I never heard of Joe Cocker, Mickey Rooney, Jack Bruce and I heard of Shirley Temple just a couple weeks ago (in a discussion about how she's not as well known

I never heard of Joe Cocker, Mickey Rooney, Jack Bruce and I heard of Shirley Temple just a couple weeks ago (in a discussion about how she's not as well known outside the US) These people are definitely not as POP as Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Muhammad Ali OTOH, also saying that Nancy Reagan has the same stature as Robin Williams seems utterly wrong I was born when Reagan was closing in to the end of his mandate, so that's probably why Nancy for me doesn't ring any bell. Likewise, Shimon Peres is much more noticeable, probably due to both timing and geographical proximity (I live in Europe) I guess that the "legendary stature" of such figures is qualified by lasting several decades and being well known across borders, attributes shared by only few On topic: there might indeed be an increase behind this trend, but if deaths are a poisson process, I'm not surprised at all that this year has seen a clustering of them