It was a life that took him from peanut farming to the presidency. While former President Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House only lasted one term, the decades afterwards were defined by humanitarian work that affected people all around the world.
Founding the Carter Center with his wife, Rosalynn, he became a global champion for democracy, human rights and public health. And he still took time to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Georgia.
Carter was the nation’s longest-lived president when he died on Monday at the age of 100.
But he was just one of many noteworthy people who died in 2024.
Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in February, was a fierce political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, crusading against corruption and staging protests against the Kremlin. He had been jailed since 2021 when he returned to Russia to face certain arrest after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
“There is an inner voice that you can’t stifle,” writes Alexei Navalny. “Come off it, the worst is never going to happen.” (Source: Getty)
Other political figures who died this year included: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi; former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney; former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; Vietnamese politician Nguyen Phu Trong; US congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee; former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov; pundit Lou Dobbs; Greek politician Vasso Papandreou; former US senators Joe Lieberman, Jim Inhofe, Tim Johnson and Jim Sasser; Namibian President Hage Geingob; and former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss.
The year also brought the deaths of several rights activists, including the reverends Cecil L "Chip" Murray and James Lawson Jr; Dexter Scott King; Hydeia Broadbent; and David Mixner.
Business leaders who died this year included: Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, The Home Depot co-founder Bernard "Bernie" Marcus, financier Jacob Rothschild and Daiso retail chain founder Hirotake Yano.
OJ Simpson’s "trial of the century" over the 1994 killings of his ex-wife and her friend bared divisions over race and law enforcement and brought an intersection of sports, crime, entertainment and class that was hard to turn away from. His death in April brought an end to a life that had become defined by scrutiny over the killings.
OJ Simpson's ashes have been divided up amongst his children. (Source: Getty)
Other noteworthy sports figures who died included: basketball players Jerry West and Dikembe Mutombo; baseball players Willie Mays and Fernando Valenzuela; and gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi.
The music industry lost a titan in producer Quincy Jones, who died in November. His many contributions included producing Michael Jackson's Thriller album and working with hundreds of other musicians over a long and storied career.
Quincy Jones was the producer for the 1985 star-studded recording of We Are The World. (Source: Bang Showbiz)
Other artists and entertainers who died this year included: actors James Earl Jones, Chita Rivera, Donald Sutherland, Gena Rowlands, Louis Gossett Jr, Shelley Duvall, Kris Kristofferson, Sandra Milo, Anouk Aimée, Carl Weathers, Joyce Randolph, Tony Todd, Shannen Doherty and Song Jae-lim; musicians Sergio Mendes, Toby Keith, Phil Lesh, Melanie, Dickey Betts, Françoise Hardy, Fatman Scoop, Duane Eddy and Frankie Beverly; filmmakers Roger Corman and Morgan Spurlock; authors Faith Ringgold, Nikki Giovanni and N Scott Momaday; TV fitness guru Richard Simmons; sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer; talk show host Phil Donahue; and poets Shuntaro Tanikawa, John Sinclair and Kazuko Shiraishi.
