Steve Jobs
“Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh wow”
Apple co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, at his Palo Alto, California home, sometime around 3 p.m. His wife, children, and sisters were by his side in his last moments in which he uttered the same monosyllabic words, three times. Jobs had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer called islet-cell neuroendocrine tumor and although he treated the disease, he suffered a relapse.
October 16, 2011 was officially declared “Steve Jobs Day” by then-Governor Jerry Brown of California. On the same day, a service was organized at Stanford University, the place where Jobs had delivered a famous TED speech a few years earlier, attended only by those receiving a specific invitation. Among the attendees, apart from Job’s family, there were also close friends, Apple and other tech company executives, media representatives, celebrities, and politicians. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the memorial.
Steve Irwin
“I’m dying.”
The world-known “Crocodile Hunter” tragically lost his life while shooting for his wildlife documentary series in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. He was pierced in the chest by a stingray barb and addressed his last-known words to his cameraman, the only witness, in fact, of the terrible incident.
According to Irwin’s cameraman, “all of a sudden [the stingray] propped on its front and started stabbing wildly with its tail. Hundreds of strikes in a few seconds”. in the shock of the moment, Irwin assumed the stingray pierced his lung when it fact it pierced his heart, causing a massive injury. “He had a two-inch-wide injury over his heart, with blood and fluid coming out of it,” the cameraman recalled. Although stingrays are usually calm but, in this case, it is assumed that it mistook Irwin’s shadow for something else and acted defensively.
Irwin was brought back on the boat and CPR was performed for over an hour before the arrival of the doctors, but he was pronounced dead within 10 seconds of the medical staff arriving at the scene. Steve Irwin’s death was mourned all over the world, with Prime Minister John Howard saying that “Australia has lost a wonderful and colourful son.”
