Died on Wednesday, 11th February – Famous Deaths

11/02/2026

James Van Der Beek, American actor (born 1977)

James David Van Der Beek was an American actor. Known for his portrayal of Dawson Leery on The WB's Dawson's Creek (1998–2003), he also played a fictionalized version of himself on the cult ABC sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (2012–2013), starred as FBI agent Elijah Mundo on CSI: Cyber (2015–2016) and appeared as Matt Bromley during the first season of the FX drama Pose (2018).

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11/02/2025

Betsy Arakawa, American classical pianist (born 1959)

Betsy Machiko Arakawa Hackman was an American classical pianist and businesswoman. Born in Hawaii, she performed with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra at the age of eleven and later worked for the television game show Card Sharks as a production assistant. She met Gene Hackman in the 1980s, marrying him in 1991 and assisting with his novels. In 2001, she co-founded a linens and home furnishings store in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she and Hackman lived; the couple were also business partners in a local Asian restaurant.

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Moses Lim, Singaporean actor (born 1949)

Moses Lim Aik Ming was a Singaporean actor, television host, comedian, and food critic, best known for playing Tan Ah Teck in the Singaporean sitcom Under One Roof (1995–2003). Together with his comedy partner, Jack Neo, they were often compared to Wang Sa and Ye Fong, a popular Singapore comedy duo in the 60s and 70s.

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11/02/2024

Allen J. Bard, American chemist (born 1933)

Allen Joseph Bard was an American chemist. He was the Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair Professor and director of the Center for Electrochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Bard developed innovations such as the scanning electrochemical microscope, his co-discovery of electrochemiluminescence, his key contributions to photoelectrochemistry of semiconductor electrodes, and co-authoring a seminal textbook.

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11/02/2023

Donald Spoto, American biographer (born 1941)

Donald Spoto was an American biographer and theologian. He was known for his biographies of people in the worlds of film and theater, and for his books on theology and spirituality.

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11/02/2018

Vic Damone, American singer, songwriter and actor (born 1928)

Vic Damone was an American traditional pop and big band singer and actor. He was best known for his performances of songs such as the number one hit "You're Breaking My Heart", and other hits such as "On the Street Where You Live" and "I Have But One Heart".

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Asma Jahangir, Pakistani human-rights lawyer and social activist (born 1952)

Asma Jilani Jahangir was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and AGHS Legal Aid Cell. Jahangir was known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers' Movement and served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and as a trustee at the International Crisis Group.

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Jan Maxwell, American stage and television actress (born 1956)

Janice Elaine Maxwell was an American stage and television actress. She was a five-time Tony Award nominee and two-time Drama Desk Award winner. In a career spanning over thirty years, Maxwell was one of the most celebrated and critically acclaimed stage actresses of her time.

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Qazi Wajid, Pakistani drama actor, writer and artist (born 1930)

Qazi Wajid was a Pakistani actor.

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11/02/2017

Fab Melo, Brazilian basketball player (born 1990)

Fabricio Paulino de Melo was a Brazilian professional basketball player. He played one season in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Boston Celtics before returning to his home country and playing for Liga Sorocabana and Brasília of the Brazilian Novo Basquete Brasil (NBB). Prior to entering the NBA in 2012, he played two years of college basketball for Syracuse, where he was named the Big East Defensive Player of the Year as a sophomore.

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Jaap Rijks, Dutch Olympian (born 1919)

Jacob "Jaap" Rijks was a Dutch equestrian who competed for his home nation in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. He was born in Nijmegen.

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Trish Doan, Korean-Canadian musician (born 1985)

Trisha Jaimee Doan was a Korean-Canadian musician, photographer and television producer, best known for her tenure as the bass guitarist for the Canadian heavy metal band Kittie.

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11/02/2016

Kevin Randleman, American mixed martial artist and wrestler (born 1971)

Kevin Christopher Randleman was an American mixed martial artist, amateur and professional wrestler, and former UFC Heavyweight Champion. Randleman's background was in collegiate wrestling, in which he became a two-time NCAA Division I and a three-time Big Ten wrestling champion out of Ohio State University. Randleman competed in the heavyweight and light heavyweight classes in MMA. In addition to competing in the UFC, Randleman also fought for other organizations such as PRIDE, WVR, and Strikeforce. He was previously associated with Mark Coleman's Team Hammer House, before training at Randy Couture's gym in Las Vegas, Nevada. On May 16, 2020, the UFC announced that Randleman would be inducted into the pioneer wing of the UFC Hall of Fame. Randleman is the first fighter to be posthumously inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.

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Zeng Xuelin, Thai-Chinese footballer and manager (born 1929)

Zeng Xuelin was a Chinese football manager and player.

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11/02/2015

Roger Hanin, French actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1925)

Roger Hanin was a French actor and film director, best known for playing the title role in the TV police drama, Navarro.

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Bob Simon, American journalist (born 1941)

Robert David Simon was an American television correspondent for CBS News. He covered crises, war, and unrest in 67 countries during his career. Simon reported the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, the Israeli–Lebanese Conflict in 1982, and the student protests in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989. During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, he and four of his TV crew were captured and imprisoned by Iraq for 40 days. He published a book about the experience titled Forty Days.

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Jerry Tarkanian, American basketball player and coach (born 1930)

Jerry Tarkanian was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools. He spent the majority of his career coaching with the UNLV Runnin' Rebels, leading them four times to the Final Four of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, winning the national championship in 1990. Tarkanian revolutionized the college game at UNLV, utilizing a pressing defense to fuel its fast-paced offense. Overall, he won over 700 games in his college coaching career, only twice failing to win 20 games, while never having a losing season. Tarkanian was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.

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11/02/2014

Alice Babs, Swedish singer and actress (born 1924)

Hildur Alice Nilson, known by her stage name Alice Babs, was a Swedish singer. She worked in a wide number of genres – Swedish folklore, Elizabethan songs and opera. While she was best known internationally as a jazz singer, Babs also competed as Sweden's first annual competition entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest 1958. In 1972 she was named Sweden's Royal Court Singer, the first non-opera singer as such.

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Tito Canepa, Dominican-American painter (born 1916)

Tito Enrique Canepa Jiménez was a leading Dominican painter of the generation that came of age in the 1930s and 1940s. Canepa's artistic identity was shaped in New York City, where he lived from the age of 21, never returning to stay in his native country. Despite this distance, or perhaps because of it, as León David has pointed out, his works always evince a certain dominicanidad without his setting out to achieve it as a goal — a dominicanidad that is never folkloric. Of the three modernist Dominican painters of the 1930s and 40s singled out by Rafael Díaz Niese as most significant — Canepa, Colson and Suro — Canepa is the one whose artistic activity developed in the most continuous absence from his native country, and the one longest resident in New York. Cánepa is accented in Spanish but not in the original Ligurian.

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Fernando González Pacheco, Colombian journalist and actor (born 1932)

Fernando González-Pacheco Castro, also known as Pacheco, was a Colombian television host, announcer, journalist and occasional actor with a career spanning over six decades. Pacheco was born in Spain and received the Colombian citizenship as he had been residing in Colombia since he was 4 years old.

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11/02/2013

Rick Huxley, English bass player (born 1940)

The Dave Clark Five, also known as the DC5, were an English rock and roll band formed in 1958 in Tottenham, London. Drummer Dave Clark was the group's leader, producer and co-songwriter. In January 1964, they had their first UK top-ten single, "Glad All Over", which knocked the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" off the top of the UK Singles Chart. It peaked at No. 6 in the United States in April 1964. Although this was their only UK No. 1, they topped the US chart in December 1965, with their cover of Bobby Day's "Over and Over". Their other UK top-ten hits include "Bits and Pieces", "Can't You See That She's Mine", "Catch Us If You Can", "Everybody Knows", "The Red Balloon", "Good Old Rock 'n' Roll", and a version of Chet Powers' "Get Together".

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11/02/2012

Siri Bjerke, Norwegian politician, Norwegian Minister of the Environment (born 1958)

Siri Bjerke was a Norwegian politician. She was substitute member of the Norwegian legislature between 1997 and 2005, state secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1993 and 1997 and Minister of the Environment between 2000 and 2001 during Stoltenberg's first cabinet. After leaving politics she worked as a director for the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (2002–2005) and for Innovation Norway (2005–). She studied psychology at the University of Oslo.

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Aharon Davidi, Israeli general (born 1927)

Aharon Davidi was an Israeli general and founder of the Sar-El volunteer program of the IDF.

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Whitney Houston, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress (born 1963)

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer, actress, film producer, and record producer. Commonly referred to as "the Voice", she is one of the most awarded performers of all time. A cultural icon, she broke down gender and racial barriers through her artistic achievements and music videos. Known for her vocal delivery, gospel singing style, crossover appeal, and live performances, Houston was ranked second on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest singers of all time in 2023.

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11/02/2011

Chuck Tanner, American baseball player and manager (born 1928)

Charles William Tanner was an American professional baseball player and manager. A left fielder and pinch hitter who appeared in 396 games in Major League Baseball (MLB) between 1955 and 1962, he was known for his unwavering confidence and infectious optimism. As a manager for all or parts of 19 seasons, he led the Pittsburgh Pirates to a World Series championship in 1979. In his last baseball job, he served as a senior advisor to Pirates general manager Neal Huntington.

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11/02/2010

Heward Grafftey, Canadian businessman and politician (born 1928)

William Heward Grafftey was a Canadian politician and businessman.

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Alexander McQueen, English fashion designer, founder of his eponymous brand (born 1969)

Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992 and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen died by suicide in 2010 at the age of 40, at his home in Mayfair, London, shortly after the death of his mother.

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11/02/2009

Estelle Bennett, American singer (born 1941)

Estelle Bennett was an American singer. She was a member of the girl group the Ronettes, along with her sister Ronnie and cousin Nedra Talley.

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Willem Johan Kolff, Dutch-American physician and academic (born 1911)

Willem Johan "Pim" Kolff was a pioneer of hemodialysis, artificial heart, as well as in the entire field of artificial organs. Willem was a member of the Kolff family, an old Dutch patrician family. He made his major discoveries in the field of dialysis for kidney failure during the Second World War. He emigrated in 1950 to the United States, where he obtained US citizenship in 1955, and received a number of awards and widespread recognition for his work.

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11/02/2008

Tom Lantos, American lawyer and politician (born 1928)

Thomas Peter Lantos was a Hungarian-born American politician who served as a U.S. representative from California from 1981 until his death in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state's 11th congressional district until 1993. After redistricting, he served from the 12th congressional district, which included both the northern two-thirds of San Mateo County and a portion of the southwestern part of San Francisco.

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Frank Piasecki, American engineer (born 1919)

Frank Piasecki was an American engineer and helicopter aviation pioneer. Piasecki pioneered tandem rotor helicopter designs and created the compound helicopter concept of vectored thrust using a ducted propeller.

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11/02/2006

Peter Benchley, American author and screenwriter (born 1940)

Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author. He is best known for his bestselling novel Jaws and co-wrote its movie adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both cinema and television, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.

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Ken Fletcher, Australian tennis player (born 1940)

Kenneth Norman Fletcher was an Australian tennis player who won numerous doubles and mixed doubles Grand Slam titles.

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Jackie Pallo, English wrestler and actor (born 1926)

Jackie "Mr TV" Pallo was an English professional wrestler, a star of British televised wrestling in its 1960s and 1970s heyday, when the sport had a regular 40-minute slot before the Saturday afternoon football results on ITV.

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Matilda, American chicken and stage magician, oldest known chicken (h. 1990)

Matilda was a fourteen-ounce (400 g) hen, and the first chicken to receive the title of World's Oldest Living Chicken from Guinness World Records. She is thought to have been descended from the Red Pyle color variation of the Old English Game breed. She was a pet of Keith and Donna Barton of Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama.

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11/02/2005

Jack L. Chalker, American author (born 1944)

Jack Laurence Chalker was an American science fiction author. Chalker was also a Baltimore City Schools history teacher in Maryland for 12 years, retiring during 1978 to write full-time. He also was a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association and was involved in the founding of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

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11/02/2004

Tony Pope, American voice actor (born 1947)

Anthony J. Pope was an American voice actor. He appeared in over 100 titles during his three-decade career, including as the voice of Goofy from 1979 to 1988. His anime roles include Colonel Shikishima in the Streamline Pictures dub of Akira (1988) and Shunsaku Ban in Metropolis (2001). Pope also provided the voice for the Tiger Electronics toy Furby.

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Shirley Strickland, Australian runner (born 1925)

Shirley Barbara de la Hunty AO, MBE, known as Shirley Strickland during her early career, was an Australian athlete. She won more Olympic medals than any other Australian in running sports.

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11/02/2002

Frankie Crosetti, American baseball player and coach (born 1910)

Frank Peter Joseph Crosetti, nicknamed "The Crow", was an American baseball player. From 1932 to 1948, he spent his entire seventeen-year Major League Baseball playing career with the New York Yankees at shortstop. After his retirement as a player, he became third base coach with the franchise for an additional twenty seasons. From 1932 to 1968, Crosetti won a combined total of 17 World Series Championships, 8 as a player, and 9 as a coach, the most by any individual. Crosetti is tied with NHL legend Jean Béliveau for the most combined championships in sports.

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Barry Foster, English actor (born 1931)

John Barry Foster was an English actor who had an extensive career in film, radio, stage and television over almost 50 years. He was best known for portraying the title character in the British crime series Van der Valk and Bob Rusk in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).

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11/02/2000

Lord Kitchner, Trinidadian singer (born 1922)

Aldwyn Roberts, better known by the stage name Lord Kitchener, was a Trinidadian calypsonian. He has been described as "the grand master of calypso" and "the greatest calypsonian of the post-war age".

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Roger Vadim, French director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1928)

Roger Vadim Plemiannikov was a French screenwriter, film director, and producer, as well as an author, artist, and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, such as And God Created Woman (1956), Blood and Roses (1960), The Game Is Over (1966), Barbarella (1968), and Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971).

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11/02/1996

Amelia Rosselli, Italian poet and author (born 1930)

Amelia Rosselli was an Italian poet, musician, and musicologist close to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

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11/02/1994

Neil Bonnett, American race car driver (born 1946)

Lawrence Neil Bonnett was an American NASCAR driver who compiled 18 victories and 20 poles over his 18-year career. Bonnett was a member of the Alabama Gang, and started his career with the help of Bobby and Donnie Allison. He rose to prominence in the late 1970s with his performances in cars owned by Jim Stacy and Wood Brothers Racing, becoming one of the top competitors in the 1980s. The Alabama native currently ranks 47th in all-time NASCAR Cup victories. He appeared in the 1983 film Stroker Ace and the 1990 film Days of Thunder. Bonnett hosted the TV show Winners for TNN from 1991 to 1994, and was a color commentator for CBS, TBS, and TNN in the years until his death. Bonnett's racing career was interrupted in 1990 when he suffered a severe brain injury in a crash that left him with amnesia and chronic dizziness. While working towards a much-anticipated comeback to the NASCAR circuit, Bonnett died as a result of injuries he sustained in a crash during a practice run for the 1994 Daytona 500. He lost control of his vehicle and collided with the outside wall in turn four, resulting in massive head injuries that proved fatal.

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Sorrell Booke, American actor and director (born 1930)

Sorrell Booke was an American actor. He appeared in over 130 film, television, and stage productions, and was best known for his role as "Boss" Hogg, the principal antagonist of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985).

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William Conrad, American actor, director, and producer (born 1920)

William Conrad was an American actor, producer, and director whose entertainment career spanned five decades in radio, film, and television.

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Paul Feyerabend, Austrian-Swiss philosopher and academic (born 1924)

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of science. He started his academic career as lecturer in the philosophy of science at the University of Bristol (1955–1958); afterward, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for three decades (1958–1989). At various points in his life, he held joint appointments at the University College London (1967–1970), the London School of Economics (1967), the FU Berlin (1968), Yale University (1969), the University of Auckland, the University of Sussex (1974), and the ETH Zurich (1980–1990). He gave lectures and lecture series at the University of Minnesota (1958–1962), Stanford University (1967), the University of Kassel (1977), and the University of Trento (1992).

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11/02/1993

Robert W. Holley, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1922)

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.

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11/02/1991

Dude Martin, American country singer, bandleader, radio and television host (born 1915)

John Stephen McSwain, better known by his stage name Dude Martin, was an American country singer and bandleader, radio and early television personality.

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11/02/1989

George O'Hanlon, American actor and voice artist (born 1912)

George O'Hanlon was an American actor, comedian and writer. He was best known for his role as Joe McDoakes in the Warner Bros.' live-action Joe McDoakes short subjects from 1942 to 1956 and as the voice of George Jetson in Hanna-Barbera's 1962 prime-time animated television series The Jetsons and its 1985 revival.

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11/02/1986

Frank Herbert, American journalist and author (born 1920)

Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. was an American science-fiction author, best known for his 1965 novel Dune and five sequels to it. He also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.

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Evelio Javier, Filipino politician (born 1942)

Evelio Bellaflor Javier was a Filipino lawyer and politician. He served as governor of the province of Antique and was an opponent of the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. His assassination on February 11, 1986, was one of the causes of the People Power Revolution that overthrew Marcos. Evelio Javier's brother, Exequiel Javier, served as congressman from 1987 to 1998 and from 2001 to 2010 and governor from 1998 to 2001, and 2010 to 2015. In 2018, Javier was identified as a Motu Proprio human rights violations victim of the Martial Law Era by the Human Rights Victims Claims Board.

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11/02/1985

Henry Hathaway, American actor, director, and producer (born 1898)

Henry Hathaway was an American film director and producer, whose career spanned from the 1930s through the 1970s. He was best known as a director of Western, adventure, and noir films, especially starring John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, and Gregory Peck. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), starring Cooper.

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11/02/1982

Eleanor Powell, American actress and dancer (born 1912)

Eleanor Torrey Powell was an American dancer and actress. Best remembered for her tap dance numbers in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s, she was one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's top dancing stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Powell appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and most prominently, in a series of movie musical vehicles tailored especially to showcase her dance talents, including Born to Dance (1936), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), Rosalie (1937), and Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940). She retired from films in the mid-1940s but resurfaced for the occasional specialty dance scene in films such as Thousands Cheer. In the 1950s she hosted a Christian children's TV show and eventually headlined a successful nightclub act in Las Vegas. She died from cancer at 69. Powell is known as one of the most versatile and athletic female dancers of the Hollywood studio era.

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11/02/1978

James Bryant Conant, American chemist and academic (born 1893)

James Bryant Conant was an American chemist, a President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany.

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Harry Martinson, Swedish novelist, essayist, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1904)

Harry Martinson was a Swedish writer, poet and former sailor. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos". The choice was controversial, as both Martinson and Johnson were members of the academy.

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11/02/1977

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Indian lawyer and politician, 5th President of India (born 1905)

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the President of India from 1974 to 1977.

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Louis Beel, Dutch academic and politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (born 1902)

Louis Joseph Maria Beel was a Dutch politician of the Roman Catholic State Party (RKSP) and later co-founder of the Catholic People's Party (KVP) and jurist who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 3 July 1946 until 7 August 1948 and from 22 December 1958 until 19 May 1959.

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11/02/1976

Lee J. Cobb, American actor (born 1911)

Lee J. Cobb was an American actor, known both for film roles and his work on the Broadway stage, as well as for his starring role on the television series The Virginian. He often played arrogant, intimidating, and abrasive characters, but he also acted as respectable figures such as judges and police officers. He was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, all in the Best Supporting Actor category.

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Alexander Lippisch, German pilot and engineer (born 1894)

Alexander Martin Lippisch was a German aeronautical engineer, a pioneer of aerodynamics who made important contributions to the understanding of tailless aircraft, delta wings and the ground effect, and also worked in the U.S. Within the Opel-RAK program, he was the designer of the world's first rocket-powered glider.

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11/02/1975

Richard Ratsimandrava, Malagasy colonel and politician, President of Madagascar (born 1931)

Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava was a Malagasy politician and soldier who served as the head of state of Madagascar for six days in February 1975 before his assassination in office.

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11/02/1973

J. Hans D. Jensen, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1907)

Johannes Hans Daniel Jensen was a German theoretical physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the Uranium Club, where he contributed to the separation of uranium isotopes. After the war, Jensen was a professor at the University of Heidelberg. He was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Institute for Advanced Study, University of California, Berkeley, Indiana University, and the California Institute of Technology.

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11/02/1968

Howard Lindsay, American playwright (born 1889)

Howard Lindsay, born Herman Nelke, was an American playwright, librettist, director, actor and theatrical producer. He is best known for his writing work as part of the collaboration of Lindsay and Crouse, and for his performance, with his wife Dorothy Stickney, in the long-running play Life with Father.

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11/02/1967

A. J. Muste, Dutch-American minister and activist (born 1885)

Abraham Johannes Muste was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, the pacifist movement, the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement in the United States.

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11/02/1963

John Olof Dahlgren, Swedish-American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient (born 1872)

John Olof Dahlgren was an American corporal serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Boxer Rebellion who received the Medal of Honor for bravery.

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Sylvia Plath, American poet, novelist, and short story writer (born 1932)

Sylvia Plath was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar (1963), a semi-autobiographical novel published one month before her suicide. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth person to receive this honor posthumously.

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11/02/1958

Ernest Jones, Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst (born 1879)

Alfred Ernest Jones was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world. As President of both the International Psychoanalytical Association and the British Psycho-Analytical Society in the 1920s and 1930s, Jones exercised a formative influence in the establishment of their organisations, institutions and publications.

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11/02/1949

Axel Munthe, Swedish doctor (born 1857)

Axel Martin Fredrik Munthe was a Swedish-born physician and psychiatrist, best known as the author of The Story of San Michele, an autobiographical account of his life and work. He spoke several languages, grew up in Sweden, attended medical school there, then studied medicine in Paris and opened his first practice in France. He was married to a wealthy Englishwoman and spent most of his adult life in Italy.

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11/02/1948

Sergei Eisenstein, Russian director and screenwriter (born 1898)

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1945/1958). In its decennial poll, the magazine Sight and Sound named his Battleship Potemkin the 54th-greatest film of all time.

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11/02/1947

Martin Klein, Estonian wrestler and coach (born 1884)

Martin Klein was an Estonian wrestler who competed for the Russian Empire at the 1912 Summer Olympics. He won the silver medal in the middleweight class, becoming the first Olympic medalist born in the territory of modern Estonia. In the semi-final against the reigning world champion Alfred Asikainen, the two grappled for 11 hours and 40 minutes on a sunny day outdoors, until Klein managed to pin Asikainen. Klein was so exhausted from the bout – the longest wrestling match ever recorded – that he was unable to wrestle for the gold the next day, leaving Swedish wrestler Claes Johansson with the gold medal.

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11/02/1942

Jamnalal Bajaj, Indian businessman and philanthropist (born 1884)

Jamnalal Kaniram Bajaj was an Indian businessman and politician. He founded the Bajaj Group of companies in the 1920s, and the group now has 24 companies, including six that are listed on the bourses. He was also a close and beloved associate of Mahatma Gandhi, who is known to have often declared that Jamnalal was his fifth son.

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11/02/1940

John Buchan, Scottish-Canadian historian and politician, Governor General of Canada (born 1875)

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian, British Army officer, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.

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Ellen Day Hale, American painter and author (born 1855)

Ellen Day Hale was an American Impressionist painter and printmaker from Boston. She studied art in Paris and during her adult life lived in Paris, London and Boston. She exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy of Arts. Hale wrote the book History of Art: A Study of the Lives of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Albrecht Dürer and mentored the next generation of New England female artists, paving the way for widespread acceptance of female artists.

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11/02/1938

Kalle Korhonen, Finnish politician (born 1878)

Kaarlo (Kalle) Eeronpoika Korhonen was a Finnish farmer, politician and member of the Parliament of Finland, the national legislature of Finland. A member of the Social Democratic Party, he represented Oulu Province South between April 1917 and September 1918. Korhonen went to Soviet Russia during the Finnish Civil War and was executed there in 1938 during Stalin's Great Purge.

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11/02/1931

Charles Algernon Parsons, English-Irish engineer, invented the steam turbine (born 1854)

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons was an Anglo-Irish mechanical engineer and inventor who designed the modern steam turbine in 1884. His invention revolutionised marine propulsion, and he was also the founder of C. A. Parsons and Company, developing and building Turbinia (1894), the first steam turbine-powered steamship.

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11/02/1918

Alexey Kaledin, Russian general (born 1861)

Alexey Maksimovich Kaledin was a Don Cossack Cavalry General who commanded the 12th Cavalry Division and Russian Eight Army during World War I. He also led the Don Cossack White movement in the opening stages of the Russian Civil War.

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11/02/1917

Oswaldo Cruz, Brazilian physician and epidemiologist (born 1872)

Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz, was a Brazilian physician, pioneer bacteriologist, epidemiologist and public health officer and the founder of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute.

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11/02/1905

Mary Pitman Ailau, high chiefess of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi

Mary Ann Kinoʻole Kaʻaumokulani Pitman, later Mary Pitman Ailau, was a high chiefess of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi of part Native Hawaiian and American descent. She was raised and educated in Hilo and Honolulu and served as a maid of honor and lady-in-waiting of Queen Emma, the wife of Kamehameha IV. In 1861, she left for the United States with her family, and she lived for the next twenty years in New England. She visited her distant cousin King Kalākaua during his state visit to the United States in 1875. She returned in 1881 to Hawaiʻi where she married musician John Keakaokalani Ailau, better known as Jack Ailau. In later life, she invested in Hawaiian curio shops selling artifacts of Hawaiiana; many of her collections are preserved in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.

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11/02/1901

Milan I of Serbia (born 1855)

Milan Obrenović IV reigned as the Prince of Serbia from 10 June 1868 until 1882, and then King of Serbia, a title he held until his abdication on 6 March 1889. Most important events during Milan's reign was the First and Second Serbian–Ottoman War and the Serbo-Bulgarian War. At the beginning of his reign, the Principality of Serbia was still de jure part of the Ottoman Empire, but became fully independent in 1878 with the Treaty of Berlin (1878). In 1882, the Principality was elevated to the status of a kingdom, and Milan became a king.

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11/02/1898

Félix María Zuloaga, Mexican general and unconstitutional interim president (born 1813)

Félix María Zuloaga Trillo was a Mexican conservative general and politician who played a key role in the outbreak of the Reform War in early 1860, a war which would see him elevated to the presidency of the nation. President Zuloaga was unrecognized by, and fought against, the liberal supporters of President Benito Juárez.

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11/02/1868

Léon Foucault, French physicist and academic (born 1819)

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was a French physicist who invented the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and is credited with naming the gyroscope.

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11/02/1862

Elizabeth Siddal, English poet and artist's model (born 1829)

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.

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11/02/1854

Magdalene Osenbroch, Norwegian actress (born 1830)

Magdalene Henrikke Dedichen Osenbroch was a Norwegian actress who mainly performed at the Det norske Theater in Bergen.

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11/02/1829

Alexander Griboyedov, Russian poet, playwright, and composer (born 1795)

Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. His one notable work is the 1823 verse comedy Woe from Wit. He was Russia's ambassador to Qajar Persia, where he and all the embassy staff were massacred by an angry mob in the aftermath of the ratification of the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), which confirmed the cession to Russia of Persia's northern territories comprising Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus. Griboyedov played a pivotal role in the ratification of the treaty. The immediate cause for the incident was Griboyedov giving refuge to Armenians who had escaped from the harems of the Persian shah and his son.

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11/02/1811

Juan Sánchez Ramírez, leader of the troops that fought against the French rule of Santo Domingo's colony between 1808 and 1809 (born 1762)

Juan Sánchez Ramírez was a Dominican general who was the primary leader of the War of Reconquista. He is known for leading the troops in the Battle of Palo Hincado. The decisive Spanish victory resulted in the end of French rule in eastern Hispaniola in 1809, during the Peninsular War. He was the first Spanish-Dominican to serve as governor of Santo Domingo.

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11/02/1795

Carl Michael Bellman, Swedish poet and composer (born 1740)

Carl Michael Bellman was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature, to this day. He has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogarth, but his gift, using elegantly rococo classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution—at once regretted and celebrated in song—is unique.

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11/02/1768

George Dance the Elder, English architect, designed St Leonard's and St Botolph's Aldgate (born 1695)

George Dance the Elder was a British architect. He was the City of London surveyor and architect from 1735 until his death.

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11/02/1763

William Shenstone, English poet and gardener (born 1714)

William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.

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11/02/1755

Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, Italian archaeologist, playwright, and critic (born 1675)

Francesco Scipione Maffei was an Italian writer and art critic, author of many articles and plays. An antiquarian with a humanist education whose publications on Etruscan antiquities stand as incunables of Etruscology, he engaged in running skirmishes in print with his rival in the field of antiquities, Antonio Francesco Gori.

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11/02/1650

René Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher (born 1596)

René Descartes was a French philosopher, scientist, logician, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science during Renaissance era. Mathematics was paramount to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry.

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11/02/1626

Pietro Cataldi, Italian mathematician and astronomer (born 1548)

Pietro Antonio Cataldi was an Italian mathematician. A citizen of Bologna, he taught mathematics and astronomy and also worked on military problems. His work included the development of simple continued fractions and a method for their representation. He was one of many mathematicians who attempted to prove Euclid's fifth postulate.

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11/02/1503

Elizabeth of York (born 1466)

Elizabeth of York was Queen of England from her marriage to King Henry VII on 18 January 1486 until her death in 1503. She was the daughter of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and her marriage to Henry VII followed his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which marked the end of the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses.

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11/02/1141

Hugh of Saint Victor, German philosopher and theologian (born 1096)

Hugh of Saint Victor was a Saxon canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.

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11/02/0824

Pope Paschal I

Pope Paschal I was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 25 January 817 to his death in 824.

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11/02/0731

Pope Gregory II (born 669)

Pope Gregory II was the bishop of Rome from 19 May 715 to his death on 11 February 731. His defiance of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian as a result of the iconoclastic controversy in the Eastern Empire prepared the way for a long series of revolts, schisms, and civil wars that eventually led to the establishment of the temporal power of the popes.

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11/02/0641

Heraclius, Byzantine emperor (born 575)

Heraclius was Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the Exarch of Africa, led a revolt against the unpopular emperor Phocas.

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11/02/0244

Gordian III, Roman emperor (born 225)

Gordian III was Roman emperor from 238 to 244. At the age of 13, he became the second-youngest sole emperor of the united Roman Empire. Gordian was the son of Maecia Faustina and her husband Junius Balbus, who died before 238. Their names are mentioned in the unreliable Historia Augusta. Maecia was the daughter of Emperor Gordian I and sister of Emperor Gordian II. Very little is known of his early life before his acclamation.

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11/02/0055

Britannicus, Roman son of Claudius (born 41)

AD 55 (LV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Caesar and Vetus. The denomination AD 55 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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