In passing
Sheik Maktoum, 62; Ruler of Dubai
Dubai, United Arab Emirates Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir of Dubai and one of the world’s foremost owners and breeders of thoroughbred horses, died Wednesday in Australia. He was 62.
Sheik Maktoum, also prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, was succeeded by his younger brother, Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed, the defense minister of the UAE, a federation of seven Gulf states.
Sheik Maktoum, visiting Australia for the prestigious Magic Millions yearling sales, died at the exclusive Palazzo Versace hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast, police said. Authorities in Dubai would not give the cause of death. Australian police would say only that the emir did not die of suspicious causes.
Sheik Maktoum owned hundreds of thoroughbreds and won some of the biggest races in the world.
Working with another brother, Sheik Hamdan, the Maktoum family put Dubai on the world racing map. The brothers founded Dubai- and British-based Godolphin Racing Inc., one of the world’s most successful stables, and created the Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest race with a $6 million purse.
Sheik Maktoum was born at home in Shindagha, near the mouth of Dubai Creek, and educated at a British university. He succeeded his father in 1990 as ruler of Dubai. He tended to leave the day-to-day government of Dubai to his younger brother, but he took an active interest in foreign policy.
Hugh Thompson Jr., 62; My Lai massacre hero
New Orleans Hugh Thompson Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62.
Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, Va. Trent Angers, Thompson’s biographer, said Thompson died of cancer.
Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai. They landed the helicopter in the line of fire between American troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pointed their own guns at the U.S. soldiers to prevent more killings.
Colburn and Andreotta provided cover for Thompson as he went forward to confront the leader of the U.S. forces. Thompson later coaxed civilians out of a bunker so they could be evacuated, and then landed his helicopter again to pick up a wounded child they transported to a hospital. Their efforts led to the cease-fire order at My Lai.
Author Seymour Hersh, who won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the massacre in 1969, called Thompson “one of the good guys.” “You can’t imagine what courage it took to do what he did,” Hersh said.
Heinrich Harrer, 93; Mountaineer and tutor
Vienna, Austria Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer and former Nazi who became a friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama, died Saturday. He was 93.
Actor Brad Pitt played Harrer in the film “Seven Years in Tibet,” which was based on Harrer’s 1953 memoir of his time in the Himalayan nation.
Born July 6, 1912, Harrer first made headlines in 1938 with the first ascent of Switzerland’s dreaded Eiger North Face. At least nine mountaineers had died trying to scale the sheer wall, long considered Europe’s greatest mountaineering challenge. Dozens have perished in subsequent attempts.
His ascent earned him fame and a handshake from Adolf Hitler: Harrer had joined the Nazi party when Germany took control of Austria in 1938. He also joined the SS, the party’s police wing associated with atrocities during World War II.
Harrer later said he joined the SS and Nazi party in order to enter a teachers’ organization. The membership let him join a government-financed Himalayan expedition, his life’s dream.
Harrer and a colleague were arrested by British troops in India at the end of that expedition as war broke out in September 1939.
The two escaped an internment camp in 1944 and trekked through Tibet to Lhasa, where few Westerners had been allowed to enter. They soon endeared themselves to the country’s secular elite and to the religious head, the young Dalai Lama. Harrer taught the Dalai Lama mathematics, English and sports, and became his adviser and friend.