Died on Friday, 18th April – Famous Deaths

18/04/2024

Dickey Betts, American guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer (born 1943)

Forrest Richard "Dickey" Betts was an American rock guitarist and vocalist, best known as a longtime member of the Allman Brothers Band. A co-founder of the band when it formed in 1969, he was central to the group's greatest commercial success in the mid-1970s, and was the writer and vocalist on the Allmans' hit single "Ramblin' Man". The Allman Brothers Band broke up and re-formed twice, always with Betts in the lineup, until he left the group in 2000.

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Mandisa, American gospel singer (born 1976)

Mandisa Lynn Hundley, known mononymously as Mandisa, was an American gospel and contemporary Christian recording artist. She began her solo career as a contestant in the fifth season of American Idol finishing in ninth place. Her album Overcomer won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Album; she was the fifth American Idol contestant to win a Grammy.

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18/04/2022

Harrison Birtwistle, British composer (born 1934)

Sir Harrison Birtwistle was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include The Triumph of Time (1972) and the operas The Mask of Orpheus (1986), Gawain (1991), and The Minotaur (2008). The last of these was ranked by music critics at The Guardian in 2019 as the third-best piece of the 21st century. Even his compositions that were not written for the stage often showed a theatrical approach. A performance of his saxophone concerto Panic during the BBC's Last Night of the Proms caused "national notoriety". He received many international awards and honorary degrees.

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18/04/2019

Lyra McKee, Irish journalist (born 1990)

Lyra Catherine McKee was a journalist from Northern Ireland who wrote for several publications about the consequences of the Troubles. She also served as an editor for Mediagazer, a news aggregator website. On 18 April 2019, McKee was fatally shot while observing rioting in the Creggan area of Derry.

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18/04/2014

Guru Dhanapal, Indian director and producer (born 1959)

Guru Dhanapal was an Indian film director, who worked in Tamil cinema, mostly with actor Sathyaraj and Karthik (actor).

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Sanford Jay Frank, American screenwriter and producer (born 1954)

Sanford Jay "Sandy" Frank, also known as Sandy Frank, was a television writer who was known as a writer for Late Night with David Letterman. He wrote for Letterman's NBC show for four years, during which the show won four Emmy Awards for comedy-variety writing. Frank had a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a law degree from Harvard and had written for The Harvard Lampoon.

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Brian Priestman, English conductor and academic (born 1927)

Brian Priestman was a British conductor and music educator.

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18/04/2013

Goran Švob, Croatian philosopher and author (born 1947)

Goran Švob was a Croatian philosopher, logician, and author. He was an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb where he taught logic and the philosophy of language, being employed there since 1975.

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Anne Williams, English activist (born 1951)

Anne Elizabeth Williams was a campaigner for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, in which 97 Liverpool football fans, including her son Kevin Williams, died at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.

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18/04/2012

Dick Clark, American television host and producer, founded Dick Clark Productions (born 1929)

Richard Wagstaff Clark was an American television and radio personality and television producer who hosted American Bandstand from 1956 to 1989. He also hosted five incarnations of the Pyramid game show from 1973 to 1988 and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which broadcast New Year's Eve celebrations in New York City's Times Square.

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René Lépine, Canadian businessman and philanthropist (born 1929)

René G. Lépine was a Canadian real estate developer and philanthropist. Lépine was the chairman of Groupe Lépine, a real estate development and investment firm he founded in 1953. He is widely considered one of the most influential French Canadian real estate developers of his time. His companies developed over $5 billion of real estate in Canada and the United States since the 1960s. He also owned a portfolio of multifamily and retail properties in Montreal and Ottawa. Lépine developed many buildings considered landmarks in Montreal, including the Olympic Village and Le Sanctuaire du Mont-Royal. Lépine is also credited with having developed the first condominiums in Montreal in 1981.

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Robert O. Ragland, American musician (born 1931)

Robert Oliver Ragland was an American film score composer, best known for his soundtracks to numerous genre films ranging from blaxploitation (Abby), to horror, to monster movies, to thrillers and action films. Throughout his career, he worked with cult filmmakers including William Girdler, Menahem Golan, Larry Cohen, and J. Lee Thompson.

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K. D. Wentworth, American author (born 1951)

Kathy Diane Wentworth, known as K. D. Wentworth, was an American science fiction author. A University of Tulsa graduate, she got her start winning the Writers of the Future Contest in 1988, and then later won Field Publications' "Teachers as Writers" Award in 1991. Wentworth served two terms as secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in the early 2000s. She served as the editor for the Writers of the Future Contest from 2009 until her death. One of her novelettes, "Kaleidoscope" (2008), and three of her short stories, "Burning Bright" (1997). "Tall One" (1998), and "Born Again" (2005) have been Nebula Award finalists. Wentworth died on April 18, 2012, from complications with pneumonia and cervical cancer.

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18/04/2008

Germaine Tillion, French ethnologist and anthropologist (born 1907)

Germaine Tillion was a French ethnologist, known for her work in Algeria in the 1950s on behalf of the Government of France. A member of the French Resistance in World War II, she spent time in Ravensbrück concentration camp.

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18/04/2004

Kamisese Mara, Fijian politician, 2nd President of Fiji (born 1920)

Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, was a Fijian politician who served as Chief Minister from 1967 to 1970, when Fiji gained its independence from the United Kingdom, and, apart from one brief interruption in 1987, as the first Prime Minister from 1970 to 1992. He subsequently served as president from 1993 to 2000.

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18/04/2002

Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnographer and explorer (born 1914)

Thor Heyerdahl KStJ was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.

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18/04/1995

Arturo Frondizi, Argentinian lawyer and politician, 32nd President of Argentina (born 1908)

Arturo Frondizi Ércoli was an Argentine lawyer, journalist, teacher, statesman, and politician. He was elected president of Argentina and governed from May 1, 1958, to March 29, 1962, when he was overthrown in a military coup. His government was characterized by its strong developmentalist policies, that was less promoted by the State and more oriented to the development of heavy industry as a consequence of the entry of multinational companies.

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18/04/1988

Oktay Rıfat Horozcu, Turkish poet and playwright (born 1914)

Ali Oktay Rifat, better known as Oktay Rifat, was a Turkish writer and playwright, and one of the forefront poets of modern Turkish poetry since the late 1930s. He was the founder of the Garip movement, together with Orhan Veli and Melih Cevdet.

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18/04/1974

Marcel Pagnol, French author, playwright, and director (born 1895)

Marcel Paul Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française. Pagnol is generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for his prominence in multiple eminent mediums—memoir, novel, theatre and film.

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18/04/1965

Guillermo González Camarena, Mexican engineer (born 1917)

Guillermo González Camarena was a Mexican electrical engineer who invented color television.

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18/04/1964

Ben Hecht, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1894)

Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films, including six Academy Award nominations and two wins.

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18/04/1963

Meyer Jacobstein, American academic and politician (born 1880)

Meyer Jacobstein was an American educator and politician who served three terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York from 1923 to 1929.

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18/04/1958

Maurice Gamelin, Belgian-French general (born 1872)

Maurice Gustave Gamelin was a French general who served as head of the French Army from 1935 and as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in France from the outbreak of the Second World War to his dismissal during the Battle of France in May 1940. The strategic choices Gamelin made ultimately left France vulnerable to a lightning offensive through the Ardennes and have been extensively criticised by historians.

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18/04/1955

Albert Einstein, German-American physicist, engineer, and academic (born 1879)

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

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18/04/1951

Óscar Carmona, Portuguese field marshal and politician, 11th President of Portugal (born 1869)

António Óscar de Fragoso Carmona a Portuguese army officer and politician who served as president of Portugal from 1926 until his death in 1951. Before his presidency, he served as prime minister of Portugal from 1926 to 1928, he previously served as minister of war in late 1923 and in 1926, and as minister of foreign affairs in 1926.

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18/04/1947

Jozef Tiso, Slovak priest and politician, President of Slovakia (born 1887)

Jozef Gašpar Tiso was a Slovak politician, dictator and Catholic priest who served as president of the First Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany during World War II, from 1939 to 1945. After the war, in 1947, he was convicted of treason and executed in Bratislava.

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18/04/1945

John Ambrose Fleming, English physicist and engineer, invented the vacuum tube (born 1849)

Sir John Ambrose Fleming was a British electrical engineer and physicist. He is known for inventing the vacuum tube radio transmitter—with which the first transatlantic radio transmission was made—and establishing the right-hand rule used in physics.

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Ernie Pyle, American journalist and soldier (born 1900)

Ernest Taylor Pyle was an American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theater (1942–44) and Pacific theater (1945). Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of "dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima during the Battle of Okinawa.

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18/04/1943

Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese admiral (born 1884)

Isoroku Yamamoto was an admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and the commander of the Combined Fleet during World War II. He commanded the fleet from 1939 until his death in 1943, overseeing the start of the Pacific War in 1941 and Japan's initial successes and defeats before his plane was shot down by U.S. fighter aircraft over New Guinea.

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18/04/1942

Aleksander Mitt, Estonian speed skater (born 1903)

Aleksander Mitt was an Estonian speed skater who competed at the 1928 and 1936 Winter Olympics.

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Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, American heiress, sculptor and art collector, founded the Whitney Museum of American Art (born 1875)

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.

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18/04/1938

George Bryant, American archer (born 1878)

George Philip "Phil" Bryant was an American archer who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. He later became President of the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games for the 1932 Summer Olympics. He won two gold medals in Archery at the 1904 Summer Olympics in the double York and American rounds. In the team competition he won the bronze medal as part of the Boston Archery Club team. Bryant had not won any major titles before the Olympics, but later won national championships in 1905, 1909, 1911, and 1912.

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18/04/1936

Milton Brown, American singer and bandleader (born 1903)

Milton Brown was an American band leader and vocalist who co-founded the genre of Western swing. His band was the first to fuse hillbilly hokum, jazz, and pop together into a unique, distinctly American hybrid, thus giving him the nickname, "Father of Western Swing". The birthplace of Brown's upbeat "hot-jazz hillbilly" string band sound was developed at the Crystal Springs Dance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1931 to 1936.

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Ottorino Respighi, Italian composer and conductor (born 1879)

Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).

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18/04/1923

Savina Petrilli, Italian religious leader (born 1851)

Savina Petrilli was an Italian Catholic professed religious who founded the Sisters of the Poor of Saint Catherine of Siena upon receiving the encouragement of Pope Pius IX.

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18/04/1917

Vladimir Serbsky, Russian psychiatrist and academic (born 1858)

Vladimir Petrovich Serbsky was a Russian psychiatrist and one of the founders of forensic psychiatry in Russia. The author of The Forensic Psychopathology, Serbsky thought delinquency to have no congenital basis, considering it to be caused by social reasons.

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18/04/1912

Martha Ripley, American physician (born 1843)

Martha George Rogers Ripley was an American physician, suffragist, and professor of medicine. Founder of the Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ripley was one of the most outspoken activists for disadvantaged female rights. A prominent leader in the American Woman Suffrage Association, Ripley also served six years as president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association.

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18/04/1906

Luis Martín, Spanish religious leader, 24th Superior-General of the Society of Jesus (born 1846)

Luis Martín García was a Spanish Jesuit, elected the twenty-fourth Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

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18/04/1898

Gustave Moreau, French painter and academic (born 1826)

Gustave Moreau was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence". He was an influential forerunner of symbolism in the visual arts in the 1860s, and at the height of the symbolist movement in the 1890s, he was among the most significant painters. Art historian Robert Delevoy wrote that Moreau "brought symbolist polyvalence to its highest point in Jupiter and Semele." He was a prolific artist who produced over 15,000 paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Moreau painted allegories and traditional biblical and mythological subjects favored by the fine art academies. J. K. Huysmans wrote, "Gustave Moreau has given new freshness to dreary old subjects by a talent both subtle and ample: he has taken myths worn out by the repetitions of centuries and expressed them in a language that is persuasive and lofty, mysterious and new." The female characters from the Bible and mythology that he so frequently depicted came to be regarded by many as the archetypical symbolist woman. His art fell from favor and received little attention in the early 20th century but, beginning in the 1960s and 70s, he has come to be considered among the most paramount of symbolist painters.

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18/04/1890

Paweł Bryliński, Polish sculptor (born 1814)

Paweł Bryliński was a Polish folk-sculptor. He is perhaps best known for a series of works concerning Holy Week.

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18/04/1873

Justus von Liebig, German chemist and academic (born 1803)

Justus Freiherr von Liebig was a German scientist who made major contributions to the theory, practice, and pedagogy of chemistry, as well as to agricultural and biological chemistry; he is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the most outstanding chemistry teachers of all time. He has been described as the "father of the fertilizer industry" for his emphasis on nitrogen and minerals as essential plant nutrients, and his popularization of the law of the minimum, which states that plant growth is limited by the scarcest nutrient resource, rather than the total amount of resources available. He also developed a manufacturing process for beef extracts, and with his consent a company, called Liebig Extract of Meat Company, was founded to exploit the concept; it later introduced the Oxo brand beef bouillon cube. He popularized an earlier invention for condensing vapors, which came to be known as the Liebig condenser.

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18/04/1864

Juris Alunāns, Latvian philologist and linguist (born 1832)

Juris Alunāns was a Latvian writer and philologist in the Russian Empire. He was one of the first contributors of the Latvian language. He was one of the members of the Young Latvia movement.

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18/04/1859

Tatya Tope, Indian general (born 1814)

Tantia Tope was an Indian general in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the British East India Company.

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18/04/1832

Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet, French painter (born 1761)

Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet was a French painter and the wife of the sculptor Antoine Denis Chaudet, who had also been her teacher.

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18/04/1802

Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist (born 1731)

Erasmus Robert Darwin was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor, freemason, and poet.

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18/04/1796

Johan Wilcke, Swedish physicist and academic (born 1732)

Johan Carl Wilcke was a Swedish physicist.

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18/04/1794

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, English lawyer, judge, and politician, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1714)

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, PC was an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician who was first to hold the title of Earl Camden. As a lawyer and judge he was a leading proponent of civil liberties, championing the rights of the jury, and limiting the powers of the State in leading cases such as Entick v Carrington.

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18/04/1763

Marie-Josephte Corriveau, Canadian murderer (born 1733)

Marie-Josephte Corriveau, better known as "la Corriveau", is a well-known figure in Québécois folklore. She lived in New France, and was sentenced to death in 1763 by a British court martial for the murder of her second husband. She was hanged, and her body was placed in a gibbet on public display in Lévis. Her story has become a legend in Quebec, and she is the subject of many books and plays.

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18/04/1742

Arvid Horn, Swedish general and politician (born 1664)

Count Arvid Bernhard Horn af Ekebyholm was a Swedish general, diplomat and politician, a member of the noble Horn family. He served twice as president of the privy council chancellery and was one of the leading figures of the Swedish Age of Liberty.

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18/04/1732

Louis Feuillée, French astronomer, geographer, and botanist (born 1660)

Louis Éconches Feuillée was a French member of the Order of the Minims, explorer, astronomer, geographer and botanist.

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18/04/1689

George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys, Welsh judge and politician, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1648)

George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys was a Welsh judge and politician. He became notable during the reign of King James II, rising to the position of Lord Chancellor. His conduct as a judge was to enforce royal policy, resulting in a historical reputation for severity and bias, earning Jeffreys the nickname of "the Hanging Judge".

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18/04/1674

John Graunt, English demographer and statistician (born 1620)

John Graunt has been regarded as the founder of demography. Graunt was one of the first demographers, and perhaps the first epidemiologist, though by profession he was a haberdasher. He was bankrupted later in life by losses suffered during Great Fire of London and the discrimination he faced following his conversion to Catholicism.

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18/04/1650

Simonds d'Ewes, English lawyer and politician (born 1602)

Sir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet was an English antiquary and politician. He was bred for the bar, was a member of the Long Parliament and left notes on its transactions. D'Ewes took the Puritan side in the Civil War. His Journal of all the Parliaments of Elizabeth is of value; he left an Autobiography and Correspondence.

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18/04/1636

Julius Caesar, English judge and politician (born 1557)

Sir Julius Caesar was an English lawyer, judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1589 and 1622. He was also known as Julius Adelmare.

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18/04/1587

John Foxe, English historian and author (born 1516)

John Foxe was an English clergyman, theologian, and historian, notable for his martyrology Foxe's Book of Martyrs, telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and "proto-Protestants" from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries.

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18/04/1567

Wilhelm von Grumbach, German adventurer (born 1503)

Wilhelm von Grumbach was a German adventurer, chiefly known through his connection with the so-called "Grumbach Feud", the last attempt of the Imperial Knights to prevail against the power of the territorial Princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

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18/04/1556

Luigi Alamanni, Italian poet and politician (born 1495)

Luigi Alamanni was an Italian poet and statesman. He was regarded as a prolific and versatile poet. He was credited with introducing the epigram into Italian poetry.

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18/04/1555

Polydore Vergil, English historian (born 1470)

Polydore Vergil or Virgil, widely known as Polydore Vergil of Urbino, was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest and diplomat, who spent much of his life in England. He is particularly remembered for his works the Proverbiorum libellus (1498), a collection of Latin proverbs; De inventoribus rerum (1499), a history of discoveries and origins; and the Anglica Historia, an influential history of England. He has been dubbed the "Father of English History".

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18/04/1552

John Leland, English poet and historian (born 1502)

John Leland or Leyland was an English poet and antiquary.

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18/04/1430

John III, Count of Nassau-Siegen, German count

Count John III the Younger of Nassau-Siegen, German: Johann III. der Jüngere Graf von Nassau-Siegen, succeeded, with his brothers, his father in 1416 as Count of Nassau-Siegen. With his brothers, he inherited the County of Vianden in 1417, and also inherited half of the County of Diez in 1420. He descended from the Ottonian Line of the House of Nassau.

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18/04/1176

Galdino della Sala, Italian archdeacon and saint

Galdino della Sala, Galdinus or Galdimus, was a Roman Catholic saint from Milan in northern Italy. He was a cardinal elevated in 1165 and he also served as Archbishop of Milan from 1166 to his death in 1176. He was a staunch supporter both of Pope Alexander III, and of Milan and its neighbours in Lombardy, in their joint and parallel struggles against the Antipope Victor IV, supported by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa.

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18/04/1161

Theobald of Bec, French-English archbishop (born 1090)

Theobald of Bec was a Norman archbishop of Canterbury from 1139 to 1161. His exact birth date is unknown. Some time in the late 11th or early 12th century Theobald became a monk at the Abbey of Bec, rising to the position of abbot in 1137. King Stephen of England chose him to be Archbishop of Canterbury in 1138. Canterbury's claim to primacy over the Welsh ecclesiastics was resolved during Theobald's term of office when Pope Eugene III decided in 1148 in Canterbury's favour. Theobald faced challenges to his authority from a subordinate bishop, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and King Stephen's younger brother, and his relationship with King Stephen was turbulent. On one occasion, Stephen forbade him from attending a papal council, but Theobald defied the king, which resulted in the confiscation of his property and temporary exile. Theobald's relations with his cathedral clergy and the monastic houses in his archdiocese were also difficult.

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18/04/0963

Stephen Lekapenos, co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire

Stephen Lekapenos or Lecapenus was the second son of the Byzantine emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, and co-emperor from 924 to 945. With his younger brother Constantine, he deposed Romanos I in December 944, but they were overthrown and exiled a few weeks later by their brother in law, the legitimate emperor Constantine VII. Stephen lived out his life in exile on the island of Lesbos, where he died on Easter 963.

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18/04/0943

Fujiwara no Atsutada, Japanese nobleman and poet (born 906)

Fujiwara no Atsutada was a mid-Heian waka and Japanese nobleman.

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18/04/0909

Dionysius II, Syriac Orthodox patriarch of Antioch

Dionysius II was the Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 896/897 until his death in 908/909.

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18/04/0850

Perfectus, Spanish monk and martyr

Saint Perfectus (Santo Perfecto) (died 18 April 850) was one of the Martyrs of Córdoba whose martyrdom was recorded by Saint Eulogius in the Memoriale sanctorum.

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18/04/0727

Agallianos Kontoskeles, Byzantine commander and rebel leader

Year 727 (DCCXXVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 727 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

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