Died on Thursday, 12th March – Famous Deaths

12/03/2021

Ronald DeFeo Jr., American criminal (born 1951)

Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, New York. He was found guilty of six counts of second degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life. DeFeo died in March 2021. The case inspired the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror.

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12/03/2016

Rafiq Azad, Bangladeshi poet and author (born 1942)

Rafiq Azad was a Bangladeshi poet, editor and writer. He is credited with 45 collections of poetry including Prakriti O Premer Kabita, Asambhaber Paye, Sahasra Sundar, Haturir Nichae Jiban, Khub Beshi Durea Noy, Khamakaro Bahaman Hey Udar Amiyo Batas and others. He is most well known for his poem "Bhaat De Haramjada" which was written during the famine of 1974. The poet participated in the war against Pakistani forces in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and was awarded ‘Notable Freedom Fighter Award' in 1997. He received Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1984 and national award Ekushey Padak in 2013 for his contribution to Bangla language and literature.

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Felix Ibru, Nigerian architect and politician, Governor of Delta State (born 1935)

Felix Ovudoroye Ibru was a Nigerian businessman, architect and politician. He was the first democratically elected Governor of Delta State and Senator for Delta Central Senatorial District. Until his death he held the position of President General of the Urhobo Progressive Union (UPU). As a traditional chieftain of his homeland, Ibru bore the tribal honorific Olorogun and often used it as a pre-nominal style. This title is also borne by the members of his large family in the same way.

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Lloyd Shapley, American mathematician and economist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1923)

Lloyd Stowell Shapley was an American mathematician and Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist. He contributed to the fields of mathematical economics and especially game theory. Shapley is generally considered one of the most important contributors to the development of game theory since the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern. With Alvin E. Roth, Shapley won the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design."

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12/03/2015

Willie Barrow, American minister and activist (born 1924)

Willie Beatrice Barrow was an American civil rights activist and minister. Barrow was the co-founder of Operation PUSH, which was named Operation Breadbasket at the time of its creation alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1984, Barrow became the first woman executive director of a civil rights organization, serving as Push's CEO. Barrow was the godmother of President Barack Obama.

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Michael Graves, American architect and academic, designed the Portland Building and the Humana Building (born 1934)

Michael Graves was an American architect, designer, and educator, and principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Group and a professor of architecture at Princeton University for nearly forty years. Following his own partial paralysis in 2003, Graves became an internationally recognized advocate of health care design.

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Ada Jafri, Pakistani poet and author (born 1924)

Ada Jafarey, often spelled Ada Jafri, was a Pakistani poet who is regarded as the first major female Urdu poet to be published and has been called "The First Lady of Urdu Poetry". She was also an author and was considered a prominent figure in contemporary Urdu literature. She received awards from the Government of Pakistan, the Pakistan Writers' Guild, and literary societies of North America and Europe in recognition of her efforts.

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Terry Pratchett, English journalist, author, and screenwriter (born 1948)

Sir Terence David John Pratchett was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.

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12/03/2014

Věra Chytilová, Czech actress, director, and screenwriter (born 1929)

Věra Chytilová was an avant-garde Czech film director and pioneer of Czech cinema. Banned by the Czechoslovak government in the 1960s, she is best known for her Czech New Wave 1966 film Sedmikrásky (Daisies). Her subsequent films screened at international film festivals, including Vlčí bouda (1987), which screened at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival, A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989), which screened at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival, and The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (1992), which screened at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. For her work, she received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Medal of Merit and the Czech Lion award.

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Paul C. Donnelly, American scientist and engineer (born 1923)

Paul Charles Donnelly was an American guided missile pioneer and a senior NASA manager during the Apollo Moon landing program at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Responsible for the checkout of all Apollo launch vehicles and spacecraft, he was also involved in every U.S. manned launch from Alan Shepard's Mercury suborbital flight in 1961 through the tenth Space Shuttle mission (STS-41B) in 1984.

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José Policarpo, Portuguese cardinal (born 1936)

José da Cruz Policarpo, officially referred to as José IV, Patriarch of Lisbon, though usually referred to as "D. José Policarpo", was Patriarch of Lisbon from 24 March 1998 to 18 May 2013. Pope John Paul II made him a Cardinal in 2001. Policarpo held a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

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12/03/2013

Michael Grigsby, English director and producer (born 1936)

Michael Kenneth Christian Grigsby was an English documentary filmmaker.

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Ganesh Pyne, Indian painter and illustrator (born 1937)

Ganesh Pyne was an Indian painter and draughtsman, born in Kolkata, West Bengal. Pyne is one of the most notable contemporary artists of the Bengal School of Art, who had also developed his own style of "poetic surrealism", fantasy and dark imagery, around the themes of Bengali folklore and mythology.

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12/03/2012

Dick Harter, American basketball player and coach (born 1930)

Richard Alvin Harter was an American basketball coach who served as both a head and assistant coach in both the NBA and NCAA.

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Michael Hossack, American drummer (born 1946)

Michael Joseph Hossack was an American drummer for the rock band The Doobie Brothers.

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Friedhelm Konietzka, German-Swiss footballer and manager (born 1938)

Friedhelm "Timo" Konietzka was a German professional football player and manager who played as a striker. He earned his nickname "Timo" due to a supposed resemblance to the Soviet commander Semyon Timoshenko.

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12/03/2011

Nilla Pizzi, Italian singer (born 1919)

Adionilla Pizzi, known by her stage name Nilla Pizzi, was an Italian singer and actress.

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12/03/2010

Miguel Delibes, Spanish journalist and author (born 1920)

Miguel Delibes Setién was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor associated with the Generation of '36 movement. From 1975 until his death, he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, where he occupied letter "e" seat. Educated in commerce, he began his career as a cartoonist and columnist. He later became the editor for the regional newspaper El Norte de Castilla before gradually devoting himself exclusively to writing novels.

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12/03/2008

Jorge Guinzburg, Argentinian journalist and producer (born 1949)

Jorge Ariel Guinzburg was an Argentine journalist, theatrical producer, humorist, and TV and radio host.

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Lazare Ponticelli, Italian-French soldier and supercentenarian (born 1897)

Lazare Ponticelli, Knight of Vittorio Veneto, was at 110, the last surviving officially recognized veteran of the First World War from France and the last poilu of its trenches to die.

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12/03/2006

Victor Sokolov, Russian-American priest and journalist (born 1947)

Victor Sokolov was a Russian-American former dissident Soviet journalist and an Eastern Orthodox priest.

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12/03/2004

Milton Resnick, Russian-American painter (born 1917)

Milton Resnick was an American artist noted for abstract paintings that coupled scale with density of incident. It was not uncommon for some of the largest paintings to weigh in excess of three hundred pounds, almost all of it pigment. He had a long and varied career, lasting about sixty-five years. He produced at least eight hundred canvases and eight thousand works on paper and board.

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12/03/2003

Zoran Đinđić, Serbian philosopher and politician, 6th Prime Minister of Serbia (born 1952)

Zoran Đinđić was a Serbian politician and philosopher who served as the prime minister of Serbia from 2001 until his assassination in 2003. He was the mayor of Belgrade in 1997, becoming the first non-communist and first democratically elected official to hold both key positions after World War II. Đinđić was a long-time opposition politician and held a doctorate in philosophy.

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Howard Fast, American novelist and screenwriter (born 1914)

Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E.V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson. He was jailed after testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

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Lynne Thigpen, American actress and singer (born 1948)

Cherlynne Theresa Thigpen was an American actress of stage and screen. She was known for her role as the Chief of ACME Crimenet in the game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and various spinoffs, and for her role as "Luna" in the Playhouse Disney children's series Bear in the Big Blue House. For her varied television work, Thigpen was nominated for six Daytime Emmy Awards. She won a Tony Award in 1997 for portraying Dr. Judith Kaufman in An American Daughter, and also played Ella Farmer on The District (2000–2003). Thigpen first gained attention for her role in the 1971 off-Broadway musical Godspell. Thigpen's character is named Lynne, and she sang "O Bless the Lord, My Soul" in the musical. Thigpen reprised her role as Lynne in the 1973 film adaptation, which she starred in alongside David Haskell and Victor Garber.

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12/03/2002

Spyros Kyprianou, Cypriot lawyer and politician, 2nd President of Cyprus (born 1932)

Spyros Achilleos Kyprianou was a Cypriot barrister and politician, who served as President of Cyprus from 1977 to 1988. He also served as President of the Cypriot House of Representatives from 1976 to 1977 and then again from 1996 to 2001, as well as being President of the Democratic Party, which he founded, from 1976 to 2000.

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Jean-Paul Riopelle, Canadian painter and sculptor (born 1923)

Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the Refus Global, the 1948 manifesto that announced the Quebecois artistic community's refusal of clericalism and provincialism. He is best known for his abstract painting style, in particular his "mosaic" works of the 1950s when he famously abandoned the paintbrush, using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas, giving his works a distinctive sculptural quality. He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morrice to attain widespread international recognition and high praise, both during his career and after his death. He was a leading artist of French Lyrical Abstraction.

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12/03/2001

Morton Downey Jr., American singer-songwriter, actor, and talk show host (born 1933)

Morton Downey Jr. was an American television talk show host and actor who pioneered the "trash TV" format in the late 1980s on his program The Morton Downey Jr. Show.

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Robert Ludlum, American author (born 1927)

Robert Ludlum was an American author of 27 thriller novels, best known as the creator of Jason Bourne from the original The Bourne Trilogy series. The number of copies of his books in print is estimated between 300 million and 500 million. They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries. Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.

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Victor Westhoff, Dutch botanist and academic (born 1916)

Victor Westhoff was a botanist at the Radboud University Nijmegen.

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12/03/2000

Aleksandar Nikolić, Yugoslav basketball coach (born 1924)

Aleksandar "Aca" Nikolić was a Serbian professional basketball player and coach. He was also a professor at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Sport and Physical Education. He is often referred to as the Father of Yugoslav and Serbian Basketball.

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12/03/1999

Yehudi Menuhin, American-Swiss violinist and conductor (born 1916)

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, was an American-born British and Swiss violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century.

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Bidu Sayão, Brazilian-American soprano (born 1902)

Balduína "Bidú" de Oliveira Sayão was a Brazilian opera soprano. One of Brazil's celebrated musicians, Sayão was a leading artist of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1937 to 1952.

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12/03/1998

Beatrice Wood, American painter and potter (born 1893)

Beatrice Wood was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Dada movement in the United States; she founded and edited The Blind Man and Rongwrong magazines in New York City with French artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Henri-Pierre Roché in 1917. She had earlier studied art and theater in Paris, and was working in New York as an actress. She later worked at sculpture and pottery. Wood was characterized as the "Mama of Dada".

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12/03/1992

Lucy M. Lewis, American potter (born 1890)

Lucy Martin Lewis was a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. She is known for her black-on-white decorative ceramics made using traditional techniques.

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12/03/1991

Ragnar Granit, Finnish-Swedish neuroscientist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1900)

Ragnar Arthur Granit was a Finnish and Swedish neurophysiologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 along with Haldan Keffer Hartline and George Wald "for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye". Granit carried out fundamental research on the retina and the physiological mechanisms of colour vision at the University of Helsinki, and later investigated the neural control of movement at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

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William Heinesen, Faroese author, poet, and author (born 1900)

Andreas William Heinesen was a poet, writer, composer and painter from the Faroe Islands.

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12/03/1989

Maurice Evans, English-American actor (born 1901)

Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor, noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. His best-known screen roles include Dr. Zaius in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes and Maurice on Bewitched.

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12/03/1985

Eugene Ormandy, Hungarian-American violinist and conductor (born 1899)

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with the orchestra is one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with any American orchestra. Ormandy made numerous recordings with the orchestra, and as guest conductor with European orchestras, and achieved three gold records and two Grammy Awards. His reputation was as a skilled technician and expert orchestral builder.

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12/03/1974

George D. Sax, American banker and businessman (born 1904)

George D. Sax was an American businessman and hotelier, who served as the chairman of the board of Exchange International Corporation and Chicago's former Exchange National Bank. He was president of Sax Enterprises, Inc and was a business entrepreneur who owned the Saxony Hotel, the first luxury hotel to be built in Miami Beach.

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12/03/1973

Frankie Frisch, American baseball player and manager (born 1898)

Frank Francis Frisch, nicknamed "the Fordham Flash" or "the Old Flash", was an American professional baseball second baseman and manager. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Giants (1919–1926) and St. Louis Cardinals (1927–1937), and managed the Cardinals (1933–1938), Pittsburgh Pirates (1940–1946), and Chicago Cubs (1949–1951). He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum. He is tied with Yogi Berra for most World Series doubles at 10 and holds the record for the most World Series hits at 58 for a player who never played for the New York Yankees, exceeded only by Berra and Mickey Mantle.

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12/03/1971

Eugene Lindsay Opie, American physician and pathologist (born 1873)

Eugene Lindsay Opie was an American physician and pathologist who conducted research on the causes, transmission, and diagnosis of tuberculosis and on immunization against the disease. He served as professor of pathology at several U.S. medical schools and as Dean of the Washington University School of Medicine.

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12/03/1957

Josephine Hull, American actress (born 1877)

Marie Josephine Hull was an American stage and film actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the movie Harvey (1950), a role she originally played on the Broadway stage. She was sometimes credited as Josephine Sherwood.

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12/03/1955

Charlie Parker, American saxophonist and composer (born 1920)

Charles Parker Jr., nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Parker primarily played the alto saxophone.

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Theodor Plievier, German author best known for his anti-war novel (born 1892)

Theodor Otto Richard Plievier was a German writer best known for his 1948 anti-war novel Stalingrad.

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12/03/1954

Marianne Weber, German sociologist and suffragist (born 1870)

Marianne Weber was a German sociologist, women's rights activist, and the wife of Max Weber.

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12/03/1949

Wilhelm Steinkopf, German chemist (born 1879)

Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was a German chemist. Today he is mostly remembered for his work on the production of mustard gas during World War I.

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12/03/1946

Ferenc Szálasi, Hungarian soldier and politician, Head of State of Hungary (born 1897)

Ferenc Szálasi was a Hungarian military officer, politician, Nazi sympathizer and founder of the far-right Arrow Cross Party who headed the government of Hungary during the country's occupation by Nazi Germany in the final stages of World War II.

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12/03/1943

Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (born 1869)

Gustav Vigeland, born as Adolf Gustav Thorsen, was a Norwegian sculptor. Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity. He is most associated with the Vigeland installation (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park, Oslo. The Vigeland installation made Frogner Park into Norway's most popular tourist attraction, and the park also contains Frogner Manor with the Oslo Museum and the Henriette Wegner Pavilion. Vigeland was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

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12/03/1942

William Henry Bragg, English physicist, chemist, and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1862)

Sir William Henry Bragg was a British X-ray crystallographer who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son Lawrence Bragg – the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays," an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography.

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12/03/1935

Mihajlo Pupin, Serbian-American physicist and chemist (born 1858)

Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, also known as Michael Pupin, was a Serbian-American electrical engineer, physicist and inventor.

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12/03/1929

Asa Griggs Candler, American businessman and politician, 44th Mayor of Atlanta (born 1851)

Asa Griggs Candler Sr. was an American business magnate and politician who in 1888 purchased the Coca-Cola recipe for $2300 from chemist John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta, Georgia. Candler founded the Coca-Cola Company in 1892 and developed it as a major company.

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12/03/1925

Sun Yat-sen, Chinese physician and politician, 1st President of the Republic of China (born 1866)

Sun Yat-sen, a.k.a. Sun Zhongshan, Sun Wen, was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republic of China (ROC) and its first political party, the Kuomintang (KMT). As the paramount leader of the 1911 Revolution, Sun is credited with overthrowing the Qing dynasty and served as the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China (1912) and as the inaugural premier of the Kuomintang.

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12/03/1916

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian author (born 1830)

Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach née Countess Dubsky was an Austrian writer and a noblewoman. Noted for her psychological novels, she is regarded as one of the most important German-language writers of the latter portion of the 19th century.

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12/03/1898

Zachris Topelius, Finnish-Swedish journalist, historian, and author (born 1818)

Zacharias Topelius was a Finnish author, poet, journalist, historian, and rector of the University of Helsinki who wrote novels related to Finnish history. He wrote his works exclusively in Swedish, although they were translated early on into Finnish. In Finland Topelius emerged as one of the foremost heirs to Sir Walter Scott’s legacy of exploring the nation through the historical novel.

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12/03/1699

Peder Griffenfeld, Danish politician (born 1635)

Count Peder Griffenfeld was a Danish statesman and royal favourite. He became the principal adviser to King Christian V of Denmark from 1670 and the de facto ruler of the dual kingdom of Denmark-Norway in the first half of the 1670s. In 1673 he was appointed as Chancellor of Denmark, elevated to count, the highest aristocratic rank in Denmark-Norway, and received the Order of the Elephant, the country's highest order. At the behest of his enemies at court, Griffenfeld was arrested in early 1676 and convicted of treason, a charge that historians agree was false. He was imprisoned for 22 years, mainly at Munkholmen in Norway.

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12/03/1539

Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, English diplomat and politician (born 1477)

Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, 1st Earl of Ormond, 1st Viscount Rochford KG, KB, of Hever Castle in Kent, was an English diplomat and politician. He was the father of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, and was thus the maternal grandfather of Queen Elizabeth I. By Henry VIII, he was made a Knight of the Garter in 1523 and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Rochford in 1525, and in 1529, he was further ennobled as Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond.

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12/03/1322

Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, English general and politician, Lord High Constable of England (born 1276)

Humphrey (VII) de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was a member of a powerful Anglo-Norman family of the Welsh Marches and was one of the Ordainers who opposed Edward II's excesses.

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12/03/1316

Stefan Dragutin (born c. 1244)

Stefan Dragutin, was King of Serbia from 1276 to 1282. From 1282, he ruled a separate kingdom which included northern Serbia, and the neighboring Hungarian banates, for which he was unofficially styled "King of Syrmia".

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12/03/1160

Al-Muqtafi, caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate (born 1096)

Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Mustazhir, better known by his regnal name al-Muqtafi li-Amr Allah, was the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad from 1136 to 1160, succeeding his nephew al-Rashid, who had been forced to abdicate by the Seljuks. The continued disunion and contests between Seljuk Turks afforded al-Muqtafi opportunity of not only maintaining his authority in Baghdad, but also extending it throughout Iraq.

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12/03/1022

Symeon the New Theologian (born 949)

Saint Symeon the New Theologian was an Eastern Orthodox monk and poet who was one of the three saints canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and given the title of "Theologian". "Theologian" was not applied to Symeon in the modern academic sense of theological study; the title was intended only to recognise someone who spoke from personal experience of the vision of God. One of his principal teachings was that humans could and should experience theoria.

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12/03/0604

Gregory I, pope of the Catholic Church (born 540)

Pope Gregory I, commonly known as Saint Gregory the Great, was the 64th Bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 until his death on 12 March 604. He is known for instituting the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian mission, to convert the then largely pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Gregory is also well known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of the previous popes. The epithet Saint Gregory the Dialogist has been attached to him in Eastern Christianity because of his Dialogues. English translations of Eastern texts sometimes list him as Gregory "Dialogos" from the Greek διάλογος, or the Anglo-Latinate equivalent "Dialogus". He is the second of the three Popes listed in the Annuario Pontificio with the title "the Great", alongside Popes Leo I and Nicholas I.

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12/03/0417

Innocent I, pope of the Catholic Church

Pope Innocent I was the bishop of Rome from 401 to his death on 12 March 417. From the beginning of his papacy, he was seen as the general arbitrator of ecclesiastical disputes in both the East and the West. He confirmed the prerogatives of the Archbishop of Thessalonica, and issued a decretal on disciplinary matters referred to him by the Bishop of Rouen. He defended the exiled John Chrysostom and consulted with the bishops of Africa concerning the Pelagian controversy, confirming the decisions of the African synods.

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