Died on Thursday, 1st January – Famous Deaths

01/01/2025

David Lodge, English author and critic (born 1935)

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. He was a literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, and some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T. S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as "Point of View", "The Stream of Consciousness" and "Interior Monologue", beginning with "Beginning" and ending with "Ending".

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Chad Morgan, Australian musician (born 1933)

Chadwick William Morgan was an Australian country music singer and guitarist known for his vaudeville style of comic country and western and folk songs, his prominent teeth and goofy stage persona. In reference to his first recording, he was nicknamed as "The Sheik of Scrubby Creek".

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Wayne Osmond, American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1951)

Melvin Wayne Osmond was an American musician. He was the second-oldest of the original Osmond Brothers singers and the fourth oldest of the nine Osmond siblings.

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01/01/2024

Lynja, American celebrity chef and YouTuber (born 1956)

Lynn T. Yamada Davis, mononymously better known by her online alias Lynja, was an American online celebrity chef known for her viral TikTok and YouTube Shorts videos from 2020 until her death in 2024. Praised for her quick-styled editing and references to popular internet memes, "Cooking with Lynja" accumulated over 13.9 million subscribers on YouTube and over 22 million followers on TikTok as of February 2025.

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01/01/2023

Fred White, American musician and songwriter (born 1955)

Earth, Wind & Fire is an American band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1969. Their music spans multiple genres, including jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, pop, Latin and Afro-pop. They are among the best-selling bands of all time, with sales of over 90 million records worldwide.

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01/01/2022

Gary Burgess, British broadcaster and journalist (born 1975)

Gary Burgess was a British broadcaster and journalist, latterly in the Channel Islands where his freelance work on regional television, local radio and a newspaper led him to become known as a community champion who shared openly about his experiences of cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome. He was named Community Champion of the Year in the Jersey Evening Post 2021 Pride of Jersey awards.

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Dan Reeves, American football player and coach (born 1944)

Daniel Edward Reeves was an American professional football running back and coach in the National Football League (NFL). During his 38 years in the NFL, Reeves participated in nine Super Bowls, the third most for an individual. He was a head coach for 23 seasons, a position he held with the Denver Broncos from 1981 to 1992, the New York Giants from 1993 to 1996, and the Atlanta Falcons from 1997 to 2003. As a player, he spent his eight-season career with the Dallas Cowboys, who signed him as an undrafted free agent in 1965.

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01/01/2021

Carlos do Carmo, Portuguese fado singer (born 1939)

Carlos Manuel de Ascenção do Carmo de Almeida, better known as Carlos do Carmo, was a Portuguese fado singer.

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Mark Eden, English actor (born 1928)

Douglas John Malin, known professionally as Mark Eden, was an English actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the villainous Alan Bradley in Coronation Street from 1986 to 1989.

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Elmira Minita Gordon, Belizean educator and psychologist (born 1930)

Dame Elmira Minita Gordon was a Belizean educator, psychologist and politician; she served as the first governor general of Belize from its independence in 1981 until 1993. She was the first Belizean to receive a doctorate in psychology. She is one of the few "double dames", having received damehoods in two separate orders: the Order of St Michael and St George and the Royal Victorian Order.

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Floyd Little, American football player (born 1942)

Floyd Douglas Little was an American professional football player who was a halfback for the Denver Broncos, initially in the American Football League (AFL) and later the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Syracuse Orangemen, twice earning All-American honors. Little was the sixth overall selection of the 1967 NFL/AFL draft, the first common draft. He was the first first-round draft pick to sign with the AFL's Broncos, where he was known as "the Franchise". Little was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010.

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01/01/2020

Lexii Alijai, American rapper (born 1998)

Alexis Alijai Lynch, better known by her stage name Lexii Alijai, was an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. Born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Alijai was part of the Twin Cities hip-hop scene. She released Growing Pains—her only full-length, studio album—in 2017. Alijai was a rising star in the local music scene when she died in Minneapolis in 2020.

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Alexander Frater, British travel writer and journalist (born 1937)

Alexander Russell Frater was a British travel writer and journalist. Described by Miles Kington as 'the funniest man who wrote for Punch since the war', Frater is best known for his various books and for documentaries he wrote and produced for the BBC and ABC.

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Don Larsen, American baseball player (born 1929)

Don James Larsen was an American professional baseball pitcher. During a 15-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, he pitched from 1953 to 1967 for seven different teams: the St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees (1955–1959), Kansas City Athletics (1960–1961), Chicago White Sox (1961), San Francisco Giants (1962–1964), Houston Colt .45's / Astros (1964–65), and Chicago Cubs (1967).

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Barry McDonald, Australian rugby union player (born 1940)

Barry Stuart McDonald was a Papua New Guinea-born Australian rugby union player who represented Australia.

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David Stern, American lawyer and businessman (born 1942)

David Joel Stern was an American lawyer and business executive who was the commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1984 to 2014. He oversaw NBA basketball's growth into one of the world's most popular sports during the 1990s and 2000s. Stern is credited with developing and broadening the NBA's audience, especially internationally by setting up training camps, playing exhibition games, and recruiting more international players. In addition, with his guidance, the NBA opened 12 offices in cities outside the United States, and broadcast to over 200 territories in over 40 languages. Stern also helped found the Women's National Basketball Association and the NBA G League, the NBA's development league. Under Stern, the NBA launched their digital presence with NBA.com, NBA TV, and NBA League Pass. He also established the NBA's social responsibility program, NBA Cares.

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01/01/2019

Paul Neville, Australian politician (born 1940)

Paul Christopher Neville was an Australian politician who was a National Party member of the Australian House of Representatives from March 1993 to August 2013, representing the Division of Hinkler, Queensland. After the Queensland chapters of the Nationals and Liberals merged in 2008 as the Liberal National Party of Queensland, Neville continued to sit with the Nationals in Parliament.

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Pegi Young, American singer, songwriter, environmentalist, educator and philanthropist (born 1952)

Margaret Mary "Pegi" Young was an American singer, songwriter, environmentalist, educator and philanthropist.

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George, last known Achatinella apexfulva (born c. 2004)

George was a snail of the species Achatinella apexfulva, and the last known individual of his species.

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01/01/2018

Robert Mann, American violinist (born 1920)

Robert Nathaniel Mann was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997.

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Jon Paul Steuer, American actor (born 1984)

Jon Paul Steuer was an American actor and musician, best known for being the first actor to play Alexander Rozhenko in Star Trek: The Next Generation and for being the first actor to regularly portray Quentin Kelly on the ABC show Grace Under Fire. He was also well known for playing Johnny "Viper" Vennaro in the 1994 children's comedy film Little Giants. After spending several years as a musician, Steuer entered the culinary industry and owned his own restaurant in Portland, Oregon.

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01/01/2017

Tony Atkinson, British economist (born 1944)

Sir Anthony Barnes Atkinson was a British economist, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, and senior research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

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Yvon Dupuis, Canadian politician (born 1926)

Yvon Dupuis, was a Canadian politician.

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01/01/2016

Fazu Aliyeva, Russian poet and journalist (born 1932)

Fazu Aliyeva was an Avar-speaking Soviet-born Russian poet, novelist and journalist. She played a significant role in the development of Avar in Russian literature. She was also a human rights activist.

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Dale Bumpers, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 38th Governor of Arkansas (born 1925)

Dale Leon Bumpers was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 38th governor of Arkansas (1971–1975) and in the United States Senate (1975–1999). He was a member of the Democratic Party. He was counsel at the Washington office of law firm Arent Fox LLP, where his clients included Riceland Foods and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

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Vilmos Zsigmond, Hungarian-American cinematographer and producer (born 1930)

Vilmos Zsigmond was a Hungarian-American cinematographer. His work helped shape the look of American movies in the 1970s, making him one of the leading figures in the American New Wave movement. In 2003, he was voted as one of the ten most influential cinematographers in history by the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.

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01/01/2015

Ulrich Beck, German sociologist (born 1944)

Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist, and one of the most cited social scientists in the world during his lifetime. His work focused on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in the modern age, and he coined the terms "risk society" and "second modernity" or "reflexive modernization". He also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with a cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the interconnectedness of the modern world. He was a professor at the University of Munich and also held appointments at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) in Paris, and at the London School of Economics.

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Mario Cuomo, American lawyer and politician, 52nd Governor of New York (born 1932)

Mario Matthew Cuomo was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 52nd governor of New York for three terms, from 1983 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, Cuomo previously served as the lieutenant governor of New York from 1979 to 1982 and the secretary of state of New York from 1975 to 1978. He was the father of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and broadcaster Chris Cuomo.

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Donna Douglas, American actress (born 1932)

Donna Douglas was an American actress and singer, known for her role as Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971). Following her acting career, Douglas became a real estate agent, gospel singer, inspirational speaker, and author of books for children and adults.

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Omar Karami, Lebanese lawyer and politician, 58th Prime Minister of Lebanon (born 1934)

Omar Abdul Hamid Karami was the 39th prime minister of Lebanon for two non-consecutive terms. He was Prime Minister for the first time from 24 December 1990, when Selim al-Hoss gave up power, until May 1992, when he resigned due to economic instability. He was again Prime Minister from October 2004 to April 2005 as the 44th Prime Minister.

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Boris Morukov, Russian physician and astronaut (born 1950)

Boris Vladimirovich Morukov was a Russian physician at the State Research Center RF-Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP). He trained with the Russian Federal Space Agency as a research-cosmonaut and flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-106 as a mission specialist

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William Lloyd Standish, United States District Judge (born 1930)

William Lloyd Standish IV was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

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01/01/2014

Higashifushimi Kunihide, Japanese monk and educator (born 1910)

Count Higashifushimi Kunihide was the titular head of the Higashifushimi-no-miya, an extinct branch of the Imperial House of Japan, and a Buddhist monk. He was the youngest brother of Empress Kōjun and was the maternal uncle of Emperor Emeritus Akihito. If he had kept his Imperial status, at the time of his death, at age 103, he would have been the longest-lived member, of the Imperial House of Japan. His Dharma name was Jigō (慈洽).

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William Mgimwa, Tanzanian banker and politician, 13th Tanzanian Minister of Finance (born 1950)

William Augustao Mgimwa was a Tanzanian CCM politician and Member of Parliament for Kalenga constituency from 2010 to 2014. He also served as Tanzania's Minister of Finance from 2012 to 2014.

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Juanita Moore, American actress (born 1914)

Juanita Moore was an American film, television, and stage actress.

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01/01/2013

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, English journalist (born 1945)

Christopher Dennis Alexander Martin-Jenkins, MBE, also known as CMJ, was a British cricket journalist and a President of MCC. He was also the longest serving commentator for Test Match Special (TMS) on BBC Radio, from 1973 until diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2012.

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Patti Page, American singer and actress (born 1927)

Clara Ann Fowler, better known by her stage name Patti Page, was an American singer. Primarily known for pop and country music, she was the top-charting female vocalist and best-selling female artist of the 1950s, selling over 100 million records during a six-decade-long career. She was often introduced as "the Singin' Rage, Miss Patti Page". New York WNEW disc-jockey William B. Williams introduced her as "A Page in my life called Patti".

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01/01/2012

Bob Anderson, English fencer (born 1922)

Robert James Gilbert Anderson was an English Olympic fencer and a renowned film fight choreographer, with a cinema career that spanned more than 50 years and included films such as Highlander, The Three Musketeers, Barry Lyndon, The Princess Bride, The Mask of Zorro, the Star Wars film series, The Lord of the Rings film series, the James Bond film series and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He was regarded as the premier choreographer of Hollywood sword-fighting, and during his career he coached many actors in swordsmanship, including Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Antonio Banderas, Mark Hamill, Viggo Mortensen, Adrian Paul, and Johnny Depp. He also appeared as a stunt double for Darth Vader's lightsaber battles in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

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Kiro Gligorov, Macedonian lawyer and politician, 1st President of the Republic of Macedonia (born 1917)

Kiro Gligorov was a Macedonian and Yugoslav statesman, economist, and politician who served as the first president of the Republic of Macedonia from 1991 to 1999. He was born and raised in Štip, where he was also educated. He continued his education in Skopje and graduated in law in Belgrade. During World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia, he worked as a lawyer and participated in the partisan resistance. By the end of the war, he was an organiser of the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, the predecessor of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as a federal Yugoslav state.

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Nay Win Maung, Burmese physician, businessman, and activist (born 1962)

Nay Win Maung was a Burmese physician, businessman and pro-democracy activist.

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Tommy Mont, American football player and coach (born 1922)

Thomas Allison Mont was an American educator, university administrator, college football coach, and National Football League (NFL) player. He played quarterback for the Washington Redskins as a back-up behind Sammy Baugh for three seasons. Mont served as the head football coach for three years at the University of Maryland and eighteen years at DePauw University. He also served as the DePauw athletic director for fifteen years.

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01/01/2010

Lhasa de Sela, American-Mexican singer-songwriter (born 1972)

Lhasa de Sela, also known by the mononym Lhasa, was an American-Mexican-Canadian singer-songwriter who was raised in Mexico and the United States and divided her adult life between Canada and France. Her first album, La Llorona, went Platinum in Canada and brought Lhasa a Félix Award and a Juno Award.

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01/01/2009

Claiborne Pell, American politician (born 1918)

Claiborne de Borda Pell was an American politician and writer who served as a U.S. senator from Rhode Island for six terms from 1961 to 1997. He was the sponsor of the 1972 bill that reformed the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, which provides financial aid funding to American college students; the grant was given Pell's name in 1980 in honor of his work in education legislation.

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Helen Suzman, South African anti-apartheid activist and politician (born 1917)

Helen Suzman, OMSG, DBE was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. She represented a series of liberal and centre-left opposition parties during her 36-year tenure in the whites-only, National Party-controlled House of Assembly of South Africa at the height of apartheid.

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01/01/2008

Pratap Chandra Chunder, Indian educator and politician (born 1919)

Pratap Chandra Chunder was a union minister of India, educationist and author. He served in the Morarji Desai Ministry as a cabinet minister with education and social welfare portfolios.

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01/01/2007

Roland Levinsky, South African-English biochemist and academic (born 1943)

Professor Roland Levinsky was an academic researcher in biomedicine and a university senior manager. His last post, which he held at the time of his death, was as vice-chancellor of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.

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Tillie Olsen, American short story writer (born 1912)

Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer who was associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

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Darrent Williams, American football player (born 1982)

Darrent Demarcus Williams was an American professional football player who was a cornerback for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). After attending high school in Fort Worth, Texas, Williams played football at Oklahoma State University. He was a second-round draft pick by the Broncos in 2005. Williams was killed in a drive-by shooting the day after he finished his second season with the Broncos.

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01/01/2006

Harry Magdoff, American economist and journalist (born 1913)

Harry Samuel Magdoff was a prominent American socialist commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Marxist publication Monthly Review.

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01/01/2005

Shirley Chisholm, American educator and politician (born 1924)

Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional district, a district centered in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Throughout her career, she was known for taking "a resolute stand against economic, social, and political injustices", as well as being a strong supporter of black civil rights and women's rights.

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Ngo Van, Vietnamese revolutionary (born 1913)

Ngô Văn Xuyết, alias Ngô Văn was a Vietnamese revolutionary who chronicled labour and peasant insurrections caught "in the crossfire" between the colonial French and the Indochinese Communist Party of Nguyễn Ái Quốc. As a Trotskyist militant in the 1930s, Ngô Văn helped organise Saigon's waterfront and factories in defiance of the Party's "Moscow line" which, in the name of "anti-fascistm", sought to engage indigenous employers and landowners in an anti-Japanese nationalist front. When, after 1945, further challenges to the Party met with a policy of targeted assassination, Ngô Văn went into exile. In Paris, experiences shared with anarchist and Poumista refugees from the Spanish Civil War suggested "new radical perspectives." Drawn into the Council Communist circles of Maximilien Rubel and Henri Simon, Ngô Văn "permanently distanced" himself from the model of "the so-called workers's party."

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01/01/2003

Joe Foss, American soldier, pilot, and politician, 20th Governor of South Dakota (born 1915)

Joseph Jacob Foss was a United States Marine Corps Major and a leading Marine fighter ace in World War II. He received the Medal of Honor in recognition of his role in air combat during the Guadalcanal campaign. In postwar years, he was an Air National Guard Brigadier General, served as the 20th Governor of South Dakota (1955–1959), president of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the first commissioner of the American Football League. He also was a television broadcaster.

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01/01/2002

Julia Phillips, American film producer and author (born 1944)

Julia Phillips was an American film producer and author. She co-produced with her husband Michael three prominent films of the 1970s—The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and was the first female producer to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, received for The Sting.

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01/01/2001

Ray Walston, American actor (born 1914)

Herman Ray Walston was an American actor. He started his career on Broadway earning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees (1956).

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01/01/1998

Helen Wills, American tennis player and coach (born 1905)

Helen Newington Wills, also known by her married names Helen Wills Moody and Helen Wills Roark, was an American tennis player. She won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles during her career, including 19 singles titles.

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01/01/1997

Townes Van Zandt, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1944)

John Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter. He wrote numerous songs, such as "Pancho and Lefty", "If I Needed You", "Snake Mountain Blues", "Our Mother the Mountain", "Waitin' Round to Die", and "To Live's to Fly". His musical style has often been described as melancholic and features rich, poetic lyrics. During his early years, Van Zandt was respected for his guitar playing and fingerpicking ability.

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01/01/1996

Arleigh Burke, American admiral (born 1901)

Arleigh Albert Burke was an admiral of the United States Navy who distinguished himself during World War II and the Korean War, and who served as Chief of Naval Operations during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.

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Arthur Rudolph, German-American engineer (born 1906)

Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was a German rocket engineer who was a leader of the effort to develop the V-2 rocket. After World War II, the United States government's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) brought him to the U.S. as part of the clandestine Operation Paperclip, where he became one of the main developers of the U.S. space program. He worked within the U.S. Army and NASA, where he managed the development of several systems, including the Pershing missile and the Saturn V Moon rocket. In 1984, the U.S. government investigated him for war crimes, and he agreed to renounce his United States citizenship and leave the U.S. in return for not being prosecuted.

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01/01/1995

Eugene Wigner, Hungarian-American physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1902)

Eugene Paul Wigner was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".

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01/01/1994

Arthur Porritt, Baron Porritt, New Zealand physician and politician, 11th Governor-General of New Zealand (born 1900)

Colonel Arthur Espie Porritt, Baron Porritt, was a New Zealand physician, military surgeon, statesman and athlete. He won a bronze medal at the 1924 Summer Olympics in the 100 m sprint. He served as the 11th governor-general of New Zealand from 1967 to 1972, becoming the first New Zealand-born person to hold the office.

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Cesar Romero, American actor (born 1907)

César Julio Romero Jr. was an American actor. He was active in film, radio, and television for almost 60 years. His wide range of screen roles included Latin lovers, historical figures in costume dramas, characters in light domestic comedies, and the Joker on the live-action Batman television series of the mid-1960s, who was included in TV Guide's 2013 list of the 60 nastiest villains of all time. Romero was the first actor to play the character.

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Edward Arthur Thompson, Irish historian and academic (born 1914)

Edward Arthur Thompson was an Irish-born British Marxist historian of classics and medieval studies. He was professor and director of the classics department at the University of Nottingham from 1948 to 1979, and a fellow of the British Academy. Thompson was a pioneer in the study of late antiquity, and was for decades the most prominent British scholar in this field. He was particularly interested in the relations between Ancient Rome and "barbarian" peoples such as the Huns and Visigoths, and has been credited with revitalizing English-language scholarship on the history of early Germanic peoples. Thompson's works on these subjects have been highly influential.

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01/01/1992

Grace Hopper, American computer scientist and admiral, co-developed COBOL (born 1906)

Grace Brewster Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. She was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today. She was also one of the first programmers on the Harvard Mark I computer. She is credited with writing the first computer manual, "A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator."

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01/01/1988

Clementine Hunter, American folk artist (born 1886 or 1887)

Clementine Hunter was a self-taught Black folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana, who lived and worked on Melrose Plantation.

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01/01/1984

Alexis Korner, French-English singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1928)

Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner, known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, he was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including the Rolling Stones and Free. Korner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category in 2024.

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Joaquín Rodríguez Ortega, known as "Cagancho", Spanish bullfighter (born 1903)

Joaquín Rodríguez Ortega, professionally known as Cagancho, was a Spanish bullfighter much of whose career was spent in Mexico, although he did sometimes perform in his native Spain, and one of his performances there, in Almagro, Ciudad Real in 1927 even gave rise to a now well known expression in the Spanish language. Rodríguez also found himself appraised in English when he and his craft were described by Ernest Hemingway in his non-fiction work Death in the Afternoon, along with many other Spanish bullfighters of the early 20th century.

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01/01/1982

Victor Buono, American actor (born 1938)

Victor Charles Buono was an American actor, comic, and briefly a recording artist. He was known for playing the villain King Tut in the television series Batman (1966–1968) and musician Edwin Flagg in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), the latter of which earned him Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations. He was a busy actor from his late teens until his death at the age of 43 and, with his large size and sonorous voice, he made a career of playing men much older than he actually was.

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01/01/1981

Hephzibah Menuhin, American-Australian pianist (born 1920)

Hephzibah Menuhin was an American-Australian pianist, writer, and human rights campaigner. She was sister to the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and to the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin. She was also a linguist and writer, co-authoring several books and writing many papers with her second husband, Richard Hauser.

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01/01/1980

Pietro Nenni, Italian journalist and politician, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs (born 1891)

Pietro Sandro Nenni was an Italian socialist politician and statesman, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and senator for life since 1970. He was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. He was one of the founders of the Italian Republic and a central figure of the Italian political left from the 1920s to the 1960s.

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01/01/1978

Carle Hessay, German-Canadian painter (born 1911)

Hans Karl Hesse, known in later life as Carle Hessay, was a German-born Canadian painter. Although much remains uncertain of his early years, he immigrated to Canada in 1927, and later studied at art academies in Paris and Dresden. Hessay served as a Canadian soldier in World War II. After the establishment of peace, he moved to British Columbia, eventually settling in the town of Langley, where he took up art again in the 1950s. Some of his early paintings were done in the manner of Romantic realism. The influence of Expressionism soon became significant, with Hessay drawing on both the European and American movements, together with aspects of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven.

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01/01/1977

Roland Hayes, American lyric tenor and composer (born 1887)

Roland Wiltse Hayes was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French, German, and Italian. Hayes' predecessors as well-known African-American concert artists, including Sissieretta Jones and Marie Selika, were not recorded. Along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, Hayes was one of the first to break this barrier in the classical repertoire when he recorded with Columbia in 1939.

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01/01/1972

Maurice Chevalier, French actor and singer (born 1888)

Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French singer, actor, and entertainer. He is best known for his signature songs, including "Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", "Louise", "Mimi", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", and for his films, including The Love Parade, The Big Pond, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour with You, and Love Me Tonight. His trademark attire was a boater hat and tuxedo.

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01/01/1971

Amphilochius of Pochayiv, Ukrainian saint (born 1894)

Amphilochius of Pochayiv was a 20th-century Ukrainian Orthodox saint from Ternopil Oblast of western Ukraine.

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01/01/1969

Barton MacLane, American actor, playwright and screenwriter (born 1902)

Barton MacLane was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. He appeared in many classic films from the 1930s through the 1960s, including his role as General Martin Peterson on the 1960s NBC television comedy series I Dream of Jeannie, with Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman.

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01/01/1966

Vincent Auriol, French journalist and politician, 16th President of the French Republic (born 1884)

Vincent Jules Auriol was a French politician who served as President of France from 1947 to 1954. A member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), he was the first president elected under the Fourth Republic. His presidential term was marked by the Indochina War, the implementation of the Monnet Plan for modernisation, as well as France joining the Council of Europe and NATO as a founding member.

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01/01/1961

Alastair Denniston, Scottish cryptologist (born 1881)

Commander Alexander Guthrie Denniston was a Scottish codebreaker, deputy head of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and hockey player. Denniston was appointed operational head of GC&CS in 1919 and remained so until February 1942.

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01/01/1960

Margaret Sullavan, American actress (born 1909)

Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. She began her career onstage in 1929 with the University Players on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1933, she caught the attention of film director John M. Stahl and made her screen debut that same year in Only Yesterday. She continued to be successful on stage and film, best known for The Shop Around the Corner.

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01/01/1958

Edward Weston, American photographer (born 1886)

Edward Henry Weston was an American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers" and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes, and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

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01/01/1955

Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, Indian colloid chemist, academic, and scientific administrator (born 1894)

Sir Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar was an Indian colloid chemist, academic and scientific administrator. The first director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Bhatnagar is revered as the Father of Research Laboratories in India. He was also the first Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

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Arthur C. Parker, American archaeologist and historian (born 1881)

Arthur Caswell Parker was a Native American archaeologist, historian, folklorist, museologist and noted authority on Native American culture. Of Seneca, Scottish, and English ancestry, he was director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924 to 1945, when he developed its holdings and research into numerous disciplines for the Genesee Region. He was an honorary trustee of the New York State Historical Association. In 1935, he was elected the first president of the Society for American Archaeology.

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01/01/1954

Duff Cooper, English politician and diplomat, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (born 1890)

Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich,, known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician and diplomat who was also a military and political historian and writer.

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Leonard Bacon, American poet and critic (born 1887)

Leonard Bacon (1887–1954) was an American poet, translator, and literary critic. The great-grandson of preacher Leonard Bacon, he graduated from Yale University in 1909, and subsequently taught at University of California, Berkeley until 1923. In 1923, he started publishing poetry in the Saturday Review of Literature under the pseudonym 'Autholycus'. He and his family lived in Florence, Italy from 1927 to 1932. He won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his satiric poems Sunderland Capture. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1942.

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01/01/1953

Hank Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1923)

Hiram "Hank" Williams was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. An early pioneer of country music, he is regarded as one of the most significant and influential musicians of the 20th century. Williams recorded 55 singles that reached the top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, 5 of which were released posthumously, and 12 of which reached No.1.

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01/01/1944

Edwin Lutyens, English architect, designed the Castle Drogo and Thiepval Memorial (born 1869)

Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".

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Charles Turner, Australian cricketer (born 1862)

Charles Thomas Biass Turner was a bowler who is regarded as one of the finest ever produced by Australia. Among his accomplishments were:taking 283 wickets in the English season of 1888 for 11.27 runs each. This tally was 69 wickets ahead of Ted Peate's 1882 record, and has been bettered only by Tom Richardson in 1895 and Tich Freeman in 1928 and 1933. taking 314 wickets in all matches in 1888. taking 106 wickets in twelve matches in the Australian season of 1887–88 – a record for any bowler in Australia taking 17 wickets for 50 runs against An England Eleven at Hastings in 1888. Of these 17, 14 were bowled, two lbw and one stumped. being the first Australian bowler to reach 100 wickets in Test matches. his 12 for 87 against England in his record season of 1887–1888 is still the best bowling analysis for a Test at the SCG. the only bowler to take 50 wickets in their first six Test matches.

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01/01/1943

Jenő Rejtő, Hungarian journalist (born 1905)

Jenő Rejtő was a Hungarian interwar journalist, pulp fiction writer and playwright, famous in Hungary for his books and novellas - adventure and detective novels and parodies of these genres, characterized by a unique sense of absurd humour. He died in a labour camp during World War II.

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01/01/1940

Panuganti Lakshminarasimha Rao, Indian author and educator (born 1865)

Panuganti Lakshmi Narasimharaavu was one of the popular modern Telugu writers. He was born at Seetanagaram, Rajamundry, Andhra Pradesh. After his education, he became a teacher in Peddapuram High School. Later he moved to Pithapuram as 'Asthana Kavi' for the Pithapuram Rajah's kingdom.

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01/01/1937

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, Indian religious leader, founded the Gaudiya Math (born 1874)

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (IAST: Bhakti-siddhānta Sarasvatī Thakur ; Bengali: ভক্তিসিদ্ধান্ত সরস্বতী; Bengali: [bʱɔktisiddʱanto ʃɔrɔʃbɔti] ;, born Bimala Prasad Datt, was a Gaudīya Vaisnava guru, Ācārya, and revivalist in early twentieth-century India. Known to followers as: Srila Prabhupāda.

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01/01/1931

Martinus Beijerinck, Dutch microbiologist and botanist (born 1851)

Martinus Willem Beijerinck was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who was one of the founders of virology and environmental microbiology. He is credited with the co-discovery of viruses (1898), which he called "contagium vivum fluidum".

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01/01/1929

Mustafa Necati, Turkish civil servant and politician, Turkish Minister of Environment and Urban Planning (born 1894)

Mustafa Necati, also known as Mustafa Necati Uğural was a Turkish statesman in the early years of the Turkish Republic, who served as the Minister of National Education during the reform period. He died before the Turkish Surname Law was adopted and the surname Uğural is actually the surname his family members adopted after his death.

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01/01/1928

Loie Fuller, American dancer (born 1862)

Loie Fuller, also known as Louie Fuller and Loïe Fuller, was an American dancer and a pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques.

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01/01/1923

Willie Keeler, American baseball player (born 1872)

William Henry Keeler, nicknamed "Wee Willie" because of his small stature, was an American right fielder in Major League Baseball who played from 1892 to 1910, primarily for the Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas in the National League, and the New York Highlanders in the American League. In 1939, Keeler was posthumously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Keeler was a part of five teams that won the National League pennant, which represented the baseball championship at that time. One of the greatest contact hitters of all time and notoriously hard to strike out, Keeler has the highest career at bats-per-strikeout ratio in MLB history, averaging 63.17 at bats between each strikeout. His plate appearance-per-strikeout ratio is also one of the best of all time, with Keeler averaging 70.66 plate appearances between strikeouts, second only to Joe Sewell, another Hall of Famer, who averaged 73.06 plate appearances between each strikeout.

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01/01/1921

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, German lawyer and politician, 5th Chancellor of Germany (born 1856)

Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg was a German politician who was imperial chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He oversaw the German entry into World War I and played a key role during its first three years. He was replaced as chancellor in July 1917 due in large part to opposition to his policies by leaders in the military.

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01/01/1918

William Wilfred Campbell, Canadian poet and author (born 1858)

William Wilfred Campbell was a Canadian poet. He is often categorized as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Canada." Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a "versatile, interesting writer" who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.

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01/01/1906

Hugh Nelson, Scottish-Australian farmer and politician, 11th Premier of Queensland (born 1833)

Sir Hugh Muir Nelson, was an Australian politician who was Premier of Queensland from 1893 to 1898.

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01/01/1901

Ignatius L. Donnelly, American politician and promoter of pseudoscience and pseudohistory (born 1831)

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly was an American U.S. representative, populist writer, and pseudoscientist. He is known primarily now for his fringe theories concerning Atlantis, Catastrophism, and Shakespearean authorship. These works are widely regarded as examples of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Donnelly's work corresponds to the writings of late-19th and early-20th century figures such as Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, and James Churchward.

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01/01/1896

Alfred Ely Beach, American publisher and lawyer, created the Beach Pneumatic Transit (born 1826)

Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, entrepreneur, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is known for his design of the earliest predecessor to the New York City Subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, which became the first subway in America. He was an early owner and cofounder of Scientific American and Munn & Co., the country's leading patent agency, and helped secure patents for Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other innovators. A member of the Union League of New York, he also invented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power.

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01/01/1894

Heinrich Hertz, German physicist and academic (born 1857)

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves proposed by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

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01/01/1892

Roswell B. Mason, American lawyer and politician, 25th Mayor of Chicago (born 1805)

Roswell B. Mason served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1869–1871) for the Citizens Party.

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01/01/1881

Louis Auguste Blanqui, French activist (born 1805)

Louis-Auguste Blanqui was a French socialist revolutionary and philosopher. A pivotal figure of the 19th-century French radical left, he was a staunch advocate for communism and a proponent of revolutionary theory that came to be known as Blanquism. His political career was marked by a relentless opposition to all forms of monarchy and capitalism, leading to his repeated imprisonment by every French regime of his lifetime. He spent 33 of his 75 years in prison, earning him the nickname L'Enfermé.

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01/01/1862

Mikhail Ostrogradsky, Ukrainian mathematician and physicist (born 1801)

Mikhail Vasilyevich Ostrogradsky, also known as Mykhailo Vasyliovych Ostrohradskyi, was a Russian Imperial mathematician, mechanician, and physicist of Zaporozhian Cossacks ancestry. Ostrogradsky was a student of Timofei Osipovsky and is considered to be a disciple of Leonhard Euler, who was known as one of the leading mathematicians of Imperial Russia.

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01/01/1853

Gregory Blaxland, Australian farmer and explorer (born 1778)

Gregory Blaxland was an English pioneer farmer and explorer.

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01/01/1846

John Torrington, English sailor and explorer (born 1825)

John Shaw Torrington was a Royal Navy stoker. He was part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to chart unexplored areas of what is now Nunavut, Canada, find the Northwest Passage, and make scientific observations. He was the first fatality of the expedition, of which all personnel ultimately died, mostly in and around King William Island. Torrington was buried on Beechey Island. His body was exhumed by forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie in 1984, to try to determine the cause of death. His remains are among the best preserved example of a corpse since the ancient Tollund Man which was found in the 1950s. Photographs of his mummified remains were widely published and inspired music and literature.

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01/01/1817

Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist and academic (born 1743)

Martin Heinrich Klaproth was a German chemist. He trained and worked for much of his life as an apothecary, moving in later life to the university. His shop became the second-largest apothecary in Berlin, and the most productive artisanal chemical research center in Europe.

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01/01/1793

Francesco Guardi, Italian painter and educator (born 1712)

Francesco Lazzaro Guardi was an Italian painter, nobleman, and a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting.

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01/01/1789

Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, English lawyer and politician, British Speaker of the House of Commons (born 1716)

Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, PC was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1756 to 1782 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Grantley.

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01/01/1782

Johann Christian Bach, German composer (born 1735)

Johann Christian Bach was a German composer of the Classical era and the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He received his early musical training from his father, and later from his half-brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Berlin. After his time in Berlin he made his way to Italy to study with famous Padre Martini in Bologna. While in Italy, J.C. Bach was appointed as an organist at the Milan Cathedral. In 1762 he became a composer to the King’s Theatre in London where he wrote a number of successful Italian operas and became known as "The English Bach". He is responsible for the development of the sinfonia concertante form. He became one of the most influential figures of the classical period, influencing compositional styles of prolific composers like Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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01/01/1780

Johann Ludwig Krebs, German organist and composer (born 1713)

Johann Ludwig Krebs was a German Baroque musician and composer for the pipe organ, harpsichord, other instruments and orchestras. His output also included chamber music, choral works and concertos.

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01/01/1766

James Francis Edward Stuart, Jacobite pretender (born 1688)

James Francis Edward Stuart, also known as the Old Pretender, was the senior House of Stuart claimant to the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1701 until his death in 1766. The only surviving son of James II of England and his second wife, Mary of Modena, he was Prince of Wales and heir-apparent until his Roman Catholic father was deposed and exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His Protestant half-sister Mary II and her husband William III and II became co-monarchs. As a Roman Catholic, he was subsequently excluded from the succession by the Bill of Rights 1689.

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01/01/1748

Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and academic (born 1667)

Johann Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educating Leonhard Euler in the pupil's youth.

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01/01/1716

William Wycherley, English playwright and poet (born 1641)

William Wycherley was an English playwright best known for writing the plays The Country Wife (1675) and The Plain Dealer (1676).

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01/01/1697

Filippo Baldinucci, Florentine historian and author (born 1625)

Filippo Baldinucci was an Italian art historian and biographer.

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01/01/1617

Hendrik Goltzius, Dutch painter and illustrator (born 1558)

Hendrick Goltzius was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his sophisticated technique, technical mastership and "exuberance" of his compositions. According to A. Hyatt Mayor, Goltzius "was the last professional engraver who drew with the authority of a good painter and the last who invented many pictures for others to copy". In the middle of his life he also began to produce paintings.

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01/01/1560

Joachim du Bellay, French poet and critic (born 1522)

Joachim du Bellay was a French poet, critic, and a founder of La Pléiade. He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin.

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01/01/1559

Christian III, king of Denmark (born 1503)

Christian III reigned as King of Denmark from 1534 and King of Norway from 1537 until his death in 1559. During his reign, Christian formed close ties between the church and the crown. He established Lutheranism as the state religion within his realms as part of the Protestant Reformation, and was the first King of Denmark-Norway.

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01/01/1515

Louis XII, king of France (born 1462)

Louis XII, also known as Louis of Orléans, was King of France from 1498 to 1515 and King of Naples from 1501 to 1504. The son of Charles I, Duke of Orléans, and Marie of Cleves, he succeeded his second cousin once removed and brother-in-law, Charles VIII, who died childless in 1498.

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01/01/1496

Charles d'Orléans, count of Angoulême (born 1459)

Charles of Orléans was the Count of Angoulême from 1467 until his death. He succeeded his father, John, and was initially under the regency of his mother, Margaret of Rohan, assisted by Jean I de La Rochefoucauld, one of his vassals.

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01/01/1387

Charles II, king of Navarre (born 1332)

Charles II, known as the Bad, was King of Navarre beginning in 1349, as well as Count of Évreux beginning in 1343, holding both titles until his death in 1387.

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01/01/1204

Haakon III, king of Norway (born 1182)

Haakon III Sverresson was King of Norway from 1202 to 1204.

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01/01/1189

Henry of Marcy, Cistercian abbot (born c. 1136)

Henry of Marcy, or Henry de Marsiac, was a Cistercian abbot, first of Hautecombe in Savoy (1160–1177), and then of Clairvaux, from 1177 until 1179. He was created Cardinal Bishop of Albano by Pope Alexander III at the Third Lateran Council in 1179.

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01/01/1031

William of Volpiano, Italian abbot (born 962)

Saint William of Volpiano was a Northern Italian monastic reformer, composer, and founding abbot of numerous abbeys in Burgundy, Italy and Normandy.

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01/01/0951

Ramiro II, king of León and Galicia

Ramiro II, son of Ordoño II and Elvira Menendez, was a King of León from 931 until his death. Initially titular king only of a lesser part of the kingdom, he gained the crown of León after supplanting his brother Alfonso IV and cousin Alfonso Fróilaz in 931. The scant Anales castellanos primeros are a primary source for his reign.

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01/01/0898

Odo I, Frankish king (born 860)

Odo, also known as Odo of Paris, was King of West Francia from 888 to 898. He was the first king from the Robertian dynasty, the parent house of the House of Capet. Before assuming the kingship, Odo was the Count of Paris, since 882. His reign marked the definitive separation of West Francia from the Carolingian Empire, which would never be reunited.

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01/01/0404

Telemachus, Christian monk and martyr

Year 404 (CDIV) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Honorius and Aristaenetus. The denomination 404 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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01/01/0138

Lucius Aelius, adopted son and intended successor of Hadrian (born 101)

Year 138 (CXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Niger and Camerinus. The denomination 138 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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