“We had fun, didn’t we?”
During a final private visit at Newman’s home in Connecticut, Paul Newman looked at his best friend and co-star Robert Redford and spoke these poignant last words. The actor, filmmaker and race-car driver died from lung cancer at his home in Westport Connecticut, and his remains were cremated after a private funeral service. He was 83 years of age.
“You crawl out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.”
These were the some of the final thoughts of the raconteur and queer icon Quentin Crisp, who passed away from a heart attack at the home of a friend in Manchester at the age of 90. She was cremated with a minimum of ceremony as she had requested, and her ashes were flown back to her personal assistant and travel companion Phillip Ward in New York.
“Orderly, I want you to take a message to Colonel Benteen. Ride as fast as you can and tell him to hurry. Tell him it’s a big village and I want him to be quick, and to bring the ammunition packs.”
George Armstrong Custer gave this last order to a Sergeant Windolph prior to his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand. The army officer and cavalry commander succumbed to fatal gunshot wounds to his head and chest and died on the field of battle at Little Bighorn in Montana, he was 36 years old.
“Thank you.”
The author and theologian’s final spoken words were said in response to his brother Warren offering him a cup of tea, he then collapsed in his bedroom and died shortly after at age 64. Clive Staples Lewis, most remembered for penning The Chronicles of Narnia series of novels, passed away from kidney failure at his home in Oxford and was buried in Holy Trinity Church.
“It is unbelievable.”
Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was convicted of spying during World War I and sentenced to death by firing squad. The exotic dancer and courtesan was 41 years old when she was executed by a firing squad consisting of 12 soldiers just before dawn, in the moat of the Château de Vincennes, Paris. According to an eyewitness account, Mata Hari was not bound and refused a blindfold. She defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad.
“Ah! A German and a genius! A prodigy—admit him!”
These were the deathbed words uttered by the author and cleric, most well known for writing Gulliver’s Travels, he was referring to composer George Frideric Handel who had come to visit him. Jonathan Swift passed away at the age of 77 from terminal dementia in his hometown of Dublin, leaving behind the bulk of his fortune to found a hospital for the mentally ill which still exists today.
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room in heaven.”
Muhammad Ali did not have any final spoken words because he was unable to talk in the days leading up to his passing, but his gravestone bears this famous maxim on humanitarianism attributed to him.
The professional boxer and activist, a global cultural icon, was hospitalised in Scottsdale Arizona with a respiratory illness. Ali’s condition worsened and he died the next day at the age of 74 from septic shock.
“This is the fight of day and night. I see black light.”
These were the deathbed words of the Romantic writer and human rights activist, most well known for his masterpiece Les Misérables, as he lay dying from pneumonia. Victor Hugo passed away at his home in Paris at the age of 83, he was interred in the Panthéon and buried in a pauper’s coffin at his own request.
“Throw up the window that I may see once more the magnificent scene of nature.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau uttered these last words after suffering an apoplectic stroke as a result of bleeding on the brain – it’s believed that repeated falls may have contributed to Rousseau’s stroke. The philosopher and writer, author of ‘The Social Contract,’ passed away at a cottage on the estate of his benefactor Marquis de Girardin, he was 66 years old.
“I often say next year I’ll slow down, but I keep being asked to do shows in great places and I love what I do.”
The singer and music icon reflected on her career and enduring passion for performing in a poignant final televised interview before her death at the age of 75. Bonnie Tyler underwent emergency surgery for a perforated intestine at a hospital near her home in Portugal, and passed away two months later from complications resulting from the illness.
