Died on Saturday, 7th March – Famous Deaths

07/03/2026

Jamie Dunn, Australian actor, radio and television host (born 1950)

James Edward Dunn was an Australian television, radio personality, puppeteer, comedian and voice artist. He began his entertainment career as a drummer and a singer-songwriter, before moving into television and finding success working the puppet Agro on the Seven Network shows Wombat and Agro's Cartoon Connection among others.

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07/03/2025

D'Wayne Wiggins, American musical artist (born 1961)

D'Wayne Patrice Wiggins was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and record producer best known as a founding member of the R&B/soul band Tony! Toni! Toné!. He formed Tony! Toni! Toné! in 1986 with his younger half brother, Charles Ray Wiggins, and their cousin Timothy Christian Riley. The band achieved three platinum albums and a slew of hits in the 1980s and '90s.

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07/03/2024

Steve Lawrence, American actor and singer (born 1935)

Steve Lawrence was an American singer, comedian, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop duo Steve and Eydie, with his wife Eydie Gormé. Lawrence also played the featured role of Maury Sline, the manager and friend of the main characters in the 1980 blockbuster film The Blues Brothers and its sequel. Lawrence and Gormé first appeared together as regulars on Tonight Starring Steve Allen in 1954 and continued performing as a duo until Gormé's retirement in 2009.

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07/03/2019

Dick Beyer, American professional wrestler (born 1930)

Richard John "Dick" Beyer was an American professional wrestler is best known by his ring names, The Destroyer and Doctor X. Among other places, he worked extensively in Japan and in 2017 he was awarded one of the country's highest honors, the Order of the Rising Sun.

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07/03/2017

Lynne Stewart, American attorney and activist (born 1939)

Lynne Irene Stewart was an American defense attorney who was known for representing controversial, famous defendants. She herself was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred. She was convicted of helping pass messages from her client Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric convicted of planning terror attacks, to his followers in al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an organization designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States Secretary of State at the time; the designation was later revoked in May 2022.

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07/03/2016

Adrian Hardiman, Irish lawyer and judge (born 1951)

Adrian Hardiman was an Irish judge who served as a Judge of the Supreme Court from 2000 to 2016.

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Leonard Berney, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp liberator (born 1920)

Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Berney was a British soldier who was one of the first British officers at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. He also testified in the Belsen trial.

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07/03/2015

G. Karthikeyan, Indian lawyer and politician (born 1949)

Gopala Pillai Karthikeyan was an Indian politician and former speaker of the Kerala Legislative Assembly. He was a Member of the Legislative Assembly from Aruvikkara constituency, who represented the Indian National Congress.

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F. Ray Keyser, Jr., American lawyer and politician, Governor of Vermont (born 1927)

Frank Ray Keyser Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Vermont. He served as Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1959 to 1961, and the 72nd governor of Vermont from 1961 to 1963.

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Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Japanese author and illustrator (born 1935)

Yoshihiro Tatsumi was a Japanese manga artist whose work was first published in his teens, and continued through the rest of his life. He is widely credited with starting the gekiga style of alternative manga in Japan, having allegedly coined the term in 1957. His work frequently illustrated the darker elements of life.

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07/03/2014

Ned O'Gorman, American poet and educator (born 1929)

Edward Charles "Ned" O'Gorman was an American poet and educator.

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07/03/2013

Peter Banks, English guitarist and songwriter (born 1947)

Peter William Brockbanks, known professionally as Peter Banks, was an English guitarist. He was the original guitarist in the rock bands Yes, Flash, and Empire; he was also a guitarist for The Syn. Banks has been described as "the architect of progressive music".

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Damiano Damiani, Italian director and screenwriter (born 1922)

Damiano Damiani was an Italian screenwriter, film director, actor and writer. Poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini referred to him as "a bitter moralist hungry for old purity", while film critic Paolo Mereghetti said that his style made him "the most American of Italian directors".

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Claude King, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1923)

Claude King was an American country music singer and songwriter. He is best known for his 1962 million-selling hit, "Wolverton Mountain".

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07/03/2006

Gordon Parks, American photographer, director, and composer (born 1912)

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and filmmaker, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African Americans—and in glamour photography. He is best remembered for his iconic photos of poor Americans during the 1940s, for his photographic essays for Life magazine, and as the director of the films Shaft, Shaft's Big Score, and the semiautobiographical The Learning Tree.

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07/03/2005

John Box, English production designer and art director (born 1920)

John Allan Hyatt Box OBE was a British film production designer and art director. He won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction on four occasions and won the equivalent BAFTA three times, a record for both awards. Throughout his career he gained a reputation for recreating exotic locations in rather more mundane surroundings; he once created a walled Chinese city in Snowdonia.

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Debra Hill, American screenwriter and producer (born 1950)

Debra Hill was an American film producer and screenwriter, best known for her films co-created with John Carpenter.

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07/03/2000

Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter (born 1914)

Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski, known professionally as Pee Wee King, was an American country music songwriter and recording artist best known for co-writing "Tennessee Waltz".

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07/03/1999

Sidney Gottlieb, American chemist and theorist (born 1918)

Sidney Gottlieb was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra.

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Stanley Kubrick, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1928)

Stanley Kubrick was an American filmmaker and photographer. A major figure of the post-war film industry, Kubrick is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. His films were nearly all adaptations of novels or short stories, spanning a number of genres and gaining recognition for their intense attention to detail, innovative cinematography, extensive set design, and dark humor.

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07/03/1997

Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1912)

Edward Mills Purcell was an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has become widely used to study the molecular structure of pure materials and the composition of mixtures. Friends and colleagues knew him as Ed Purcell.

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07/03/1993

Tony Harris, South African cricketer (born 1916)

Terence Anthony Harris known as Tony Harris, was a South African sportsman who was the last man to be a dual international of both cricket and rugby union for his country. He represented South Africa in five rugby union Tests during the 1930s as a fly-half, following World War II he played Test cricket three times between 1947 and 1949 as an attacking batsman.

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J. Merrill Knapp, American musicologist (born 1914)

John Merrill Knapp was an American musicologist and academic. He was considered an authority on the life and works of George Frideric Handel. Born in New York City, Knapp graduated from the Hotchkiss School before entering Yale University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1936 and was a member of Skull and Bones. He then taught briefly at The Thacher School in Ojai, California before returning to Yale to assume the post of assistant director of the Yale Glee Club. He left there to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University where he earned a Master of Music degree. He served as an operations officer in the Third Fleet of United States Navy during World War II (1942-1946); earning two service stars and a commendation ribbon.

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Martti Larni, Finnish writer (born 1909)

Martti Larni was a Finnish writer. He was the chairman of the Union of Finnish Writers from 1964 to 1967. During his lifetime, Larni was one of Finland's most internationally known writers in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries thanks to his book Neljäs nikama.

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Eleanor Sanger, American television producer (born 1929)

Eleanor Sanger was a 7-time Emmy-award-winning television writer and producer, who was the first woman Network Sports Producer.

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Josef Steindl, Austrian economist (born 1912)

Josef Steindl was an Austrian-born post-Keynesian economist.

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07/03/1991

Cool Papa Bell, American baseball player (born 1903)

James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell was an American center fielder and pitcher in Negro league baseball and the Mexican League from 1922 to 1946. He is considered to have been one of the fastest men ever to play the game. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. He ranked 66th on a list of the greatest baseball players published by The Sporting News in 1999.

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07/03/1988

Divine, American drag queen and film actor (born 1945)

Harris Glenn Milstead, better known by the stage name Divine, was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.

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Ülo Õun, Estonian sculptor (born 1940)

Ülo Õun was an Estonian sculptor whose career began in the late 1960s and came to prominence in the 1970s. Õun mainly worked as a portrait and figural sculptor and was known for his works in colored plaster and bronze.

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07/03/1987

Karl Leichter, Estonian musicologist and academic (born 1902)

Karl Leichter was an Estonian musicologist. In 1929 he graduated in theory and composition, studying under Heino Eller with pupils such as Eduard Tubin, Alfred Karindi, Eduard Oja and Olav Roots. Between 1929 and 1931 he worked in the Estonian Folklore Archives.

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07/03/1986

Jacob K. Javits, American colonel and politician, New York State Attorney General (born 1904)

Jacob Koppel Javits was an American lawyer and politician from New York. During his time in politics, he served in both chambers of the United States Congress, a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1947 to 1954 and a member of the United States Senate from 1957 to 1981. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as Attorney General of New York from 1955 to 1957. Generally considered a liberal Republican, he was often at odds with his own party. A supporter of labor unions, the Great Society, and the civil rights movement, he played a key role in the passing of civil rights legislation. An opponent of the Vietnam War, he drafted the War Powers Resolution in 1973.

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07/03/1983

Igor Markevitch, Ukrainian conductor and composer (born 1912)

Igor Borisovich Markevitch was a Russian composer and conductor who studied and worked in Paris and became a naturalized Italian and French citizen in 1947 and 1982 respectively. He was commissioned in 1929 for a piano concerto by impresario Serge Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes.

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07/03/1982

Ida Barney, American astronomer (born 1886)

Ida Barney was an American astronomer, best known for her 22 volumes of astrometric measurements on 150,000 stars. She was educated at Smith College and Yale University and spent most of her career at the Yale University Observatory. She was the 1952 recipient of the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy.

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07/03/1981

Muhammad Zaki Abd al-Qadir, Egyptian journalist and writer (born 1906)

Muhammad Zaki Abd al-Qadir was an Egyptian journalist and multi-topic writer. Although he graduated from Cairo University in law in 1928, he turned to journalism. One of the 100 founding members of the Syndicate of Journalists in 1941, collaborated with various Egyptian notable newspapers, such as Akhbār al-Yawm and Al-Ahram. Publicly known by "Nahw Al-Noor", a column he wrote in 1950s, which formed the core of his new-style journalism. He also wrote many books in literary and non-literary, fiction and non-fiction subjects and was elected a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo.

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07/03/1976

Wright Patman, American politician (born 1893)

John William Wright Patman was an American politician. First elected in 1928, Patman served 24 consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives for Texas's 1st congressional district from 1929 to 1976. He was a member of the Democratic Party. From 1973 to 1976, he was Dean of the United States House of Representatives.

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07/03/1975

Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian philosopher and critic (born 1895)

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the philosophy of language, ethics, and literary theory. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.

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07/03/1973

Lalo Ríos, Mexican actor (born 1927)

Lalo Ríos was a Mexican-born American actor best known for his lead role in The Ring (1952) as Tommy.

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07/03/1971

Richard Montague, American mathematician and philosopher (born 1930)

Richard Merritt Montague was an American mathematician and philosopher who made contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language. He is known for proposing Montague grammar to formalize the semantics of natural language. As a student of Alfred Tarski, he also contributed early developments to axiomatic set theory (ZFC). For the latter half of his life, he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles until his early death, believed to be a homicide, at age 40.

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07/03/1967

Alice B. Toklas, American writer (born 1877)

Alice Babette Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.

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07/03/1957

Wyndham Lewis, English painter and critic (born 1882)

Percy Wyndham Lewis was a Canadian-born British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited Blast, the literary magazine of the Vorticists.

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07/03/1954

Otto Diels, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1876)

Otto Paul Hermann Diels was a German chemist. His most notable work was done with Kurt Alder on the Diels–Alder reaction, a method for cyclohexene synthesis. The pair was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1950 for their work. Their method of synthesizing cyclic organic compounds proved valuable for the manufacture of synthetic rubber and plastic. He completed his education at the University of Berlin, where he later worked. Diels was employed at the University of Kiel when he completed his Nobel Prize-winning work, and remained there until he retired in 1945. Diels was married, with five children.

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07/03/1949

Bradbury Robinson, American football player, physician, and politician (born 1884)

Bradbury Norton Robinson Jr. was a pioneering American football player, physician, nutritionist, conservationist and local politician. He played college football at the University of Wisconsin in 1903 and at Saint Louis University from 1904 to 1907. In 1904, through personal connections to Wisconsin governor Robert M. La Follette, Sr. and his wife, Belle Case, Robinson learned of calls for reforms to the game of football from President Theodore Roosevelt, and began to develop tactics for passing. After moving to Saint Louis University, Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in the history of American football on September 5, 1906, at a game at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He became the sport's first triple threat man, excelling at running, passing, and kicking. He was also a member of St. Louis' "Olympic World's Champions" football team in 1904.

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07/03/1932

Aristide Briand, French journalist and politician, Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1862)

Aristide Pierre Henri Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic. He is mainly remembered for his focus on international issues and reconciliation politics during the interwar period (1918–1939).

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07/03/1931

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish artist (born 1865)

Akseli Gallen-Kallela was a Finnish painter who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. His work is considered a very important aspect of the Finnish national identity. He finnicized his name from Gallén to Gallen-Kallela in 1907.

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07/03/1928

Robert Abbe, American surgeon and radiologist (born 1851)

Robert Abbe was an American surgeon and pioneer radiologist in New York City. He was born in New York City and educated at the College of the City of New York and Columbia University.

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07/03/1920

Jaan Poska, Estonian lawyer and politician, Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs (born 1866)

Jaan Poska VR III/1 was a lawyer, politician and the foreign minister of Estonia in 1918–1919.

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07/03/1913

Pauline Johnson, Canadian poet and author (born 1861)

Emily Pauline Johnson, also known by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake, was a Canadian poet, author, and performer who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her father was a hereditary Mohawk chief, and her mother was an English immigrant.

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07/03/1897

Harriet Ann Jacobs, African American Abolitionist and author (born 1813)

Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".

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07/03/1838

Robert Townsend, American spy (born 1753)

Robert Townsend was a member of the Culper Ring during the American Revolution. He operated in New York City with the aliases "Samuel Culper, Jr." and "723" and gathered information as a service to General George Washington. He is one of the least-known operatives in the spy ring and once demanded that Abraham Woodhull never tell his name to anyone, even Washington.

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07/03/1810

Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, English admiral (born 1748)

Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood, was a Royal Navy officer. Collingwood was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and later lived in Morpeth, Northumberland. He entered the Royal Navy at a young age, eventually rising from midshipman to lieutenant during the American Revolutionary War, where he saw action at the Battle of Bunker Hill during which he led a naval brigade. In the 1780s and 1790s Collingwood participated in the French Revolutionary Wars, during which time he captained several ships and reached the rank of post-captain. He took part in several key naval battles of the time, including the Glorious First of June and the Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

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07/03/1809

Jean-Pierre Blanchard, French inventor, best known as a pioneer in balloon flight (born 1753)

Jean-Pierre François Blanchard was a French inventor, best known as a pioneer of gas balloon flight, who distinguished himself in the conquest of the air in a balloon. Notable for his successful hydrogen balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, Blanchard later moved to London and undertook flights with varying propulsion mechanisms. His historic achievement came on 7 January 1785, crossing the English Channel from Dover Castle to Guînes in about 2½ hours, receiving acclaim from Louis XVI and earning a substantial pension.

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07/03/1778

Charles De Geer, Swedish entomologist and archaeologist (born 1720)

Charles De Geer was an entomologist, industrialist, civil servant and book collector. He is sometimes referred to as Charles the Entomologist, to distinguish him from other relatives with the same name. Charles De Geer came from a prominent Swedish-Dutch family. Born in Sweden, he spent most of his childhood and youth in the Dutch Republic. At the age of 18 he moved back to Sweden and would spend the rest of his life there. Upon his return to Sweden, he took over the management of the ironworks of Lövstabruk. He was a successful businessman and with time became one of the richest men in Sweden, head of an early industry employing around 3,000 people. He had a successful civic career, became Marshal of the Court and was elevated to the rank of friherre (baron) in 1773.

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07/03/1767

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, Canadian politician, Colonial Governor of Louisiana (born 1680)

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, also known as Sieur de Bienville, was a French-Canadian colonial administrator in New France. Born in Montreal, he was an early governor of French Louisiana, appointed four separate times during 1701–1743. He was the younger brother of explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville.

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07/03/1724

Pope Innocent XIII (born 1655)

Pope Innocent XIII, born as Michelangelo dei Conti, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 May 1721 to his death in March 1724. He remains the most recent pope to take the pontifical name "Innocent".

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07/03/1625

Johann Bayer, German lawyer and cartographer (born 1572)

Johann Bayer was a German lawyer and uranographer. He was born in Rain in 1572. In 1592, aged 20, he began his study of philosophy and law at the University of Ingolstadt, after which he moved to Augsburg to begin work as a lawyer, becoming legal adviser to the city council in 1612.

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07/03/1578

Margaret Douglas, English noblewoman, daughter of Margaret Tudor and Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus (born 1515)

Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, born Lady Margaret Douglas, was the daughter of the Scottish queen dowager Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and thus the granddaughter of King Henry VII of England and the half-sister of King James V. She was the grandmother of King James VI and I.

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07/03/1407

Francesco I Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua

Francesco I Gonzaga was ruler of Mantua from 1382 to 1407. He was also a condottiero.

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07/03/1274

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Italian priest and philosopher (born 1225)

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, theologian, and philosopher. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Catholic theology and Western philosophy.

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07/03/1226

William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, English commander

William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury was an Anglo-Norman nobleman, primarily remembered for his command of the English forces at the Battle of Damme and for remaining loyal to his half-brother, King John, until shortly before John's death. His nickname "Longespée" is generally taken as a reference to his great physical height and the oversized weapons that he used.

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07/03/0851

Nominoe, Duke of Brittany

Nominoe or Nomenoe was the first Duke of Brittany from 846 to his death. He is the Breton pater patriae and to Breton nationalists he is known as Tad ar Vro.

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07/03/0413

Heraclianus, Roman politician and failed usurper

Heraclianus was a provincial governor and a usurper of the Western Roman Empire (412–413) opposed to Emperor Honorius, who had originally brought him to power. Heraclianus helped put down a rebellion by Priscus Attalus. However, he decided to stage his own rebellion and during his invasion of the Italian peninsula, was either defeated in battle or captured and executed.

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07/03/0161

Antoninus Pius, Roman emperor (born 86)

Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from AD 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.

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