pm on Saturday. Political, civic and RSL leaders leaders described the passing of the pioneer Mallee settler as the end of an era.

Premier Steve Bracks offered his family a state funeral. …

John Henry Lockett is the third World War I veteran to die in the past 11 days, following the last Gallipoli Anzac, Alec Campbell, and Raymond Durston.

Only 14 World War I veterans are left in Australia, two of them in Victoria. … Read full obituary

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