Died on Saturday, 13th December – Famous Deaths

13/12/2025

Juan José Zerboni, Mexican actor (born 1953)

Juan José Zerboni was a Mexican actor.

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13/12/2024

Lorraine O'Grady, American artist (born 1934)

Lorraine O'Grady was an American artist, writer, translator, and critic. Working in conceptual art and performance art that integrates photo and video installation, she explored the cultural construction of identity – particularly that of Black female subjectivity – as shaped by the experience of diaspora and hybridity. O'Grady studied at Wellesley College and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop before becoming an artist at the age of 45. Regarding the purpose of art, O'Grady said in 2016: "I think art's first goal is to remind us that we are human, whatever that is. I suppose the politics in my art could be to remind us that we are all human."

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13/12/2022

Stephen "tWitch" Boss, American dancer and media personality (born 1982)

Stephen Laurel "tWitch" Boss was an American freestyle hip hop dancer, choreographer, actor, television producer, and television personality. In 2008, he finished in second place on the American version of So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD). From 2014 to May 2022, he was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show as a repeated guest host and he was also a co-executive producer of the program. He was featured in Ellen's Game of Games as a cohost to DeGeneres. Between 2018 and 2020, he and his wife, Allison Holker, hosted Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings on Freeform and Disney+.

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13/12/2018

Noah Klieger, Holocaust survivor who became an award-winning Israeli journalist (born 1926)

Noah Klieger was an Israeli journalist and sports administrator. Klieger, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz, Mittelbau-Dora and Ravensbruck, covered trials of Nazi criminals after the end of World War II, besides working as a sports journalist in Israel. He also was the president of the basketball club Maccabi Tel Aviv and chairman of the FIBA's media council. In 2010 he was awarded the FIBA Order of Merit, and in 2012 became a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. In 2015, Klieger was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame for his contributions.

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13/12/2016

Alan Thicke, Canadian actor, songwriter, game and talk-show host (born 1947)

Alan Willis Thicke was a Canadian-American actor, songwriter, and game/talk show host. He was the father of singer Robin Thicke. Thicke was best known for playing Dr. Jason Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains on ABC. In 2013, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.

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13/12/2006

Lamar Hunt, American businessman, co-founded the American Football League and World Championship Tennis (born 1932)

Lamar Hunt Sr. was an American businessman and sports executive involved in promoting football, soccer, and tennis in the United States. With his brothers, he also attempted to corner the silver market.

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13/12/2005

Alan Shields, American painter and ferryboat captain (born 1944)

Alan J. Shields was an American painter, and for a time during the 1980s, had a secondary career as a commercial boat operator, including as ferryboat captain.

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13/12/2004

David Wheeler, English computer scientist and academic (born 1927)

David John Wheeler was an English computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge.

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13/12/2002

Zal Yanovsky, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who founded The Lovin' Spoonful (born 1944)

Zalman Yanovsky was a Canadian folk-rock musician and restaurateur. Born in Toronto, he was the son of political cartoonist Avrom Yanovsky and teacher Nechama Yanovsky. He played lead guitar and sang for the Lovin' Spoonful, a rock band which he founded with John Sebastian in 1964.

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13/12/1998

Lew Grade, Ukrainian-born British impresario and media proprietor (born 1906)

Lew Grade, Baron Grade, was a British media proprietor and impresario. Born to Jewish parents in the Russian Empire, he emigrated to the United Kingdom as a child and was raised in London. Originally a dancer, and later a talent agent, Grade's interest in television production began in 1954 when he founded the Incorporated Television Company to distribute programmes.

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Richard Thomas, Royal Naval Officer (born 1922)

Admiral Sir William Richard Scott Thomas, was a senior Royal Navy officer and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod in the British Parliament's House of Lords from January 1992 to 8 May 1995.

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Wade Watts, civil rights activist (born 1919)

Wade Watts was an American gospel preacher and civil rights activist from Oklahoma. He served as the state president of the Oklahoma chapter of the NAACP for sixteen years, challenging the Ku Klux Klan through Christian love doctrine. He worked with Thurgood Marshall and developed a friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. during the American civil rights movement, and has been cited as a mentor by the current leader of the NAACP in Oklahoma, Miller Newman, and his nephew, former congressman, J. C. Watts.

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13/12/1997

Don E. Fehrenbacher, American historian, author, and academic (born 1920)

Don Edward Fehrenbacher was an American historian. He wrote on politics, slavery, and Abraham Lincoln. He won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, his book about the Dred Scott Decision. In 1977 David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, which he edited and completed, won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1997 he won the Lincoln Prize.

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13/12/1996

Edward Blishen, English author and educator (born 1920)

Edward Blishen was an English author and broadcaster. He may be known best for the first of two children's novels based on Greek mythology, written with Leon Garfield, illustrated by Charles Keeping, and published by Longman in 1970. For The God Beneath the Sea Blishen and Garfield won the 1970 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

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13/12/1995

Ann Nolan Clark, American author and educator (born 1896)

Ann Nolan Clark, born Anna Marie Nolan, was an American writer who won the 1953 Newbery Medal.

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13/12/1993

Vanessa Duriès, French author (born 1972)

Vanessa Duriès, also known as Katia Lamara, was a French novelist. She was the author of two novels; Le lien and L'Étudiante.

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13/12/1992

K. C. Irving, Canadian businessman (born 1899)

Kenneth Colin Irving, was a Canadian businessman whose business began with a family sawmill in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, in 1882. In 1989, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

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Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, American businessman and philanthropist (born 1899)

Cornelius "Sonny" Vanderbilt Whitney was an American businessman, film producer, government official, writer and philanthropist. He was also a polo player who owned a stable of Thoroughbred racehorses.

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13/12/1986

Heather Angel, British-American actress (born 1909)

Heather Grace Angel was a British actress. She was known for providing the voice of Mrs. Darling, Wendy's mother in Peter Pan (1953) and Alice's sister in Alice in Wonderland (1951).

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Ella Baker, American activist (born 1903)

Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. In New York City and the South, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, and Bob Moses, as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

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Smita Patil, Indian actress and journalist (born 1955)

Smita Patil was an Indian actress who primarily worked in Hindi and Marathi films. Regarded among the greatest and finest actresses in the history of Indian cinema, she was known for her unconventional portrayal of strong and independent women. Patil appeared in over 80 films, in a career that spanned over a decade and was the recipient of two National Film Awards, a Filmfare Award, a Maharashtra State Film Award and two Filmfare Awards Marathi. In 1985, Patil received the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour.

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13/12/1983

Alexander Schmemann, Estonian-American priest and theologian (born 1921)

Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States.

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Nichita Stănescu, Romanian poet and critic (born 1933)

Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist.

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13/12/1979

Jon Hall, American actor and director (born 1915)

Jon Hall was an American film actor known for playing a variety of adventurous roles, as in 1937's The Hurricane, and later when contracted to Universal Pictures, including Invisible Agent, The Invisible Man's Revenge, and six films with Maria Montez. He was also the creator and star of the Ramar of the Jungle television series that ran from 1952 to 1954. Hall directed and starred in two 1960s science fiction films in his later years, The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966).

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Behçet Necatigil, Turkish author, poet and translator (born 1916)

Behçet Necatigil, Turkish poet, teacher and translator who is often considered to be one of the most important poets of modern Turkish poetry. His paternal family originated from Kastamonu, a city in Turkey's Western Black Sea region. His father, Mehmet Necati Gönül, was from the Çörekçiler family of Kastamonu. The family moved to Kastamonu when Behçet was young, and he completed his primary education there. His interest in literature is noted to have begun during his middle school years in Kastamonu. He later returned to Istanbul to continue his education and career. Throughout his writing life he stood apart from all literary movements, and was known as an independent poet and intellectual. Besides poetry, he has produced works in many fields of literature, such as theater, mythology, lexicography, novel translations and radio plays. He contributed greatly to the adoption of radiophonic play as a branch of literature in Turkey with his plays, translations and adaptations. The artist, who is known as the "Poet of Houses", is also known for his identity as a teacher as well as his literary work.

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13/12/1977

Oguz Atay, Turkish engineer and author (born 1934)

Oğuz Atay was a Turkish novelist. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar, appeared in 1971–72. Never reprinted in his lifetime and controversial among critics, it has become a best-seller since a new edition came out in 1984. It has been described as "probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature": this reference is due to a UNESCO survey, which goes on: "it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size."

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13/12/1975

Cyril Delevanti, English-American actor (born 1889)

Harry Cyril Delevanti was an English character actor, with a long career in American films during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He appeared in some 170 productions, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964).

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Addie Viola Smith, American lawyer and trade commissioner (born 1893)

Addie Viola Smith, also known as Shi Fanglan, was an American attorney who served as the United States trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1939. She was the first female Foreign Service officer in the United States Foreign Service to work under the United States Department of Commerce, the first woman to serve as an assistant trade commissioner, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner.

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13/12/1974

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, Egyptian-Turkish journalist, author, and politician (born 1889)

Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu was a Turkish novelist, journalist, diplomat, and member of parliament.

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13/12/1973

Henry Green, English author (born 1905)

Henry Vincent Yorke, who wrote under the pen name Henry Green, was an English writer best remembered for the novels Party Going, Living, and Loving. He published a total of nine novels between 1926 and 1952. He is considered as one of the group designated in the 1920s/30s as the 'Bright Young Things' by the tabloid press.

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13/12/1969

Raymond A. Spruance, American admiral and diplomat, United States Ambassador to the Philippines (born 1886)

Raymond Ames Spruance was a United States Navy admiral during World War II. He commanded U.S. naval forces during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, one of the most significant naval battles of the Pacific Theatre. He also commanded Task Force 16 at the Battle of Midway, comprising the carriers Enterprise and Hornet. At Midway, dive bombers from American carriers sank four fleet carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Most historians consider Midway the turning point of the Pacific War.

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13/12/1962

Harry Barris, American singer-songwriter and pianist (born 1905)

Harry Barris was an American popular singer and songwriter. He was one of the earliest singers to use "scat singing" in recordings. Barris, one of Paul Whiteman's Rhythm Boys, along with Bing Crosby and Al Rinker, scatted on several songs, including "Mississippi Mud," which Barris wrote in 1927.

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13/12/1961

Grandma Moses, American painter (born 1860)

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, popularly known as Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. Moses gained popularity during the 1950s, having been featured on a cover of Time Magazine in 1953. She was a subject of numerous television programs and of a 1950 Oscar-nominated biographical documentary. Her autobiography, titled My Life's History, was published in 1952. She was also awarded two honorary doctoral degrees.

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13/12/1960

Dora Marsden, English author and activist (born 1882)

Dora Marsden was an English suffragette, editor of literary journals, and philosopher of language. Beginning her career as an activist in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Marsden eventually broke off from the suffragist organization in order to found a journal that would provide a space for more radical voices in the movement. Her prime importance lies with her contributions to the suffrage movement, her criticism of the Pankhursts' WSPU, and her radical feminism, via The Freewoman. There are those who also claim she has relevance to the emergence of literary modernism, while others value her contribution to the understanding of egoism.

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13/12/1955

Egas Moniz, Portuguese psychiatrist and neurosurgeon, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1874)

António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz, known as simply Egas Moniz, was a Portuguese neurologist and the developer of cerebral angiography. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern psychosurgery, having developed the surgical procedure leucotomy—​better known today as lobotomy—​for which he became the first Portuguese national to receive a Nobel Prize in 1949.

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13/12/1954

John Raymond Hubbell, American director and composer (born 1879)

John Raymond Hubbell was an American writer, composer and lyricist. He is best known for the popular song, "Poor Butterfly".

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13/12/1950

Abraham Wald, Hungarian mathematician and academic (born 1902)

Abraham Wald was a Hungarian and American mathematician and statistician who contributed to decision theory, geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis. One of his well-known statistical works was written during World War II on how to minimize the damage to bomber aircraft and took into account the survivorship bias in his calculations. He spent his research career at Columbia University. He was the grandson of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner.

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13/12/1947

Henry James, American lawyer and author (born 1879)

Henry James III was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1931. James, who was described as "delightful, rather pedantic, crisp, and humorous," was the son of William James and the nephew of novelist Henry James.

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Nicholas Roerich, Russian archaeologist, painter, and philosopher (born 1874)

Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh, better known as Nicholas Roerich, was a Russian polymath, painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure. He is best known for his prolific body of artwork, which spans over 7,000 paintings, and his contributions to a wide array of cultural, political, intellectual, and artistic movements and causes.

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13/12/1945

Irma Grese, German concentration camp guard (born 1923)

Irma Ilse Ida Grese was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen. She has been widely known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz" and the "Beast of Belsen" for the atrocities she committed in Birkenau.

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Josef Kramer, German concentration camp commandant (born 1906)

Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen concentration camps. Dubbed the "Beast of Belsen" by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

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Elisabeth Volkenrath, Polish-German concentration camp supervisor (born 1919)

Elisabeth Volkenrath was a German supervisor at several Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

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13/12/1944

Wassily Kandinsky, Russian-French painter and theorist (born 1866)

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist active in Germany during the late Belle Époque and Interwar eras. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Born in Moscow, he began painting studies at the age of 30.

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13/12/1942

Wlodimir Ledóchowski, Austrian-Polish religious leader, 26th Superior-General of the Society of Jesus (born 1866)

Włodzimierz Halka Ledóchowski was a Polish Catholic priest who served as the 26th superior general of the Society of Jesus from 11 February 1915 until his death. Prior to taking holy orders, he was briefly a page to Empress Elizabeth.

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Robert Robinson Taylor, American architect (born 1868)

Robert Robinson Taylor was an American architect and educator. Taylor was the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the first accredited African-American architect when he graduated in 1892. He was an early and influential member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty.

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13/12/1935

Victor Grignard, French chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1871)

Francois Auguste Victor Grignard was a French chemist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the eponymously named Grignard reagent and Grignard reaction, both of which are important in the formation of carbon–carbon bonds. He also wrote some of his experiments in his laboratory notebooks.

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13/12/1932

Georgios Jakobides, Greek painter and sculptor (born 1853)

Georgios Jakobides was a Greek painter and medallist, one of the main representatives of the Greek artistic movement of the Munich School. He founded and was the first curator of the National Gallery of Greece in Athens.

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13/12/1931

Gustave Le Bon, French psychologist, sociologist, and anthropologist (born 1840)

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon was a leading French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology.

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13/12/1930

Fritz Pregl, Slovenian-Austrian chemist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1869)

Fritz Pregl, was a Slovenian-Austrian chemist and physician from a mixed Slovene-German-speaking background. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1923 for making important contributions to quantitative organic microanalysis, one of which was the improvement of the combustion train technique for elemental analysis.

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13/12/1929

Rosina Heikel, Finnish physician (born 1842)

Emma Rosina Heikel was a Finnish medical doctor and feminist. In 1878, she became the first female physician in Finland, and specialised in gynaecology and paediatrics.

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13/12/1927

Mehmet Nadir, Turkish mathematician and academic (born 1856)

Mehmet Nadir was a Turkish mathematician, politician, and educator.

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13/12/1924

Samuel Gompers, English-born American labor leader, founded the American Federation of Labor (born 1850)

Samuel Gompers was a British-born American cigar maker and labor union leader. A key figure in American labor history, Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894, and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining in order to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labor.

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13/12/1922

Arthur Wesley Dow, American painter and photographer (born 1857)

Arthur Wesley Dow was an American painter, printmaker, photographer and an arts educator.

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Hannes Hafstein, Icelandic poet and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Iceland (born 1861)

Hannes Þórður Pétursson Hafstein was an Icelandic politician and poet. In 1904 he became the first Icelander to be appointed to the Danish Cabinet as the Minister for Iceland in the Cabinet of Deuntzer and was – unlike the previous minister for Iceland Peter Adler Alberti – responsible to the Icelandic Althing. He is considered to be the 1st Prime Minister of Iceland, he was also the 1st Minister for Iceland under Home Rule.

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13/12/1919

Woldemar Voigt, German physicist and academic (born 1850)

Woldemar Voigt was a German mathematician and physicist.

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13/12/1911

Reggie Duff, Australian cricketer (born 1878)

Reginald Alexander Duff was an Australian cricketer who played in 22 Tests between 1902 and 1905.

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13/12/1908

Augustus Le Plongeon, French photographer and historian (born 1825)

Augustus Henry Julian Le Plongeon was a British-American antiquarian and photographer who studied the pre-Columbian ruins of America, particularly those of the Maya civilization on the northern Yucatán Peninsula. While his writings contain many notions that were not well received by his contemporaries and were later disproven, Le Plongeon left a lasting legacy in his photographs documenting the ancient ruins. He was one of the earliest proponents of Mayanism.

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13/12/1895

Ányos Jedlik, Hungarian physicist and engineer (born 1800)

Ányos István Jedlik was a Hungarian inventor, engineer, physicist, and Benedictine priest. He was also a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He is considered by Hungarians and Slovaks to be the unsung father of the dynamo and electric motor.

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13/12/1893

Georg August Rudolph, German lawyer and politician, 3rd Mayor of Marburg (born 1816)

Georg August Rudolph was a German politician and from 4 December 1856 until 2 August 1884 mayor of Marburg.

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13/12/1883

Victor de Laprade, French poet and critic (born 1812)

Pierre Martin Victor Richard de Laprade, known as Victor de Laprade, was a French poet and critic.

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13/12/1881

August Šenoa, Croatian author and poet (born 1838)

August Ivan Nepomuk Eduard Šenoa was a Croatian novelist, playwright, poet, and editor. Born to an ethnic German and Slovak family, Šenoa became a key figure in the development of an independent literary tradition in Croatian and shaping the emergence of the urban Croatian identity of Zagreb and its surroundings at a time when Austrian control was weaning. He was a literary transitional figure, who helped bring Croatian literature from Romanticism to Realism and introduced the historical novel to Croatia. He wrote more than ten novels, among which the most notable are: Zlatarovo zlato, Čuvaj se senjske ruke, Seljačka buna, and Diogenes (1878).

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13/12/1868

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist and explorer (born 1794)

Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was a German botanist and explorer. Between 1817 and 1820, he travelled 10,000 km through Brazil while collecting botanical specimens. His most important work was a comprehensive flora of Brazil, Flora Brasiliensis, which he initiated in 1840 and was completed posthumously in 1906.

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13/12/1863

Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and playwright (born 1813)

Christian Friedrich Hebbel was a German poet and dramatist.

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13/12/1862

Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, American general, lawyer, and politician (born 1823)

Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, also known as T. R. R. Cobb, was an American lawyer, author, politician, and Confederate States Army officer, killed in the Battle of Fredericksburg during the American Civil War. He was the brother of noted Confederate statesman Howell Cobb.

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13/12/1849

Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg, German botanist and entomologist (born 1766)

Johann Centurius Hoffmann Graf von Hoffmannsegg was a German botanist, entomologist and ornithologist. The standard author abbreviation Hoffmanns. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

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13/12/1814

Charles-Joseph, 7th Prince of Ligne, Belgian-Austrian field marshal (born 1735)

Charles-Joseph Lamoral, 7th Prince de Ligne in French; in German Karl-Joseph Lamoral 7. Fürst von Ligne : was a field marshal, inhaber of an infantry regiment, prolific writer, intellectual, member of the princely family of Ligne. He fought as a field officer during several famous battles during the Seven Years' War and briefly returned to military duty in the War of the Bavarian Succession. He performed an important diplomatic mission to Catherine the Great in 1787 and led troops against the Turks at Belgrade in 1789. Beginning in the 1770s, he authored an impressive volume of work. After his estates in the Austrian Netherlands were lost to France during the War of the First Coalition, he lived in Vienna. All three of his sons died before him, but his wife and four daughters all outlived him. His grandson, the 8th Prince, became a Belgian statesman.

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13/12/1784

Samuel Johnson, English poet and lexicographer (born 1709)

Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".

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13/12/1783

Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer and demographer (born 1717)

Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer and demographer.

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13/12/1769

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, German poet and hymn-writer (born 1715)

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert was a German poet, novelist, and popular moralistic writer, one of the forerunners of the golden age of German literature that was ushered in by Lessing.

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13/12/1758

Noël Doiron, Canadian Acadia leader (born 1684)

Noël Doiron was a leader of the Acadians, renowned for his leadership during the Deportation of the Acadians. Doiron was deported on a vessel named the Duke William (1758). The Duke William sank, killing many passengers, in one of the worst marine disasters in Canadian history. The captain of the Duke William, William Nichols, described Noel Doiron as the "father" to all the Acadians on Ile St. Jean and the "head prisoner" on board the ship.

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13/12/1754

Mahmud I, Ottoman sultan (born 1696)

Mahmud I, known as Mahmud the Hunchback, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1730 to 1754. He took over the throne after the quelling of the Patrona Halil rebellion. His reign was marked by wars in Persia and conflicts in Europe. He delegated government affairs to his viziers and devoted time to writing poetry. Nader Shah's devastating campaign weakened the Mughal Empire and created the opportunity for Mahmud I to initiate war with cooperation from Muhammad Shah. The alliance ended with the latter's death, leading to tensions between the Afsharids and the Ottomans. In 1748, he outlawed Freemasonry within the Ottoman Empire.

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13/12/1729

Anthony Collins, English philosopher and author (born 1676)

Anthony Collins was an English philosopher and essayist, notable for being one of the early proponents of Deism in Great Britain.

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13/12/1721

Alexander Selkirk, Scottish sailor (born 1676)

Alexander Selkirk was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean.

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13/12/1716

Charles de La Fosse, French painter (born 1640)

Charles de La Fosse was a French painter born in Paris.

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13/12/1671

Antonio Grassi, Italian Roman Catholic priest(born 1592)

Antonio Grassi, born Vincenzo Grassi, was an Italian Roman Catholic priest and a professed member of the Oratorians. Grassi was known for his humble and pious nature with a strong devotion to the Marian devotions of Loreto to where he made pilgrimages on an annual basis.

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13/12/1621

Katarina Stenbock, queen of Gustav I of Sweden (born 1535)

Catherine Stenbock was Queen of Sweden from 1552 to 1560 as the third and last wife of King Gustav I.

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13/12/1565

Conrad Gessner, Swiss botanist and physician (born 1516)

Conrad Gessner was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zurich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly realised his talents and supported him through university, where he studied classical languages, theology and medicine. He became Zurich's city physician, but was able to spend much of his time on collecting, research and writing. Gessner compiled monumental works on bibliography and zoology and was working on a major botanical text at the time of his death from plague at the age of 49. He is regarded as the father of modern scientific bibliography, zoology and botany. He was frequently the first to describe species of plants or animals in Europe, such as the tulip in 1559. A number of plants and animals have been named after him.

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13/12/1557

Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia, Italian mathematician and engineer (born 1499)

Nicolo, known as Tartaglia, was an Italian mathematician, engineer, a surveyor and a bookkeeper from the then Republic of Venice. He published many books, including the first Italian translations of Archimedes and Euclid, and an acclaimed compilation of mathematics. Tartaglia was the first to apply mathematics to the investigation of the paths of cannonballs, known as ballistics, in his Nova Scientia ; his work was later partially validated and partially superseded by Galileo's studies on falling bodies. He also published a treatise on retrieving sunken ships.

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13/12/1521

Manuel I of Portugal (born 1469)

Manuel I, known as the Fortunate, was King of Portugal from 1495 to 1521. A member of the House of Aviz, Manuel was Duke of Beja and Viseu prior to succeeding his cousin, John II of Portugal, as monarch. Manuel ruled over a period of intensive expansion of the Portuguese Empire owing to the numerous Portuguese discoveries made during his reign. His sponsorship of Vasco da Gama led to the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, resulting in the creation of the Portuguese India Armadas, which guaranteed Portugal's monopoly on the spice trade. Manuel began the Portuguese colonization of the Americas and Portuguese India, and oversaw the establishment of a vast trade empire across Africa and Asia.

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13/12/1516

Johannes Trithemius, German cryptographer and historian (born 1462)

Johannes Trithemius, born Johann Heidenberg, was a German Benedictine abbot and a polymath who was active in the German Renaissance as a lexicographer, chronicler, cryptographer, and occultist. He is considered the founder of modern cryptography and steganography, as well as the founder of bibliography and literary studies as branches of knowledge. He had considerable influence on the development of early modern and modern occultism. His students included Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus.

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13/12/1466

Donatello, Italian painter and sculptor (born 1386)

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, known mononymously as Donatello, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work, it was commissioned by the Medici family.

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13/12/1404

Albert I, Duke of Bavaria (born 1336)

Albert I, Duke of Lower Bavaria was a feudal ruler of the counties of Holland, Hainaut, and Zeeland in the Low Countries. Additionally, he held a portion of the Bavarian province of Straubing, his Bavarian ducal line's appanage and seat, Lower Bavaria.

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13/12/1272

Bertold of Regensburg, German preacher

Bertold of Regensburg, also known as Berthold of Ratisbon was a German preacher during the high Middle Ages.

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13/12/1250

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (born 1194)

Frederick II was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220, and King of Jerusalem from 1225 to 1228. He was the son of Emperor Henry VI, of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, and Queen Constance I of Sicily, of the Hauteville dynasty.

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13/12/1204

Maimonides, Spanish rabbi and philosopher (born 1135)

Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam, was a Sephardic Jewish rabbi who is widely acknowledged as one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. Originally from Córdoba, where he was born on Passover Eve of 1135 or 1138, his family was exiled from Muslim-ruled Spain when they refused to convert to Islam shortly after the Almohad Caliphate conquered the Almoravid dynasty in 1148. Over the course of the next two decades, Maimonides resided in Fez, Acre, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Cairo before finally settling in Fustat between 1168 and 1171. During this period, he advanced his vocations and became renowned for his achievements as an astronomer, philosopher, and physician—even being appointed to serve as personal physician to Saladin of the Ayyubid Sultanate.

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13/12/1126

Henry IX, Duke of Bavaria (born 1075)

Henry IX, also known as Henry the Black, was a member of the House of Welf and Duke of Bavaria from 1120 until his death.

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13/12/1124

Pope Callixtus II (born 1065)

Pope Callixtus II or Callistus II, born Guy of Burgundy, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from February 1119 to his death in 1124. His pontificate was shaped by the Investiture Controversy, which he was able to settle through the Concordat of Worms in 1122.

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13/12/0859

Angilbert II, archbishop of Milan

Angilbert II was the Archbishop of Milan from 27 or 28 June 824 to his death on the 13 December 859. He succeeded Angilbert I.

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13/12/0838

Pepin I of Aquitaine (born 797)

Pepin I or Pepin I of Aquitaine was King of Aquitaine and Duke of Maine.

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13/12/0769

Du Hongjian, Chinese politician (born 709)

Du Hongjian, courtesy name Zhisun (之巽), formally Duke Wenxian of Wei (衛文憲公), was a Chinese Buddhist monk and politician during the Tang dynasty who served as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Daizong. He was known, and much criticized by traditional Chinese historians, for his devotion to Buddhism, one manifestation of which was his patronage of the Chan master Wuzhu.

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13/12/0558

Childebert I, Frankish king (born 496)

Childebert I was a Frankish King of the Merovingian dynasty; as the third of the four sons of Clovis I, he inherited a share of the kingdom of the Franks, which was divided upon their father's death in 511. He was one of the sons of Saint Clotilda, and was born at Reims. He reigned as King of Paris from 511 to 558 and Orléans from 524 to 558.

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