Died on Wednesday, 18th March – Famous Deaths

18/03/2025

Kanzi, Bonobo research subject (born 1980)

Kanzi was a male bonobo who was the subject of numerous studies on great ape language and cognition. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo since the 1990s, Kanzi exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.

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Jessie Hoffman Jr., American convicted murderer (born 1978)

Jessie Dean Hoffman Jr. was an American convicted murderer who was sentenced to death in Louisiana for the 1996 rape and murder of Molly Elliott. On November 26, 1996, Hoffman, then 18, abducted the 28-year-old advertising executive in downtown New Orleans. After forcing her to withdraw money from an ATM at gunpoint, he made her drive to a remote area in St. Tammany Parish, where he raped and murdered her.

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18/03/2024

Thomas P. Stafford, American Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut (born 1930)

Thomas Patten Stafford was an American Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, and one of 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon. He also served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1969 to 1971.

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18/03/2020

Alfred Worden, American test pilot, engineer and astronaut (born 1932)

Alfred Merrill Worden was an American test pilot, engineer and NASA astronaut who was command module pilot for the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971. One of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, he orbited it 74 times in the command module (CM) Endeavour.

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18/03/2017

Chuck Berry, American guitarist, singer and songwriter (born 1926)

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter; and one of the pioneers of rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.

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18/03/2016

Barry Hines, English author and screenwriter (born 1939)

Melvin Barry Hines, FRSL was an English author, playwright and screenwriter. His novels and screenplays explore the political and economic struggles of working-class Northern England, particularly in his native West Riding/South Yorkshire.

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Jan Němec, Czech director and screenwriter (born 1936)

Jan Němec was a Czech filmmaker whose most important work dates from the 1960s. Film historian Peter Hames has described him as the "enfant terrible of the Czech New Wave."

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Tray Walker, American football player (born 1992)

Tray Walker was an American professional football player who was a cornerback for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Texas Southern Tigers, and was selected by the Ravens in the fourth round of the 2015 NFL draft, ultimately playing only one season with the team before his death.

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Guido Westerwelle, German lawyer and politician, 15th Vice-Chancellor of Germany (born 1961)

Guido Westerwelle was a German politician who served as foreign minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011, being the first openly gay person to hold any of these positions. He also led the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) from 2001 until he stepped down in 2011. A lawyer by profession, he was a member of the Bundestag from 1996 to 2013.

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18/03/2015

Zhao Dayu, Chinese footballer and manager (born 1961)

Zhao Dayu, also known as Tatsuyu Matsuki , was a Chinese coach, businessman and a former international football striker. He was a naturalized citizen of Japan.

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Thomas Hopko, American priest and theologian (born 1939)

Thomas John Hopko was an Eastern Orthodox Christian priest and theologian. He was the Dean of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary from September 1992 until July 1, 2002 and taught dogmatic theology there from 1968 until 2002. In retirement, he carried the honorary title of Dean Emeritus.

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Grace Ogot, Kenyan nurse, journalist, and politician (born 1930)

Grace Emily Ogot was a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat. Together with Charity Waciuma she was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. She was one of the first Kenyan members of parliament and she became an assistant minister.

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18/03/2014

Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Nigerian author, playwright, and academic (born 1951)

Catherine Obianuju Acholonu was a Nigerian author, researcher and political activist. She served as the Senior Special Adviser (SSA) to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Arts and Culture and was a founder-member of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).

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Kaiser Kalambo, Zambian footballer, coach, and manager (born 1953)

Kaiser Kalambo was a Zambian coach and former footballer. He represented Zambia in three African Cup of Nations tournaments and was named Zambian captain in 1980, the same year in which he was voted Zambian footballer of the year. He later coached several club sides in Zambia and Botswana.

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Lucius Shepard, American author and critic (born 1943)

Lucius Shepard was an American writer. Classified as a science fiction and fantasy writer, he often leaned into other genres, such as magical realism.

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18/03/2013

Muhammad Mahmood Alam, Pakistani general and pilot (born 1935)

Muhammad Mahmood Alam best known as M. M. Alam and affectionately nicknamed Little Dragon and Peanut Alam, was a Pakistani flying ace, war hero, and a former one-star rank officer in the Pakistan Air Force.

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Henry Bromell, American novelist, screenwriter, and director (born 1947)

Alfred Henry Bromell was an American novelist, screenwriter, and director.

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Clay Ford, American lawyer and politician (born 1938)

Clarence V. Ford, known as Clay Ford, was an attorney and Republican politician from Gulf Breeze in Santa Rosa County near Pensacola, Florida, who, from 2007 until his death, represented District 2 in the Florida House of Representatives.

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18/03/2012

Furman Bisher, American journalist and author (born 1918)

James Furman Bisher was an American newspaper sportswriter and columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Atlanta, Georgia.

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William R. Charette, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient (born 1932)

William Richard Charette was a United States Navy master chief hospital corpsman who received the nation's highest military decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor. He was awarded the medal for heroic actions "above and beyond the call of duty" on March 27, 1953, while assigned to a Marine Corps rifle company during the Korean War. He retired from the navy after 26 years of service.

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William G. Moore Jr., American general (born 1920)

William Grover Moore Jr. was a general in the United States Air Force and the former commander-in-chief of Military Airlift Command. Moore was a combat veteran with 100 missions flown during World War II and the Korean War, and more than 140 missions in the Vietnam War.

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George Tupou V of Tonga (born 1948)

George Tupou V was King of Tonga from 2006 until his death in 2012. He was the eldest son of King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV.

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18/03/2011

Warren Christopher, American lawyer and politician, 63rd United States Secretary of State (born 1925)

Warren Minor Christopher was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, and United States Navy officer who served as the 63rd United States secretary of state from 1993 to 1997.

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18/03/2010

Fess Parker, American actor and businessman (born 1924)

Fess Elisha Parker Jr. was an American film and television actor best known for his portrayals of the title characters in Walt Disney Productions' television miniseries Davy Crockett and the television series Daniel Boone.

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18/03/2009

Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, Iranian journalist and blogger (born 1980)

Omid Reza Mir Sayafi was an Iranian blogger and journalist.

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Natasha Richardson, English-American actress (born 1963)

Natasha Jane Richardson was an English actress. A member of the Redgrave family, Richardson was a daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and a granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. She was married to Liam Neeson.

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18/03/2008

Anthony Minghella, English director and screenwriter (born 1954)

Anthony Minghella was a British playwright and filmmaker. He was chairman of the board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007. He directed Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), The English Patient (1996), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), and Cold Mountain (2003), and produced Iris (2001).

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18/03/2007

Bob Woolmer, Indian-English cricketer, coach, and sportscaster (born 1948)

Robert Andrew Woolmer was an English cricket coach, cricketer, and a commentator. He played in 19 Test matches and six One Day Internationals for the England cricket team and later coached South Africa, Warwickshire and Pakistan. During his coaching career with South Africa, he led the team to being the winners of the 1998 ICC KnockOut Trophy, first of the only two ICC titles the country has won to date.

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18/03/2006

Dan Gibson, Canadian photographer and cinematographer (born 1922)

Dan Gibson was a Canadian photographer, cinematographer and sound recordist.

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18/03/2004

Harrison McCain, Canadian businessman, co-founded McCain Foods (born 1927)

Harold Harrison McCain was a Canadian businessman and co-founder, along with his three brothers, of international frozen foods giant McCain Foods.

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18/03/2003

Karl Kling, German race car driver (born 1910)

Karl Kling was a German racing driver and motorsport executive, who competed in Formula One at 11 Grands Prix from 1954 to 1955.

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Adam Osborne, Thai-English engineer and businessman, founded the Osborne Computer Corporation (born 1939)

Adam Osborne was a British author, software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and elsewhere. He introduced the Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer.

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18/03/2002

R. A. Lafferty, American soldier and author (born 1914)

Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction writer best known for his imaginative and eccentric short stories and novels from the 1960s and 1970s.

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18/03/2001

John Phillips, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1935)

John Edmund Andrew Phillips was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was the leader of the vocal group the Mamas & the Papas and remains frequently referred to as Papa John Phillips. In addition to writing the majority of the group's compositions, he also wrote "San Francisco " in 1967 for former Journeymen bandmate Scott McKenzie, as well as the oft-covered "Me and My Uncle", which was a favorite in the repertoire of the Grateful Dead. Phillips was one of the chief organizers of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

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18/03/2000

Eberhard Bethge, German theologian and academic (born 1909)

Eberhard Bethge was a German theologian and pastor, best known for being the close friend and biographer of the theologian and anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

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18/03/1996

Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1911)

Odysseas Elytis was a Greek poet, man of letters, essayist and translator, regarded as the definitive exponent of romantic modernism in Greece and the world. He is one of the most praised poets of the second half of the twentieth century, with his Axion Esti "regarded as a monument of contemporary poetry". In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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18/03/1993

Kenneth E. Boulding, English-American economist and activist (born 1910)

Kenneth Ewart Boulding was an English-born American economist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. Boulding was the author of two citation classics: The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (1956) and Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (1962). He was co-founder of general systems theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. He was married to sociologist Elise M. Boulding.

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18/03/1990

Robin Harris, American comedian (born 1953)

Robin Hughes Harris Sr. was an American comedian and actor, best known for his recurring comic sketch about "Bé-bé's Kids". He was posthumously nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the film House Party.

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18/03/1988

Billy Butterfield, American trumpet player and cornet player (born 1917)

Charles William Butterfield was an American jazz bandleader, trumpeter, flugelhornist, and cornetist.

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18/03/1987

Kari Diesen, Norwegian singer and revue actress (born 1914)

Kari Diesen was a Norwegian singer and revue actress. She worked for the revue theatre Chat Noir from 1937 to 1953, and for the Edderkoppen Theatre from 1954 to 1959. She participated in 24 films between 1941 and 1985. Among her best known song recordings is her version of "Hovedøen".

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18/03/1986

Bernard Malamud, American novelist and short story writer (born 1914)

Bernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel The Natural was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

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18/03/1984

Charley Lau, American baseball player and coach (born 1933)

Charles Richard Lau was an American professional baseball player and a highly influential hitting coach. During his playing career in Major League Baseball, Lau appeared in 527 games as a catcher and pinch hitter over all or portions of 11 seasons for four clubs. Then, beginning in 1969, he spent 15 years as a coach for five American League teams, most notably the Kansas City Royals. He was the incumbent hitting coach of the Chicago White Sox when he died, aged 50, from colorectal cancer in 1984.

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18/03/1983

Umberto II of Italy (born 1904)

Umberto II was the last king of Italy. Umberto's reign lasted for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 until his formal deposition on 12 June 1946, although he had been the de facto head of state since 1944. Due to his short reign, he was nicknamed the May King.

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18/03/1982

Patrick Smith, Irish farmer and politician, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine (born 1901)

Patrick Smith was an Irish Fianna Fáil party politician, who served as a teachta dála from 1923 until 1977, a tenure of 53 years, and the longest in the state. He held a number of ministerial positions within the governments of Éamon de Valera and Seán Lemass.

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18/03/1980

Erich Fromm, German psychologist and philosopher (born 1900)

Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

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Tamara de Lempicka, Polish-American painter (born 1898)

Tamara Łempicka, known outside Poland as Tamara de Lempicka, was a Polish painter who spent her working life in France and the United States. She is best known for her polished Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes.

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18/03/1978

Leigh Brackett, American author and screenwriter (born 1915)

Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author and screenwriter. Nicknamed "the Queen of Space Opera", she was one of the most prominent female writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. As a screenwriter, she was best known for her collaborations with director Howard Hawks, mainly writing Westerns and crime films. She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production.

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Peggy Wood, American actress (born 1892)

Mary Margaret Wood was an American actress of stage, film, and television. She is best remembered for her performance as the title character in the CBS television series Mama (1949–1957), for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series; her starring role as Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, in The Story of Ruth (1960); and her final screen appearance as Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music (1965), for which she received nominations for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

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18/03/1977

Marien Ngouabi, Congolese politician, President of the Republic of the Congo (born 1938)

Marien Ngouabi was a Congolese politician and military officer who served as the fourth President of the People's Republic of the Congo from 1969 until his assassination in 1977.

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Carlos Pace, Brazilian race car driver (born 1944)

José Carlos Pace was a Brazilian racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1972 to 1977. Pace won the 1975 Brazilian Grand Prix with Brabham.

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18/03/1973

Johannes Aavik, Estonian philologist and poet (born 1880)

Johannes Aavik was an Estonian linguist and innovator of the Estonian language.

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18/03/1965

Farouk of Egypt (born 1920)

Farouk I was the tenth ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and the Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 1936 and reigning until his overthrow in a military coup in 1952.

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18/03/1964

Sigfrid Edström, Swedish businessman, 4th President of the International Olympic Committee (born 1870)

Johannes Sigfrid Edström was a Swedish industrialist, chairman of the Sweden-America Foundation, and fourth president of the International Olympic Committee.

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18/03/1963

C. C. Martindale, English Jesuit priest (born 1879)

Cyril Charlie Martindale was a Roman Catholic priest, scholar, and writer. Along with Martin D'Arcy, he was one of England's foremost Catholics of the first half of the 20th century, and was a correspondent of figures including Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Ronald Knox.

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18/03/1962

Walter W. Bacon, American accountant and politician, 60th Governor of Delaware (born 1880)

Walter Wolfkiel Bacon was an American politician and accountant from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a member of the Republican Party who served three terms as Mayor of Wilmington and two terms as Governor of Delaware. He is the only mayor of a Delaware city to have been elected Governor of Delaware.

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18/03/1956

Louis Bromfield, American environmentalist and author (born 1896)

Louis Bromfield was an American writer and conservationist. A bestselling novelist in the 1920s, he reinvented himself as a farmer in the late 1930s and became one of the earliest proponents of sustainable and organic agriculture in the United States. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1927 for Early Autumn, founded the experimental Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio, and played an important role in the early environmental movement.

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18/03/1954

Walter Mead, English cricketer (born 1868)

Walter Mead was the principal bowler for Essex during their first two decades as a first-class county. As a member of the Lord’s ground staff, he was also after J.T. Hearne the most important bowler for MCC and Ground, who in those days played quite a number of first-class matches.

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18/03/1947

William C. Durant, American businessman, co-founded General Motors and Chevrolet (born 1861)

William Crapo Durant was an American businessman. A leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, he was the founder of General Motors and a co-founder of Chevrolet. He created a system in which a company held multiple brands – each seemingly independent, with different automobile lines – bound under a unified corporate holding company. He also founded Frigidaire.

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18/03/1941

Henri Cornet, French cyclist (born 1884)

Henri Cornet was a French cyclist who won the 1904 Tour de France. He is its youngest winner, just short of his 20th birthday.

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18/03/1939

Henry Simpson Lunn, English businessman, founded Lunn Poly (born 1859)

Sir Henry Simpson Lunn was an English humanitarian and religious figure, and also founder of Lunn Poly, one of the UK's largest travel companies.

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18/03/1936

Eleftherios Venizelos, Greek journalist, lawyer, and politician, 93rd Prime Minister of Greece (born 1864)

Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos was a Cretan Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party, Venizelos served as prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms from 1910 to 1933.

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18/03/1930

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, American painter (born 1863)

Jean Leon Gerome Ferris was an American painter best known for his series of 78 scenes from American history, entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist.

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18/03/1918

Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, American architect, designed the Plaza Hotel (born 1847)

Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was an American architect, best known for his hotels and apartment buildings, and as a "master of a new building form — the skyscraper." He worked three times with Edward Clark, the wealthy owner of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and real estate developer: The Singer company's first tower in New York City, the Dakota Apartments, and its precursor, the Van Corlear. He is best known for building apartment dwellings and luxury hotels.

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18/03/1913

George I of Greece (born 1845)

George I was King of Greece from 30 March 1863 until his assassination on 18 March 1913.

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18/03/1907

Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist and politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (born 1827)

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and Republican politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures. "Why not", he asked, "if it proved cheaper and better to make the same materials than to grow them?"

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18/03/1900

Hjalmar Kiærskou, Danish botanist (born 1835)

Hjalmar Frederik Christian Kiærskou, sometimes also stated as Hjalmar Kiaerskov, was a Danish botanist.

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18/03/1898

Matilda Joslyn Gage, American author and activist (born 1826)

Matilda Joslyn Gage was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States, but also campaigned for Native American rights, abolitionism, and freethought. She is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention. She influenced her son-in-law L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

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18/03/1871

Augustus De Morgan, Indian-English mathematician and academic (born 1806)

Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He is best known for De Morgan's laws, relating logical conjunction, disjunction, and negation, and for coining the term "mathematical induction", the underlying principles of which he formalized. De Morgan's contributions to logic are heavily used in many branches of mathematics, including set theory and probability theory, as well as other related fields such as computer science.

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18/03/1845

Johnny Appleseed, American gardener and missionary (born 1774)

John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced trees grown with apple seeds to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia. He became an American icon while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance that he attributed to apples. He was the inspiration for many museums and historical sites such as the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio, and today is recognized as an American folk hero.

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18/03/1835

Christian Günther von Bernstorff, Danish-Prussian politician and diplomat (born 1769)

Count Christian Günther von Bernstorff was a Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomat.

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18/03/1823

Jean-Baptiste Bréval, French cellist and composer (born 1753)

Jean-Baptiste Sebastien Bréval was a French cellist and composer. He wrote mostly for his own instrument, including pedagogical works as well as virtuoso display pieces.

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18/03/1793

Karl Abraham Zedlitz, Prussian minister of education (born 1731)

Karl Abraham Freiherr von Zedlitz und Leipe was a Prussian minister of education who was instrumental in establishing mandatory education in Prussia, which served as a model for the public education system in the United States.

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18/03/1781

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, French economist and politician, Controller-General of Finances (born 1727)

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, commonly known as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Sometimes considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to have been the first political economist to have postulated something like the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.

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18/03/1768

Laurence Sterne, Irish novelist and clergyman (born 1713)

Laurence Sterne was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).

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18/03/1745

Robert Walpole, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1676)

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1721 to 1742. His formal titles included First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons. He is the longest serving prime minister in UK history, with a tenure of over 20 years.

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18/03/1703

Maria de Dominici, Maltese sculptor and painter (born 1645)

Suor Maria de Dominici was a Maltese painter, sculptor, and Carmelite tertiary nun. Born into a family of artists based in the city of Birgu (Vittoriosa), she was the daughter of a goldsmith and appraiser for the Knights of Malta. Two of her brothers, Raimondo de Dominici and Francesco de Dominici, were painters. Raimondo's son Bernardo would write a contemporary art history book that included references to his aunt Maria.

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18/03/1689

John Dixwell, English soldier and politician (born 1607)

John Dixwell, alias James Davids, was an English lawyer, republican politician and regicide. Born in Warwickshire, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms he held various administrative positions in Kent on behalf of Parliament, and approved the Execution of Charles I in January 1649. Under the Commonwealth, he served as Governor of Dover Castle, and was a member of the English Council of State.

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18/03/1675

Arthur Chichester, 1st Earl of Donegall, Irish soldier (born 1606)

Arthur Chichester, 1st Earl of Donegall, was an Anglo-Irish military officer, politician and peer.

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18/03/1582

Juan Jauregui, attempted assassin of William I of Orange (born 1562)

Juan de Jáuregui was a Biscayan accounting assistant known for his unsuccessful 1582 assassination attempt upon William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

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18/03/1321

Matthew III Csák, Hungarian oligarch (born c. 1260/5)

Máté Csák or Matthew III Csák, also Máté Csák of Trencsén, was a Hungarian oligarch who ruled de facto independently the north-western counties of Medieval Hungary. He held the offices of master of the horse (főlovászmester) (1293–1296), palatine (nádor) and master of the treasury (tárnokmester) (1309–1311). He was able to maintain his rule over his territories even after his defeat at the Battle of Rozgony against King Charles I of Hungary. In the 19th century, he was often described as a symbol of the struggle for independence in both the Hungarian and Slovak literatures.

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18/03/1314

Jacques de Molay, Frankish knight (born 1244)

Jacques de Molay, also spelled "Molai", was the 23rd and last grand master of the Knights Templar, leading the order sometime before 20 April 1292 until it was dissolved by order of Pope Clement V in 1312. Though little is known of his actual life and deeds except for his last years as Grand Master, he is one of the best known Templars.

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Geoffroy de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar

Geoffroi de Charney, also known as Guy d'Auvergne, was preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar. In 1307 de Charny was arrested, along with the entire Order of Knights Templar in France, and in 1314 was burned at the stake.

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18/03/1308

Yuri I of Galicia

Yuri I of Galicia was King of Ruthenia and Prince of Volhynia.

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18/03/1227

Pope Honorius III (born 1148)

Pope Honorius III, born Cencio Savelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 18 July 1216 to his death. A canon at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, he came to hold a number of important administrative positions, including that of Camerlengo. In 1197, he became tutor to the young Frederick II. As pope, he worked to promote the Fifth Crusade, which had been planned under his predecessor, Innocent III. Honorius repeatedly exhorted King Andrew II of Hungary and Emperor Frederick II to fulfill their vows to participate. He also gave approval to the recently formed Dominican and Franciscan religious orders.

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18/03/1086

Anselm of Lucca, Italian bishop (born 1036)

Anselm of Lucca, born Anselm of Baggio, was a medieval bishop of Lucca in Italy and a prominent figure in the Investiture Controversy amid the fighting in central Italy between Matilda, countess of Tuscany, and Emperor Henry IV. His uncle Anselm preceded him as bishop of Lucca before being elected to the papacy as Pope Alexander II and so he is sometimes distinguished as Anselm the Younger or Anselm II.

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18/03/1076

Ermengarde of Anjou, Duchess of Burgundy (born 1018)

Ermengarde of Anjou, known as Blanche, was a Duchess consort of Burgundy. She was the daughter of Count Fulk III of Anjou and Hildegarde of Sundgau. She was sometimes known as Ermengarde-Blanche.

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18/03/0978

Edward the Martyr, English king (born 962)

Edward the Martyr was King of the English from 8 July 975 until he was killed in 978. He was the eldest son of King Edgar. On Edgar's death, the succession to the throne was contested between Edward's supporters and those of his younger half-brother, the future King Æthelred the Unready. As they were both children, it is unlikely that they played an active role in the dispute, which was probably between rival family alliances. Edward's principal supporters were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, while Æthelred was backed by his mother Queen Ælfthryth and her friend Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. The dispute was quickly settled. Edward was chosen as king and Æthelred received the lands traditionally allocated to the king's eldest son in compensation.

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