Died on Sunday, 11th January – Famous Deaths

11/01/2026

Richard Codey, American politician, 53rd Governor of New Jersey (born 1946)

Richard James Codey was an American politician who served as the 53rd governor of New Jersey from 2004 to 2006. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the New Jersey Senate from 1982 to 2024 and as the President of the Senate from 2002 to 2010. He represented the 27th Legislative District, which covered the western portions of Essex County and the southeastern portion of Morris County.

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11/01/2023

Carole Cook, American actress and singer (born 1924)

Mildred Frances Cook, known professionally as Carole Cook, was an American actress, active on screen and stage, best known for appearances on Lucille Ball's comedy television series The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy.

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11/01/2019

Michael Atiyah, British-Lebanese mathematician (born 1929)

Sir Michael Francis Atiyah was a British-Lebanese mathematician specialising in geometry. His contributions include the Atiyah–Singer index theorem and co-founding topological K-theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the Abel Prize in 2004.

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11/01/2018

Edgar Ray Killen, American murderer (born 1925)

Edgar Ray Killen was an American Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, at age 93.

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11/01/2017

Adenan Satem, Malaysian politician and Chief Minister of Sarawak, Malaysia (born 1944)

Adenan bin Satem, popularly known as Tok Nan, was a Malaysian politician and lawyer who served as the fifth chief minister of Sarawak from 2014 until his death in January 2017. A president of Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu during his tenure as chief minister, he represented Tanjong Datu in Sarawak State Legislative Assembly from 2006 to 2017.

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11/01/2016

Monte Irvin, American baseball player (born 1919)

Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin was an American left fielder and right fielder in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who played with the Newark Eagles, New York Giants (1949–1955) and Chicago Cubs (1956). He grew up in New Jersey and was a standout football player at Lincoln University. Irvin left Lincoln to spend several seasons in Negro league baseball. His career was interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945.

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David Margulies, American actor (born 1937)

David Joseph Margulies was an American actor. He is known for his role as Lenny Clotch, the Mayor of New York City in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), and his recurring role as Neil Mink on The Sopranos (2000–2007).

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11/01/2015

Jenő Buzánszky, Hungarian footballer and coach (born 1925)

Jenő Buzánszky was a Hungarian football player and coach. He played as a right back for Hungary and during the 1950s he was a member of the legendary squad known as the Golden Team. Other members of the team included Ferenc Puskás, Zoltán Czibor, Sándor Kocsis, József Bozsik and Nándor Hidegkuti. He was the only member of the team not to play for either Honvéd or MTK Hungária FC. After 274 league games he retired as a player and became a coach. In 1996, he became a deputy chairman of the Hungarian Football Federation.

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Anita Ekberg, Swedish-Italian model and actress (born 1931)

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was a Swedish actress active in American and European films, known for her beauty and curvaceous figure. She became prominent in her iconic role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960). Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, where she became a permanent resident in 1964.

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Chashi Nazrul Islam, Bangladeshi director and producer (born 1941)

Chashi Nazrul Islam was a Bangladeshi film director and producer. He won Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Director twice for the films Shuvoda in 1986 and Hangor Nodi Grenade in 1997. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 2004 by the Government of Bangladesh.

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Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle, American neuroscientist and academic (born 1918)

Vernon Benjamin Mountcastle was an American neurophysiologist and Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. He discovered and characterized the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex in the 1950s. This discovery was a turning point in investigations of the cerebral cortex, as nearly all cortical studies of sensory function after Mountcastle's 1957 paper, on the somatosensory cortex, used columnar organization as their basis.

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11/01/2014

Keiko Awaji, Japanese actress (born 1933)

Keiko Awaji was a Japanese stage and film actress.

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Muhammad Habibur Rahman, Indian-Bangladeshi jurist and politician, Prime Minister of Bangladesh (born 1928)

Muhammad Habibur Rahman was a Bangladeshi jurist and statesman who served as Chief Justice of Bangladesh in 1995. He was Chief Adviser of the 1996 caretaker government which oversaw the June 1996 Bangladeshi general election. He was a faculty member at the Department of Law, University of Rajshahi and University of Dhaka. Besides, being a language activist, advocate of the Bengali language, he wrote extensively and published eight books on the subject. He played a significant role to implement Bengali in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He wrote Jathashabdo (1974), the first thesaurus in the Bengali language.

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Chai Trong-rong, Taiwanese educator and politician (born 1935)

Chai Trong-rong, sometimes known in English as Trong Chai, was a Taiwanese politician.

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Ariel Sharon, Israeli general and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Israel (born 1928)

Ariel "Arik" Sharon was an Israeli general and politician who served as the prime minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.

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11/01/2013

Guido Forti, Italian businessman, founded the Forti Racing Team (born 1940)

Guido Forti was the founder and team manager of the now-defunct Formula One team Forti.

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Nguyễn Khánh, Vietnamese general and politician, 3rd President of South Vietnam (born 1927)

Nguyễn Khánh was a Vietnamese military officer and politician. A general of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, he was the leader of South Vietnam from January 1964 until February 1965 while at the head of a military junta, serving during that time in various capacities, alternatively as head of state and as prime minister. He was involved in or against many coup attempts, failed and successful, from 1960 until his defeat and exile from South Vietnam in 1965. Khánh lived out his later years with his family in exile in the United States. He died in 2013 in San Jose, California, at age 85.

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Mariangela Melato, Italian actress (born 1941)

Mariangela Caterina Melato, sometimes billed as Maria Angela Melato, was an Italian actress. She is most remembered for her roles in films of director Lina Wertmüller, including The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), and Swept Away (1974). In cinema, she also appeared in films of Claude Chabrol, Elio Petri and Vittorio De Sica, and on stage in productions by Dario Fo, Luchino Visconti and Luca Ronconi. Her roles in English-language films include the 1980 science fiction film Flash Gordon, So Fine (1981) and Dancers (1987).

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Tom Parry Jones, Welsh chemist, invented the breathalyzer (born 1935)

Thomas Parry Jones OBE was a Welsh scientist, inventor and entrepreneur, who was responsible for developing and marketing the first handheld electronic breathalyser, winning the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1980 for the work. Born and raised on Anglesey, he attended Bangor University and went on to study for his doctorate at University of Alberta, Canada. Prior to his work on the breathalyser at Lion Laboratories, he was a lecturer at the Royal Military College of Science and the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. He established the Dr Tom Parry Jones Endowment Fund at Bangor University in 2002. After selling Lion Laboratories in 2005, he set up PPM Technology and Welsh Dragon Aviation. A trust was set up in his, and his wife's, names. The Tom and Raj Jones Trust promotes work by young entrepreneurs.

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Alemayehu Shumye, Ethiopian runner (born 1988)

Alemayehu Shumye Tafere was an Ethiopian long-distance runner who specialised in marathon running.

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Aaron Swartz, American programmer and activist (born 1986)

Aaron Hillel Swartz, also known as AaronSw, was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS; the technical architecture for Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses; and the Python website framework web.py. Swartz helped define the syntax of the lightweight markup language format Markdown, and was a co-owner of the social news aggregation website Reddit and contributed to its development until he left the company in 2007. He is often credited as a martyr and a prodigy, and much of his work focused on civic awareness and progressive activism.

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11/01/2012

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Iranian physicist and academic (born 1980)

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was an Iranian nuclear scientist who was assassinated in 2012. He was also deputy of commerce at the Natanz nuclear power plant.

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Gilles Jacquier, French journalist and photographer (born 1968)

Gilles Jacquier was a French photojournalist and reporter for France Télévisions. Jacquier worked as a special correspondent for Envoyé spécial, one of France's best known documentary programs which airs on France 2. He had a successful career, has covered major international military conflicts and won many awards during his life. He was killed on 11 January 2012 while covering the ongoing Syrian Civil War in Homs, Syria. Jacquier was the first Western journalist killed in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War.

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Edgar Kaiser, Jr, American-Canadian businessman and philanthropist (born 1942)

Edgar Fosburgh Kaiser Jr. was an American-Canadian financier and a former owner of the Denver Broncos American football team.

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Wally Osterkorn, American basketball player (born 1928)

Walter Raymond Osterkorn was an American professional basketball player.

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Steven Rawlings, English astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic (born 1961)

Steven Gregory Rawlings was a British astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, where he held a professorship in astrophysics and a fellowship at St Peter's College. He studied physics and theoretical physics at St John's College, Cambridge and received his PhD in radio astronomy in 1988. He was one of the lead scientists in the Square Kilometre Array project.

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David Whitaker, English composer and conductor (born 1931)

David Sinclair Whitaker was an English composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s.

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11/01/2011

David Nelson, American actor, director, and producer (born 1936)

David Oswald Nelson was an American actor. He was the older brother of musician Ricky Nelson.

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11/01/2010

Miep Gies, Austrian-Dutch humanitarian (born 1909)

Hermine "Miep" Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Dutch Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Otto Frank's business premises during World War II. She was Austrian by birth, but in 1920, at the age of eleven, she was taken in as a foster child by a Dutch family in Leiden to whom she became very attached. Although she was only supposed to stay for six months, this stay was extended to one year because of frail health, after which Gies chose to remain with them, living the rest of her life in the Netherlands.

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Éric Rohmer, French director, screenwriter, and critic (born 1920)

Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer, was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher. Rohmer was the last of the post-World War II French New Wave directors to become established. He edited the influential film journal Cahiers du cinéma from 1957 to 1963, while most of his colleagues—among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—were making the transition from critics to filmmakers and gaining international attention.

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11/01/2008

Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer and explorer (born 1919)

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. They were part of the ninth British expedition to Everest, which was led by John Hunt. From 1985 to 1988, he served as New Zealand's High Commissioner to India and Bangladesh and concurrently as Ambassador to Nepal.

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Carl Karcher, American businessman, co-founded Carl's Jr. (born 1917)

Carl Nicholas Karcher was an American businessman who founded the Carl's Jr. hamburger chain, now owned by parent company Snow Star LP. Karcher served in the U.S. military during WWII.

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11/01/2007

Solveig Dommartin, French-German actress (born 1961)

Solveig Dommartin was a French actress.

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Robert Anton Wilson, American psychologist, author, poet, and playwright (born 1932)

Robert Anton Wilson was an American writer, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."

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11/01/2004

Spalding Gray, American actor, writer, and performance artist (born 1941)

Spalding Rockwell Gray was an American actor and writer. He is best known for driving autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for theater in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for his film adaptations of these works, beginning in 1987. He wrote and starred in several films, working with different directors.

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11/01/2003

Jože Pučnik, Slovenian sociologist and politician (born 1932)

Jože Pučnik was a Slovenian public intellectual, sociologist and politician. During the communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, he was one of the most outspoken Slovenian critics of dictatorship and lack of civil liberties in SFR Yugoslavia.

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11/01/2002

Henri Verneuil, French-Armenian director and playwright (born 1920)

Henri Verneuil was a French-Armenian playwright and filmmaker, who made a successful career in France. He was nominated for Oscar and Palme d'Or awards, and won Locarno International Film Festival, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, French Legion of Honor, Golden Globe Award, French National Academy of Cinema and Honorary Cesar awards.

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11/01/2001

Denys Lasdun, English architect, co-designed the Royal National Theatre (born 1914)

Sir Denys Louis Lasdun, was an eminent English architect. Probably his best known work is the Royal National Theatre, on London's South Bank of the Thames, which is a Grade II* listed building and one of the most notable examples of Brutalist design in the United Kingdom.

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11/01/2000

Ivan Combe, American businessman, invented Clearasil (born 1911)

Ivan DeBlois Combe was the American inventor of personal-care products, most notably Clearasil and Odor Eaters. In 1949 he established his eponymous company Combe Incorporated in White Plains, New York.

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Bob Lemon, American baseball player and manager (born 1920)

Robert Granville Lemon was an American right-handed pitcher and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.

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Betty Archdale, English-Australian cricketer and educator (born 1907)

Helen Elizabeth Archdale was an English-Australian sportswoman and educator. She was the inaugural Test captain of the England women's cricket team in 1934. A qualified barrister and Women's Royal Naval Service veteran, she moved to Australia in 1946 to become principal of The Women's College at the University of Sydney. She later served as headmistress of Abbotsleigh, a private girls' school in Sydney, and was an inaugural member of the Australian Council for the Arts.

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11/01/1999

Fabrizio De André, Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1940)

Fabrizio Cristiano De André was an Italian singer-songwriter and the most-prominent cantautore of his time. He is also known as Faber, a nickname given by the friend Paolo Villaggio, as a reference to his liking towards Faber-Castell's pastels and pencils, aside from the assonance with his own name, and also because he was known as "il cantautore degli emarginati" or "il poeta degli sconfitti". His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political protest, and French music. He is considered a prominent member of the Genoese School. He sang in both Italian and in other languages such as Genoese. Because of the success of his music in Italy and its impact on the Italian collective memory, many public places such as roads, squares, and schools in Italy are named after De André.

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Naomi Mitchison, Scottish author and poet (born 1897)

Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. Her husband Dick Mitchison's life peerage in 1964 entitled her to call herself Lady Mitchison, but she never did. Her 1931 work, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, is seen by some as the prime 20th-century historical novel.

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Brian Moore, Irish-Canadian author and screenwriter (born 1921)

Brian Moore, was a novelist and screenwriter from Northern Ireland who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland during and after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The Troubles, and has been described as "one of the few genuine masters of the contemporary novel". He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1975 and the inaugural Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1987, and he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. Moore also wrote screenplays and several of his books were made into films.

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11/01/1996

Roger Crozier, Canadian-American ice hockey player (born 1942)

Roger Allan Crozier was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He was a goaltender for fourteen seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Detroit Red Wings, Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals. During his career, Crozier was named to the NHL First All-Star Team once, was a Calder Memorial Trophy winner, and was the first player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy while playing for the losing team in the Stanley Cup Final. He was the last goaltender in the NHL to start all of his team's games in the regular season, in 1964–65.

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11/01/1995

Josef Gingold, Belarusian-American violinist and educator (born 1909)

Josef Gingold was a Russian and American classical violinist and teacher who lived most of his life in the United States. At the time of his death he was considered one of the most influential violin masters in the United States, with many successful students.

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Onat Kutlar, Turkish author and poet (born 1936)

Onat Kutlar was a prominent Turkish writer and poet, founder of the Turkish Sinematek and cofounder of the Istanbul International Film Festival.

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Lewis Nixon, U.S. Army captain (born 1918)

Lewis Nixon III was a United States Army officer who, during World War II, served at the company, battalion, and regimental level with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Nixon was portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers by Ron Livingston.

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Theodor Wisch, German general (born 1907)

Theodor Peter Johann Wisch was a high-ranking member of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a commander of the SS Division Leibstandarte (LSSAH) and a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. He assumed command of the LSSAH in April 1943. He was seriously wounded in combat on the Western Front by a naval artillery barrage in the Falaise Pocket on 20 August 1944, and replaced as division commander by SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke.

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11/01/1994

Helmut Poppendick, German physician (born 1902)

Helmut Poppendick was a Nazi physician in the SS during World War II. After the war he was a defendant in the 1947 Doctors' Trial and accused of war crimes relating to human experimentation; he was acquitted on these charges, but convicted for his SS membership and sentenced to 10 year imprisonment. He was released in 1951.

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11/01/1991

Carl David Anderson, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1905)

Carl David Anderson was an American experimental physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Victor Hess for his discovery of the positron, which confirmed the existence of antimatter.

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11/01/1990

Carolyn Haywood, American author and illustrator (born 1898)

Carolyn Haywood was an American writer and illustrator from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She created 47 children's books, most notably the series under the "Eddie" and "Betsy" titles.

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11/01/1989

Ray Moore, English radio host (born 1942)

Raymond Moore was a British broadcaster, best known for hosting the early morning show on BBC Radio 2 between 1982 and 1988.

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11/01/1988

Pappy Boyington, American colonel and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (born 1912)

Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was an American combat pilot who was a United States Marine Corps fighter ace during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. A Marine aviator with the Pacific fleet in 1941, Boyington joined the "Flying Tigers" of the Republic of China Air Force and saw combat in Burma in late 1941 and 1942 during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

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Isidor Isaac Rabi, Polish-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1898)

Israel "Isidor" Isaac Rabi was an American nuclear physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 "for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei". He was also one of the first scientists in the United States to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.

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11/01/1987

Albert Ferber, Swiss-English pianist, composer, and conductor (born 1911)

Albert Ferber was a Swiss pianist who had an international performing career that spanned four decades and took him across the world.

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11/01/1986

Sid Chaplin, English author and screenwriter (born 1916)

Sid Chaplin was an English writer whose works are mostly set in the north-east of England, in the 1940s and 1950s.

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Andrzej Czok, Polish mountaineer (born 1948)

Andrzej Czok was a Polish mountaineer best known for making the first winter ascent of Dhaulagiri on 21 January 1985 with Jerzy Kukuczka, and for the first ascent of the South Pillar route on Mount Everest in 1980. He suffered a pulmonary oedema while making a winter attempt on Kangchenjunga in 1985–86 and died at Camp III. He was buried nearby in a crevasse.

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11/01/1985

Edward Buzzell, American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1895)

Edward Buzzell was an American film actor and director whose credits include Child of Manhattan (1933); Honolulu (1939); the Marx Brothers films At the Circus (1939) and Go West (1940); the musicals Best Foot Forward (1943), Song of the Thin Man (1947), Neptune's Daughter (1949), and Easy to Wed (1946).

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William McKell, Australian lawyer and politician, 12th Governor-General of Australia (born 1891)

Sir William John McKell was an Australian politician who served as the 12th governor-general of Australia, in office from 1947 to 1953. He had previously been the 27th premier of New South Wales from 1941 to 1947, as leader of the Labor Party.

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11/01/1981

Beulah Bondi, American actress (born 1889)

Beulah Bondi was an American character actress; she often played eccentric mothers and later grandmothers and wives, although she was known for numerous other roles. She began her acting career as a young child in theater in the late 19th Century, and after establishing herself as a Broadway stage actress in 1925, she reprised her role in Street Scene for the 1931 film version.

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11/01/1980

Barbara Pym, English author (born 1913)

Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In the 1950s, she published a series of social comedies, of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). After a period of rejection by publishers, her career was revived in 1977 when the critic Lord David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin nominated her as the most underrated writer of the previous 75 years. Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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11/01/1975

Max Lorenz, German tenor and actor (born 1901)

Max Lorenz was a German heldentenor famous for Wagnerian roles.

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11/01/1972

Padraic Colum, Irish poet and playwright (born 1881)

Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.

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11/01/1969

Richmal Crompton, English author and educator (born 1890)

Richmal Crompton Lamburn was a popular English writer, best known for her Just William series of books, humorous short stories, and to a lesser extent adult fiction books.

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11/01/1968

Moshe Zvi Segal, Israeli linguist and scholar (born 1876)

Moshe Zvi (Hirsch) Segal was an Israeli rabbi, linguist and Talmudic scholar.

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11/01/1966

Alberto Giacometti, Swiss sculptor and painter (born 1901)

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker, who was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work.

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Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian academic and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of India (born 1904)

Lal Bahadur Shastri was an Indian politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of India from 1964 to 1966. He previously served as home minister from 1961 to 1963.

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11/01/1965

Wally Pipp, American baseball player (born 1893)

Walter Clement Pipp Sr. was an American professional baseball player. A first baseman, Pipp played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, and Cincinnati Reds between 1913 and 1928.

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11/01/1963

Arthur Nock, English-American scholar, theologian, and academic (born 1902)

Arthur Darby Nock was an English classicist and theologian, regarded as a leading scholar in the history of religion. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1930 until his death.

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11/01/1961

Elena Gerhardt, German soprano and actress (born 1883)

Elena Gerhardt was a German mezzo-soprano singer associated with the singing of German classical lieder, of which she was considered one of the great interpreters. She emigrated to London in October 1934.

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11/01/1957

Robert Garran, Australian lawyer and politician, Solicitor-General of Australia (born 1867)

Sir Robert Randolph Garran was an Australian lawyer who became "Australia's first public servant" – the first federal government employee after the federation of the Australian colonies. He served as the departmental secretary of the Attorney-General's Department from 1901 to 1932, and after 1916 also held the position of Solicitor-General of Australia.

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11/01/1954

Oscar Straus, Austrian composer (born 1870)

Oscar Nathan Straus was a Viennese composer of operettas, film scores, and songs. He also wrote about 500 cabaret songs, chamber music, and orchestral and choral works. His original name was actually Strauss, but for professional purposes he deliberately omitted the final 's'. He wished not to be associated with the musical Strauss family of Vienna. However, he did follow the advice of Johann Strauss II in 1898 about abandoning the prospective lure of writing waltzes for the more lucrative business of writing for the theatre.

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11/01/1953

Noe Zhordania, Georgian journalist and politician, Prime Minister of Georgia (born 1868)

Noe Zhordania was a Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician. He played an eminent role in the socialist revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, and later chaired the government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from July 24, 1918, until March 18, 1921, when the Bolshevik Russian Red Army invasion of Georgia forced him into exile to France. There Zhordania led the government-in-exile until his death in 1953.

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Roberta Fulbright, American businesswoman (born 1874)

Roberta Fulbright was an American businesswoman who consolidated her husband's business enterprises and became an influential newspaper publisher, editor, and journalist. She used her paper to push civic responsibility and women's rights. Fulbright was the 1946 Arkansas Mother of the Year, a co-founder of the Arkansas Newspaper Women, and was posthumously inducted into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame in its inaugural group of honorees.

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11/01/1952

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, French general (born 1889)

Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny was a French général d'armée during World War II and the First Indochina War. He was posthumously elevated to the dignity of Marshal of France in 1952.

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Aureliano Pertile, Italian tenor and educator (born 1885)

Aureliano Pertile was an Italian lyric tenor. Many critics consider him one of the most exciting operatic artists of the inter-war period, and one of the most important tenors of the 20th century.

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11/01/1947

Eva Tanguay, Canadian singer (born 1879)

Eva Tanguay was a Canadian singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous". She was known as "The Queen of Vaudeville" during the height of her popularity from the early 1900s until the early 1920s. Tanguay also appeared in films, and was the first performer to achieve national mass-media celebrity, with publicists and newspapers covering her tours from coast-to-coast, out-earning the likes of contemporaries Enrico Caruso and Harry Houdini at one time, and being described by Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations", as "our first symbol of emergence from the Victorian age."

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11/01/1944

Galeazzo Ciano, Italian politician, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs (born 1903)

Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari, was an Italian diplomat and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Italy under the government of his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, from 1936 until 1943. During this period, he was widely seen as Mussolini's most probable successor as head of government.

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11/01/1941

Emanuel Lasker, German mathematician, philosopher, and chess player (born 1868)

Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher. He was the second World Chess Champion, holding the title for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champion, winning 6 World Chess Championships. In his prime, Lasker was one of the most dominant champions.

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11/01/1937

Nuri Conker, Turkish colonel and politician (born 1882)

Mehmet Nuri Conker was a Turkish politician and an officer of the Ottoman Army and the Turkish Army.

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11/01/1931

James Milton Carroll, American pastor, historian, and author (born 1852)

James Milton Carroll was an American Baptist pastor, leader, historian, author, and educator.

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11/01/1929

Elfrida Andrée, Swedish organist, composer, and conductor (born 1841)

Elfrida Andrée was a Swedish organist, composer, and conductor. Her sister was the singer Fredrika Stenhammar.

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11/01/1928

Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet (born 1840)

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England.

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11/01/1923

Constantine I of Greece (born 1868)

Constantine I was King of Greece from 18 March 1913 to 11 June 1917 and again from 19 December 1920 to 27 September 1922. The eldest son of George I of Greece, he succeeded to the throne following his father's assassination in 1913.

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11/01/1920

Steinar Schjøtt, Norwegian philologist and lexicographer (born 1844)

Steinar Schjøtt was a Norwegian educator, philologist and lexicographer.

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11/01/1914

Carl Jacobsen, Danish brewer and philanthropist (born 1842)

Carl Christian Hillman Jacobsen was a Danish brewer, art collector and philanthropist. Though often preoccupied with his cultural interests, Jacobsen was a shrewd and visionary businessman and initiated the transition of the brewery Carlsberg from a local Copenhagen brewery to the multinational conglomerate that it is today.

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11/01/1904

William Sawyer, Canadian merchant and politician (born 1815)

William Sawyer was a lumber merchant and political figure in Quebec. He represented Compton in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec from 1871 to 1886 as a Conservative.

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11/01/1902

Johnny Briggs, English cricketer and rugby player (born 1862)

Johnny Briggs was an English left arm spin bowler who played for Lancashire County Cricket Club between 1879 and 1900 and remains the second-highest wicket-taker in the county's history after Brian Statham. In the early days of Test cricket, Briggs‘ batting was considered careless, although still very useful. He was the first bowler in Test cricket to take 100 wickets, and held the record of most wickets in Test cricket on two occasions, the first in 1895 and again from 1898 until 1904, when he was succeeded by Hugh Trumble. He toured Australia a record six times, a feat only equalled by Colin Cowdrey.

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11/01/1891

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, French urban planner (born 1809)

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, known as Baron Haussmann, was a French official who supervised a radical urban renewal programme of new boulevards, parks, and public works in Paris, referred to as Haussmann's renovation of Paris, aimed at introducing grandeur in the city. First a prefect in Var (1849–1850), Yonne (1850–1851), and Gironde (1851–1853), his skills as an administrator led to his appointment in Paris by Emperor Napoleon III in 1853.

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11/01/1882

Theodor Schwann, German physiologist and biologist (born 1810)

Theodor Schwann was a German physician and physiologist. His most significant contribution to biology is considered to be the extension of cell theory to animals. Other contributions include the discovery of Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system, the discovery and study of pepsin, the discovery of the organic nature of yeast, and the invention of the term "metabolism".

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11/01/1867

Stuart Donaldson, English-Australian businessman and politician, 1st Premier of New South Wales (born 1812)

Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson was the first Premier of the Colony of New South Wales.

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11/01/1866

Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, Irish actor (born 1818)

Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, commonly referred to as G. V. Brooke, was an Irish stage actor who enjoyed success in Ireland, England, and Australia.

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John Woolley, English minister and academic (born 1816)

John Woolley was an academic and clergyman, the first principal of the University of Sydney, Australia.

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11/01/1843

Francis Scott Key, American lawyer, author, and songwriter (born 1779)

Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer, author, and poet from Frederick, Maryland, best known as the author of the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", which was set to a popular British tune and eventually became the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner". In 1814 Key observed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. He was inspired upon seeing an American flag flying over the fort at dawn: his poem was published within a week with the suggested tune of the popular song "To Anacreon in Heaven". The song with Key's lyrics became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" and slowly gained in popularity as an unofficial anthem, finally achieving official status as the national anthem more than a century later in 1931.

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11/01/1836

John Molson, Canadian businessman, founded the Molson Brewing Company (born 1763)

John Molson was an English-born brewer and entrepreneur in colonial Quebec, which during his lifetime became Lower Canada. In addition to founding Molson Brewery, he is known for building the first Canadian steamship and the first public Canadian railway. He was a president of the Bank of Montreal, and established a hospital, a hotel, and a theatre in Montreal. Molson was also the "leader" of the freemason's lodge of Montreal from 1826 to 1833. His business dynasty, much of which he passed along to and was expanded by his family, continues to remain influential in Canada.

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11/01/1824

Thomas Mullins, 1st Baron Ventry, Anglo-Irish politician and peer (born 1736)

Thomas Mullins, 1st Baron Ventry was an Anglo-Irish politician and peer.

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11/01/1801

Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer and educator (born 1749)

Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan School and of the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the best known of which is Il matrimonio segreto (1792); most of his operas are comedies. He also wrote instrumental works and church music.

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11/01/1798

Heraclius II of Georgia (born 1720)

Heraclius II, also known as The Little Kakhetian, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti from 1762 until his death in 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakly (Ираклий). Heraclius is the Latinized form of his name.

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11/01/1791

William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh composer and poet (born 1717)

William Williams, Pantycelyn, also known as William Williams, Williams Pantycelyn or simply Pantycelyn, was generally seen as Wales's premier hymnist. He is also rated among the great literary figures of Wales, as a writer of poetry and prose. In religion he was among the leaders of the 18th-century Welsh Methodist revival, along with the evangelists Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland.

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11/01/1788

François Joseph Paul de Grasse, French admiral (born 1722)

Lieutenant général des armées navales François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, Marquis of Grasse-Tilly, KM was a French naval officer. He is best known for his crucial victory over the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War. The battle directly led to the Franco-American victory at the siege of Yorktown and helped secure the independence of the United States.

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11/01/1771

Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, French philosopher and author (born 1704)

Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens was a French rationalist, author and critic of the Catholic Church, who was a close friend of Voltaire and spent much of his life in exile at the court of Frederick the Great.

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11/01/1763

Caspar Abel, German poet, historian, and theologian (born 1676)

Caspar Abel was a German theologian, historian and poet.

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11/01/1762

Louis-François Roubiliac, French-English sculptor (born 1695)

Louis-François Roubiliac was a French sculptor who worked in England. One of the four most prominent sculptors in London working in the rococo style, he was described by Margaret Whinney as "probably the most accomplished sculptor ever to work in England".

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11/01/1757

Louis Bertrand Castel, French mathematician and philosopher (born 1688)

Louis Bertrand Castel was a French mathematician born in Montpellier, who entered the order of the Jesuits in 1703. Having studied literature, he afterwards devoted himself entirely to mathematics and natural philosophy. After moving from Toulouse to Paris in 1720, at the behest of Bernard de Fontenelle, Castel acted as the science editor of the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux.

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11/01/1753

Hans Sloane, Irish-English physician and academic (born 1660)

Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, was an Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum, London.

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11/01/1735

Danilo I, Metropolitan of Cetinje (born 1670)

Danilo I Petrović-Njegoš was the Metropolitan of Cetinje between 1697 and 1735, the first de facto vladika of Montenegro, and the founder of the House of Petrović-Njegoš—which ruled Montenegro from 1697 to 1918. He restored the Cetinje Monastery and initiated the struggle for the liberation of Montenegro from Ottoman rule.

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11/01/1713

Pierre Jurieu, French priest and theologian (born 1637)

Pierre Jurieu was a French Protestant leader.

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11/01/1703

Johann Georg Graevius, German scholar and critic (born 1632)

Johann Georg Graevius was a German classical scholar and critic. He was born in Naumburg, in the Electorate of Saxony.

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11/01/1696

Charles Albanel, French priest, missionary, and explorer (born 1616)

Charles Albanel, born in Ardes or Auvergne, was a French missionary explorer in Canada, and a Jesuit priest. He was the first to travel by land to Hudson Bay from Tadoussac.

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11/01/1641

Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar, Spanish poet and painter (born 1583)

Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar was a Spanish poet, scholar and painter in the Siglo de Oro.

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11/01/1554

Min Bin, king of Arakan (born 1493)

Min Bin was a king of Arakan, a former state in Myanmar (Burma), from 1531 to 1554, "whose reign witnessed the country's emergence as a major power". Aided by Portuguese mercenaries and their firearms, his powerful navy and army pushed the boundaries of the kingdom deep into Bengal, where coins bearing his name and styling him sultan were struck, and even interfered in the affairs of mainland Burma. He carried the esteemed title "Lord of the White Umbrella" (ထီးဖြူရှင်). He was additionally known as Zabuk Shah by the neighbouring Bengal.

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11/01/1546

Gaudenzio Ferrari, Italian painter and sculptor (born c. 1471)

Gaudenzio Ferrari was an Italian painter and sculptor of the Renaissance.

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11/01/1495

Pedro González de Mendoza, Spanish cardinal (born 1428)

Pedro González de Mendoza was a Spanish cardinal, statesman and lawyer. He served on the council of King Henry IV of Castile and in 1467 fought for him at the Second Battle of Olmedo. In 1468 he was named bishop of Sigüenza and in 1473 he became cardinal and archbishop of Seville and appointed chancellor of Castile.

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11/01/1494

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Italian painter (born 1449)

Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli.

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11/01/1397

Skirgaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania

Skirgaila, also known as Ivan/Iwan, was a regent of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for his brother Jogaila from 1386 to 1392. He was the son of Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and his second wife Uliana of Tver.

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11/01/1396

Isidore Glabas, Metropolitan bishop of Thessalonica (born c. 1341)

Isidore Glabas was the metropolitan bishop of Thessalonica between 1380 and 1384, and again from 1386 until his death on 11 January 1396.

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11/01/1372

Eleanor of Lancaster, English noblewoman (born 1318)

Eleanor of Lancaster, Countess of Arundel was the fifth daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster and Maud Chaworth.

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11/01/1344

Thomas Charlton, Bishop of Hereford and Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Thomas Charlton was Bishop of Hereford, Lord High Treasurer of England, Lord Privy Seal, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He is buried in Hereford Cathedral in Hereford, Herefordshire, England.

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11/01/1266

Swietopelk II, Duke of Pomerania

Swantopolk II, also known as Swantopolk II the Great, was the ruling Duke of Gdańsk from 1215 until his death. He was the first member of the Samborides to style himself dux from 1227 onwards.

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11/01/1083

Otto of Nordheim (born 1020)

Otto of Nordheim was Duke of Bavaria from 1061 until 1070. He was one of the leaders of the Saxon revolt of 1073–1075 and the Saxon revolt of 1077–1088 against King Henry IV of Germany.

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11/01/1068

Egbert I, Margrave of Meissen

Egbert I was the Margrave of Meissen from 1067 until his early death the next year. Egbert was the Count of Brunswick from about 1038, when his father, Liudolf, Margrave of Frisia, died.

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11/01/1055

Constantine IX Monomachos, Byzantine emperor (born 1000)

Constantine IX Monomachos reigned as Byzantine emperor from June 1042 to January 1055. A member of the urban aristocracy, Constantine became emperor through marriage to the ruling empress Zoë Porphyrogenita in 1042. The couple shared the throne with Zoë's sister Theodora Porphyrogenita. Constantine's energetic rule was one of the most consequential in the Byzantine Empire's tumultuous 11th century.

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11/01/0937

Cao, empress of Later Tang

Empress Cao, formally Empress Hewuxian (和武憲皇后), was an empress of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Tang. Her husband was Later Tang's second emperor Li Siyuan, and she was empress dowager during the subsequent reigns of his son Li Conghou and adoptive son Li Congke. Eventually, when her son-in-law Shi Jingtang rebelled against Li Congke, establishing his own Later Jin and attacked the Later Tang capital Luoyang, she died in a mass suicide with Li Congke, his family, and some officers.

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Li Chongmei, prince of Later Tang

Li Chongmei, formally the Prince of Yong (雍王), was an imperial prince of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Tang, as a son of its last emperor Li Congke.

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Li Congke, emperor of Later Tang (born 885)

Li Congke, also known in historiography as the Last Emperor of Later Tang (後唐末帝), Deposed Emperor of Later Tang (後唐廢帝), Wang Congke (王從珂), or Prince of Lu, childhood name Ershisan or, in short, Asan (阿三), was the last emperor of the Later Tang dynasty of China. He was an adoptive son of Li Siyuan and took the throne after overthrowing Emperor Mingzong's biological son Li Conghou. He was later himself overthrown by his brother-in-law Shi Jingtang, who was supported by Liao troops. When the combined Later Jin and Khitan forces defeated Later Tang forces, Li Congke and his family members, as well as the guards most loyal to him, ascended a tower and set it on fire, dying in the fire.

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Liu, empress of Later Tang

Empress Liu, was an empress of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Tang. Her husband was Later Tang's last emperor Li Congke.

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11/01/0887

Boso of Provence, Frankish nobleman

Boso of Provence was the first non-Carolingian pretender to the royal throne of West Francia in 879, who failed to achieve wider recognition, being accepted only in Lower Burgundy and Provence, where he ruled as king from 879 to 887. By 882, he had already lost much of his Burgundian domains, and had to retreat to his remaining possessions in Provence. By ancestry, he was a Frankish nobleman of the Bosonid family, who was related to the Carolingian dynasty and previously served as a count in several south-eastern counties of the West Frankish realm.

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11/01/0844

Michael I Rangabe, Byzantine emperor (born 770)

Michael I Rangabe was Byzantine emperor from 811 to 813. A courtier of Emperor Nikephoros I, he survived the disastrous campaign against the Bulgars and was preferred as imperial successor over Staurakios, who was severely injured. He was proclaimed emperor by Patriarch Nicephorus I of Constantinople on 2 October 811.

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11/01/0812

Staurakios, Byzantine emperor

Staurakios or Stauracius was the shortest-reigning Byzantine emperor, ruling for 68 days between 26 July and 2 October 811.

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11/01/0782

Emperor Kōnin of Japan (born 709)

Emperor Kōnin was the 49th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kōnin's reign lasted from 770 to 781; he reigned during the Nara period.

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11/01/0705

Pope John VI (born 655)

Pope John VI was the bishop of Rome from 30 October 701 to his death on 11 January 705. John VI was a Greek from Ephesus who reigned during the Byzantine Papacy. His papacy was noted for military and political breakthroughs on the Italian Peninsula. He was succeeded by Pope John VII after a vacancy of less than two months. The body of the pope was buried in Old St. Peter's Basilica.

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11/01/0140

Pope Hyginus, Bishop of Rome (born 74)

Year 140 (CXL) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Hadrianus and Caesar. The denomination 140 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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