Died on Saturday, 7th June – Famous Deaths

07/06/2025

Uriah Rennie, English Association Football Referee (born 1959)

Uriah Duddley Rennie was an English football referee. He was the first black referee to officiate in the Premier League, and officiated over 300 Premier League matches between 1997 and 2008. Outside of football, he was a magistrate in Sheffield and briefly served as chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University in 2025.

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07/06/2024

William Anders, American astronaut and lunar explorer (born 1933)

William Alison Anders was a United States Air Force (USAF) major general, electrical engineer, nuclear engineer, NASA astronaut, and businessman. In December 1968, he was a member of the crew of Apollo 8, the first three people to leave low-Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. Along with fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, he circled the Moon ten times, and broadcast live images and commentary back to Earth, including the Christmas Eve Genesis reading. During one of the mission's lunar orbits, he took the iconic Earthrise photograph.

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07/06/2023

The Iron Sheik, Iranian-American wrestler and actor (born 1942)

Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, better known by his ring name the Iron Sheik, was an Iranian and American professional wrestler, amateur wrestler, as well as an actor. To date he is the only Iranian-born champion in WWE history, having won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship in 1983.

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07/06/2015

Christopher Lee, English actor (born 1922)

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was an English actor and singer. In a career spanning over 60 years, he became known as an actor with tremendous screen presence and a deep and commanding voice who often portrayed villains in horror and franchise films. Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity in June 2009 by King Charles III, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011 and received the BFI Fellowship in 2013.

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07/06/2013

Pierre Mauroy, French educator and politician, Prime Minister of France (born 1928)

Pierre Mauroy was a French politician who was Prime Minister of France from 1981 to 1984 under President François Mitterrand. Mauroy also served as Mayor of Lille from 1973 to 2001 and President of the Socialist International from 1992 to 1999. At the time of his death, Mauroy was the emeritus mayor of the city of Lille.

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Richard Ramirez, American serial killer and sex offender (born 1960)

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, better known as Richard Ramirez, was an American serial killer, sex offender and burglar whose killing spree occurred in Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the state of California. From April 1984 to August 1985, Ramirez murdered at least fifteen people during various break-ins. With his crimes usually taking place after dark, Ramirez was dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer, and the Valley Intruder. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 and died while awaiting execution in 2013.

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07/06/2012

Phillip V. Tobias, South African paleontologist and academic (born 1925)

Phillip Vallentine Tobias was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil sites. He was also an activist for the eradication of apartheid and gave numerous anti-apartheid speeches at protest rallies and also to academic audiences.

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07/06/2006

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian militant (born 1966)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian militant jihadist who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and masterminding a series of bombings, beheadings, and other attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against U.S. troops" in Iraq into a Shia–Sunni civil war. He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".

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07/06/2002

Signe Hasso, Swedish-American actress (born 1915)

Signe Eleonora Cecilia Hasso was a Swedish actress.

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07/06/2001

Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Bolivian politician, 52nd President of Bolivia (born 1907)

Ángel Víctor Paz Estenssoro was a Bolivian politician who served as the 45th president of Bolivia for three nonconsecutive and four total terms from 1952 to 1956, 1960 to 1964 and 1985 to 1989. He ran for president eight times and was victorious in 1951, 1960, 1964 and 1985. His 1951 victory was annulled by a military junta led by Hugo Ballivián, and his 1964 victory was interrupted by the 1964 Bolivian coup d'état.

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Betty Neels, English nurse and author (born 1910)

Betty Neels was a prolific British writer of over 134 romance novels, beginning in 1969 and continuing until her death. Her work is known for being particularly chaste.

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07/06/1995

Hsuan Hua, Chinese monk and educator (born 1918)

Hsuan Hua, also known as An Tzu, Tu Lun and Master Hua by his Western disciples, was a Chinese monk of Chan Buddhism and a contributing figure in bringing Chinese Buddhism to the United States in the late 20th century.

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07/06/1992

Bill France Sr., American race car driver and businessman, co-founded NASCAR (born 1909)

William Henry Getty France was an American businessman and racing driver. He was also known as Bill France Sr. or Big Bill. He is best known for founding and managing NASCAR, a sanctioning body of American-based stock car racing.

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07/06/1987

Cahit Zarifoğlu, Turkish poet and author (born 1940)

Abdurrahman Cahit Zarifoğlu was a Turkish poet and writer.

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07/06/1985

Klaudia Taev, Estonian opera singer and educator (born 1906)

Klaudia Taev was an Estonian vocal pedagogue.

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07/06/1980

Elizabeth Craig, Scottish journalist and economist (born 1883)

Elizabeth Josephine Craig, MBE, FRSA was a Scottish journalist, home economist and a notable author on cookery.

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Philip Guston, Canadian-American painter and educator (born 1913)

Philip Guston was a Canadian and American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. "Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplished abstraction," and is now regarded as one of the "most important, powerful, and influential American painters of the last 100 years". He frequently depicted racism, antisemitism, fascism and American identity, as well as—especially in his later most cartoonish and mocking work—the banality of evil. In 2013, Guston's painting To Fellini set an auction record at Christie's when it sold for US$25.8 million.

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Henry Miller, American novelist and essayist (born 1891)

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blends character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism and painted watercolors.

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07/06/1978

Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, English chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)

Ronald George Wreyford Norrish FRS was a British chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967.

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07/06/1970

E. M. Forster, English novelist, short story writer, essayist (born 1879)

Edward Morgan Forster was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as biographies and pageant plays. His short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) is often viewed as the beginning of technological dystopian fiction. He also co-authored the libretto to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work.

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07/06/1968

Dan Duryea, American actor and singer (born 1907)

Dan Duryea was an American actor in film, stage, and television. Known for portraying villains, he had a long career in a variety of leading and secondary roles.

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07/06/1967

Anatoly Maltsev, Russian mathematician and academic (born 1909)

Anatoly Ivanovich Maltsev was born in Misheronsky, near Moscow, and died in Novosibirsk, USSR. He was a mathematician noted for his work on the decidability of various algebraic groups. Malcev algebras, as well as Malcev Lie algebras are named after him.

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Dorothy Parker, American poet, short story writer, critic, and satirist (born 1893)

Dorothy Parker was an American poet, literary critic and writer of fiction. Based in New York, she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

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07/06/1966

Jean Arp, German-French sculptor, painter, and poet (born 1886)

Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp, better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.

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07/06/1965

Judy Holliday, American actress and singer (born 1921)

Judy Holliday was an American actress, comedian, and singer.

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07/06/1956

John Willcock, Australian politician, 15th Premier of Western Australia (born 1879)

John Collings Willcock was an Australian politician. He was the premier of Western Australia from 1936 to 1945, holding office as state leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He was a member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly from 1916 to 1947, representing the seat of Geraldton. Prior to entering politics he was a railways worker and train driver.

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07/06/1954

Alan Turing, English mathematician and computer scientist (born 1912)

Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.

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07/06/1945

Kitaro Nishida, Japanese philosopher and academic (born 1870)

Kitarō Nishida was a Japanese moral philosopher, philosopher of mathematics and science, and religious scholar. He was the founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from the University of Tokyo during the Meiji period in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth Higher School in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1899 and later became professor of philosophy at Kyoto University. Nishida retired in 1927. In 1940, he was awarded the Order of Culture. He participated in establishing the Chiba Institute of Technology (千葉工業大学) from 1940.

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07/06/1942

Alan Blumlein, English engineer (born 1903)

Alan Dower Blumlein was an English electronics engineer, notable for his many inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereophonic sound, television and radar. He received 128 patents and was considered one of the most significant engineers and inventors of his time.

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07/06/1937

Jean Harlow, American actress and singer (born 1911)

Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image has endured in the public eye. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.

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07/06/1936

Stjepan Seljan, Croatian explorer (born 1875)

Mirko Seljan and Stjepan Seljan were Croatian explorers.

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07/06/1933

Dragutin Domjanić, Croatian lawyer, judge, and poet (born 1875)

Dragutin Milivoj Domjanić was a Croatian poet. He is well known for his work of Domjanic and the poems Fala and Popevke sam slagal.

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07/06/1932

John Verran, English-Australian politician, 26th Premier of South Australia (born 1856)

John Verran was an Australian politician and trade unionist. He served as premier of South Australia from 1910 to 1912, the second member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to hold the position.

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07/06/1927

Archie Birkin, English motorcycle racer (born 1905)

Charles Archibald Cecil Birkin was an English motorcycle racer, brother of Tim Birkin, one of the "Bentley Boys" of the 1920s.

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Edmund James Flynn, Canadian lawyer and politician, 10th Premier of Quebec (born 1847)

Edmund James Flynn was a Canadian lawyer, politician and the tenth premier of Quebec, from 1896 to 1897.

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07/06/1924

William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, Irish businessman and politician, Lord Mayor of Belfast (born 1847)

William James Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie was a leading British shipbuilder and businessman. He was chairman of Harland & Wolff, shipbuilders, between 1895 and 1924, and also served as Lord Mayor of Belfast between 1896 and 1898. He was ennobled as Baron Pirrie in 1906, appointed a Knight of the Order of St Patrick in 1908 and made Viscount Pirrie in 1921. Lord Pirrie was involved in the building of the Olympic-class ocean liners, along with his nephew Thomas Andrews. In Belfast, he was already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.

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07/06/1921

Patrick Maher, executed Irish republican (born 1889)

Patrick Maher was a member of the Irish Republican Army executed in Mountjoy Prison. He was 32 years old at the time of his death.

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Edmond Foley, executed Irish republican (born 1897)

Edmond Foley, sometimes known as Edmund or Edward, was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who was hanged in Mountjoy Prison on 7 June 1921. Together with nine other men executed by hanging during the War of Independence, he was one of The Forgotten Ten.

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07/06/1916

Émile Faguet, French author and critic (born 1847)

Auguste Émile Faguet was a French author and literary critic.

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07/06/1915

Charles Reed Bishop, American banker and politician, founded the First Hawaiian Bank (born 1822)

Charles Reed Bishop was an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist in Hawaii. Born in Glens Falls, New York, he sailed to Hawaii in 1846 at the age of 24, and made his home there, marrying into the royal family of the kingdom. He served several monarchs in appointed positions in the kingdom, before its overthrow in 1893 by Americans from the United States and organization as the Territory of Hawaii.

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07/06/1911

Maurice Rouvier, French politician, Prime Minister of France (born 1842)

Maurice Rouvier was a French statesman of the "Opportunist" faction, who twice served as the Prime Minister of France. He is best known for his financial policies and his unpopular policies designed to avoid a rupture with Germany.

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07/06/1896

Pavlos Carrer, Greek composer (born 1829)

Pavlos Carrer or Pavlos Carreris, was a Greek composer, one of the leaders of the Ionian art music school and the first to create national operas and national songs on Greek plots, Greek librettos and verses, as well as melodies inspired by the folk and the urban popular musical tradition of modern Greece.

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07/06/1879

William Tilbury Fox, English dermatologist and academic (born 1836)

William Tilbury Fox was an English dermatologist.

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07/06/1866

Chief Seattle, American tribal chief (born 1780)

Seattle was a leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples. A leading figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with Doc Maynard. The city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, was named after him. A widely publicized speech arguing in favor of ecological responsibility and respect for Native Americans' land rights has been attributed to him.

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07/06/1863

Antonio Valero de Bernabé, Latin American liberator (born 1790)

Antonio Vicente Miguel Valero de Bernabé Pacheco, a.k.a. The Liberator from Puerto Rico, was a Puerto Rican military leader. Trained in Spain, he fought with the Spanish Army to expel the French leader, Napoleon, from Spain and was promoted to colonel during these years. A variant of his name, Manuel Antonio Valero, has been adopted by some historians, but it is not present in official documentation nor was it used by him.

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07/06/1861

Patrick Brontë, Anglo-Irish priest and author (born 1777)

Patrick Brontë was an Irish Anglican clergyman and author who spent most of his adult life in England. One of ten children from a very poor family, he managed to secure a scholarship to study theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and went on to take holy orders. In 1811 he published a collection of poetry, Cottage Poems. He continued to write and publish throughout his life. In 1812 he married Maria Branwell, and they had six children, including the writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, and Branwell Brontë, their only son.

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07/06/1859

David Cox, English painter (born 1783)

David Cox was an English landscape painter, one of the most important members of the Birmingham School of landscape artists and an early precursor of Impressionism.

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07/06/1854

Charles Baudin, French admiral (born 1792)

Charles Baudin, was a French admiral, whose naval service extended from the First Empire through the early days of the Second Empire.

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07/06/1853

Norbert Provencher, Canadian missionary and bishop (born 1787)

Joseph-Norbert Provencher was a Canadian clergyman and missionary and one of the founders of the modern province of Manitoba. He was the first Bishop of Saint Boniface and was an important figure in the history of the Franco-Manitoban community.

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07/06/1843

Friedrich Hölderlin, German lyric poet and author (born 1770)

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism. Particularly due to his early association with and philosophical influence on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, he was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism.

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07/06/1840

Frederick William III of Prussia (born 1770)

Frederick William III was King of Prussia from 16 November 1797 until his death in 1840. He was concurrently Elector of Brandenburg in the Holy Roman Empire until 6 August 1806, when the empire was dissolved.

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07/06/1826

Joseph von Fraunhofer, German optician, physicist, and astronomer (born 1787)

Joseph Ritter von Fraunhofer was a German physicist and optical lens manufacturer. He made optical glass, an achromatic telescope, and objective lenses. He developed diffraction grating and also invented the spectroscope. In 1814, he discovered and studied the dark absorption lines in the spectrum of the sun now known as Fraunhofer lines.

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07/06/1810

Luigi Schiavonetti, Italian engraver and etcher (born 1765)

Luigi Schiavonetti was an Italian reproductive engraver and etcher.

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07/06/1792

Benjamin Tupper, American general and surveyor (born 1738)

Benjamin Tupper was an American soldier in the French and Indian War, and an officer of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, achieving the rank of brevet brigadier general. Subsequently, he served as a Massachusetts legislator, and he assisted Gen. William Shepard in stopping Shays' Rebellion. Benjamin Tupper was a co-founder of the Ohio Company of Associates, and was a pioneer to the Ohio Country, involved in establishing Marietta as the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory.

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07/06/1779

William Warburton, English bishop and critic (born 1698)

William Warburton was an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death. He edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of William Shakespeare.

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07/06/1740

Alexander Spotswood, Moroccan-American colonial and politician, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (born 1676)

Major-General Alexander Spotswood was a British army officer, explorer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722. After an unsatisfactory military career, in 1710 he was appointed as Virginia's governor, a post he held for twelve years. During that period, Spotswood engaged in the exploration of the territories beyond the western border, of which he was the first to see the economic potentials. In 1716 he organised and led an expedition west of the mountains, known as Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition, with which he established the Crown's dominion over the territory between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, thus taking a decisive step for the future British expansion to the West.

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07/06/1711

Henry Dodwell, Irish scholar and theologian (born 1641)

Henry Dodwell was an Anglo-Irish scholar, theologian and controversial writer.

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07/06/1660

George II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania (born 1621)

George II Rákóczi, was a Hungarian nobleman, Prince of Transylvania (1648–1660), the eldest son of George I and Zsuzsanna Lorántffy.

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07/06/1618

Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, English politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (born 1577)

Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr was an English colonial administrator for whom the bay, the river, and, consequently, a Native American people and U.S. state, all later called "Delaware", were named. A member of the House of Lords, from the death of his father in 1602 until his own death in 1618, he served as the governor of Virginia from 1610 to 1611.

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07/06/1594

Rodrigo Lopez, physician of Queen Elizabeth I (born 1525)

Roderigo Lopes was a Portuguese physician who served as a physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1581 until his death by execution, having been found guilty of plotting to poison her. A Portuguese converso or New Christian of Jewish ancestry, he is the only royal doctor in English history to have been executed, and may have inspired the character of Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which was written within four years of his death.

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07/06/1492

Casimir IV Jagiellon, Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1440 and King of Poland from 1447 (born 1427)

Casimir IV was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1440 and King of Poland from 1447 until his death in 1492. He was one of the most active Polish-Lithuanian rulers; under him, Poland defeated the Teutonic Knights in the Thirteen Years' War and recovered Pomerania.

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07/06/1394

Anne of Bohemia, English queen (born 1366)

Anne of Bohemia, also known as Anne of Luxembourg, was Queen of England as the first wife of King Richard II. A member of the House of Luxembourg, she was the daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, and Elizabeth of Pomerania. Her death at the age of 28 was believed to have been caused by plague.

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07/06/1358

Ashikaga Takauji, Japanese shōgun (born 1305)

Ashikaga Takauji also known as Minamoto no Takauji was a Japanese samurai, daimyo and the founder and first shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate. His rule began in 1338, beginning the Muromachi period of Japan, and ended with his death in 1358. He was a male-line descendant of the samurai of the (Minamoto) Seiwa Genji line who had settled in the Ashikaga area of Shimotsuke Province, in present-day Tochigi Prefecture.

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07/06/1341

An-Nasir Muhammad, Egyptian sultan (born 1285)

Al-Malik an-Nasir Nasir ad-Din Muhammad ibn Qalawun, commonly known as an-Nasir Muhammad, or by his kunya: Abu al-Ma'ali or as Ibn Qalawun (1285–1341) was the ninth Mamluk sultan of the Bahri dynasty who ruled Egypt between 1293–1294, 1299–1309, and 1310 until his death in 1341. During his first reign, he was dominated by Kitbugha and al-Shuja‘i, while during his second reign he was dominated by Baibars and Salar. Not wanting to be dominated or deprived of his full rights as a sultan by his third reign, an-Nasir executed Baibars and accepted the resignation of Salar as vice Sultan.

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07/06/1337

William I, Count of Hainaut (born 1286)

William the Good was count of Hainaut, Avesnes, Holland, and Zeeland from 1304 to his death.

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07/06/1329

Robert the Bruce, Scottish king (born 1274)

Robert I, popularly known as Robert the Bruce, was King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329. Robert led Scotland during the First War of Scottish Independence against England. He fought successfully during his reign to restore Scotland to an independent kingdom and is regarded in Scotland as a national hero. Robert was a fourth-great-grandson of King David I, and his grandfather, Robert de Brus, 5th Lord of Annandale, was one of the claimants to the Scottish throne during the "Great Cause".

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07/06/0951

Lu Wenji, Chinese chancellor (born 876)

Lu Wenji, courtesy name Zichi (子持), was a Chinese official who served the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou dynasties. He was a chancellor during the reign of the Later Tang's last emperor, Li Congke.

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07/06/0940

Qian Hongzun, heir apparent of Wuyue (born 925)

Qian Hongzun (錢弘僔), formally Heir Apparent Xiaoxian, was an heir apparent to the throne of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Wuyue during most of the reign of his father Qian Yuanguan, but did not inherit the throne on account of his predeceasing his father.

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07/06/0929

Ælfthryth, Countess of Flanders (born 877)

Ælfthryth of Wessex, also known as Elftrudis , was an English princess and a countess consort of Flanders to Baldwin II.

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07/06/0862

Al-Muntasir, Abbasid caliph (born 837)

Abu Ja'far Muḥammad ibn Ja'far ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Muntasir biʾLlāh, better known by his regnal title al-Muntasir biʾLlāh was the caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 861 to 862, during the "Anarchy at Samarra". The power struggle between al-Muntasir and his brother, al-Mu'tazz, backed by different factions, climaxed with the Turkic leaders plotting the murder of his father al-Mutawakkil. Following the assassination in 861, al-Muntasir assumed the caliphate with Turkic support.

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07/06/0555

Vigilius, first pope of the Byzantine Papacy (born 500)

Pope Vigilius was the bishop of Rome from 29 March 537 to his death on 7 June 555. He is considered the first pope of the Byzantine papacy. Born into Roman aristocracy, Vigilius served as a deacon and papal apocrisiarius in Constantinople. He allied with Empress Theodora, who sought his help to establish Monophysitism, and was made pope after the deposition of Silverius. After he refused to sign Emperor Justinian I's edict condemning the Three Chapters, Vigilius was arrested in 545 and taken to Constantinople. He died in Sicily while returning to Rome.

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