Died on Friday, 23rd January – Famous Deaths

23/01/2024

Charles Osgood, American radio and television commentator, writer and musician (born 1933)

Charles Osgood Wood III was an American radio and television commentator, writer, and musician. Osgood was best known both for being the host of CBS News Sunday Morning, a role he held for over 22 years from April 10, 1994, until September 25, 2016, and The Osgood File, a series of daily radio commentaries he hosted from 1971 until December 29, 2017.

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Melanie Safka, American Emmy winning singer-songwriter (born 1947)

Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk, professionally known as Melanie or Melanie Safka, was an American singer-songwriter.

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23/01/2021

Hal Holbrook, American actor and director (born 1925)

Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was an American actor. He first received critical acclaim in 1954 for a one-man stage show, titled Mark Twain Tonight!, that he developed while studying at Denison University. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1966 for his portrayal of Twain. He continued to perform his signature role for more than 60 years, retiring the show in 2017 due to his failing health. Throughout his career, he also won five Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on television and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in film.

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Larry King, American journalist and talk show host (born 1933)

Larry King was an American TV and radio host, author, and spokesman. He was a WMBM radio interviewer in the Miami area in the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in 1978, King gained national prominence as host of The Larry King Show, an all-night nationwide call-in radio program heard over the Mutual Broadcasting System. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN. King hosted Larry King Now from 2012 to 2020, which aired on Hulu, Ora TV, and RT America. He hosted Politicking with Larry King, a weekly political talk show, on the same three channels from 2013 to 2020. King conducted over 50,000 interviews on radio and television.

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Song Yoo-jung, South Korean actress and model (born 1994)

Song Yoo-jung was a South Korean actress and model. Song made her acting debut in the MBC series Golden Rainbow (2013). She gained viewers' attention for her performance in the same cable channel series Make a Wish (2014). She also appeared in the television series School 2017 (2017).

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23/01/2019

Aloysius Pang, Singaporean actor (born 1990)

Aloysius Pang Wei Chong was a Singaporean actor once managed under NoonTalk Media, best known for his involvement in multiple Mediacorp dramas.

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Oliver Mtukudzi, Zimbabwean Afro Jazz musician (born 1952)

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi was a Zimbabwean musician, businessman, philanthropist, human rights activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Southern Africa Region.

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23/01/2018

Hugh Masekela, South African trumpeter, composer and singer (born 1939)

Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer who was described as "the father of South African jazz". Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number-one US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass".

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Wyatt Tee Walker, American civil rights activist and pastor (born 1928)

Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.

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23/01/2015

Ernie Banks, American baseball player and coach (born 1931)

Ernest Banks, nicknamed "Mr. Cub" and "Mr. Sunshine", was an American professional baseball player who starred in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a shortstop and first baseman for the Chicago Cubs between 1953 and 1971. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977 in his first year of eligibility, and was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999.

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Prosper Ego, Dutch activist, founded the Oud-Strijders Legioen (born 1927)

Prosper Joannes Gerardus Antonius Ego was the founder of the Oud-Strijders Legioen.

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Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (born 1924)

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 1 August 2005 until his death in 2015. Prior to his accession, he was Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia from 13 June 1982. He was the tenth son of King Abdulaziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia.

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23/01/2014

Yuri Izrael, Russian meteorologist and journalist (born 1930)

Yuri Antonievich Izrael was a Soviet and Russian meteorologist. He served as the vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until September 2008, when the new bureau was elected. He was the "most influential scientific adviser" for Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, according to CNN.

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Elmira Nazirova, Azerbaijani composer (born 1928)

Elmira Mirza Rza-kyzy Nazirova was an Azerbaijani composer. Born to a Georgian Jewish family, she was a child prodigy who excelled at music and trained at the Azerbaijan State Conservatory for several years. At 14, she became one of the youngest members of the Composers Union of Azerbaijan. Nazirova performed abroad, where her talent was recognised by prominent musicians, and she pursued an education at the Moscow Conservatory. Through her education there, she met and became lifelong friends with Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, having significant impact on his work, particularly his Tenth Symphony.

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23/01/2013

Józef Glemp, Polish cardinal (born 1929)

Józef Glemp was a Polish cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Warsaw from 1981 to 2006, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983. He assumed the title of Primate of Poland following Stefan Wyszyński's death.

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23/01/2009

Robert W. Scott, American farmer and politician, 67th Governor of North Carolina (born 1929)

Robert Walter "Bob" Scott was an American politician who served as the 67th Governor of North Carolina from 1969 to 1973. He was born and died in Haw River, North Carolina.

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23/01/2007

Syed Hussein Alatas, Malaysian sociologist and politician (born 1928)

Syed Hussein Alatas bin Syed Ali Alatas was a Malaysian academic, sociologist, politician, and founder of social science organisations. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in the 1980s and formed the Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan). Syed Hussein wrote several books on corruption, multi-racialism, imperialism, and intellectual captivity as part of the colonial, and postcolonial, project, the most famous being The Myth of the Lazy Native.

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23/01/2005

Johnny Carson, American talk show host, television personality, and producer (born 1925)

John William Carson was an American television host, comedian, and writer best known as the host of NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992).

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23/01/2004

Helmut Newton, German-Australian photographer (born 1920)

Helmut Newton was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications."

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23/01/2003

Nell Carter, American actress and singer (born 1948)

Nell Carter was an American actress and singer.

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23/01/2002

Paul Aars, American race car driver (born 1934)

Paul Charles Aars was an American stock car driver. He was born on June 4, 1934, and lived in San Mateo, California.

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Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher (born 1930)

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France.

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Robert Nozick, American philosopher, author, and academic (born 1938)

Robert Nozick was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. His later work Philosophical Explanations (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award the following year.

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23/01/1999

Joe D'Amato, Italian director and cinematographer (born 1936)

Aristide Massaccesi, known professionally as Joe D'Amato, was an Italian film director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter who worked in many genres but is best known for his horror, erotic and adult films.

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Jay Pritzker, American businessman, co-founded the Hyatt Corporation (born 1922)

Jay Arthur Pritzker was an American businessman and member of the Pritzker family. He was a founder of the Hyatt Corporation, having purchased the first Hyatt Hotel in 1957, and was responsible for the corporation's evolution into a multinational hospitality conglomerate.

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23/01/1994

Nikolai Ogarkov, Russian field marshal (born 1917)

Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov was a prominent Soviet military personality. He was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1977. Between 1977 and 1984, he was Chief of the General Staff of the USSR. He became widely known in the West when he became the Soviet military's spokesman following the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Moneron Island in September 1983. He was dismissed as Chief of the General Staff on 6 September 1984.

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Brian Redhead, English journalist and author (born 1929)

Brian Leonard Redhead was a British author, journalist and broadcaster. He was a co-presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 from 1975 until 1993, shortly before his death. He was a great lover and promoter of the city of Manchester and the North West in general, where he lived for most of his career.

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23/01/1993

Keith Laumer, American soldier, author, and diplomat (born 1925)

John Keith Laumer was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the United States Air Force and a diplomat in the United States Foreign Service. His older brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz. Frank Laumer, their youngest brother, is a historian and writer.

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23/01/1992

Freddie Bartholomew, American actor (born 1924)

Frederick Cecil Bartholomew, known for his acting work as Freddie Bartholomew, was an English-American child actor who was very popular in 1930s Hollywood films. His most famous starring roles are in Captains Courageous (1937) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936). His child acting contemporary Mickey Rooney said of him, "He was one of the finest, if not the finest child stars that we had on the scene at that time." His Captains Courageous co-star Spencer Tracy said of him "Freddie Bartholomew's acting is so fine and so simple and so true that it's way over people's heads."

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23/01/1991

Northrop Frye, Canadian author and critic (born 1912)

Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

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23/01/1990

Allen Collins, American guitarist and songwriter (born 1952)

Larkin Allen Collins Jr. was an American guitarist, and one of the founding members of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. He co-wrote many of the band's songs with frontman and original lead singer Ronnie Van Zant.

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23/01/1989

Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter and sculptor (born 1904)

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí de Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.

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Lars-Erik Torph, Swedish race car driver (born 1961)

Lars-Erik Torph was a Swedish rally driver. He debuted in the World Rally Championship in 1980 and took his first points at his home event, the Swedish Rally, in 1984. Driving a Toyota Celica TCT, a Toyota Supra 3.0i and an Audi Coupé Quattro, he went on to finish on the podium four times. After just turning 28, Torph and his co-driver Bertil-Rune Rehnfeldt died while spectating the 1989 Monte Carlo Rally, after Lancia driver Alex Fiorio lost control of his Delta Integrale and crashed into them.

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23/01/1988

Charles Glen King, American biochemist and academic (born 1896)

Charles Glen King was an American biochemist who was a pioneer in the field of nutrition research and who isolated vitamin C at the same time as Albert Szent-Györgyi. A biography of King states that many feel he deserves equal credit with Szent-Györgyi for the discovery of this vitamin.

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23/01/1986

Joseph Beuys, German sculptor and painter (born 1921)

Joseph Heinrich Beuys was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, Johannes Stüttgen, Caroline Tisdall, Robert McDowell, and Enrico Wolleb, Beuys created the Free International University for Creativity & Interdisciplinary Research (FIU). Through his talks and performances, he also formed The Party for Animals and The Organisation for Direct Democracy. He was a member of a Dadaist art movement Fluxus and singularly inspirational in developing of Performance Art, called Kunst Aktionen, alongside Wiener Aktionismus that Allan Kaprow and Carolee Schneemann termed Art Happenings.

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23/01/1985

James Beard, American chef and cookbook author for whom the James Beard Foundation Awards are named (born 1905)

James Andrews Beard was an American chef, cookbook author, teacher and television personality. He pioneered television cooking shows, taught at The James Beard Cooking School in New York City and Seaside, Oregon, and lectured widely. He emphasized American cooking, prepared with fresh and wholesome American ingredients, to a country just becoming aware of its own culinary heritage. Beard taught and mentored generations of professional chefs and food enthusiasts. He published more than twenty books, and his memory is honored by his foundation's annual James Beard Awards.

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23/01/1984

Muin Bseiso, Palestinian-Egyptian poet and critic (born 1926)

Mu'in Tawfiq Bseiso was a Palestinian poet and playwright based in Egypt.

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23/01/1983

Fred Bakewell, English cricketer and coach (born 1908)

Alfred Harry "Fred" Bakewell was an English cricketer. Playing for Northamptonshire and England, he was an opening batsman who was renowned as one of the most exciting players of his time, largely owing to his unorthodox methods, which allowed him to play some of the most brilliant innings in county cricket, despite the fact that his county, Northamptonshire, was exceptionally weak throughout his career: he was always the only class batsman in the team in the years before his career was ended by a serious car accident in 1936.

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23/01/1981

Samuel Barber, American pianist and composer (born 1910)

Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the mid-20th century. Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression. However, he adopted elements of modernism after 1940 in some of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the Cello Concerto (1945) and Medea's Dance of Vengeance (1955); and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of serialism in his Piano Sonata (1949), Prayers of Kierkegaard (1954), and Nocturne (1959).

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23/01/1980

Giovanni Michelotti, Italian engineer (born 1921)

Giovanni Michelotti was one of the most prolific designers of sports cars in the 20th century. His notable contributions were for Ferrari, Lancia, Maserati and Triumph marques. He was also associated with truck designs for Leyland Motors, and with designs for British Leyland after the merger of Leyland and BMC.

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23/01/1978

Terry Kath, American guitarist and songwriter (born 1946)

Terry Alan Kath was an American guitarist and singer who is best known as a founding member of the rock band Chicago. He played lead guitar and sang lead vocals on many of the band's early hit singles alongside Robert Lamm and Peter Cetera. He has been praised by his bandmates and other musicians for his guitar skills and his Ray Charles–influenced vocal style. Jimi Hendrix cited Kath as one of his favorite guitarists and considered him to be "the best guitarist in the universe."

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Jack Oakie, American actor (born 1903)

Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He portrayed Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

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23/01/1977

Toots Shor, American businessman, founded Toots Shor's Restaurant (born 1903)

Bernard "Toots" Shor was an American bar owner, and was the proprietor of the saloon and restaurant Toots Shor's Restaurant, in Manhattan. He ran three establishments under that name, but his first was located at 51 West 51st Street. He was a saloonkeeper, friend, and confidant to some of New York's biggest celebrities during that era.

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23/01/1976

Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, and activist (born 1898)

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.

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23/01/1973

Alexander Onassis, American-Greek businessman (born 1948)

Alexander Socrates Onassis was an American-born Greek businessman. He was the son of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his first wife Tina Livanos. He and his sister Christina Onassis were upset by his father's marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, and he was credited with attempting to improve the relationship between his father and his brother-in-law and business rival Stavros Niarchos, who in 1971 married Alexander's mother after her divorce from Aristotle Onassis.

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Kid Ory, American trombonist, composer, and bandleader (born 1886)

Edward "Kid" Ory was an American jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader. One of the early users of the glissando technique, he helped establish it as a central element of New Orleans jazz.

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23/01/1971

Fritz Feigl, Austrian-Brazilian chemist and academic (born 1871)

Fritz Feigl was a Jewish Austrian-born chemist. He taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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23/01/1966

T. M. Sabaratnam, Sri Lankan lawyer and politician (born 1895)

Thambaiyah Mudaliyar Sabaratnam was a Ceylon Tamil lawyer, politician and member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon.

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23/01/1963

Józef Gosławski, Polish sculptor (born 1908)

Józef Jan Gosławski was a Polish sculptor and medallic artist. He was a designer of coins, monuments and medals. Laureate of many artistic competitions; decorated with the Silver Cross of Merit.

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23/01/1956

Alexander Korda, Hungarian-English director and producer (born 1893)

Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British film director, producer, and screenwriter, who founded his own film production studios and film distribution company.

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23/01/1947

Pierre Bonnard, French painter (born 1867)

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis, his early work was strongly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, as well as the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists. Bonnard was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject.

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23/01/1944

Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter and illustrator (born 1863)

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work The Scream has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western art.

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23/01/1943

Alexander Woollcott, American actor, playwright, and critic (born 1887)

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American drama critic for The New York Times and The New York Herald, critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality.

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23/01/1939

Matthias Sindelar, Austrian footballer and manager (born 1903)

Matthias Sindelar was an Austrian professional footballer. Regarded as one of the greatest Austrian players of all time, Sindelar notably played for Austria Vienna and the national side.

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23/01/1937

Orso Mario Corbino, Italian physicist and politician (born 1876)

Orso Mario Corbino was an Italian physicist and politician. He is noted for his studies of the influence of external magnetic fields on the motion of electrons in metals and he discovered the Corbino effect. He served as Minister for education in 1921–1922 and as Minister for National Economy in 1923–1924. He also served as professor of the University of Messina (1905) and of the University of Rome (1908). He was also the supervisor of the Via Panisperna boys.

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23/01/1931

Anna Pavlova, Russian-English ballerina (born 1881)

Anna Pavlovna Pavlova was a Russian prima ballerina. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, but is most recognized for creating the role of The Dying Swan and, with her own company, being the first ballerina to tour the world, including South America, India, Mexico and Australia.

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23/01/1923

Max Nordau, Austrian physician and author (born 1849)

Max Simon Nordau was a Jewish Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic. He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice-president of several Zionist congresses.

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23/01/1922

René Beeh, Alsatian painter and draughtsman (born 1886)

René Beeh was a German draughtsman and painter from Alsace. He was held in high esteem by his contemporaries and called "the coming genius" by art historian Wilhelm Hausenstein, but with his having died prematurely, he has been mostly forgotten.

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Arthur Nikisch, Hungarian conductor and academic (born 1855)

Arthur Nikisch was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London, Leipzig and—most importantly—Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt. Johannes Brahms praised Nikisch's performance of his Fourth Symphony as "quite exemplary, it's impossible to hear it any better."

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23/01/1921

Mykola Leontovych, Ukrainian composer and conductor (born 1877)

Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych was a Ukrainian composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, and teacher. His music was inspired by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko and the Ukrainian National Music School. Leontovych specialised in a cappella choral music, ranging from original compositions to church music to elaborate arrangements of folk music.

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23/01/1893

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II, American lawyer and politician, 16th United States Secretary of the Interior (born 1825)

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II was a Confederate soldier, American politician, diplomat, and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Mississippi in both houses of Congress, served as the United States Secretary of the Interior, and was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also served as an official in the Confederate States of America.

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William Price, Welsh physician, Chartist, and neo-Druid (born 1800)

William Price was a Welsh physician and political activist best known for his support of Welsh nationalism, Chartism and involvement with the Neo-Druidic religious movement. Historians have characterised Price as one of the most significant figures in Wales during the Victorian era.

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José Zorrilla, Spanish poet and playwright (born 1817)

José Zorrilla y Moral was a Spanish poet and dramatist, who became National Laureate.

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23/01/1883

Gustave Doré, French engraver and illustrator (born 1832)

Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré was a French printmaker, illustrator, painter, comics artist, caricaturist, and sculptor. He is best known for his prolific output of wood-engravings illustrating classic literature, especially those for the Vulgate Bible and Dante's Divine Comedy. These achieved great international success, and he became renowned for printmaking, although his role was normally as the designer only; at the height of his career some 40 block-cutters were employed to cut his drawings onto the wooden printing blocks, usually also signing the image.

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23/01/1875

Charles Kingsley, English priest and author (born 1819)

Charles Kingsley was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, Anti-Catholicism, the working men's college, and forming labour cooperatives, which failed, but encouraged later working reforms.

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23/01/1866

Thomas Love Peacock, English author and poet (born 1785)

Thomas Love Peacock was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

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23/01/1837

John Field, Irish pianist and composer (born 1782)

John Field was an Irish pianist, composer and teacher widely credited as the inventor of the nocturne. While many of his contemporaries wrote in a similar style, Field was the first to use the term to apply to a character piece featuring a cantabile melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment.

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23/01/1833

Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, English admiral and politician (born 1757)

Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, GCB was a Royal Navy officer and politician. He fought during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars. His younger brother Israel Pellew also pursued a naval career.

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23/01/1820

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (born 1767)

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was the fourth son and fifth child of King George III and Queen Charlotte. His only child, Victoria, became Queen of the United Kingdom 17 years after his death.

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23/01/1812

Robert Craufurd, Scottish general and politician (born 1764)

Major-General Robert Craufurd was a British Army officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. After a military career which took him from India to the Netherlands, in 1810 in the Peninsular War he was given command of the Light Division, composed of the elite foot soldiers in the army at the time, under the Duke of Wellington. Craufurd was a strict disciplinarian and somewhat prone to violent mood swings which earned him the nickname "Black Bob". He was mortally wounded storming the lesser breach in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo on 19 January 1812 and died four days later.

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23/01/1810

Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German chemist and physicist (born 1776)

Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. He is associated with the German Romanticism. He is also known for discovering the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum. He is also credited for the first achieved sustained electrolysis of water and the discovery of electroplating.

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23/01/1806

William Pitt the Younger, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1759)

William Pitt was a British statesman who served as the last prime minister of Great Britain from 1783 until the Acts of Union 1800, and the first official prime minister of the United Kingdom from January 1801. He left office in March 1801, but served as prime minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer for all his time as prime minister. He is known as "Pitt the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt the Elder, who had also previously served as prime minister from 1766-1768.

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23/01/1805

Claude Chappe, French engineer (born 1763)

Claude Chappe was a French inventor who in 1792 demonstrated a practical semaphore system that eventually spanned all of France. His system consisted of a series of towers, each within line of sight of others, each supporting a wooden mast with two crossarms on pivots that could be placed in various positions. The operator in a tower moved the arms to a sequence of positions, spelling out text messages in semaphore code. The operator in the next tower read the message through a telescope, then passed it on to the next tower. This was the first practical telecommunications system of the industrial age, and was used until the 1850s when electric telegraph systems replaced it.

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23/01/1803

Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer, founded Guinness (born 1725)

Arthur Guinness was an Irish brewer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. The inventor of Guinness stout, he founded the Guinness Brewery at St. James's Gate in 1759.

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23/01/1800

Edward Rutledge, American captain and politician, 39th Governor of South Carolina (born 1749)

Edward Rutledge was an American Founding Father and politician who signed the Continental Association and was the youngest signatory of the Declaration of Independence. He later served as the 39th governor of South Carolina.

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23/01/1789

Frances Brooke, English author and playwright (born 1724)

Frances Brooke was an English novelist, essayist, playwright and translator. Hers was the first English novel known to have been written in Canada.

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John Cleland, English author (born 1709)

John Cleland was an English novelist best known for his fictional Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcontent".

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23/01/1785

Matthew Stewart, Scottish mathematician and academic (born 1717)

Matthew Stewart FRS FRSE (1717–1785) was a Scottish mathematician and minister of the Church of Scotland.

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23/01/1744

Giambattista Vico, Italian historian and philosopher (born 1668)

Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist during the Italian Enlightenment. He criticized the expansion and development of modern rationalism, finding Cartesian analysis and other types of reductionism impractical to human life, and he was an apologist for classical antiquity and the Renaissance humanities, in addition to being the first expositor of the fundamentals of social science and of semiotics. He is recognised as one of the first Counter-Enlightenment figures in history.

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23/01/1650

Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke (born 1584)

Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and 1st Earl of Montgomery, was an English courtier, nobleman, and politician active during the reigns of James I and Charles I. He married Susan de Vere, the youngest daughter of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Philip and his older brother William were the 'incomparable pair of brethren' to whom the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected works was dedicated in 1623.

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23/01/1622

William Baffin, English explorer and navigator (born 1584)

William Baffin was an English navigator, explorer and cartographer. He is best known for his attempt to find the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans, during which Baffin became the first European to discover a bay which was subsequently named in his honour.

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23/01/1620

John Croke, English politician and judge (born 1553)

Sir John Croke was an English judge and politician who served as Speaker of the English House of Commons between October and December 1601. He also served as Recorder of London, and won the City of London constituency in his election to the 1601 parliament, being the last Speaker before the death of Elizabeth I, in 1603.

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23/01/1570

James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, Scottish politician (born 1531)

James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray was a member of the House of Stewart as the illegitimate son of James V of Scotland. At times a supporter of his half-sister Mary, Queen of Scots, he was the regent of Scotland for his half-nephew, the infant James VI, from 1567 until his assassination in 1570. He was the first head of government to be assassinated with a firearm.

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23/01/1567

Jiajing Emperor of China (born 1507)

The Jiajing Emperor, personal name Zhu Houcong, was the 12th emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigning from 1521 to 1567. He succeeded his cousin, the Zhengde Emperor.

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23/01/1549

Johannes Honter, Romanian-Hungarian cartographer and theologian (born 1498)

Johannes Honter was a Transylvanian Saxon, renaissance humanist, Protestant reformer, and theologian. Honter is best known for his geographic and cartographic publishing activity, as well as for implementing the Lutheran reform in Transylvania and founding the church, which would become the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania, after the union of Transylvania with Romania.

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23/01/1548

Bernardo Pisano, Italian priest, scholar, and composer (born 1490)

Bernardo Pisano was an Italian composer, priest, singer, and scholar of the Renaissance. He was one of the first madrigalists, and the first composer anywhere to have a printed collection of secular music devoted entirely to himself.

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23/01/1516

Ferdinand II of Aragon (born 1452)

Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband and co-ruler of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504. He reigned jointly with Isabella over a dynastically unified Spain; together, they are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand is considered the de facto first king of Spain, and was described as such during his reign, even though, legally, Castile and Aragon remained two separate kingdoms until they were formally united by the Nueva Planta decrees issued between 1707 and 1716.

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23/01/1423

Margaret of Bavaria, Burgundian regent (born 1363)

Margaret of Bavaria was Duchess of Burgundy by marriage to John the Fearless. She was the regent of the Burgundian Low Countries during the absence of her spouse in 1404–1419 and the regent in French Burgundy during the absence of her son in 1419–1423. She became most known for her successful defense of the Duchy of Burgundy against Count John IV of Armagnac in 1419.

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23/01/1297

Florent of Hainaut, Prince of Achaea (born c. 1255)

Florent of Hainaut was Prince of Achaea from 1289 to his death, in right of his wife, Isabella of Villehardouin. He was the son of John I of Avesnes and Adelaide of Holland. From his father, he received the stadholdership (government) of Zeeland.

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23/01/1252

Isabella, Queen of Armenia

Isabella, also Isabel or Zabel, was queen regnant of Armenian Cilicia from 1219 until her death in 1252. Under Constantine's regency, Isabella married Philip of Antioch. Philip's offensive behavior offended the Armenians who had him imprisoned and poisoned. Constantine then had Isabella marry his son Hethum. Isabella died 23 January 1252 and was buried in the monastery of Trazarg.

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23/01/1199

Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, Moroccan caliph (born 1160)

Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Abd al-Muʾmin al-Manṣūr, commonly known as Yaqub al-Mansur or Moulay Yacoub, was the third Almohad caliph. Succeeding his father, al-Mansur reigned from 1184 to 1199. His reign was distinguished by the flourishing of trade, architecture, philosophy and the sciences, as well as by victorious military campaigns in which he was successful in repelling the tide of the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula.

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23/01/1002

Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor (born 980)

Otto III was the Holy Roman emperor and King of Italy from 996 until his death in 1002. A member of the Ottonian dynasty, Otto III was the only son of Emperor Otto II and his wife Theophanu.

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23/01/0989

Adalbero, archbishop of Reims

Adalbero was the archbishop of Reims, chancellor of Kings Lothair and Louis V of France.

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23/01/0667

Ildefonsus, bishop of Toledo

Ildefonsus or Ildephonsus was a scholar and theologian who served as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Toledo for the last decade of his life. His Gothic name was Hildefuns. In the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church he is known as Dexius based on the Ge'ez translation of legends about his life.

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