Died on Friday, 20th June – Famous Deaths

20/06/2024

Donald Sutherland, Canadian actor and producer (born 1935)

Donald McNichol Sutherland was a Canadian actor. With a career spanning six decades, he received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards as well as a BAFTA Award nomination. Considered one of the best actors never nominated for an Academy Award, he received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017.

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Taylor Wily, American actor, sumo wrestler and mixed martial artist (born 1968)

Taylor Tuli Wily was an American actor, sumo wrestler and mixed martial artist. He competed in UFC where he was billed as Teila Tuli and also competed in sumo wrestling. As an actor, he was known for his recurring role as Kamekona Tupuola on both Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I.

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20/06/2022

Caleb Swanigan, American basketball player (born 1997)

Caleb Sylvester Swanigan was an American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Purdue Boilermakers. He was ranked among the top prep players in the national class of 2015 by Rivals.com, Scout.com and ESPN. He completed his senior season in the 2014–15 academic year for Homestead High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who went on to win the first state championship in the school's history. Swanigan was named Indiana's Mr. Basketball and a McDonald's All-American.

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20/06/2017

Prodigy, American music artist (born 1974)

Albert Johnson, known professionally as Prodigy, was an American rapper and record producer. He was best known for being one half of the rap duo Mobb Deep along with Havoc, yet Prodigy still had a solo career, regularly collaborating with producer The Alchemist. Prodigy released eight albums during his career in Mobb Deep, as well as six solo studio albums and one posthumous album.

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20/06/2015

Angelo Niculescu, Romanian footballer and manager (born 1921)

Angelo Niculescu was a Romanian football player and manager. He is best remembered in Romania for being the national team's coach during the 1970 World Cup. Niculescu is also credited with inventing the "temporizare" ("delaying") tactics. This strategy involved the team maintaining possession of the ball within its own half, with players exchanging numerous short passes across the field. The goal was to disrupt opponents' patience and force them to press high. This approach is often considered an early form of tiki-taka. Using these tactics, Niculescu qualified Romania for a World Cup after more than 30 years and secured a notable win against Czechoslovakia.

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Miriam Schapiro, Canadian-American painter and sculptor (born 1923)

Miriam "Mimi" Schapiro was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pattern and Decoration art movement. Her artwork blurs the line between fine art and craft. She incorporated craft elements into her paintings due to their association with women and femininity. She often used icons that are associated with women, such as hearts, floral decorations, geometric patterns, and the color pink. In the 1970s, she made the hand fan, a typically small woman's object, heroic by painting it six feet by twelve feet. "The fan-shaped canvas, a powerful icon, gave her the opportunity to experiment … Out of this emerged a surface of textured coloristic complexity and opulence that formed the basis of her new personal style. The kimono, fans, houses, and hearts were the form into which she repeatedly poured her feelings and desires, her anxieties, and hopes".

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20/06/2013

Ingvar Rydell, Swedish footballer (born 1922)

Gustav Ingvar Rydell was a Swedish football forward who played for Malmö FF. He also represented Sweden in the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. and won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Finland.

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20/06/2012

Judy Agnew, Second Lady of the United States. (born 1921)

Elinor Isabel "Judy" Agnew was the second lady of the United States from 1969 to 1973. She was the wife of the 39th vice president of the United States, Spiro Agnew, who had previously served as Governor of Maryland and Baltimore County Executive. Although Judy Agnew attempted to avoid political discussion during her tenure as second lady, preferring to cultivate her image primarily as a wife and mother, her dismissive remarks about the women's liberation movement were quoted by media.

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LeRoy Neiman, American painter (born 1921)

LeRoy Neiman was an American artist known for his brilliantly colored, expressionist paintings and screenprints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events.

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Heinrich IV, Prince Reuss of Köstritz (born 1919)

Heinrich IV, Prince Reuss was the head of the German formerly princely House of Reuss.

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Andrew Sarris, American critic (born 1928)

Andrew Sarris was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.

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20/06/2011

Ryan Dunn, American television personality (born 1977)

Ryan Matthew Dunn was an American stunt performer, television personality, and actor. He was one of the stars of the MTV reality stunt show Jackass and its film franchise.

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20/06/2010

Roberto Rosato, Italian footballer (born 1943)

Roberto Rosato was an Italian footballer, who played as a defender.

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Harry B. Whittington, English palaeontologist and academic (born 1916)

Harry Blackmore Whittington FRS was a British palaeontologist who made a major contribution to the study of fossils of the Burgess Shale and other Cambrian fauna. His works are largely responsible for the concept of Cambrian explosion, whereby modern animal body plans are explained to originate during a short span of geological period. With initial work on trilobites, his discoveries revealed that these arthropods were the most diversified of all invertebrates during the Cambrian Period. He was responsible for setting the standard for naming and describing the delicate fossils preserved in Konservat-Lagerstätten.

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20/06/2005

Larry Collins, American journalist, historian, and author (born 1929)

John Lawrence Collins Jr. was an American writer.

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Jack Kilby, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1923)

Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American electronics engineer who took part, along with Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments in 1958. For this invention, Kilby shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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20/06/2004

Jim Bacon, Australian politician, 41st Premier of Tasmania (born 1950)

James Alexander Bacon, AC was an Australian politician who served as Premier of Tasmania from 1998 to 2004.

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20/06/2002

Erwin Chargaff, Austrian-American biochemist and academic (born 1905)

Erwin Chargaff was an Austro-Hungarian-born American biochemist, writer, and professor of biochemistry at Columbia University medical school. A Bucovinian Jew who immigrated to the United States during the Nazi regime, he penned a well-reviewed autobiography, Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature. Through careful experimentation, Chargaff discovered two rules, called Chargaff's rules, which helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.

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Tinus Osendarp, Dutch runner (born 1916)

Martinus Bernardus "Tinus" Osendarp was a Dutch sprint runner.

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20/06/1999

Clifton Fadiman, American game show host, author, and critic (born 1902)

Clifton Paul "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, and radio and television personality. He began his work in radio, and switched to television later in his career.

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20/06/1997

Cahit Külebi, Turkish poet and author (born 1917)

Cahit Külebi was a leading Turkish poet and author. He has an important place in contemporary Turkish poetry due to his attachment to folk poetry traditions. His poetry is enriched with simple yet ironic language, embellished with original descriptions.

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20/06/1995

Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and educator (born 1911)

Emil Cioran was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, until his death in 1995.

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20/06/1984

Estelle Winwood, English actress (born 1883)

Estelle Winwood was an English actress who moved to the United States mid-career and became celebrated for her wit and longevity, starring in film and TV roles until her nineties.

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20/06/1978

Mark Robson, Canadian-American director and producer (born 1913)

Mark Robson was a Canadian-American film director, producer, and editor. Robson began his 45-year career in Hollywood as a film editor. He later began working as a director and producer. He directed 34 films during his career, including Champion (1949), Bright Victory (1951), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), Peyton Place (1957), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Von Ryan's Express (1965), Valley of the Dolls (1967), and Earthquake (1974).

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20/06/1975

Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, Haitian anthropologist (born 1898)

Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain was the first woman Haitian anthropologist. Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain was a student of Bronisław Malinowski who worked in 1949 with Alfred Métraux, and participated in a UNESCO project in Haiti. She married Jean Comhaire, a Belgian who headed the Anthropology Department of University of Nsukka. Subsequently, she worked in Africa.

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20/06/1974

Horace Lindrum, Australian snooker player (born 1912)

Horace Lindrum was an Australian professional player of snooker and English billiards. Lindrum won the 1952 World Snooker Championship defeating New Zealander Clark McConachy. The tournament is disputed, as it had only two participants, and other players boycotted the event to play in the 1952 World Professional Match-play Championship. Lindrum won the Australian Professional Billiards Championship on multiple occasions, first winning the event in 1934.

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20/06/1969

Bishnu Prasad Rabha, Indian artist, painter, actor, dancer, writer, music composer and politician (born 1909)

Bishnu Prasad Rabha (1909–1969) was an Indian cultural figure from Assam, known for his contributions in the fields of music, dance, painting, literature as well as political activism. As an advocate of people's cultural movement, he drew heavily from different genres of classical and folk cultural traditions. Considered a doyen of the culture of Assam, the people of Assam affectionately call him Kalaguru. He is also called by Marxists as Sainik Silpi for his active participation in the armed struggle, led by the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI).

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20/06/1966

Georges Lemaître, Belgian priest, physicist, and astronomer (born 1894)

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest, theoretical physicist, and mathematician who made major contributions to cosmology and astrophysics. He was the first to argue that the recession of galaxies is evidence of an expanding universe and to connect the observational Hubble–Lemaître law with the solution to the Einstein field equations in the general theory of relativity for a homogenous and isotropic universe. That work led Lemaître to propose what he called the "hypothesis of the primeval atom", now regarded as the first formulation of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

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20/06/1965

Bernard Baruch, American financier and politician (born 1870)

Bernard Mannes Baruch was an American financier and statesman.

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20/06/1963

Raphaël Salem, Greek-French mathematician and academic (born 1898)

Raphaël Salem was a Greek mathematician after whom the Salem numbers and Salem–Spencer sets are named, and whose widow founded the Salem Prize.

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20/06/1958

Kurt Alder, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1902)

Kurt Alder was a German chemist and Nobel laureate.

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20/06/1952

Luigi Fagioli, Italian race car driver (born 1898)

Luigi Cristiano Fagioli was an Italian racing driver, who competed in Grand Prix motor racing from 1928 to 1949, and Formula One from 1950 to 1951. Nicknamed "the Abruzzi Robber", Fagioli won the 1951 French Grand Prix with Alfa Romeo aged 53, and remains the oldest driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix. Fagioli was runner-up in the European Drivers' Championship in 1935 with Mercedes.

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20/06/1947

Bugsy Siegel, American mobster (born 1906)

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Along with his childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, Siegel was influential within the Jewish-American mob, the Italian-American Mafia, and the largely Italian-Jewish coalition known as the National Crime Syndicate. Described as "handsome" and "charismatic," Siegel became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters.

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20/06/1945

Bruno Frank, German author, poet, and playwright (born 1878)

Bruno Frank was a German author, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and humanist.

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20/06/1929

Emmanouil Benakis, Greek merchant and politician, 35th Mayor of Athens (born 1843)

Emmanouil Benakis was a Greek merchant and politician, considered a national benefactor of Greece.

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20/06/1925

Josef Breuer, Austrian physician and psychologist (born 1842)

Josef Breuer was an Austrian physician who made discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work during the 1880s with his patient Bertha Pappenheim, known as Anna O., led to the development of the "cathartic method" for psychiatric disorders. The method was a major initiatory factor for psychoanalysis, as developed by Breuer's friend and collaborator Sigmund Freud.

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20/06/1909

Friedrich Martens, Estonian-Russian historian, lawyer, and diplomat (born 1845)

Friedrich Fromhold Martens, or Friedrich Fromhold von Martens, was a diplomat and jurist in service of the Russian Empire who made important contributions to the science of international law. He represented Russia at the Hague Peace Conferences and helped to settle the first cases of international arbitration, notably the dispute between France and the United Kingdom over Newfoundland. As a scholar, he is probably best remembered today for having edited 15 volumes of Russian international treaties (1874–1909).

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20/06/1906

John Clayton Adams, English painter (born 1840)

John Clayton Adams or J. Clayton Adams was an English landscape artist.

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20/06/1888

Johannes Zukertort, Polish-English chess player (born 1842)

Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a Polish-born British-German chess master. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, but lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally regarded as the first World Chess Championship match. He was also defeated by Steinitz in 1872 in an unofficial championship.

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20/06/1876

John Neal, American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist (born 1793)

John Neal was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.

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20/06/1875

Joseph Meek, American police officer and politician (born 1810)

Joseph Lafayette Meek was an American pioneer, mountain man, law enforcement official, and politician in the Oregon Country and later Oregon Territory of the United States. A trapper involved in the fur trade before settling in the Tualatin Valley, Meek played a prominent role at the Champoeg Meetings of 1843, where he was elected a sheriff. He was later elected to and served in the Provisional Legislature of Oregon before being appointed as the United States Marshal for the Oregon Territory.

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20/06/1872

Élie Frédéric Forey, French general (born 1804)

Élie Frédéric Forey was a Marshal of France.

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20/06/1870

Jules de Goncourt, French historian and author (born 1830)

Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt was a French writer, who published books together with his brother Edmond. Jules was born and died in Paris. His death at the age of 39 was at Auteuil of a stroke brought on by syphilis.

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20/06/1869

Hijikata Toshizō, Japanese commander (born 1835)

Hijikata Toshizō was a Japanese swordsman of the Bakumatsu period and Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi. As Vice-Commander, he served the Tokugawa Shogunate and co-led his group in its resistance against the imperial rule brought about by the Meiji Restoration. He fought against the Imperial Army during the Boshin War until his death at the Battle of Hakodate, which ended the war.

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20/06/1847

Juan Larrea, Argentinian captain and politician (born 1782)

Juan Larrea was a Spanish businessman and politician in Buenos Aires during the early nineteenth century. He headed a military unit during the second British invasion of the River Plate, and worked at the Buenos Aires Cabildo. He took part in the ill-fated Mutiny of Álzaga. Larrea and Domingo Matheu were the only two Spanish-born members of the Primera Junta, the first national government of Argentina.

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20/06/1840

Pierre Claude François Daunou, French historian and politician (born 1761)

Pierre Claude François Daunou was a French statesman of the French Revolution and Empire. An author and historian, he served as the nation's archivist under both the Empire and the Restoration, contributed a volume to the Histoire littéraire de la France, and published more than twenty volumes of lectures he delivered when he held the chair of history and ethics at the Collège de France.

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20/06/1837

William IV of the United Kingdom (born 1765)

William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death in 1837. The third son of George III, William succeeded his elder brother George IV, becoming the last king and penultimate monarch of the United Kingdom's House of Hanover.

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20/06/1820

Manuel Belgrano, Argentinian general, economist, and politician (born 1770)

Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de Jesús Belgrano, usually referred to as Manuel Belgrano, was an Argentine public servant, economist, lawyer, politician, journalist, and military leader. He took part in the Argentine Wars of Independence and designed what became the flag of Argentina. Argentines regard him as one of the main Founding Fathers of the country. He was also a supporter of free trade.

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20/06/1815

Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, French general (born 1766)

Guillaume Philibert, 1st Count Duhesme was a French Army officer, politician and writer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was a commander of the Imperial Guard, Governor of Catalonia and a Peer of France. Napoleon wrote that "he was a fearless soldier, covered with wounds and of the greatest bravery, an accomplished general, who always stood firm in good and bad fortune". Duhesme is regarded as one of the most able French infantry generals of the Napoleonic Wars.

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20/06/1810

Axel von Fersen the Younger, Swedish general and politician (born 1755)

Hans Axel von Fersen, also known as Axel von Fersen the Younger and as Axel de Fersen in France, was a Swedish count, military officer, courtier, ambassador, Marshal and Lord of the Realm. He gained international renown for his close association with Queen Marie Antoinette of France and his prominent involvement in the French Revolution.

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20/06/1800

Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, German mathematician and academic (born 1719)

Abraham Gotthelf Kästner was a mathematician and epigrammatist from the Holy Roman Empire.

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20/06/1787

Carl Friedrich Abel, German viol player and composer (born 1723)

Carl Friedrich Abel was a German composer of the Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument. He was director of music at the Dresden court from 1743, and moved to London in 1759, becoming chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764. He founded a subscription concert series there with Johann Christian Bach. According to the Catalogue of Works of Carl Friedrich Abel (AbelWV), he left 420 compositions, with a focus on chamber music.

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20/06/1776

Benjamin Huntsman, English businessman (born 1704)

Benjamin Huntsman was an English inventor and manufacturer of cast or crucible steel.

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20/06/1668

Heinrich Roth, German missionary and scholar (born 1620)

Heinrich Roth, also known as Henricus Rodius or Henrique Roa, was a German missionary and pioneering Sanskrit scholar.

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20/06/1605

Feodor II of Russia (born 1589)

Feodor II Borisovich Godunov was Tsar of all Russia from April to June 1605, during the Time of Troubles.

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20/06/1597

Willem Barentsz, Dutch cartographer and explorer (born 1550)

Willem Barentsz, anglicized as William Barents or Barentz, was a Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer.

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20/06/1351

Margareta Ebner, German nun and mystic (born 1291)

Margareta Ebner was a German professed religious from the Dominican Nuns. Ebner – from 1311 – experienced a series of spiritual visions in which Jesus Christ gave her messages which she recorded in letters and a journal at the behest of her spiritual director; she was ill for well over a decade as she experienced these visions. The backdrop of much of Ebner's religious life was the bitter fighting between Pope John XXII and Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Bavarian, in which she and her convent faithfully backed Louis.

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20/06/1176

Mikhail of Vladimir, Russian prince

Mikhalko (Mikhail) Yuryevich was Grand Prince of Vladimir in 1174, and from 1175 to 1176. He was a son of Yuri Dolgoruky.

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20/06/0981

Adalbert, archbishop of Magdeburg

Adalbert of Magdeburg, sometimes incorrectly shortened to "Albert", known as the Apostle of the Slavs, was the first Archbishop of Magdeburg and a successful missionary to the Polabian Slavs to the east of what was contemporarily Germany. He was later canonised and his liturgical feast day was assigned as 20 June.

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20/06/0930

Hucbald, Frankish monk and music theorist

Hucbald was a Benedictine monk active as a music theorist, poet, composer, teacher, and hagiographer. He was long associated with Saint-Amand Abbey, so is often known as Hucbald of St Amand. Deeply influenced by Boethius' De Institutione Musica, Hucbald's (De) Musica, formerly known as De harmonica institutione, aims to reconcile ancient Greek music theory and the contemporary practice of Gregorian chant with the use of many notated examples. Among the leading music theorists of the Carolingian era, he was likely a near contemporary of Aurelian of Réôme, the unknown author of the Musica enchiriadis, and the anonymous authors of other music theory texts Commemoratio brevis, Alia musica, and De modis.

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20/06/0840

Louis the Pious, Carolingian emperor (born 778)

Louis the Pious, also called the Fair and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only surviving son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position that he held until his death except from November 833 to March 834, when he was deposed.

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20/06/0465

Emperor Wencheng of Northern Wei (born 440)

Emperor Wencheng of Northern Wei ( 魏文成帝), Han name Tuoba Jun (拓跋濬), Xianbei name Wulei (烏雷), was an emperor of the Xianbei-led Northern Wei dynasty of China. He became emperor aged 12 in the aftermath of the eunuch Zong Ai's assassinations of his grandfather Emperor Taiwu and uncle Tuoba Yu, and he was generally described by historians as a ruler who sought foremost to allow his people to rest after his grandfather's expansionist policies and extensive campaigns, and who also reformed the laws to become more lenient.

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