Died on Wednesday, 9th April – Famous Deaths

09/04/2025

Ray Shero, American ice hockey player and executive (born 1962)

Rejean "Ray" Shero was an American ice hockey executive in the National Hockey League (NHL) who served as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils franchises from 2006 to 2020.

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09/04/2023

Karl Berger, German-American jazz pianist (born 1935)

Karl Hans Berger was a German-American jazz pianist, vibraphonist, composer, and educator. He was a leading figure in jazz improvisation from the 1960s when he settled in the United States for life. He founded the educational Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, in 1972 with his wife and Ornette Coleman, to encourage international students to pursue their own ideas about music.

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09/04/2022

Dwayne Haskins, American football player (born 1997)

Dwayne Haskins Jr. was an American professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for three seasons. He played college football for the Ohio State Buckeyes, setting Big Ten Conference records for single-season passing yards and passing touchdowns as a sophomore in 2018. He won the Sammy Baugh Trophy and Kellen Moore Award, along with several conference honors.

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09/04/2021

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born 1921)

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and served as consort of the British monarch from her accession on 6 February 1952 until his death in 2021, making him the longest-serving royal consort in British history.

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DMX, American rapper and actor (born 1970)

Earl Simmons, known professionally as DMX, was an American rapper, songwriter, and actor. His accolades included an American Music Award, a Billboard Music Award, and six Grammy Award nominations. Regarded as an influential figure in the late 1990s and early 2000s and one of the greats of hip-hop, his music is characterized by his "aggressive" rapping style, with lyrical content varying from hardcore themes to prayers. His violent lyricism helped popularize the horrorcore genre.

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Nikki Grahame, British reality-TV icon (born 1982)

Nicola Rachele-Beth Grahame was an English television personality and author. She was a contestant on the seventh series of the reality show Big Brother in 2006, which she finished in fifth place. Following the show, she starred in her own reality series Princess Nikki, and won a National Television Award for Most Popular TV Contender. In 2010, Grahame was runner-up in Ultimate Big Brother, and in 2015, she appeared as a guest housemate on the sixteenth series of Big Brother. In 2016, she competed in the fourth season of Big Brother Canada, finishing in sixth place.

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Ian Gibson, British scientist and Labour Party politician (born 1938)

Ian Gibson was a British Labour politician and scientist who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich North from 1997 to 2009.

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Ramsey Clark, American lawyer (born 1927)

William Ramsey Clark was an American lawyer, activist, and federal government official. A progressive, New Frontier liberal, he occupied senior positions in the United States Department of Justice under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, serving as United States Attorney General from 1967 to 1969; previously, he was Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967 and Assistant Attorney General from 1961 to 1965.

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09/04/2019

Charles Van Doren, American writer and editor (born 1926)

Charles Lincoln Van Doren was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the United States Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, becoming a vice-president and writing and editing many books before retiring in 1982.

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09/04/2017

John Clarke, New Zealand-Australian comedian, writer, and satirist (born 1948)

John Morrison Clarke was a New Zealand comedian, writer and satirist who lived and worked in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in both radio and television and also in print. He is principally known for his character Fred Dagg and his long-running collaboration with fellow satirist Bryan Dawe, which lasted from 1989 to his death in 2017, as well as for his success as a comic actor in Australian and New Zealand film and television.

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09/04/2016

Duane Clarridge, American spy (born 1932)

Duane Ramsdell "Dewey" Clarridge was an American senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and supervisor for more than 30 years. At various points, he had been stationed in Nepal, India, Turkey and Italy and Nicaragua. Clarridge was the chief of the Latin American division from 1981 to 1987 and a key figure in the Iran-Contra Affair. Clarridge pleaded not guilty to seven counts of perjury and making false statements relating to 1985 shipment to Iran.

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Will Smith, American football player (born 1981)

William Raymond Smith III was an American professional football defensive end who played in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Ohio State Buckeyes and was selected by the New Orleans Saints in the first round of the 2004 NFL draft, where he played for the entirety of his career. Smith was murdered by firearm during an altercation after a traffic crash.

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09/04/2015

Paul Almond, Canadian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1931)

Paul Almond was a Canadian television and motion picture screenwriter, director, producer, and novelist. He is most known for being the director of the first film in the Up series.

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Margaret Rule, British marine archaeologist (born 1928)

Margaret Helen Rule was a British archaeologist. She is most notable for her involvement with the project that excavated and raised the Tudor warship Mary Rose in 1982.

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Nina Companeez, French director and screenwriter (born 1937)

Nina Companeez was a French screenwriter and film director. Nina Companeez was the younger daughter of Russian Jewish émigré screenwriter Jacques Companéez and younger sister of contralto Irène Companeez. She was the mother of actress Valentine Varela.

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Alexander Dalgarno, English physicist and academic (born 1928)

Alexander Dalgarno FRS was a British physicist who was a Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University.

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Ivan Doig, American journalist and author (born 1939)

Ivan Doig was an American author and novelist, widely known for his sixteen fiction and non-fiction books set mostly in his native Montana, celebrating the landscape and people of the post-war American West.

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Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, Chinese-American academic (born 1909)

Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, also known as T.H. Tsien, was a Chinese-American bibliographer, librarian, and sinologist who served as a professor of Chinese literature and library science at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, and was curator of its East Asian Library from 1949 to 1978. He is known for studies of the history of the Chinese book, Chinese bibliography, paleography, and science and technology, especially the history of paper and printing in China, notably Paper and Printing, Volume 5 Pt 1 of British biochemist and sinologist Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. He is also known for risking his life to smuggle tens of thousands of rare books outside of Japanese-occupied China during World War II.

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09/04/2014

Gil Askey, American trumpet player, composer, and producer (born 1925)

Gilbert Askey was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, producer and musical director who was born in Austin, Texas, and emigrated to Australia in 1988.

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Chris Banks, American football player (born 1973)

Warren Christopher Banks was an American professional football guard in the National Football League (NFL). Drafted out of the University of Kansas by the Broncos with the 226th overall pick in the seventh round of the 1996 NFL draft, Banks won a Super Bowl ring as a member of the Broncos' Super Bowl XXXIII championship team in 1998. Banks also played for the Barcelona Dragons and Atlanta Falcons. Banks died at his home in Abingdon, Maryland, on April 9, 2014.

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Rory Ellinger, American lawyer and politician (born 1941)

Rory Vincent Ellinger was an American lawyer and politician. Ellinger was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He served as the Representative for Pagedale, University City, and Wellston in St. Louis County in the Missouri House of Representatives. He was elected to his first two-year term in November 2010 on the Democratic Party ticket.

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Norman Girvan, Jamaican economist, academic, and politician (born 1941)

Norman Paul Girvan was a Jamaican professor, Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States between 2000 and 2004. He was born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica. He died aged 72 in Cuba on 9 April 2014, after having suffered a fall while hiking in Dominica in early 2014. He had been a member of the United Nations Committee on Development Policy since 2009, and in 2010 was appointed the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's personal representative on the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy. He was Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI).

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Aelay Narendra, Indian politician (born 1946)

Ale Narendra was an Indian politician who was a member of the 13th and 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represented the Medak Lok Sabha in 1999 and Medak in 2004. He was 3 time MLA from Himayatnagar Constituency in 1983, 1988, 1992. He was one of the biggest proponents for Telangana statehood. Ale Narendra and other individuals associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

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A. N. R. Robinson, Trinbagonian politician, 3rd President of Trinidad and Tobago (born 1926)

Arthur Napoleon Raymond Robinson, was a Trinidad and Tobago politician who served as the third President of Trinidad and Tobago from 1997 to 2003 and the third Prime Minister from 1986 to 1991. He is known for his resilience within the government, resigning from Eric Williams’ administration in 1970 promoted by the State of Emergency imposed on Black Power protests, and is recognized for his proposal that led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court. He is also remembered for being held hostage during the 1990 Jamaat al Muslimeen coup attempt, during which he ordered the army to “attack with full force” while being held at gunpoint.

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Svetlana Velmar-Janković, Serbian author (born 1933)

Svetlana Velmar-Janković was a Serbian novelist, essayist, chronicler of Belgrade, and first female laureate of the Isidora Sekulić Award. She was considered to be one of the most important Serbian female authors of her time. In 2001, the French President Jacques Chirac honored her with the Chevalier medal of Legion of Honor because she always took care to preserve the humanist values which unite her and her country with the rest of Europe.

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09/04/2013

David Hayes, American sculptor and painter (born 1931)

David Vincent Hayes was an American sculptor.

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Greg McCrary, American football player (born 1952)

Gregory Alonza McCrary was an American professional football player who was a tight end in the National Football League (NFL) for the Atlanta Falcons, Washington Redskins, and the San Diego Chargers. He played college football for the Clark Atlanta Panthers and was selected in the fifth round of the 1975 NFL draft.

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Mordechai Mishani, Israeli lawyer and politician (born 1945)

Mordechai "Motti" Mishani was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for One Israel and Gesher between 2001 and 2003.

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McCandlish Phillips, American journalist and author (born 1927)

John McCandlish Phillips Jr. was an American journalist and author on religious subjects. He worked at The New York Times from 1952 to 1973. McCandlish was most well known for writing a story for the Times which revealed that senior Ku Klux Klan and former American Nazi Party official Dan Burros was ethnically Jewish, which resulted in Burros committing suicide.

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Paolo Soleri, Italian-American architect, designed the Cosanti (born 1919)

Paolo Soleri was an Italian architect and urban planner. He established the educational Cosanti Foundation and Arcosanti. Soleri was a lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University and a National Design Award recipient in 2006. He coined the concept of 'arcology' – a synthesis of architecture and ecology as the philosophy of democratic society. He died at home of natural causes on 9 April 2013 at the age of 93.

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09/04/2012

Malcolm Thomas, Welsh rugby player and cricketer (born 1929)

Malcolm Campbell Thomas was a Welsh and British Lions international rugby union player. A centre, he played club rugby for Newport. He won 27 caps for Wales and was selected to play in the British Lions on two tours of Australia and New Zealand.

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Boris Parygin, Soviet philosopher, psychologist, and author (born 1930)

Boris Dmitrievitch Parygin was a Soviet and Russian philosopher, sociologist and one of the founders of social psychology and member of a wide range of international academies. Parygin was a specialist in a sphere of philosophical and psychological problems of social psychology – its history, methodology, theory and praxeology.

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09/04/2011

Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri, Bahraini journalist (born 1971)

Zakariya Rashid Hassan Al-Ashiri, also spelled Al Asheri and Aushayri,, was a forty-year-old Bahraini blogger and journalist, worked as an editor and writer for a local blog news website in Al Dair, Bahrain. He was killed on April 9, 2011, while in custody of the Bahraini Government. Al-Ashiri was the first journalist in Bahrain to die in direct relation to his work since The Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping records in 1992, and he was the first to die in the Bahraini uprising (2011–present).

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Sidney Lumet, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1924)

Sidney Arthur Lumet was an American film director. Lumet started his career in theatre before moving to directing television in 1950, and then directing films from 1957, where he gained a reputation for making realistic and gritty New York dramas that focused on the working class, tackled social injustices, and often questioned authority. He received various accolades including an Academy Honorary Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for nine British Academy Film Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award.

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09/04/2010

Zoltán Varga, Hungarian footballer and manager (born 1945)

Zoltán Varga was a Hungarian footballer who played in the 1960s and 1970s. He was an Olympic gold medalist at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He played for Ferencvárosi TC when they won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1965, beating Juventus 1–0 in the final. He also played for Ajax Amsterdam.

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09/04/2009

Nick Adenhart, American baseball player (born 1986)

Nicholas James Adenhart was an American right-handed baseball starting pitcher who played parts of two seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. In just four career games, Adenhart pitched 18 innings and posted a win-loss record of 1–0.

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09/04/2007

Egon Bondy, Czech philosopher and poet (born 1930)

Egon Bondy, born Zbyněk Fišer, was a Czech writer, with prolific and distinctive output in poetry, prose and philosophy, one of the leading personalities of the Prague underground within Communist Czechoslovakia. From the 1950s down to the 1980s, his non-conformism made him a target of the totalitarian regime, but he himself also collaborated with the regime's secret police (StB) by informing on other dissidents in his circle.

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Dorrit Hoffleit, American astronomer and academic (born 1907)

Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit was an American senior research astronomer at Yale University. She is best known for her work in variable stars, astrometry, spectroscopy, meteors, and the Bright Star Catalog. She is also known for her mentorship of many young women and generations of astronomers.

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09/04/2006

Billy Hitchcock, American baseball player, coach, manager (born 1916)

William Clyde Hitchcock was an American professional baseball infielder, coach, manager and scout. In Major League Baseball (MLB), he was primarily a third baseman, second baseman and shortstop who appeared in 703 games over nine years with five American League teams. After 18 years as a coach, manager, and scout he became an executive in Minor League Baseball, serving as president of the Double-A Southern League from 1971 to 1980. His older brother, Jimmy Hitchcock, played briefly for the 1938 Boston Bees.

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Vilgot Sjöman, Swedish director and screenwriter (born 1924)

David Harald Vilgot Sjöman was a Swedish writer and film director. His films deal with controversial issues of social class, morality, and sexual taboos, combining the emotionally tortured characters of Ingmar Bergman with the avant garde style of the French New Wave. He is best known as the director of the films 491 (1964), I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), and I Am Curious (Blue) (1968), which stretched the boundaries of acceptability of what could then be shown on film, deliberately treating their subjects in a provocative and explicit manner.

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09/04/2003

Jerry Bittle, American cartoonist (born 1949)

Jerry Bittle was a cartoonist who drew the comic strips Geech and Shirley and Son.

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09/04/2002

Pat Flaherty, American race car driver (born 1926)

George Francis "Pat" Flaherty was an American racing driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1956.

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Leopold Vietoris, Austrian soldier, mathematician, and academic (born 1891)

Leopold Vietoris was an Austrian mathematician, World War I veteran and supercentenarian. He was born in Radkersburg and died in Innsbruck.

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09/04/2001

Willie Stargell, American baseball player and coach (born 1940)

Wilver Dornell Stargell, nicknamed "Pops" later in his career, was an American professional baseball left fielder and first baseman who spent all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1962–1982) with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Among the most feared power hitters in baseball history, Stargell had the most home runs (296) of any player in the 1970s decade. During his career, he batted .282 with 2,232 hits, 1,194 runs, 423 doubles, 475 home runs, and 1,540 runs batted in, helping his team win six National League (NL) East division titles, two NL pennants, and two World Series championships in 1971 and 1979, both over the Baltimore Orioles. Stargell was a seven-time All-Star and two-time NL home run leader. In 1979, at the age of 39, he became the first and currently only player to win the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, the NL Championship Series MVP Award and the World Series MVP Award in one season. In 1982, the Pirates retired his uniform number 8. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988 in his first year of eligibility.

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09/04/2000

Tony Cliff, Trotskyist activist and founder of the Socialist Workers Party (born 1917)

Tony Cliff was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in Ottoman Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen name of Tony Cliff. A founding member of the Socialist Review Group, which became the International Socialists and then the Socialist Workers Party, in 1977. Cliff was effectively the leader of all three.

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09/04/1999

Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, Nigerien general and politician, President of Niger (born 1949)

General Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara was a Nigerien military officer and diplomat who ruled Niger from 1996 until his assassination in 1999. He seized and lost power in military coups.

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09/04/1998

Tom Cora, American cellist and composer (born 1953)

Thomas Henry Corra, better known as Tom Cora, was an American cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock. He recorded with John Zorn, Butch Morris, and the Ex, and was a member of Curlew, Third Person and Skeleton Crew.

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09/04/1997

Mae Boren Axton, American singer-songwriter (born 1914)

Mae Boren Axton was an American singer-songwriter. She was known in the music industry as the "Queen Mother of Nashville". She co-wrote the Elvis Presley hit single "Heartbreak Hotel" with Tommy Durden. She worked with Mel Tillis, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Eddy Arnold, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Tillotson, and Blake Shelton.

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Helene Hanff, American author and screenwriter (born 1916)

Helene Hanff was an American writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play, television play, and film of the same name.

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09/04/1996

Richard Condon, American author and publicist (born 1915)

Richard Thomas Condon was an American political novelist. Though his works were satire, they were generally transformed into thrillers or semi-thrillers in other media, such as cinema. All 26 books were written in distinctive Condon style, which combined a fast pace, outrage, and frequent humor while focusing almost obsessively on monetary greed and political corruption. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." Condon's books were occasionally bestsellers, and a number of his books were made into films; he is primarily remembered for his 1959 The Manchurian Candidate and, many years later, a series of four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.

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09/04/1993

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, American rabbi and philosopher (born 1903)

Joseph Ber Soloveitchik was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, and modern Jewish philosopher. He was a scion of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty.

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09/04/1991

Forrest Towns, American hurdler and coach (born 1914)

Forrest Grady "Spec" Towns was an American track and field athlete and coach. He was the 1936 Olympic champion in the 110 m hurdles and broke the world record in that event three times.

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09/04/1988

Brook Benton, American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1931)

Benjamin Franklin Peay, known professionally as Brook Benton, was an American singer and songwriter whose music transcended rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop music genres in the 1950s and 1960s, with hits such as "It's Just a Matter of Time" and "Endlessly".

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Hans Berndt, German footballer (born 1913)

Hans "Hanne" Berndt was a German footballer who played for Tennis Borussia Berlin and VfB Königsberg. He was also capped three times for the Germany national team, scoring two goals.

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Dave Prater, American singer (born 1937)

David Prater Jr. was an American Southern soul and rhythm & blues singer and musician, who was the deeper baritone/tenor vocalist of the soul vocal duo Sam & Dave from 1961 until his death in 1988. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1992), the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame (1997), and he was a Grammy Award–winning (1967) and multiple Gold Record award-winning recording artist.

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09/04/1982

Wilfrid Pelletier, Canadian pianist, composer, and conductor (born 1896)

Joseph Louis Wilfrid Pelletier, was a Canadian conductor, pianist, composer, and arts administrator. He was instrumental in establishing the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, serving as the orchestra's first artistic director and conductor from 1935 to 1941. He had a long and fruitful partnership with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City that began with his appointment as a rehearsal accompanist in 1917; ultimately working there as one of the company's conductors in mainly the French opera repertoire from 1929 to 1950. From 1951 to 1966, he was the principal conductor of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec. He was also a featured conductor for a number of RCA Victor recordings, including an acclaimed reading of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem featuring baritone Mack Harrell and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and chorus.

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09/04/1980

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Iraqi cleric and philosopher (born 1935)

Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, also known as al-Shahid al-Khamis, was an Iraqi Islamic scholar, philosopher, and the ideological founder of the Islamic Dawa Party. He was the father-in-law to Muqtada al-Sadr, a cousin of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and Musa al-Sadr. His father Haydar al-Sadr was a well-respected high-ranking Shi'a cleric. His lineage can be traced back to Muhammad through the seventh Shia Imam Musa al-Kazim. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was executed in 1980 by the regime of Saddam Hussein along with his sister, Amina Sadr bint al-Huda.

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09/04/1978

Clough Williams-Ellis, English-Welsh architect, designed Portmeirion (born 1883)

Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales. He became a major figure in the development of Welsh architecture in the first half of the 20th century, as well as working on commissions across the UK and Ireland, in a variety of styles and building types. He also campaigned widely for the preservation of rural England and Wales, for which he was knighted.

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09/04/1976

Dagmar Nordstrom, American singer-songwriter and pianist (born 1903)

Dagmar Nordstrom was an American composer, pianist and singer. She performed together with her sister Siggie as a cabaret singing duo known as The Nordstrom Sisters.

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Phil Ochs, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1940)

Philip David Ochs was an American songwriter, protest singer, and political activist. Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, and political commentary. He wrote about 200 songs in the 1960s and 1970s and released eight albums.

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Renato Petronio, Italian rower (born 1891)

Renato Petronio was an Italian rowing coxswain who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics and in the 1936 Summer Olympics.

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09/04/1970

Gustaf Tenggren, Swedish-American illustrator and animator (born 1896)

Gustaf Adolf Tenggren was a Swedish illustrator and animator. He is known for his Arthur Rackham-influenced fairy-tale style and use of silhouetted figures with caricatured faces. Tenggren was a chief illustrator for The Walt Disney Company in the late 1930s, in what has been called the Golden Age of American animation, when animated feature films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio were produced.

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09/04/1963

Eddie Edwards, American trombonist (born 1891)

Edwin Branford Edwards was an early jazz trombonist who was a member of the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

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Xul Solar, Argentinian painter and sculptor (born 1887)

Xul Solar was the adopted name of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari, an Argentine painter, sculptor, writer, and inventor of imaginary languages.

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09/04/1961

Zog I of Albania (born 1895)

Zog I was an Albanian statesman and aristocrat who served as the leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939. At age 27, he first served as Albania's youngest ever Prime Minister (1922–1924), then as president (1925–1928), and finally as King (1928–1939).

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09/04/1959

Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, designed the Price Tower and Fallingwater (born 1867)

Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".

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09/04/1953

Eddie Cochems, American football player and coach (born 1877)

Edward Bulwer Cochems was an American football player and coach. He played football for the University of Wisconsin from 1898 to 1901 and was the head football coach at North Dakota Agricultural College—now known as North Dakota State University (1902–1903), Clemson University (1905), Saint Louis University (1906–1908), and the University of Maine (1914). During his three years at Saint Louis, he was the first football coach to build an offense around the forward pass, which became a legal play in the 1906 college football season. Using the forward pass, Cochems' 1906 team compiled an undefeated 11–0 record, led the nation in scoring, and outscored opponents by a combined score of 407 to 11. He is considered by some to be the "father of the forward pass" in American football.

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C. E. M. Joad, English philosopher and television host (born 1891)

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher, author, teacher and broadcasting personality. He appeared on The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio wartime discussion programme. He popularised philosophy and became a celebrity, before his downfall in a scandal over an unpaid train fare in 1948.

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Hans Reichenbach, German philosopher from the Vienna Circle (born 1891)

Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator, and proponent of logical empiricism. He founded the Gesellschaft für empirische Philosophie in Berlin in 1928, also known as the "Berlin Circle". Carl Gustav Hempel, Richard von Mises, David Hilbert and Kurt Grelling all became members of the Berlin Circle.

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09/04/1951

Vilhelm Bjerknes, Norwegian physicist and meteorologist (born 1862)

Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes was a Norwegian geophysicist and meteorologist who did much to lay the foundation of the modern practice of weather forecasting. He formulated the primitive equations that are still in use in numerical weather prediction and climate modeling. He founded the so-called Bergen School of Meteorology, which was successful in advancing weather prediction and meteorology in the early 20th century.

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09/04/1948

George Carpenter, Australian 5th General of The Salvation Army (born 1872)

George Lyndon Carpenter was an Australian writer who was the fifth General of The Salvation Army from 1939 to 1946.

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Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Colombian lawyer and politician, 16th Colombian Minister of National Education (born 1903)

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala was a Colombian politician and statesman who was the leader of the Liberal Party. A nationalist, he served as the mayor of Bogotá from 1936–37, the national Education Minister from 1940–41, and the Labor Minister from 1943–44.

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09/04/1945

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and theologian (born 1906)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential; his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship is described as a modern classic. Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Nazi euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison for a year and a half. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

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Wilhelm Canaris, German admiral (born 1887)

Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during World War II following the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

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Johann Georg Elser, German carpenter (born 1903)

Johann Georg Elser was a German carpenter who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on 8 November 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. Elser constructed and placed a bomb near the platform from which Hitler was to deliver a speech. It did not kill Hitler, who left earlier than expected, but it did kill 8 people and injured 62 others. Elser was held as a prisoner for more than five years until he was executed at Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.

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Hans Oster, German general (born 1887)

Generalmajor Hans Paul Oster was a general in the Wehrmacht and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr, Oster was in a good position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work.

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Karl Sack, German lawyer and jurist (born 1896)

Karl Sack was a German jurist and member of the resistance movement during World War II.

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Hans von Dohnányi, Austrian-German lawyer and jurist (born 1902)

Hans von Dohnanyi was a German jurist. He used his position in the Abwehr to help Jews escape Germany, worked with German resistance against the Nazi régime, and after the failed 20 July Plot, he was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and executed by the SS in 1945.

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09/04/1944

Yevgeniya Rudneva, Ukrainian lieutenant and pilot (born 1920)

Yevgeniya Maksimovna Rudneva was the head navigator of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. Prior to World War II she was an astronomer, the head of the Solar Department of the Moscow branch of the Astronomical-Geodesical Society of the USSR.

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09/04/1940

Mrs Patrick Campbell, English actress (born 1865)

Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name Mrs Patrick Campbell or Mrs Pat, was an English stage actress, best known for appearing in plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Barrie. These included Shaw's Pygmalion where she originated the role of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the West End in 1914. She also toured the United States and appeared briefly in films.

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09/04/1936

Ferdinand Tönnies, German sociologist and philosopher (born 1855)

Ferdinand Tönnies was a German sociologist, economist, and philosopher. He was a significant contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for distinguishing between two types of social groups, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. He co-founded the German Sociological Association together with Max Weber and Georg Simmel and many other founders. He was president of the society from 1909 to 1933, after which he was ousted for having criticized the Nazis. Tönnies was regarded as the first proper German sociologist and published over 900 works, contributing to many areas of sociology and philosophy. Tönnies, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel are considered the founding fathers of classical German sociology. Though there has been a resurgence of interest in Weber and Simmel, Tönnies has not drawn as much attention.

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09/04/1926

Zip the Pinhead, American freak show performer (born 1857)

William Henry Johnson, known as Zip the Pinhead, was an American freak show performer known for his tapered head.

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09/04/1922

Hans Fruhstorfer, German entomologist and explorer (born 1866)

Hans Fruhstorfer was a German explorer, insect and shell trader and entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. He collected and described new species of exotic butterflies, especially in Adalbert Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World. He is best known for his work on the butterflies of Java.

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09/04/1917

James Hope Moulton, English philologist and scholar (born 1863)

The Reverend James Hope Moulton was a British non-conformist divine. He was also a philologist and made a special study of Zoroastrianism.

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09/04/1915

Raymond Whittindale, English rugby player (born 1883)

Raymond Whittindale was a British rugby union player who competed in the 1900 Summer Olympics. He was a member of the British rugby union team, which won the silver medal.

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09/04/1909

Helena Modjeska, Polish-American actress (born 1840)

Helena Modrzejewska, known professionally in the United States as Helena Modjeska, was a Polish-American actress who specialized in Shakespearean and tragic roles. She was also a philanthropist and a socialite.

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09/04/1904

Isabella II, Spanish queen (born 1830)

Isabella II was Queen of Spain from 1833 until her deposition in 1868. She is the only queen regnant in the history of unified Spain.

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09/04/1889

Michel Eugène Chevreul, French chemist and academic (born 1786)

Michel Eugène Chevreul was a French chemist whose work contributed to significant developments in science, medicine, and art. Chevreul's early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led to his isolation of the heptadecanoic (margaric), stearic, and oleic fatty acids. In the process, Chevreul became the first scientist to define the concept of a chemical compound and the first to formally characterize the nature of organic compounds; he is consequently considered a founder of modern organic chemistry.

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09/04/1882

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter (born 1828)

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired many contemporary artists and writers, such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

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09/04/1876

Charles Goodyear, American lawyer, judge, and politician (born 1804)

Charles Goodyear was a banker, attorney, and politician from New York. He was most notable for his service as a United States representative from 1845 to 1847 and 1865 to 1867.

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09/04/1872

Erastus Corning, American businessman and politician (born 1794)

Erastus Corning was an American businessman and politician from Albany, New York. A Democrat, he was most notable for his service as mayor of Albany from 1834 to 1837, in the New York State Senate from 1842 to 1845, and two nonconsecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1857 to 1859, and from 1861 to 1863.

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09/04/1806

William V, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic (born 1748)

William V was Prince of Orange and the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. He went into exile to London in 1795.

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09/04/1804

Jacques Necker, Swiss-French politician, Chief Minister to the French Monarch (born 1732)

Jacques Necker was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. Necker was a constitutional monarchist, a political economist, and a moralist, who wrote a severe critique of the new principle of equality before the law.

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09/04/1768

Sarah Fielding, English author (born 1710)

Sarah Fielding was an English writer and sister of the playwright, novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding. She wrote The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749), thought to be the first novel in English aimed expressly at children. Earlier she had success with her novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744-53).

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09/04/1761

William Law, English priest and theologian (born 1686)

William Law was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously, William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror. Thereafter, Law continued as a simple priest (curate), and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately and wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing, greatly influenced the evangelistic movement of his day, as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Samuel Johnson and the historian Edward Gibbon. In 1784, William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the politician, philanthropist, and leader of the movement to stop the slave trade, was deeply touched by reading William Law's book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729). Law's spiritual writings remain in print today.

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09/04/1754

Christian Wolff, German philosopher and academic (born 1679)

Christian Wolff was a German philosopher. Wolff is characterized as one of the most eminent German philosophers between Leibniz and Kant. His life work spanned almost every scholarly subject of his time, displayed and unfolded according to his demonstrative-deductive, mathematical method, which some deem the peak of Enlightenment rationality in Germany.

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09/04/1747

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Scottish soldier and politician (born 1667)

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was a Scottish landowner and head of Clan Fraser of Lovat. Convicted of high treason for his role in the Jacobite rising of 1745, he was the last man in Britain to be executed by beheading.

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09/04/1693

Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, French author (born 1618)

Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, commonly known as Bussy-Rabutin, was a French memoirist. He was the cousin and frequent correspondent of Madame de Sévigné.

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09/04/1654

Matei Basarab, Romanian prince (born 1588)

Matei Basarab was the voivode (prince) of Wallachia from 1632 to 1654.

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09/04/1626

Francis Bacon, English jurist and politician, Attorney General for England and Wales (born 1561)

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of natural philosophy, guided by the scientific method, and his works remained influential throughout the Scientific Revolution.

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09/04/1561

Jean Quintin, French priest, knight and writer (born 1500)

Jean Quintin or Quentin was a French priest, knight of the Order of St John and writer. His writings include Insulae Melitae Descriptio (1536), the earliest known detailed description of the Maltese Islands, which also contains the earliest known printed map of the archipelago.

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09/04/1557

Mikael Agricola, Finnish priest and scholar (born 1510)

Mikael Agricola was a Finnish Lutheran clergyman who became the de facto founder of literary Finnish and a prominent proponent of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden, including Finland, which was a Swedish territory at the time. He is often called the "father of literary Finnish".

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09/04/1553

François Rabelais, French monk and scholar (born 1494)

François Rabelais was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholar, he attracted opposition from both Protestant theologian John Calvin and from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Though in his day he was best known as a physician, scholar, diplomat, and Catholic priest, later he became better known as a satirist for his depictions of the grotesque, and for his larger-than-life characters.

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09/04/1550

Alqas Mirza, Safavid prince (born 1516)

Abu'l Ghazi Sultan Alqas Mirza, better known as Alqas Mirza, was a Safavid prince and the second surviving son of king (shah) Ismail I. In early 1546, with Ottoman help, he staged a revolt against his brother Tahmasp I, who was king at the time.

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09/04/1484

Edward of Middleheim, prince of Wales (born 1473)

Edward of Middleham, Prince of Wales, was the son and heir apparent of King Richard III of England by his wife Anne Neville. He was Richard's only legitimate child and died aged seven or ten.

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09/04/1483

Edward IV, king of England (born 1442)

Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.

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09/04/1327

Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland, Scottish nobleman (ca. 1296)

Walter Stewart was the 6th Hereditary High Steward of Scotland and was the father of King Robert II of Scotland, the first Stewart monarch.

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09/04/1283

Margaret of Scotland, queen of Norway (born 1261)

Margaret of Scotland was Queen of Norway as the wife of King Eric II. She is sometimes known as the Maid of Scotland to distinguish her from her daughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway, who succeeded to the throne of Scotland.

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09/04/1241

Henry II, High Duke of Poland (born 1196)

Henry II the Pious was Duke of Silesia and High Duke of Poland as well as Duke of South-Greater Poland from 1238 until his death. Between 1238 and 1239 he also served as regent of Sandomierz and Opole–Racibórz. He was the son of Henry the Bearded and a member of the Silesian Piast dynasty. In October 2015, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Legnica opened up his cause for beatification, obtaining him the title of Servant of God.

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09/04/1137

William X, duke of Aquitaine (born 1099)

William X, called the Saint, was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou from 1126 to 1137.

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09/04/1024

Benedict VIII, pope of the Catholic Church (born 980)

Pope Benedict VIII was bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 18 May 1012 until 1024. He was born Theophylact of Tusculum to the noble family of the counts of Tusculum. Unusually for a medieval pope, he had strong authority both in Rome and abroad.

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09/04/0715

Constantine, pope of the Catholic Church (born 664)

Pope Constantine was the bishop of Rome from 25 March 708 to his death on 9 April 715. One of the last popes of the Byzantine Papacy, the defining moment of his pontificate was his 710/711 visit to Constantinople, where he compromised with Justinian II on the Trullan canons of the Quinisext Council. The city's next papal visit occurred in 1967.

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09/04/0682

Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari, Egyptian politician, Governor of Egypt (born 616)

Maslama ibn Mukhallad ibn Samit al-Ansari was one of the companions of the Prophet and active in Egypt in the decades after its conquest by the Muslims.

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09/04/0491

Zeno, emperor of the Byzantine Empire (born 425)

Zeno was Eastern Roman emperor from 474 to 475 and again from 476 to 491. His reign was plagued by domestic revolts and religious dissension, but was more successful on the foreign front. He is credited with further stabilizing the Eastern empire, while the Western Roman Empire fell following the deposition of Romulus Augustulus.

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09/04/0436

Tan Daoji, Chinese general and politician

Tan Daoji was a high-level general of the Chinese Liu Song dynasty. He was one of the most respected generals during the Southern and Northern Dynasties era. Because of this, however, he was feared by Emperor Wen and even more so by Emperor Wen's brother, the prime minister Liu Yikang the Prince of Pengcheng, and during an illness of Emperor Wen, Liu Yikang had Tan arrested and executed on false accusations of treason.

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11/04/2005

Jimmu, emperor of Japan (born 711 BC)

Emperor Jimmu was the legendary first emperor of Japan according to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. His ascension is traditionally dated as 660 BC. In Japanese mythology, he was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, through her grandson Ninigi, as well as a descendant of the storm god Susanoo. He launched a military expedition from Hyūga near the Seto Inland Sea, captured Yamato, and established this as his center of power. In modern Japan, Emperor Jimmu's legendary ascension is marked as National Foundation Day on February 11.

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