Died on Saturday, 16th August – Famous Deaths

16/08/2023

Howard S. Becker, American sociologist (born 1928)

Howard Saul Becker was an American sociologist who taught at Northwestern University. Becker made contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. Becker also wrote extensively on sociological writing styles and methodologies. Becker's 1963 book Outsiders provided the foundations for labeling theory. Becker was often called a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist, although he did not align himself with either method. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Becker was considered part of the second Chicago School of Sociology, which also includes Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss.

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16/08/2021

Sean Lock, English comedian and actor (born 1963)

Sean Lock was an English comedian and actor. He began his comedy career as a stand-up comedian. In 2000, Lock won the British Comedy Award, in the category of Best Live Comic, and was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats from 2005 to 2015, and on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown from 2012 until his death in 2021.

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16/08/2019

Peter Fonda, American actor, director, and screenwriter. (born 1940)

Peter Henry Fonda was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He was twice an Academy Award nominee, both for acting and screenwriting, and a two-time Golden Globe Award winner for his acting. He was a member of the Fonda acting family, as the son of actor Henry Fonda, the brother of actress and activist Jane Fonda, and the father of actress Bridget Fonda.

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Richard Williams, Canadian-British animator (born 1933)

Richard Edmund Williams was a Canadian and British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)—for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993).

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16/08/2018

Aretha Franklin, American singer-songwriter (born 1942)

Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Regarded as the "Queen of Soul", she was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time.

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indian poet and 12th Prime Minister of India (born 1924)

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian poet, writer and statesman who served as the prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for 6 years from 1998 to 2004. He was the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a volunteer and full-time functionary (pracharak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. He was also a Hindi poet and a writer. The Sangh's emphasis on self-cultivation and disciplined nation-building left a lasting mark on Vajpayee's early worldview. Scholars have observed that Vajpayee combined cultural nationalism with political moderation, shaping a distinctive strand of post-Independence Indian conservatism rooted in civilisational identity. His speeches and poetry are noted for blending political pragmatism with themes drawn from India's cultural and philosophical traditions. Vajpayee represented a current in Hindu nationalism that sought to harmonise cultural identity with democratic pluralism.

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Wakako Yamauchi, American-Japanese writer (born 1924)

Wakako Yamauchi was a Japanese American playwright and short story writer. Her plays are considered pioneering works in Asian-American theater.

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16/08/2016

João Havelange, Brazilian water polo player, lawyer, and businessman (born 1916)

Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid "João" de Havelange was a Brazilian lawyer, businessman, and athlete who was the seventh president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998. His tenure as president is the second longest in FIFA's history, behind that of Jules Rimet. He received the title of honorary president when leaving office, but resigned in April 2013. He was preceded by Stanley Rous and succeeded by Sepp Blatter. Havelange served as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1963 to 2011. He was the longest-serving active member upon his resignation. In July 2012, a Swiss prosecutor's report revealed that, during his tenure on FIFA's Executive Committee, he and his son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira took more than 41 million Swiss francs (£21m) in bribes in connection with the award of World Cup marketing rights.

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John McLaughlin, American television personality (born 1927)

John Joseph McLaughlin (; was an American television personality and political commentator. He created, produced, and hosted the political commentary series The McLaughlin Group from 1982 to 2016, and hosted and produced John McLaughlin's One on One, which ran from 1984 to 2013.

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16/08/2015

Jacob Bekenstein, Mexican-American physicist, astronomer, and academic (born 1947)

Jacob David Bekenstein was a Mexican-born American-Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections between information and gravitation.

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Anna Kashfi, British actress (born 1934)

Anna Kashfi was an Anglo-Indian actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950s but was better known for her tumultuous marriage to film star Marlon Brando and the controversies surrounding their son.

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Shuja Khanzada, Pakistani colonel and politician (born 1943)

Shuja Khanzada was a Pakistani politician and retired army colonel, who was serving as the Home Minister of Punjab from 2014 until his assassination on 16 August 2015.

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Mile Mrkšić, Serb general (born 1947)

Mile Mrkšić was a colonel of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in charge of the unit involved in the Battle of Vukovar during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. He was convicted for not preventing the mass killing of 264 Croats that followed the fall of Vukovar, and sentenced to 20 years.

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16/08/2014

Patrick Aziza, Nigerian general and politician, Governor of Kebbi State (born 1947)

Patrick Aziza was the first military Governor of Kebbi State, Nigeria after it was split off from Sokoto State on 27 August 1991 during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida.

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Vsevolod Nestayko, Ukrainian author (born 1930)

Vsevolod Zinoviiovych Nestaiko or Nestayko was a modern Ukrainian children's writer. In Ukraine he is considered the country's best-known and best loved Ukrainian children’s literature writer.

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Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, Italian-South African lawyer and politician (born 1960)

Mario Gaspare R. Oriani-Ambrosini was an Italian constitutional lawyer and politician who was a Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party.

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Peter Scholl-Latour, German journalist, author, and academic (born 1924)

Peter Roman Scholl-Latour was a French-German journalist, author and reporter. Scholl-Latour was regarded as one of Europe's most important journalists, akin to what Walter Cronkite was in the US. For over six decades, he was one of the continent's most influential voices. During the Vietnam War, he was captured by the Viet Cong and managed to secure unique film footage during his captivity.

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16/08/2013

David Rees, Welsh mathematician and academic (born 1918)

David Rees FRS was a British professor of pure mathematics at the University of Exeter, having been head of the Mathematics / Mathematical Sciences Department at Exeter from 1958 to 1983. During the Second World War, Rees was active on Enigma research in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park.

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16/08/2012

Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (born 1954)

Princess Lalla Amina was a member of the Moroccan royal family and former President of the Royal Moroccan Federation of Equestrian Sports.

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Martine Franck, Belgian photographer and director (born 1938)

Martine Franck was a British-Belgian documentary and portrait photographer. She was a member of Magnum Photos for more than 32 years. Franck was the second wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson and co-founder and president of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.

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Abune Paulos, Ethiopian patriarch (born 1935)

Abune Paulos was the fifth Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church from 1992 to his death in 2012. His full title was "His Holiness Abuna Paulos, Fifth Patriarch of the Orthodox Tewahido Church of Ethiopia, Ichege of the see of Saint Tekle Haymanot, Archbishop of Axum and one of the seven serving Presidents of the World Council of Churches."

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William Windom, American actor (born 1923)

William Windom was an American actor. He was known as a character actor of the stage and screen. He is well known for his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt alongside Angela Lansbury in the CBS mystery series Murder, She Wrote and his intense guest role as Commodore Matt Decker in Star Trek.

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16/08/2011

Mihri Belli, Turkish activist and politician (born 1916)

Mihri Belli was a prominent leader of the socialist movement in Turkey. He fought for the communist side in the Greek Civil War.

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16/08/2010

Dimitrios Ioannidis, Greek general (born 1923)

Dimitrios Ioannidis, also known as Dimitris Ioannidis and as The Invisible Dictator, was a Greek military officer and one of the leading figures in the junta that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. Ioannidis was considered a "purist and a moralist, a type of Greek Gaddafi".

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16/08/2008

Dorival Caymmi, Brazilian singer-songwriter and actor (born 1914)

Dorival Caymmi was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actor, and painter active for more than 70 years, beginning in 1933. He contributed to the birth of Brazil's bossa nova movement, and several of his samba pieces, such as "Samba da Minha Terra", "Doralice" and "Saudade da Bahia", have become staples of música popular brasileira (MPB). Equally notable are his ballads celebrating the fishermen and women of Bahia, including "Promessa de Pescador", "O Que É Que a Baiana Tem?", and "Milagre". Caymmi composed about 100 songs in his lifetime, and many of his works are now considered to be Brazilian classics. Both Brazilian and non-Brazilian musicians have covered his songs.

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Ronnie Drew, Irish musician, folk singer and actor (born 1934)

Joseph Ronald Drew was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor who had a fifty-year career recording with The Dubliners.

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Masanobu Fukuoka, Japanese farmer and author (born 1913)

Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer and philosopher celebrated for his natural farming and re-vegetation of desertified lands. He was a proponent of no-till, herbicide and pesticide-free cultivation methods from which he created a particular method of agriculture, commonly referred to as "natural farming" or "do-nothing farming".

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16/08/2007

Bahaedin Adab, Iranian engineer and politician (born 1945)

Bahaedin Adab, also spelled Bahaeddin or Bahaoddin Adab, Kurdish "Baha Adab" was an Iranian Kurdish politician, engineer and philanthropist. A reformist, he served as an independent deputy in the Islamic Consultative Assembly for two terms from 1996 to 2004. He co-founded the Karafarin Bank in 2001 and the Kurdish United Front in 2005.

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16/08/2006

Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguayan general and dictator; 46th President of Paraguay (born 1912)

Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda was a Paraguayan politician, army general, and military dictator who ruled as the 42nd president of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 until his overthrow in 1989. Known as El Stronato, his dictatorship was marked by political violence. Before his accession to the presidency, he was the country's de facto leader from May to August 1954.

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16/08/2005

Vassar Clements, American fiddler (born 1928)

Vassar Carlton Clements was an American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass along with roots also in country and other musical traditions. He was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2018.

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Tonino Delli Colli, Italian cinematographer (born 1922)

Antonio "Tonino" Delli Colli was an Italian cinematographer.

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William Corlett, English novelist and playwright (born 1938)

William Corlett, was an English author, best known for his quartet of children's novels, The Magician's House, published between 1990 and 1992.

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Frère Roger, Swiss monk and mystic (born 1915)

Roger Schutz, popularly known as Brother Roger, was a Swiss Christian leader and monastic brother. In 1940 Schutz founded the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastic community in Burgundy, France, serving as its first prior until his murder in 2005. Towards the end of his life, the Taizé Community was attracting international attention, welcoming thousands of young pilgrims every week, which it has continued to do after his death.

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16/08/2004

Ivan Hlinka, Czech ice hockey player and coach (born 1950)

Ivan Hlinka was a Czech professional ice hockey player and coach. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in Czech ice hockey history. A big centre, his playing style was comparable to Phil Esposito, often scoring with shots from the slot. He played most of his career with HC Litvínov and spent two seasons in the National Hockey League with the Vancouver Canucks. Internationally, Hlinka played for the Czechoslovakia men's national ice hockey team and was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2002. After retiring as a player, he turned to coaching, leading the Czech national team to gold at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano and spending two seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins. His legacy includes the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament for national under-18 hockey teams, and the Ivan Hlinka Stadion.

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Balanadarajah Iyer, Sri Lankan journalist and poet (born 1957)

Kandasamy Iyer Balanadarajah Iyer (Balanadarasan), also known as Sinna Bala, (6 June 1957 – 16 August 2004) was a Sri Lankan Tamil activist, writer and poet who was a media secretary and a senior member of the Eelam People's Democratic Party.

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Carl Mydans, American photographer and journalist (born 1907)

Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine.

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Robert Quiroga, American boxer (born 1969)

Robert Quiroga was the International Boxing Federation Super flyweight champion from 1990 to 1993. Quiroga successfully defended his title five times and retired in 1995. He finished with 20–2 with 11 KOs. Quiroga was the first world champion from San Antonio, Texas.

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16/08/2003

Idi Amin, Ugandan field marshal and politician, 3rd President of Uganda (born 1928)

Awon'go Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 until his overthrow in 1979. He rose through military ranks until he became commander of all Ugandan armed forces in 1970. In 1971, he overthrew president Milton Obote, subsequently ruling as a dictator. His administration carried out human rights abuses, including mass killings, and collapsed the Ugandan economy. He was ousted from power in 1979 after launching an unsuccessful war on Tanzania. He lived in exile for the rest of his life.

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16/08/2002

Abu Nidal, Palestinian terrorist leader (born 1937)

Sabri Khalil al-Banna, known by his nom de guerre Abu Nidal, was a Palestinian militant. He was the founder of Fatah: The Revolutionary Council, a militant Palestinian splinter group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). Abu Nidal formed the ANO in October 1974 after splitting from Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

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Jeff Corey, American actor (born 1914)

Jeff Corey was an American actor, television director, and teacher. After being blacklisted in the 1950s, he became one of the most prominent and influential acting coaches in Hollywood, whose students included the likes of Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams, James Dean, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, James Coburn, Leonard Nimoy, Cher, Barbra Streisand and Rob Reiner. He returned to film and television work in the 1960s, playing many character roles.

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John Roseboro, American baseball player and coach (born 1933)

John Junior Roseboro was an American professional baseball player and coach. He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball from 1957 until 1970, most prominently as a member of the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers. A four-time All-Star player, Roseboro is considered one of the best defensive catchers of the 1960s, winning two Gold Glove Awards. He was the Dodgers' starting catcher in four World Series with the Dodgers winning three of those.

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16/08/1998

Phil Leeds, American actor (born 1916)

Phil Leeds was an American character actor. He appeared in many movies and television series, including guest appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Maude, The Monkees, Friends, Barney Miller, The Golden Girls, Everybody Loves Raymond, Boy Meets World and more.

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Dorothy West, American journalist and author (born 1907)

Dorothy West was an American novelist, short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music. She was one of the few Black women writers to be published in major literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s.

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16/08/1997

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistani musician and Qawwali singer (born 1948)

Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, also known by his initials NFAK, was a Pakistani singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music director, primarily associated with qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music from Pakistan and India. He ranks as one of the most influential South Asian singers of all time. Widely recognised as the "Shahanshah-e-Qawwali", he has been recognised as one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR and 200 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. The New York Times named Khan the greatest qawwali singer of his generation. Credited with introducing Qawwali music to international audiences, he was known for his vocal abilities and could perform at a high level of intensity for several hours.

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Sultan Ahmad Nanupuri, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and teacher (born 1914)

Shah Sultan Ahmad Nanupuri, also known by his daak naam Badshah, was a Bangladeshi Islamic scholar, teacher and author. He established numerous madrasas in Bangladesh and was the founding principal of Al-Jamiah Al-Islamiah Obaidia Nanupur for seventeen years.

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16/08/1993

Stewart Granger, English-American actor (born 1913)

Stewart Granger was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.

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16/08/1992

Mark Heard, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1951)

John Mark Heard III was an American record producer, folk rock singer and songwriter from Macon, Georgia.

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16/08/1991

Luigi Zampa, Italian director and screenwriter (born 1905)

Luigi Zampa was an Italian film director.

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16/08/1990

Pat O'Connor, New Zealand wrestler and trainer (born 1925)

Patrick John O'Connor was a New Zealand-American amateur wrestler and professional wrestler. Regarded as one of the premier workers of his era, O'Connor held the AWA World Heavyweight Championship and NWA World Heavyweight Championship simultaneously, the latter of which he held for approximately two years. He was also the inaugural AWA World Heavyweight Champion. He is an overall two-time world champion.

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16/08/1989

Amanda Blake, American actress (born 1929)

Amanda Blake was an American actress best known for the role of the red-haired saloon proprietress "Miss Kitty Russell" on the Western television series Gunsmoke. Along with her fourth husband, Frank Gilbert, she ran one of the first successful programs for breeding cheetahs in captivity.

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16/08/1986

Ronnie Aird, English cricketer and administrator (born 1902)

Ronald Aird was an English first-class cricketer, cricket administrator and British Army officer. Aird began his first-class cricket career with Hampshire County Cricket Club in 1920, making over 100 appearances for the county in which he scored over 3,600 runs. After also playing first-class cricket for Cambridge University Cricket Club while studying at Clare College, Aird was appointed assistant secretary of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 1926, which restricted his appearances in first-class cricket thereafter. He served as assistant secretary under William Findlay and Rowan Rait Kerr, and was himself elected secretary following Kerr's retirement in 1952. Aird remained in the post until 1962 and became MCC president in 1968, the year in which he chaired the special general meeting of the MCC over relations with South Africa during the D'Oliveira affair. He was president of Hampshire County Cricket Club from 1971 to 1983. Outside of cricket, Aird served in the Second World War with the Royal Armoured Corps and was decorated with the Military Cross.

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Jaime Sáenz, Bolivian author and poet (born 1921)

Jaime Saenz Guzmán was a Bolivian writer, poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, illustrator, dramaturge, and professor, known best for his narrative and poetic works. His poetry, though individual to the point of being difficult to classify, bears some similarities with surrealist literature.

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16/08/1984

Duško Radović, Serbian children's writer, poet, journalist, aphorist and TV editor (born 1922)

Dušan "Duško" Radović was a Serbian writer, journalist, aphorist and a poet.

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16/08/1983

Earl Averill, American baseball player (born 1902)

Howard Earl Averill was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a center fielder from 1929 to 1941, including 11 seasons for the Cleveland Indians. He was a six-time All-Star (1933–1938) and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975.

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16/08/1979

John Diefenbaker, Canadian lawyer and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Canada (born 1895)

John George Diefenbaker was the 13th prime minister of Canada, serving from 1957 to 1963. He was the only Progressive Conservative party leader between 1935 and 1979 to lead the party to an election victory, doing so three times, although only once with a majority of the seats in the House of Commons.

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16/08/1978

Alidius Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, Dutch soldier and politician, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (born 1888)

Jonkheer Alidius Warmoldus Lambertus Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer was a Dutch nobleman and statesman, primarily noted for being the last colonial Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. He was taken captive after accepting Japan's demands for an unconditional surrender of the islands on 9 March 1942.

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16/08/1977

Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (born 1935)

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Presley's energetic and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and initial controversy.

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16/08/1973

Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-American biochemist and microbiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1888)

Selman Abraham Waksman was a Russian-born American inventor, biochemist and microbiologist, whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. For his work he won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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16/08/1972

Pierre Brasseur, French actor and screenwriter (born 1905)

Pierre Brasseur, born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.

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16/08/1971

Spyros Skouras, Greek-American businessman (born 1893)

Spyros Panagiotis Skouras was a Greek-American motion picture pioneer and film executive who was the president of 20th Century-Fox from 1942 to 1962. He resigned June 27, 1962, but was chairman of the company for several more years. He also had numerous ships, owning Prudential Lines.

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16/08/1963

Joan Eardley, British artist (born 1921)

Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley was a British artist noted for her portraiture of street children in Glasgow and for her landscapes of the fishing village of Catterline and surroundings on the North-East coast of Scotland. One of Scotland's most enduringly popular artists, her career was cut short by breast cancer. Her artistic career had three distinct phases. The first was from 1940 when she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art through to 1949 when she had a successful exhibition of paintings created while travelling in Italy. From 1950 to 1957, Eardley's work focused on the city of Glasgow and in particular the slum area of Townhead. In the late 1950s, while still living in Glasgow, she spent much time in Catterline before moving there permanently in 1961. During the last years of her life, seascapes and landscapes painted in and around Catterline dominated her output.

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16/08/1961

Abdul Haq, Pakistani linguist and scholar (born 1870)

Abdul Haq was a Pakistani Urdu linguist and scholar. Often known as Baba-e-Urdu, he is credited for the development and promotion of Urdu language in 20th century. He is known for demanding Urdu to be made the national language of Pakistan.

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16/08/1959

William Halsey, Jr., American admiral (born 1882)

William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr. was an American Navy admiral during World War II. He is one of four officers to have attained the rank of five-star fleet admiral of the United States Navy, the others being William Leahy, Ernest J. King, and Chester W. Nimitz.

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Wanda Landowska, Polish-French harpsichord player (born 1879)

Wanda Aleksandra Landowska was a Polish-born French harpsichordist, pianist, and composer whose performances, teaching, writings and especially her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. She was the first person to record Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord in 1933. She became a naturalized French citizen in 1938.

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16/08/1958

Jacob M. Lomakin, Soviet Consul General in New York City, journalist and economist (born 1904)

Jacob Mironovich Lomakin was a Soviet diplomat, journalist and economist.

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16/08/1957

Irving Langmuir, American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1881)

Irving Langmuir was an American chemist, physicist, and metallurgical engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.

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16/08/1956

Bela Lugosi, Hungarian-American actor (born 1882)

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, better known by the stage name Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor. He was best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the horror film classic Dracula (1931), Ygor in both Son of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.

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16/08/1952

Lydia Field Emmet, American painter and academic (born 1866)

Lydia Field Emmet was an American artist best known for her work as a portraitist. She studied with, among others, prominent artists such as William Merritt Chase, Harry Siddons Mowbray, Kenyon Cox and Tony Robert-Fleury. Emmet exhibited widely during her career, and her paintings can now be found hanging in the White House, and many prestigious art galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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16/08/1949

Margaret Mitchell, American journalist and author (born 1900)

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel that was published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Fiction for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Long after her death, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, titled Lost Laysen, were published. A collection of newspaper articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form.

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16/08/1948

Babe Ruth, American baseball player and coach (born 1895)

George Herman "Babe" Ruth was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", he began his MLB career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Ruth is regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture and is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time. In 1936, Ruth was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" members.

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16/08/1945

Takijirō Ōnishi, Japanese admiral (born 1891)

Takijirō Ōnishi was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II who came to be known as the father of the kamikaze.

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16/08/1938

Andrej Hlinka, Slovak priest, journalist, and politician (born 1864)

Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest and politician who was one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before World War II. He was the leader of the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, a papal chamberlain, inducted papal protonotary, member of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia, and chairman of the St. Vojtech Fellowship.

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Robert Johnson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1911)

Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps "the first ever rock star".

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16/08/1921

Peter I of Serbia (born 1844)

Peter I was King of Serbia from 15 June 1903 to 1 December 1918. On 1 December 1918, he became King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and he held that title until his death three years later. Since he was the king of Serbia during a period of great Serbian military success, he was remembered by Serbians as King Peter the Liberator and also as the Old King.

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16/08/1920

Henry Daglish, Australian politician, Premier of Western Australia (born 1866)

Henry Daglish was an Australian politician who was the sixth premier of Western Australia and the first from the Labor Party, serving from 10 August 1904 to 25 August 1905. Daglish was born in Ballarat, Victoria, and studied at the University of Melbourne. In 1882, he worked as a mechanical engineer but soon switched to working in the Victorian public service. He first stood for election in 1896 but failed to win the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Melbourne South. He then moved to Subiaco, Western Australia, where he found work as a chief clerk in the Western Australian Police Department. In 1900, Daglish was elected to the Subiaco Municipal Council and in April the following year, he was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly as the member for the newly created seat of Subiaco, becoming one of six Labor members in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. The party elected him as its whip, and he resigned from the Subiaco council on 1 May 1901. On 1 December 1902, Daglish was sworn in as mayor of Subiaco, having been elected the previous month.

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16/08/1916

George Scott, English footballer (born 1885)

George Scott was an English footballer.

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16/08/1914

Carl Theodor Schulz, German-Norwegian gardener (born 1835)

Carl Theodor Schulz was a Norwegian gardener.

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16/08/1911

Patrick Francis Moran, Irish-Australian cardinal (born 1830)

Patrick Francis Moran was a prelate of the Catholic Church and the third Archbishop of Sydney and the first cardinal appointed from Australia.

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16/08/1904

Prentiss Ingraham, American soldier and author (born 1843)

Colonel Prentiss Ingraham was a colonel in the Confederate Army, a mercenary throughout the 1860s, and a fiction writer.

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16/08/1900

José Maria de Eça de Queirós, Portuguese journalist and author (born 1845)

José Maria de Eça de Queiroz or Queirós is generally considered to have been the greatest Portuguese writer in the realist style. Zola considered him to be far greater than Flaubert. In the London Observer, Jonathan Keates ranked him alongside Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy.

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16/08/1899

Robert Bunsen, German chemist and academic (born 1811)

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium in 1860 and rubidium in 1861 with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff.

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16/08/1893

Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist and academic (born 1825)

Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on groundbreaking work about hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot is known as "the founder of modern neurology", and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including various conditions sometimes referred to as Charcot diseases.

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16/08/1888

John Pemberton, American pharmacist and chemist, invented Coca-Cola (born 1831)

John Stith Pemberton was an American pharmacist, chemist, and Confederate States Army officer who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. On May 8, 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become Coca-Cola, but sold the rights to Asa Griggs Candler for roughly 2,300 dollars shortly before his death in 1888.

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16/08/1887

Webster Paulson, English civil engineer (born 1837)

Webster Paulson was an English civil engineer who is known for his work in Malta in the late 19th century.

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16/08/1886

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and philosopher (born 1836)

Ramakrishna, also called Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Ramakrishna Chattopadhyay, was an Indian Hindu mystic. He was a devotee of the goddess Kali, but adhered to various religious practices from the Hindu traditions of Vaishnavism, Tantric Shaktism, and Advaita Vedanta, as well as Christianity and Sufi Islam. His parable-based teachings advocated the essential unity of religions and proclaimed that world religions are "so many paths to reach one and the same goal". He is regarded by his followers as an avatar.

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16/08/1878

Richard Upjohn, English-American architect (born 1802)

Richard Upjohn was a British-American architect who immigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the Italianate style. He was a founder and the first president of the American Institute of Architects. His son, Richard Michell Upjohn, (1828-1903), was also a well-known architect and served as a partner in his continued architectural firm in New York.

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16/08/1861

Ranavalona I, Queen consort of Kingdom of Madagascar and then sovereign (born 1778)

Ranavalona I, also known as Ramavo or Ranavalo-Manjaka I or Ranavalona reniny, was the sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar from 1828 to 1861. After positioning herself as queen following the death of her young husband Radama I, she pursued a policy of isolationism and self-sufficiency. She sought reduced economic and political ties with European powers and took vigorous measures to eradicate the small but growing Malagasy Christian movement initiated under Radama I by members of the London Missionary Society.

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16/08/1855

Henry Colburn, English publisher (born 1785)

Henry Colburn was a British publisher.

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16/08/1836

Marc-Antoine Parseval, French mathematician and theorist (born 1755)

Marc-Antoine Parseval des Chênes was a French mathematician, most famous for what is now known as Parseval's theorem, which showed that the Fourier transform is unitary.

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16/08/1791

Charles-François de Broglie, marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (born 1719)

Charles François de Broglie, Marquis of Ruffec, was a French soldier and diplomat from the House of Broglie.

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16/08/1733

Matthew Tindal, English philosopher and author (born 1657)

Matthew Tindal was an eminent English deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time.

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16/08/1705

Jacob Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and theorist (born 1654)

Jacob Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician. He sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy and was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus, to which he made numerous contributions. A member of the Bernoulli family, he, along with his brother Johann, was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.

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16/08/1678

Andrew Marvell, English poet and author (born 1621)

Andrew Marvell was an English poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. A metaphysical poet, his poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland".

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16/08/1661

Thomas Fuller, English historian and author (born 1608)

Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen.

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16/08/1532

John, Elector of Saxony (born 1468)

John, known as John the Steadfast or John the Constant, was Elector of Saxony from 1525 until 1532. He belonged to the House of Wettin.

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16/08/1518

Loyset Compère, French composer (born 1445)

Loyset Compère was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first musicians to bring the light Italianate Renaissance style to France.

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16/08/1492

Beatrice of Silva, Dominican nun

Beatrice of Silva, born Beatriz de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese noblewoman who became the foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception. Amadeus of Portugal's younger sister, she is honored as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

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16/08/1443

Ashikaga Yoshikatsu, Japanese shōgun (born 1434)

Ashikaga Yoshikatsu was the seventh shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate who reigned from 1442 to 1443 during the Muromachi period of Japan. Yoshikatsu was the son of 6th shōgun Ashikaga Yoshinori with his concubine, Hino Shigeko (1411–1463). His childhood name was Chiyachamaru (千也茶丸). Hino Tomiko, wife of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, at first was betrothed to Yoshikatsu.

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16/08/1419

Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia (born 1361)

Wenceslaus IV was King of Bohemia from 1378 until his death in 1419 and King of the Romans and King of Germany from 1376 until he was deposed in 1400. As he belonged to the House of Luxembourg, he was also Duke of Luxembourg as Wenceslaus II from 1383 to 1388.

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16/08/1358

Albert II, Duke of Austria (born 1298)

Albert II, known as the Wise or the Lame, a member of the House of Habsburg, was duke of Austria and Styria from 1330, as well as duke of Carinthia and margrave of Carniola from 1335 until his death.

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16/08/1339

Azzone Visconti, founder of the state of Milan (born 1302)

Azzone Visconti was lord of Milan from 1329 until his death. After the death of his uncle, Marco Visconti, he was threatened with excommunication and had to submit to Pope John XXII. Azzone reconstituted his family's land holdings, taking numerous cities. He died in 1339.

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16/08/1327

Roch, French saint (born 1295)

Roch, also called Rock in English, was a Majorcan Catholic confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August and 9 September in Italy; he was especially invoked against the plague.

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16/08/1297

John II of Trebizond (born 1262)

John II Megas Komnenos was Emperor of Trebizond from June 1280 to his death in 1297. He was the youngest son of Emperor Manuel I and his third wife, Irene Syrikaina, a Trapezuntine noblewoman. John succeeded to the throne after his full-brother George was betrayed by his archons on the mountain of Taurezion. It was during his reign that the style of the rulers of Trebizond changed; until then, they claimed the traditional title of the Byzantine emperors, "Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans", but from John II on they changed it to "Emperor and Autocrat of all the East, the Iberians, and the Transmarine Provinces", although Iberia had been lost in the reign of Andronikos I Gidos.

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16/08/1285

Philip I, Count of Savoy (born 1207)

Philip I was Count of Savoy from 1268 to 1285. Before this, he was Bishop of Valence (1241–1267) and Archbishop of Lyon (1245–1267).

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16/08/1258

Theodore II Laskaris, Byzantine-Greek emperor (born 1222)

Theodore II Doukas Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258. He was the only child of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes and Empress Irene Laskarina. His mother was the eldest daughter of Theodore I Laskaris, who had established the Empire of Nicaea as a successor state to the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor after the crusaders captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Theodore received an excellent education from two renowned scholars, Nikephoros Blemmydes and George Akropolites. He made friends with young intellectuals, especially with a page of low birth, George Mouzalon. Theodore began to write treatises on theological, historical and philosophical themes in his youth.

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16/08/1225

Hōjō Masako, Japanese regent and onna-bugeisha (born 1156)

Hōjō Masako was a Japanese female samurai (onna-musha) and politician who exercised significant power in the early years of the Kamakura period, which was reflected by her contemporary sobriquet of the "nun shogun". She was the wife of Minamoto no Yoritomo, and mother of Minamoto no Yoriie and Minamoto no Sanetomo, the first, second and third shoguns of the Kamakura shogunate, respectively. She was the eldest daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa and sister of Hōjō Yoshitoki, both of them shikken of the Kamakura shogunate.

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16/08/1153

Bernard de Tremelay, fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar

Bernard de Tramelay was the fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar, serving from 1152 until his death at the Siege of Ascalon.

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16/08/1027

George I of Georgia (born 998)

George I, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the 2nd king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Georgia from 1014 until his death in 1027.

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16/08/0963

Marianos Argyros, Byzantine general (born 944)

Marianos Argyros was a Byzantine aristocrat and member of the Argyros family. A monk, in 944 he supported the assumption of sole rule by Constantine VII, and was allowed to leave the monastery and enter imperial service. He held a succession of senior military commands, fighting in southern Italy against local rebels and the Fatimids, and in the Balkans against the Magyars. In 963, he tried to oppose the takeover of the imperial throne by the general Nikephoros Phokas by assuming control over Constantinople and arresting his father, Bardas Phokas the Elder. During the ensuing clashes, he was hit on the head by a platter and died on the next day, 16 August.

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16/08/0856

Theutbald I, bishop of Langres

Theutbald I was the bishop of Langres from when he was elected to succeed Alberic until his death. He is first securely attested as bishop in 842. He may have belonged to the same Bavarian family that had dominated the episcopate of Langres since 769.

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16/08/0079

Empress Ma, Chinese Han dynasty consort (born 40)

AD 79 (LXXIX) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Titus and Vespasianus. The denomination AD 79 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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