Died on Friday, 6th June – Famous Deaths
On 6th June, 53 remarkable people passed away — from 184 to 2016. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.
On 6 June 2025, several notable figures are remembered for their contributions to the arts, sciences and public service. Peter Shaffer, the English playwright and screenwriter whose works included the acclaimed productions Equus and Amadeus, died in 2016 at an advanced age. His theatrical innovations shaped contemporary drama and influenced generations of writers working across stage and screen. Similarly, Viktor Korchnoi, the Russian chess grandmaster who died the same year, remains one of the most formidable players in the history of the game despite never achieving the title of World Chess Champion. Korchnoi’s competitive career spanned decades and established him as a dominant force in international chess competition throughout the latter half of the twentieth century.
Ludvík Vacuolík, the Czech journalist and author who passed away in 2015, played a significant role in twentieth-century European intellectual history. His manifesto The Two Thousand Words became a catalyst for the Prague Spring movement, representing a crucial moment in the region’s struggle for greater freedoms and democratic reform. The document’s influence extended across Central Europe and demonstrated the power of written expression to inspire political and social change.
The date falls on a Friday in early summer, marking the anniversary of these deaths across multiple decades. DayAtlas provides comprehensive information about weather conditions, historical events, notable births and deaths for any chosen date and location, allowing users to explore the rich tapestry of history associated with specific days throughout the calendar year.
See who passed away today 11th April.
06/06/2016
Viktor Korchnoi, Russian chess grandmaster; arguably the best player never to become World Chess Champion (born 1931)
Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi was a Soviet and Swiss chess grandmaster (GM) and chess writer. He is considered one of the strongest players never to have become World Chess Champion.
Peter Shaffer, English playwright and screenwriter; works included Equus and Amadeus (born 1926)
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer was an English playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. His best-known works are the plays Equus and Amadeus, both of which earned him the Tony Award for Best Play. They were later adapted for the screen by Shaffer himself in 1977 and 1984, respectively. He was nominated for an Academy Award for both screenplays, winning for Amadeus, which also earned him a Golden Globe Award. Shaffer also earned nominations for two BAFTA Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award.
06/06/2015
Vincent Bugliosi, American lawyer and author; prosecuting attorney in the Tate–LaBianca murders case (born 1934)
Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the August 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders.
Ludvík Vaculík, Czech journalist and author; noted for The Two Thousand Words which inspired the Prague Spring (born 1926)
Ludvík Vaculík was a Czech writer and journalist. He was born in Brumov, Moravian Wallachia. A prominent samizdat writer, he was best known as the author of the "Two Thousand Words" manifesto of June 1968.
06/06/2014
Lorna Wing, English psychiatrist and physician; pioneered studies of autism (born 1928)
Lorna Gladys Wing was a British psychiatrist who conducted research into autism. She coined the term Asperger's syndrome and helped found the National Autistic Society.
06/06/2013
Jerome Karle, American crystallographer and academic; awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research into the molecular structure of chemical compounds (born 1918)
Jerome Karle was an American physical chemist. Jointly with Herbert A. Hauptman, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985, for the direct analysis of crystal structures using X-ray scattering techniques.
Esther Williams, American swimmer and actress (born 1921)
Esther Jane Williams was an American competitive swimmer and actress. She set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team. Unable to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics because of the outbreak of World War II, she joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, where she took on the role vacated by Eleanor Holm after the show's move from New York City to San Francisco. While in the city, she spent five months swimming alongside Olympic gold medal-winner and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller. Williams caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer scouts at the Aquacade. After appearing in several small roles, then with Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film, and with future five-time co-star Van Johnson in A Guy Named Joe, Williams made a series of films in the 1940s and early 1950s known as "aquamusicals", which featured elaborate performances with synchronised swimming and diving.
06/06/2012
Vladimir Krutov, Russian ice hockey player; together with Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov, formed the famed KLM Line. (born 1960)
Vladimir Yevgenyevich Krutov, nicknamed "The Tank", was a Russian professional ice hockey forward. Together with Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov, he was part of the famed KLM Line. He is considered one of the best ice hockey wingers of the 1980s.
06/06/2009
Jean Dausset, French-Spanish immunologist and academic; awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of the genetic basis of immunological reaction (born 1916)
Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Joachim Dausset was a French immunologist born in Toulouse, France. Dausset received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 along with Baruj Benacerraf and George Davis Snell for their discovery and characterisation of the genes making the major histocompatibility complex. Using the money from his Nobel Prize and a grant from the French Television, Dausset founded the Human Polymorphism Study Center (CEPH) in 1984, which was later renamed the Foundation Jean Dausset-CEPH in his honour. He married Rose Mayoral in 1963, with whom he had two children, Henri and Irène. Jean Dausset died on June 6, 2009, in Mallorca, Spain, at the age of 92.
06/06/2006
Billy Preston, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actor (born 1946)
William Everett Preston was an American keyboardist, singer, and songwriter whose work encompassed R&B, rock, soul, funk, and gospel. Preston was a top session keyboardist in the 1960s, backing Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Reverend James Cleveland, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. He gained attention as a solo artist with hit singles "That's the Way God Planned It", the Grammy-winning "Outa-Space", "Will It Go Round in Circles", "Space Race", "Nothing from Nothing", and "With You I'm Born Again". Additionally, Preston co-wrote "You Are So Beautiful", which became a hit for Joe Cocker.
06/06/2005
Anne Bancroft, American film actress; winner of the 1963 Academy Award for Best Actress for The Miracle Worker (born 1931)
Anne Bancroft was an American actress. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. She is one of 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.
06/06/1996
George Davis Snell, American geneticist and immunologist; awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 for his studies of histocompatibility (born 1903)
George Davis Snell NAS was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.
06/06/1994
Mark McManus, Scottish actor (born 1935)
Mark McManus was a Scottish actor known for his roles in the British television series Sam, Bulman, The Brothers, Strangers, and Dramarama and the feature film 2000 Weeks. He was best known for playing the tough Glaswegian Detective Chief Inspector Jim Taggart in the long-running STV television series Taggart from 1983 until his death in 1994.
Barry Sullivan, American film actor (born 1912)
Patrick Barry Sullivan was an American actor of film, television, theatre, and radio. In a career that spanned over 40 years, Sullivan appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s, primarily as a leading actor after establishing himself in the industry, and later as a character actor.
06/06/1991
Stan Getz, American saxophonist and jazz innovator (born 1927)
Stan Getz was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow as "one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists". Getz performed in bebop and cool jazz groups. Influenced by João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim, he also helped popularize bossa nova in the United States with the hit 1964 single "The Girl from Ipanema".
06/06/1983
Hans Leip, German author, poet, and playwright who wrote the lyrics of Lili Marleen (born 1893)
Hans Leip was a German novelist, poet and playwright, best remembered as the lyricist of Lili Marleen.
06/06/1982
Kenneth Rexroth, American poet and academic (born 1905)
Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the "Father of the Beats" by Time magazine. Largely self-educated, Rexroth learned several languages and translated poems from Chinese, French, Spanish, and Japanese.
06/06/1979
Jack Haley, American actor (born 1897)
John Joseph Haley Jr. was an American actor, comedian, dancer, radio host, singer, drummer and vaudevillian. He is most notable for his portrayal of the Tin Man and his farmhand counterpart Hickory in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz.
06/06/1976
J. Paul Getty, American businessman, founded the Getty Oil Company (born 1892)
Jean Paul Getty Sr. was an American petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and was the patriarch of the Getty family. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was the son of pioneer oilman George Getty. In 1957, Fortune magazine named J. Paul Getty the wealthiest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records declared him to be the world's wealthiest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion. At the time of his death, he was worth more than $6 billion. A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th wealthiest American who ever lived.
06/06/1968
Robert F. Kennedy, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 64th United States Attorney General (born 1925)
Robert Francis Kennedy, also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy served as the 64th United States attorney general from 1961 to 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he is considered an icon of modern American liberalism.
06/06/1963
William Baziotes, American painter and academic (born 1912)
William Baziotes was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.
06/06/1962
Yves Klein, French painter (born 1928)
Yves Klein was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme, founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art. He developed and used International Klein Blue.
Tom Phillis, Australian motorcycle racer (born 1934)
Thomas Edward Phillis was an Australian professional Grand Prix motorcycle road racer. He won the 1961 125cc motorcycle road racing World Championship and was the first person to lap the Isle of Man TT mountain circuit at over 100 mph on a pushrod engined motorcycle. He was also the first person to win a World Championship motorcycle race on a Japanese machine.
06/06/1961
Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist (born 1875)
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. He was a prolific author of over twenty books, illustrator, and correspondent, and academic, best known for his concept of archetypes. Widely considered one of the most influential psychologists of all time, Jung's work has fostered not only scholarship, but also popular interest. His work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies.
06/06/1955
Max Meldrum, Scottish-Australian painter and educator (born 1875)
Duncan Max Meldrum was a Scottish-born Australian artist and art teacher, best known as the founder of Australian tonalism, a representational painting style that became popular in Melbourne during the interwar period. He also won fame for his portrait work, winning the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1939 and 1940.
06/06/1948
Louis Lumière, French film director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1864)
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière and Louis Jean Lumière, were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system and the short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers.
06/06/1947
James Agate, English author and critic (born 1877)
James Evershed Agate was an English diarist and theatre critic between the two world wars. He took up journalism in his late twenties and was on the staff of The Manchester Guardian in 1907–1914. He later became a drama critic for The Saturday Review (1921–1923), The Sunday Times (1923–1947) and the BBC (1925–1932). The nine volumes of Agate's diaries and letters cover the British theatre of his time and non-theatrical interests such as sports, social gossip and private preoccupations with health and finances. He published three novels, translated a play briefly staged in London, and regularly published collections of theatre essays and reviews.
06/06/1946
Gerhart Hauptmann, German novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1862)
Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist. He is counted among the most important promoters of literary naturalism, though he integrated other styles into his work as well. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.
06/06/1941
Louis Chevrolet, American race car driver and businessman, founded Chevrolet and Frontenac Motor Corporation (born 1878)
Louis-Joseph Chevrolet was a Swiss-born American racing driver, mechanic, and entrepreneur who co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911.
06/06/1939
Constantin Noe, Megleno-Romanian editor and professor (born 1883)
Constantin Noe was a Megleno-Romanian editor and professor. He was born in 1883 in the Megleno-Romanian village of Lagkadia, then in the Ottoman Empire and now in Greece. He was one of the best students of the Romanian High School of Bitola, from which he graduated in 1903. On the same year, Noe became professor in several of the Romanian schools in the Balkans and one of the main figures of the Megleno-Romanian national movement. In 1907, he and several others of his colleagues were arrested and sentenced to four months in prison under the pretext of not using books approved by the General Directorate of Education of the Salonica vilayet of the Ottoman Empire in the schools they were teaching at.
06/06/1935
Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy, English field marshal and politician, 12th Governor-General of Canada (born 1862)
Field Marshal Julian Hedworth George Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy, was a British Army officer who served as Governor General of Canada, the 12th since the Canadian Confederation.
06/06/1922
Lillian Russell, American actress and singer (born 1860)
Lillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, praised for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.
06/06/1916
Yuan Shikai, Chinese general and politician, 2nd President of the Republic of China (born 1859)
Yuan Shikai was a Chinese general and statesman. As leader of the Beiyang Army, he played a decisive role in securing the abdication of the Qing court. He served as the second provisional president and the first formal president of the Republic of China, with his administration known as the Beiyang government. He declared himself Emperor of the Chinese Empire in December 1915 and abdicated in March 1916.
06/06/1891
John A. Macdonald, Scottish-Canadian lawyer and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Canada (born 1815)
Sir John Alexander Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 until his death in 1891. He was the dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, and had a political career that spanned almost half a century.
06/06/1881
Henri Vieuxtemps, Belgian violinist and composer (born 1820)
Henri François Joseph Vieuxtemps was a Belgian composer and violinist. He occupies an important place in the history of the violin as a prominent exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school during the mid-19th century. He is also known for playing what is now known as the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, a violin of superior workmanship.
06/06/1878
Robert Stirling, Scottish minister and engineer, invented the stirling engine (born 1790)
Robert Stirling was a Scottish clergyman and engineer. He invented the Stirling engine and was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2014.
06/06/1865
William Quantrill, American Confederate guerrilla band leader (born 1837)
William Clarke Quantrill was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War.
06/06/1861
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Italian politician, 1st Prime Minister of Italy (born 1810)
Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri, generally known as the Count of Cavour or simply Cavour, was an Italian politician, statesman, businessman, economist, and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towards Italian unification. He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1852, a position he maintained until his death, throughout the Second Italian War of Independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi's campaigns to unite Italy. After the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took office as the first Prime Minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office and did not live to see the Roman Question solved through the complete unification of the country after the Capture of Rome in 1870.
06/06/1832
Jeremy Bentham, English jurist and philosopher (born 1748)
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
06/06/1813
Antonio Cachia, Maltese architect, engineer and archaeologist (born 1739)
Antonio Cachia (1739–1813) was a Maltese architect, civil and military engineer and archaeologist who was active in the late 18th and early 19th century.
06/06/1799
Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia (born 1736)
Patrick Henry was an American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.
06/06/1661
Martino Martini, Italian Jesuit missionary (born 1614)
Martino Martini was a Jesuit missionary in China. Born and raised in Trento, he worked as a cartographer and historian of ancient imperial China.
06/06/1583
Nakagawa Kiyohide, Japanese daimyo (born 1556)
Nakagawa Kiyohide was a daimyō in Azuchi–Momoyama period. His childhood name was Nakagawa Toranosuke. His common name was Nakagawa Sebe.
06/06/1548
João de Castro, Portuguese soldier and politician, Governor of Portuguese India (born 1500)
Dom João de Castro was a Portuguese nobleman, scientist, writer and colonial administrator, who served as the fourth Portuguese Viceroy of India from 1545 to 1548. He was called Strong Castro by the poet Luís de Camões. De Castro was the second son of Álvaro de Castro, the civil governor of Lisbon. His wife was Leonor Coutinho.
06/06/1480
Vecchietta, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect (born 1412)
Lorenzo di Pietro, known as Vecchietta, was an Italian Sienese School painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and architect of the Renaissance. He is among the artists profiled in Vasari's Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori.
06/06/1252
Robert Passelewe, Bishop of Chichester
Robert Passelewe was a medieval Bishop of Chichester elect as well as being a royal clerk and Archdeacon of Lewes.
06/06/1251
William III of Dampierre, Count of Flanders
William III was the lord of Dampierre from 1231 and count of Flanders from 1247 until his death. He was the son of William II of Dampierre and Margaret II of Flanders.
06/06/1217
Henry I, King of Castile and Toledo (born 1204)
Henry I was the king of Castile from 1214 until 1217. Throughout his short reign, the boy king was a puppet monarch torn between his sister and heir, Queen Berengaria, and guardian, Count Álvaro Núñez de Lara.
06/06/1134
Norbert of Xanten, German bishop and saint (born 1060)
Norbert of Xanten, O. Praem, also known as Norbert Gennep, was a German Catholic bishop who was the Archbishop of Magdeburg, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
06/06/1097
Agnes of Aquitaine, Queen of Aragon and Navarre
Agnes of Aquitaine was a queen consort of Navarre. She was a daughter of William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine, and his third wife, Hildegarde of Burgundy.
06/06/0913
Alexander III, Byzantine emperor (born 870)
Alexander was briefly Byzantine emperor from 912 to 913, and the third emperor of the Macedonian dynasty.
06/06/0863
Abu Musa Utamish, vizier to the Abbasid Caliphate
Abu Musa Utamish was a Turkic military officer of the Abbasid Caliphate. He played an important role in the first years of the period known as the Anarchy at Samarra, during which he rapidly became one of the most powerful officials in the government. He was appointed as vizier upon the caliph al-Musta'in's ascension in 862, but was assassinated after approximately a year in office.
06/06/0184
Qiao Xuan, Chinese official (born c. 110)
Qiao Xuan, courtesy name Gongzu, was an influential official during the Eastern Han dynasty of China.