List of Famous people who died at 70

Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985), about an African-American girl runaway from home. Among Shange's honors and awards were fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. In April 2016, Barnard College announced it had acquired Shange's archive. Shange lived in Brooklyn, New York. Shange had one daughter, Savannah Shange. She was married twice: to the saxophonist David Murray and the painter McArthur Binion, Savannah’s father, with both marriages ending in divorce.

Ernst Dieter Lueg was a German author and television journalist.

Usha Kiran was an Indian film actress. In a career spanning over four decades, she acted in over 50 Hindi and Marathi films, notably Daag (1952), Patita (1953), Baadbaan (1954), Chupke Chupke (1975), Mili (1975) and Bawarchi (1972). She was also the Sheriff of Mumbai during 1996 and 1997.

Jacques Médecin was a French politician. A member of the Gaullist RPR, he succeeded his father as mayor of the city of Nice and served from 1966 to 1990. Under suspicion of corruption, he fled France in 1990, but was extradited from Uruguay back to France in 1993, convicted and jailed.

Antonio José Cortés Pantoja, better known by his artistic name Chiquetete, was a Spanish flamenco singer, cousin of the tonadillera Isabel Pantoja.

Peter Mociulski von Remenyk, known professionally as Peter Rock, was an Austrian-born Chilean rock and roll and nueva ola musician. He sang in Festival de Viña del Mar and in Bierfest Valdivia.

Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins was an American singer-songwriter, musician, actor, film producer, and boxer. Famed chiefly for his powerful, operatic vocal delivery and wildly theatrical performances of songs such as "I Put a Spell on You", he sometimes used macabre props onstage, making him an early pioneer of shock rock. He received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the hit indie film Mystery Train.

Toshiyuki Hosokawa was a Japanese actor and disc jockey, whose credits included roles in television, film, stage and musical theater. He reached prominence in Japan for his starring role in the 1970 film Eros Plus Massacre, which was directed by Yoshishige Yoshida.

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose, was an American photographer and photojournalist. She was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, where she became a fashion and fine art photographer. During the Second World War, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

Jon Graham Burge was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department who was accused of torturing more than 200 innocent men between 1972 and 1991 in order to force confessions.