Died on Thursday, 22nd January – Famous Deaths

22/01/2026

Hifumi Katō, Japanese professional shogi player (born 1940)

Hifumi Katō was a Japanese professional shogi player who achieved the rank of 9-dan. During his career, he won the Meijin, Tenth Dan, Ōi, Kiō and Ōshō major titles. He also held the record for being the youngest to have been awarded regular professional status at age 14 years and 7 months until Sōta Fujii broke it at age 14 years and 2 months in 2016.

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22/01/2023

Lin Brehmer, American disc jockey (born 1954)

Lin Brehmer was an American disc jockey and radio personality at WXRT in Chicago. Brehmer hosted mornings on WXRT from 1991 to 2020, and middays from early 2020 until taking a leave of absence to undergo chemotherapy in 2022.

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22/01/2022

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, and founder of the Plum Village Tradition (born 1926)

Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet, and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Known as the "father of mindfulness", Nhất Hạnh was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.

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22/01/2021

Hank Aaron, American baseball player (born 1934)

Henry Louis Aaron, nicknamed "Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank", was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976. Considered one of the greatest baseball players in history, he spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee / Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL). At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game's key career power-hitting records. He broke the long-standing MLB record for career home runs held by Babe Ruth and remained the career leader for 33 years, until Barry Bonds surpassed his famous total of 755 in 2007. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973 and is one of only two players to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least 15 times.

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22/01/2018

Ursula K. Le Guin, American sci-fi and fantasy novelist (born 1929)

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. Her work was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".

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William B. Jordan, American art historian (born 1940)

William Bryan Jordan Jr. was an American art historian who facilitated acquisitions, curated exhibitions, and authored publications on Spanish artists and still life paintings, particularly from the Golden Age.

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22/01/2017

Masaya Nakamura, Japanese businessman (born 1925)

Masaya Nakamura was a Japanese businessman and the founder of Namco. He was the company's president up until 2002, where he took a ceremonial role in its management. Following the formation of Bandai Namco Holdings, Nakamura would retain an honorary position in the video game division, Bandai Namco Entertainment.

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Yordano Ventura, Dominican baseball player (born 1991)

Yordano Ventura Hernández was a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball (MLB). Ventura made his MLB debut on September 17, 2013. Known as a power pitcher, his fastball topped out at 102 miles per hour (164 km/h) in his career. He won the 2015 World Series with the Royals. On January 22, 2017, Ventura was killed in a car crash in the Dominican Republic.

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22/01/2016

Homayoun Behzadi, Iranian footballer and coach (born 1942)

Homayoun Behzadi was an Iranian footballer and coach. He usually played as a striker.

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Cecil Parkinson, English politician (born 1931)

Cecil Edward Parkinson, Baron Parkinson, was a British Conservative Party politician and cabinet minister. A chartered accountant by training, he entered Parliament in November 1970, and was appointed a minister in Margaret Thatcher's first government in May 1979. He successfully managed the Conservative Party's 1983 election campaign, and was rewarded with an appointment as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, but was forced to resign following revelations that his former secretary, Sara Keays, was pregnant with his child, whom she later bore and named Flora Keays. Flora was born with severe cerebral palsy.

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Lois Ramsey, Australian actress (born 1922)

Lois June Ramsey also billed as Lois Ramsay, was an Australian actress, best known for her regular roles on television series The Box and Prisoner. She often played quirky, eccentric old ladies on television soap operas.

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Kamer Genç, Turkish politician (born 1940)

Kamer Genç was a Turkish politician, elected a member of parliament for the Republican People's Party in the 1987 and 1991 elections, for the True Path Party in the 1995 and 1999 elections, as an independent candidate in the 2007 elections, returning to the Republican People's Party on 1 June 2010, for which he was reelected in the 2011 elections.

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22/01/2015

Fabrizio de Miranda, Italian engineer and academic, co-designed the Rande Bridge (born 1926)

Fabrizio de Miranda was an Italian bridges and structural engineer and university professor.

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Wendell H. Ford, American lieutenant and politician, 53rd Governor of Kentucky (born 1924)

Wendell Hampton Ford was an American politician from Kentucky. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 53rd governor of Kentucky from 1971 to 1974, and as a member of the United States Senate from 1974 to 1999. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky, governor, and United States Senate member in Kentucky history. He was the Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, and was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election as governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell, in 2009. Ford is the last Democrat to have served as a U.S. Senate member from the state of Kentucky.

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Margaret Bloy Graham, Canadian author and illustrator (born 1920)

Margaret Bloy Graham was a Canadian creator of children's books, primarily as an illustrator of picture books. She is best known for her work on Harry the Dirty Dog (1956) and other books in the same series written by her then-husband Gene Zion.

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22/01/2014

Maziar Partow, Iranian cinematographer (born 1933)

Maziar Partow was one of the first Iranian cinematographers and had worked as a cameraman on numerous Iranian films. He directed a few movies and edited several more, and was most well known by his title as Director of Photography.

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22/01/2013

Robert Bonnaud, French historian and academic (born 1929)

Robert Bonnaud was a French anti-colonialist historian and professor of history at the Paris Diderot University.

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Hinton Mitchem, American businessman and politician (born 1938)

Hinton Mitchem was a Democratic member of the Alabama Senate, representing the 9th District from 1979 to January 1987 and then again from June 1987 to January 2011.

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22/01/2012

Simon Marsden, English photographer and author (born 1948)

Sir Simon Neville Llewelyn Marsden, 4th Baronet was an English photographer and author. He is known best for his uncommon black-and-white photographs of allegedly haunted houses and places throughout Europe. He succeeded his brother as baronet of Grimsby in Lincolnshire in 1997.

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Joe Paterno, American football player and coach (born 1926)

Joseph Vincent Paterno, sometimes referred to as JoePa, was an American college football player, athletic director, and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions from 1966 to 2011. With 409 victories, Paterno is the most victorious coach in NCAA FBS history. He recorded his 409th victory on October 29, 2011; his career ended with his dismissal from the team on November 9, 2011, as a result of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. He died 74 days later, of complications from lung cancer.

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Clarence Tillenius, Canadian painter and environmentalist (born 1913)

Clarence Tillenius, LL. D. was a Canadian artist, environmentalist, and advocate for the protection of wildlife and wilderness.

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Dick Tufeld, American actor (born 1926)

Richard Norton Tufeld was an American actor, announcer, narrator, and voice actor from the late 1940s until the early 21st century. He worked constantly and continuously throughout this lengthy career and was one of the busiest announcers in television history. He was a well-known and well respected presence on television as an announcer on countless television shows, award shows, network promos, radio and movie promos but his most famous role was as the voice of the Robot in the television series Lost in Space and in the Lost in Space movie.

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22/01/2010

Louis R. Harlan, American historian and author (born 1922)

Louis Rudolph Harlan was an American academic historian who wrote a two-volume biography of the African-American educator and social leader Booker T. Washington and edited several volumes of Washington materials. He won the Bancroft Prize in 1973 and 1984, once for each volume, and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for the second volume.

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Jean Simmons, English-American actress (born 1929)

Jean Merilyn Simmons was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Britain during and after the Second World War, followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950 onwards.

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22/01/2009

Billy Werber, American baseball player (born 1908)

William Murray Werber was an American professional baseball third baseman in Major League Baseball who played for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox (1933–1936), Philadelphia Athletics (1937–1938), Cincinnati Reds (1939–1941) and New York Giants (1942). He led American League third basemen in putouts and assists once each, and also led National League third basemen in assists, double plays and fielding percentage once each. A strong baserunner, he led the AL in stolen bases three times and led the NL in runs in 1939 as the Reds won the pennant. He was born in Berwyn Heights, Maryland and batted and threw right-handed.

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22/01/2008

Heath Ledger, Australian actor and director (born 1979)

Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian actor. Known for his versatility across independent and major studio films, his work consisted of 20 films in a variety of genres. He received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, an Actor Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award.

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Miles Lerman, Polish Holocaust survivor and activist (born 1920)

Miles Lerman was an American activist who helped plan and create both the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the memorial at the Bełżec extermination camp. Lerman, a Holocaust survivor himself, had fought as a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II in Nazi German occupied Poland.

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22/01/2007

Ngô Quang Trưởng, Vietnamese general (born 1929)

Ngô Quang Trưởng was an officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Trưởng gained his commission in the Vietnamese National Army in 1954 and moved up the ranks over the next decade, mostly in the Airborne Brigade. In 1966, Trưởng commanded a division for the first time after he was given command of the 1st Division after helping to quell the Buddhist Uprising. He rebuilt the unit after this divisive period and used it to reclaim the city of Huế after weeks of bitter street fighting during the Tết Offensive.

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Abbé Pierre, French priest and activist (born 1912)

Abbé Pierre was a French Catholic priest. He was a member of the Resistance during World War II and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement. In 1949, he founded the Emmaus movement, with the goal of helping poor and homeless people. For several decades, he was one of the most popular public figures in France. Allegations of sexual abuse of at least 57 women, as well as several underage girls, emerged in 2024 and 2025.

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Liz Renay, American actress, author and performer (born 1926)

Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins, known professionally as Liz Renay, was an American stripper, author, and actress who appeared in John Waters' film Desperate Living (1977).

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22/01/2006

Aydın Güven Gürkan, Turkish academic and politician, Turkish Minister of Labor and Social Security (born 1941)

Aydın Güven Gürkan was a Turkish academic and politician.

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22/01/2005

César Gutiérrez, Venezuelan baseball player, coach, and manager (born 1943)

César Dario Gutiérrez [goo-te-er'-rez], also nicknamed "Cocoa", was a Venezuelan professional baseball player. He played as a shortstop in Major League Baseball for the San Francisco Giants in the 1967 and 1969 seasons, and for the Detroit Tigers from 1969 to 1971. Listed at 5'9" and 155 lbs, he batted and threw right handed. Gutiérrez is notable for being the second player in Major League history to record seven hits in a game without making an out.

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Carlo Orelli, Italian soldier (born 1894)

Carlo Orelli was, at age 110, the last surviving Italian World War I veteran who joined the army at the onset of the war. Born in Perugia, although he lived in Rome for most of his life, Orelli came from a military family whose members had served in various Italian conflicts since 1849. A mechanic by trade, Orelli joined the Italian Army in May 1915 and engaged in combat operations in Italy. His recollections were marked by particularly brutal experiences of trench warfare, including the violent deaths of many of his friends. After receiving injuries to his leg, he was pulled from active duty and returned home.

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Consuelo Velázquez, Mexican pianist and songwriter (born 1924)

Consuelo Velázquez Torres, also popularly known as Consuelito Velázquez, was a Mexican concert pianist and composer. She was the composer of famous Mexican ballads such as "Bésame mucho", "Amar y vivir", and "Cachito".

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22/01/2004

Billy May, American trumpet player and composer (born 1916)

Edward William May Jr. was an American composer, arranger and trumpeter. He composed film and television music for The Green Hornet (1966), The Mod Squad (1968), Batman, and Naked City (1960). He collaborated on films such as Pennies from Heaven (1981), and orchestrated Cocoon, and Cocoon: The Return, among others.

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Tom Mead, Australian journalist and politician (born 1918)

Thomas Francis Mead was an Australian politician, elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing the seat of Hurstville for the Liberal Party. He was also a political journalist.

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Ann Miller, American actress, singer, and dancer (born 1923)

Ann Miller was an American actress and dancer. She is best remembered for her work in the classical Hollywood cinema musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Her early film work included roles in Room Service with the Marx Brothers and Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You, both released in 1938. She later starred in the musical classics Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953). Her final film role was in Mulholland Drive (2001).

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22/01/2003

Bill Mauldin, American soldier and cartoonist (born 1921)

William Henry Mauldin was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field.

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22/01/2001

Tommie Agee, American baseball player (born 1942)

Tommie Lee Agee was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a center fielder from 1962 through 1973, most notably as a member of the New York Mets team that became known as the Miracle Mets when they rose from being perennial losers to defeat the favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series for one of the most improbable upsets in World Series history. Agee performed two impressive defensive plays in center field to help preserve a Mets victory in the third game of the series.

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Roy Brown, American clown and puppeteer (born 1932)

Roy Thomas Brown was an American television personality, puppeteer, clown and artist known for playing "Cooky the Cook" on Chicago's Bozo's Circus.

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22/01/2000

Craig Claiborne, American journalist, author, and critic (born 1920)

Craig Claiborne was an American restaurant critic, food journalist, and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for The New York Times, he was also the author of numerous cookbooks and an autobiography. He made many contributions to gastronomy and food writing in the United States.

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Anne Hébert, Canadian author and poet (born 1916)

Anne Hébert, was a Canadian author and poet. She won Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, three times, twice for fiction and once for poetry.

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22/01/1999

Graham Staines, Australian-Indian missionary and translator (born 1941)

Graham Stuart Staines was an Australian Christian missionary who, along with his two sons, Philip and Timothy, was burnt to death in India by members of the Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindutva organisation. In 2003, Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh was convicted of leading the murderers and was sentenced to life in prison.

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22/01/1997

Billy Mackenzie, Scottish singer-songwriter (born 1957)

William MacArthur Mackenzie was a Scottish singer and songwriter, known for his distinctive high tenor voice. He was the co-founder and lead vocalist of the post-punk and pop band the Associates. He also had a brief solo career releasing his debut studio album, Outernational, in 1992, his only solo album released during his lifetime.

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22/01/1996

Israel Eldad, Polish-Israeli philosopher and author (born 1910)

Israel Eldad was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group Lehi in Mandatory Palestine.

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22/01/1994

Jean-Louis Barrault, French actor and director (born 1910)

Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist who worked on both screen and stage.

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Telly Savalas, American actor (born 1922)

Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas was an American actor. Noted for his bald head and deep, resonant voice, he is perhaps best known for portraying Lt. Theo Kojak on the crime drama series Kojak (1973–1978) and James Bond archvillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

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22/01/1993

Kōbō Abe, Japanese playwright and photographer (born 1924)

Kimifusa Abe , known by his pen name Kōbō Abe , was a Japanese writer, playwright and director. His 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes was made into an award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society. He died aged 68 of heart failure in Tokyo after a brief illness.

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22/01/1991

Robert Choquette, Canadian author, poet and diplomat (born 1905)

Robert Guy Choquette was a Canadian novelist, poet and diplomat.

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22/01/1989

S. Vithiananthan, Sri Lankan author and academic (born 1924)

Suppiramaniam Vithiananthan was a Sri Lankan writer, academic and the first vice-chancellor of the University of Jaffna.

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22/01/1987

R. Budd Dwyer, American educator and politician, 30th Treasurer of Pennsylvania (born 1939)

Robert Budd Dwyer was an American politician who served as the 70th Treasurer of Pennsylvania from 1981 until his suicide in 1987. He had previously served from 1965 to 1971 as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and from 1971 to 1981 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate representing the state's 50th district. Dwyer committed suicide by gunshot during a press conference.

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22/01/1985

Arthur Bryant, English historian and journalist (born 1899)

Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant, was an English historian, columnist for The Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. He moved in high government circles, where his works were influential, writing histories of three prime ministers: Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Harold Wilson.

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22/01/1982

Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chilean lawyer and politician, 28th President of Chile (born 1911)

Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva was a Chilean political leader. In his long political career, he was Minister of Public Works, president of his Christian Democratic Party, senator, President of the Senate, and the 28th president of Chile from 1964 to 1970. His eldest son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, also became president of Chile (1994–2000).

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22/01/1981

Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, Pakistani historian and academic (born 1903)

Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi popularly known as I.H. Qureshi, SP, HI, was a Pakistani nationalist historian and playwright. He was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi from 1961 till 1971.

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22/01/1980

Yitzhak Baer, German-Israeli historian and academic (born 1888)

Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer was a German-Israeli historian and an expert on medieval Spanish Jewish history.

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22/01/1979

Ali Hassan Salameh, Palestinian rebel leader (born 1940)

Ali Hassan Salameh was a Palestinian militant who was the chief of operations for Black September and founder of Force 17. He was assassinated in January 1979 as part of an assassination campaign by Mossad.

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22/01/1978

Oliver Leese, English general (born 1894)

Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver William Hargreaves Leese, 3rd Baronet, was a senior British Army officer who saw distinguished active service during both the world wars. He commanded XXX Corps in North Africa and Sicily, serving under General Sir Bernard Montgomery, before going on to command the Eighth Army in the Italian Campaign throughout most of 1944.

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Herbert Sutcliffe, English cricketer and soldier (born 1894)

Herbert Sutcliffe was an English professional cricketer who represented Yorkshire and England as an opening batsman. Apart from one match in 1945, his first-class career spanned the period between the two world wars. His first-class debut was delayed by the First World War until 1919 and his career was effectively terminated in August 1939 when he was called up for military service in the imminent Second World War. He was the first cricketer to score 16 centuries in Test match cricket. He is most famous for being the partner of Jack Hobbs and the partnership between the two, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, is widely regarded as the greatest partnership of all time.

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22/01/1977

Ibrahim bin Abdullah Al Suwaiyel, Saudi Arabian diplomat (born 1916)

Sheikh Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al Suwaiyel was a Saudi Arabian statesman, diplomat, and military officer who served as the Saudi Arabian minister of foreign affairs from 1960 to 1962. Appointed on 22 December 1960 by King Saud, he succeeded the future king Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and was succeeded by him again on 16 March 1961. He was noted for being the first non-royal to hold the position of foreign minister. He also served as the Saudi Arabian ambassador to both the United States and Iraq, as the minister of agriculture, and later as a member of the Council of Ministers and an advisor to the Royal Court.

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22/01/1973

Lyndon B. Johnson, American lieutenant and politician, 36th President of the United States (born 1908)

Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th president of the United States, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 until 1969. He was Kennedy's vice president from 1961 to 1963, and a member of Congress for 26 years before. Johnson was a U.S. representative from Texas's 10th congressional district and the elder U.S. senator for Texas as a member of the Democratic Party. Born and raised in the segregationist South, Johnson had to compromise during the height of the civil rights movement.

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22/01/1971

Harry Frank Guggenheim, American businessman and publisher, co-founded Newsday (born 1890)

Harry Frank Guggenheim was an American businessman, diplomat, publisher, philanthropist, aviator, and horseman.

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22/01/1968

Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer and water polo player (born 1890)

Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian competition swimmer, lifeguard, and popularizer of the sport of surfing. A Native Hawaiian, he was born three years before the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. He lived to see the territory's admission as a state and became a United States citizen. He was the world record holder of the 100-meters free style in swimming, and was a five-time Olympic medalist in swimming, winning medals in 1912, 1920 and 1924.

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22/01/1966

Herbert Marshall, English actor (born 1890)

Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall was an English actor of stage, screen, and radio. He starred in many popular and well-regarded Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. After a successful theatrical career in the United Kingdom and North America, he became an in-demand Hollywood leading man, frequently appearing in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies. In his later years, Marshall turned to character acting.

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22/01/1964

Marc Blitzstein, American pianist and composer (born 1905)

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is known for The Cradle Will Rock and for his off-Broadway translation and adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. His works also include the opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes; the Broadway musical Juno, based on Seán O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock; and No for an Answer. He completed translations and adaptations of Brecht's and Weill's musical play Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and of Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children with music by Paul Dessau. Blitzstein also composed music for films, such as Surf and Seaweed (1931) and The Spanish Earth (1937), and he contributed two songs to the original 1960 production of Hellman's play Toys in the Attic.

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22/01/1959

Mike Hawthorn, English racing driver (born 1929)

John Michael Hawthorn was a British racing driver who competed in Formula One from 1952 to 1958. Hawthorn won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1958 with Ferrari, and won three Grands Prix across seven seasons. In endurance racing, Hawthorn won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1955 with Jaguar.

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22/01/1957

Ralph Barton Perry, American philosopher and academic (born 1876)

Ralph Barton Perry was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth." Perry's viewpoints on religion stressed the notion that religious thinking possessed legitimacy should it exist within a framework accepting of human reason and social progress.

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22/01/1955

Jonni Myyrä, Finnish-American athlete (born 1892)

Joonas "Jonni" Myyrä was a Finnish athlete who competed at the 1912, 1920 and 1924 Olympics. In 1912, he finished eighth in the javelin throw. At the 1920 Olympics, his left arm was fractured in a warm-up accident – the spear thrown by James Lincoln struck Myyrä while he was resting on the grass. Nevertheless, Myyrä won the javelin event with an Olympic record of 65.78 meters. He also finished 12th in the discus throw but could not complete his pentathlon events. Myyrä successfully defended his javelin title at the 1924 Summer Olympics and then fled to the United States due to his financial problems in Finland. He never returned to his home country and died in San Francisco in 1955.

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22/01/1951

Harald Bohr, Danish mathematician and footballer (born 1887)

Harald August Bohr was a Danish mathematician and footballer. After receiving his doctorate in 1910, Bohr became an eminent mathematician, founding the field of almost periodic functions. His brother was the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr. He was on the Denmark national team for the 1908 Summer Olympics, where he won a silver medal.

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Lawson Robertson, Scottish-American sprinter and high jumper (born 1883)

Lawson "Robbie" N. Robertson was considered one of the more accomplished American track coaches of the first half of the twentieth century. From 1904-1936, he was with the American team at every Olympics with the exception of 1916 when the Olympics were cancelled due to WWI. He coached Track and Field for the Irish-American Athletic Club in Queens, New York from 1909–16, and then for the University of Pennsylvania from 1916-47. He was U.S. Olympic Assistant Track coach in 1912 and 1920 and was head coach for the American Track and Field Team in four Olympics from 1924-36.

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22/01/1950

Alan Hale, Sr., American actor and director (born 1892)

Alan Hale Sr., typically credited as Alan Hale, was an American actor and film director. He is best known for his many character roles during the Golden Age of Hollywood, in particular as a frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn. He also played in films supporting Lon Chaney, Wallace Beery, Douglas Fairbanks, James Cagney, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan. In total, his career in film lasted 40 years.

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22/01/1949

William Thomas Walsh, American author, poet, and playwright (born 1891)

William Thomas Walsh, was an American historian, educator and author; he was also a violinist.

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22/01/1945

Else Lasker-Schüler, German poet and playwright (born 1869)

Else Lasker-Schüler was a German poet and playwright. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler, who was Jewish, fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.

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22/01/1931

László Batthyány-Strattmann, Hungarian physician and ophthalmologist (born 1870)

László, 7th Prince Batthyany-Strattmann was a Hungarian aristocrat and physician. Until 1914, he was known as László Batthyány. A devout Catholic, he became known as the "doctor of the poor" and was beatified by the Church in 2003.

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22/01/1930

Stephen Mather, American businessman and conservationist, co-founded the Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company (born 1867)

Stephen Tyng Mather was an American industrialist and conservationist who was the first director of the National Park Service. As president and owner of Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company he became a millionaire. Along with journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather led a publicity campaign known as the Mather Mountain Party to promote the creation of a unified federal agency to oversee National Parks administration, which was established in 1916. In 1917, Mather was appointed to lead the NPS, the new agency created within the Department of the Interior. He served until 1929, during which time Mather created a professional civil service organization, increased the numbers of parks and national monuments, and established systematic criteria for adding new properties to the federal system.

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22/01/1929

R. C. Lehmann, English journalist, author, and politician (born 1856)

Rudolph Chambers Lehmann was an English writer and Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1906 to 1910. As a writer he was best known for three decades in which he was a major contributor to Punch as well as founding editor of Granta magazine.

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22/01/1927

James Ford Rhodes, American historian and author (born 1848)

James Ford Rhodes, was an American industrialist and historian born in Cleveland, Ohio. After earning a fortune in the iron, coal, and steel industries by 1885, he retired from business to devote time to historical research. He wrote a seven-volume history of the United States from 1850, initially published from 1893 to 1906 with an eighth volume added in 1920. Another book, A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1918), won the second-ever Pulitzer Prize for History.

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22/01/1925

Fanny Bullock Workman, American geographer and mountain climber (born 1859)

Fanny Bullock Workman was an American mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and travel writer known for her expeditions in the Himalayas and the Karakoram. One of the first women to pursue mountaineering as a professional career, she combined exploration with scientific observation and published detailed accounts of her journeys. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries she set several women's altitude records and advocated for women's suffrage and women's participation in exploration and science.

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22/01/1922

Fredrik Bajer, Danish educator and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1837)

Fredrik Bajer was a Danish writer, teacher, and pacifist politician who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1908 together with Klas Pontus Arnoldson.

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Pope Benedict XV (born 1854)

Pope Benedict XV was head of the Catholic Church from 1914 until his death in January 1922. His pontificate was largely overshadowed by World War I and its political, social, and humanitarian consequences in Europe.

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Camille Jordan, French mathematician and academic (born 1838)

Marie Ennemond Camille Jordan was a French mathematician, known both for his foundational work in group theory and for his textbook Cours d'analyse de l'École polytechnique.

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22/01/1921

George Streeter, American captain and businessman (born 1837)

George Wellington "Cap" Streeter was an American who became infamous in Chicago for his real estate schemes and oftentimes bizarre eccentricity. From 1886 to 1921, Streeter, often through forgery and other manipulative means, attempted to lay claim to 186 acres (0.75 km2) of Lake Michigan shoreline from various owners. Failing in his efforts to defraud wealthy landowners, he turned to selling the disputed land to uninformed buyers. A portion of the real estate near downtown Chicago, known as Streeterville, is named for him.

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22/01/1909

Emil Erlenmeyer, German chemist and academic (born 1825)

Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer, known simply as Emil Erlenmeyer, was a German chemist known for contributing to the early development of the theory of chemical structure and formulating the Erlenmeyer rule. He also designed the Erlenmeyer flask, a specialized apparatus ubiquitous in chemistry laboratories, which is named after him.

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22/01/1906

George Holyoake, English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor (born 1817)

George Jacob Holyoake was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor. He coined the terms secularism in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secularist paper, The Reasoner, from 1846 to June 1861, and a co-operative one, The English Leader, in 1864–1867.

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22/01/1901

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (born 1819)

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days, which was longer than those of any of her predecessors, constituted the Victorian era, a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

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22/01/1900

David Edward Hughes, Welsh-American physicist, co-invented the microphone (born 1831)

David Edward Hughes, was a Welsh-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone. He is generally considered to have been born in London but his family moved around that time so he may have been born in Corwen, Wales.

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22/01/1892

Joseph P. Bradley, American lawyer and jurist (born 1813)

Joseph Philo Bradley was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1870 to 1892. He was also a member of the Electoral Commission that decided the disputed 1876 United States presidential election.

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22/01/1879

Anthony Durnford, Irish colonel (born 1830)

Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony William Durnford was a British Army officer of the Royal Engineers who served in the Anglo-Zulu War. Breveted colonel effective 31 December 1878, Durnford is mainly known for his defeat by the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana, which was a disaster for the British Army.

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Henry Pulleine, English colonel (born 1838)

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Burmester Pulleine was an administrator and commander in the British Army in the Cape Frontier and Anglo-Zulu Wars. He is most notable as a commander of British forces at the disastrous Battle of Isandlwana in January 1879. Substantively a major, he held the rank of brevet lieutenant colonel.

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22/01/1850

Vincent Pallotti, Italian missionary and saint (born 1795)

Vincent Pallotti, SAC was an Italian Catholic cleric and the founder of the Society of the Catholic Apostolate, later known as the Pious Society of Missions. The original name was restored in 1947. He is buried in the Church of San Salvatore in Onda. He is considered the forerunner of Catholic Action. His feast day is 22 January.

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22/01/1840

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, German physician, physiologist, and anthropologist (born 1752)

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a German medical doctor, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He has been called the "founder of racial classifications".

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22/01/1798

Lewis Morris, American judge and politician (born 1726)

Lewis Morris was an American Founding Father, landowner, and developer from Morrisania, New York, presently part of Bronx County. He signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a delegate to the Continental Congress from New York.

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22/01/1779

Jeremiah Dixon, English surveyor and astronomer (born 1733)

Jeremiah Dixon was an English surveyor and astronomer best known for surveying the Mason–Dixon line with Charles Mason from 1763 to 1767. The line came to mark the borders between Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Dixon's name may be the origin for the nickname Dixie used in reference to the Southern United States.

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Claudius Smith, American guerrilla leader (born 1736)

Claudius Smith was a Loyalist guerrilla leader during the American Revolution. He led a band of irregulars who were known locally as the 'cowboys'.

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22/01/1767

Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German meteorologist and geologist (born 1719)

Johann Gottlob Lehmann was a German mineralogist and geologist noted for his work and research contributions to the geologic record leading to the development of stratigraphy.

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22/01/1763

John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (born 1690)

John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, 7th Seigneur of Sark, commonly known by his earlier title Lord Carteret, was a British statesman and Lord President of the Council from 1751 to 1763 and worked closely with the Prime Minister of the country, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, to manage the various factions of the Government. He was Seigneur of Sark from 1715 to 1720, when he sold the fief. He held the office of Bailiff of Jersey from 1715 to 1763.

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22/01/1750

Franz Xaver Josef von Unertl, Bavarian politician (born 1675)

Franz Xaver Josef Baron von Unertl was a Bavarian politician.

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22/01/1666

Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor (born 1592)

Shah Jahan I, also called Shah Jahan the Magnificent, was the fifth Mughal Emperor from 1628 until his deposition in 1658. His reign marked the zenith of Mughal architectural and cultural achievements.

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22/01/1599

Cristofano Malvezzi, Italian organist and composer (born 1547)

Cristofano Malvezzi was an Italian organist and composer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the most famous composers in the city of Florence during a time of transition to the Baroque style.

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22/01/1575

James Hamilton, Duke of Châtellerault (born 1516)

James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Châtellerault, 2nd Earl of Arran, was a Scottish nobleman and Regent of Scotland during the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1543 to 1554. At first pro-English and Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1543 and supported a pro-French policy. He reluctantly agreed to Mary's marriage to Francis, eldest son of King Henry II of France, and was rewarded by Henry by being made Duke of Châtellerault in 1549. During the Scottish Reformation, he joined the Protestant Lords of the Congregation to oppose the regency of Mary of Guise.

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22/01/1560

Wang Zhi, Chinese pirate

Wang Zhi, art name Wufeng (五峰), was a Chinese pirate lord of the 16th century, one of the main figures among the wokou pirates prevalent during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor. Originally a salt merchant, Wang Zhi turned to smuggling during the Ming dynasty's period of maritime prohibitions banning all private overseas trade, and eventually became the head of a pirate syndicate stretching across the East and South China Seas, from Japan to Thailand. Through his clandestine trade, he is credited for spreading European firearms throughout East Asia, and for his role in leading the first Europeans to reach Japan in 1543.

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22/01/1552

Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, English general and politician, Lord High Treasurer of England (born 1500)

Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp was an English nobleman and politician who served as Lord Protector of England from 1547 to 1549 during the minority of his nephew King Edward VI. He was the eldest surviving brother of Queen Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII and mother of King Edward VI.

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22/01/1536

Bernhard Knipperdolling, German religious leader (born 1495)

Bernhard Knipperdolling was a German leader of the Münster Anabaptists. He was also known as Bernd or Berndt Knipperdollinck or Knypperdollynck or Bertrand Knipperdoling; his birth name was van Stockem. He was executed at the principal market in Munster.

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John of Leiden, Anabaptist leader from the Dutch city of Leiden (born 1509)

John of Leiden was a Dutch Anabaptist leader. In 1533 he moved to Münster, capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, where he became an influential prophet, turned the city into a millenarian Anabaptist theocracy, and proclaimed himself King of New Jerusalem in September 1534. The insurrection was suppressed in June 1535 after Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck besieged the city and captured John. John was tortured to death in the city's central marketplace on 22 January 1536, along with Bernhard Knipperdolling and Bernhard Krechting.

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22/01/1517

Hadım Sinan Pasha, Ottoman politician, 32nd Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (born ?)

Hadım Sinan Pasha was a Bosnian-Ottoman nobleman, politician and statesman. He served as the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1517. He was a eunuch.

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22/01/1341

Louis I, Duke of Bourbon (born 1279)

Louis I, called the Lame was a French prince du sang, Count of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis and La Marche and the first Duke of Bourbon, as well as briefly the titular King of Thessalonica from 1320 to 1321.

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22/01/1188

Ferdinand II of León (born 1137)

Ferdinand II, was a member of the Castilian cadet branch of the House of Ivrea and King of León and Galicia from 1157 until his death.

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22/01/1170

Wang Chongyang, Chinese Daoist and co-founder of the Quanzhen School (born 1113)

Wang Chongyang is the founder of the Quanzhen school of Taoism. In his life he had many devotees and followers, but formally accepted seven major disciples which are known as the Seven Perfected or the Seven Masters of Quanzhen: Ma Danyang, Qiu Chuji, Tan Chuduan, Liu Chuxuan, Hao Datong, Wang Chuyi, and Sun Bu’er. Wang Chongyang is one of the Five Northern Patriarchs of Quanzhen, which in order they are: Wang Xuanfu 王玄甫, Zhongli Quan 钟离权, Lü Dongbin 吕洞宾, Liu Haichan 刘海蟾, Wang Chongyang 王重阳. He is also one of the Eight Immortals of Taoism.

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22/01/1051

Ælfric Puttoc, archbishop of York

Ælfric Puttoc was Archbishop of York from 1023 to his death, and briefly Bishop of Worcester from 1040 to 1041. He may have crowned Harold Harefoot in 1036, and certainly assisted in that king's disinterment in 1040 and at the coronation of Edward the Confessor in 1043. He founded houses of canons and encouraged the cult of John of Beverley.

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22/01/1001

Al-Muqallad ibn al-Musayyab, Uqaylid emir of Mosul

Abu Hassān al-Muqallad ibn al-Musayyab, known with the honorific Husam al-Dawla, was an Uqaylid chieftain. He succeeded his older brother, Muhammad, as ruler of Mosul, succeeding in expelling the Buyid governor from the city. His attempts to create a centralized state failed, however, as he had to share power with his older brother Ali, and respect the tribal customs of the Uqayl tribe. His ambitions led him to turn south, towards Buyid-held Iraq, where he came to control a number of towns around Baghdad, including Kufa. In late 1000, he entered into negotiations for the capture of Baghdad, but was assassinated on 22 January 1001.

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22/01/0935

Ma, empress of Southern Han

Empress Ma was the only known empress of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period state Southern Han. She was the wife of Southern Han's founding emperor Liu Yan, and the daughter of Ma Yin, the prince of Southern Han's northern neighbor Chu.

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22/01/0906

He, empress of the Tang Dynasty

Empress He, formally Empress Xuanmu (宣穆皇后) as honored by Later Tang, semi-formally known as Empress Jishan (積善皇后), was the wife of Emperor Zhaozong near the end of the Tang dynasty of China, and the mother of two of his sons, Li Yu, Prince of De, and Emperor Ai. Her husband, herself, and her sons would all die at the hands of the warlord Zhu Quanzhong, who would eventually take over the Tang throne and establish his own Later Liang.

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22/01/0628

Anastasius of Persia, monk

Saint Anastasius of Persia, also known by his native name Magundat, was a Zoroastrian soldier in the Sasanian army who later became a convert to Christianity and was martyred in 628.

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22/01/0239

Cao Rui, Chinese emperor (born 205)

Cao Rui, courtesy name Yuanzhong, was the second emperor of the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period. His parentage is in dispute: his mother, Lady Zhen, was Yuan Xi's wife, but she later remarried Cao Pi, the first ruler of Wei. Based on conflicting accounts of his age, Pei Songzhi calculated that, in order to be Cao Pi's son, Cao Rui could not have been 36 when he died as recorded, so the recorded age was in error; late-Qing scholars Lu Bi (卢弼) and Mao Guangsheng (冒广生) argued instead that Cao Rui was Yuan Xi's son.

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