Died on Thursday, 20th November – Famous Deaths

20/11/2024

Ursula Haverbeck, German Holocaust denier (born 1928)

Ursula Hedwig Meta Haverbeck-Wetzel was a German neo-Nazi activist. Between 2004 and her death in 2024, she had been the subject of multiple lawsuits and convictions for Holocaust denial, which is a criminal offense in Germany.

---

Andy Paley, American songwriter (born 1952)

Andrew Douglas Paley was an American songwriter, record producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist who formed the Paley Brothers, a 1970s power pop duo, with his brother Jonathan Paley. Following their disbandment, Paley was a staff producer at Sire Records, producing albums for artists, such as Brian Wilson, Jonathan Richman, NRBQ, John Wesley Harding, the Greenberry Woods, and Jerry Lee Lewis. He also worked in film and television, composing scores and writing songs mostly for animated series, such as The Ren & Stimpy Show, SpongeBob SquarePants, Camp Lazlo, and Handy Manny.

---

John Prescott, British sailor and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1938)

John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott was a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007.

---

Jodi Rell, American politician, 87th Governor of Connecticut (born 1946)

Mary Carolyn Rell, known as M. Jodi Rell, was an American politician who served as the 87th governor of Connecticut from 2004 to 2011. Rell also had served as the state's 105th lieutenant governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004 under Governor John G. Rowland, and became governor after Rowland resigned from office. To date, Rell is the last Republican and last woman to serve as Governor of Connecticut.

---

20/11/2020

Jan Morris, Welsh historian, author and travel writer (born 1926)

Catharine Jan Morris was a Welsh historian, author and travel writer. She was known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy (1968–1978), a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, including Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong and New York City. She published under her birth name, James, until 1972, when she had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female.

---

20/11/2019

Wataru Misaka, American basketball player (born 1923)

Wataru Misaka was an American professional basketball player. A 5-foot-7-inch (1.70 m) point guard of Japanese descent, he broke a color barrier in professional basketball by being the first non-white player and the first player of Asian descent to play in the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The National Basketball Association (NBA), which was created in 1949 with the merger of the BAA and the NBL, later adopted the BAA's history and thus considers Misaka to be the first non-white player of the league.

---

20/11/2018

James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress (born 1929)

James Hadley Billington was an American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions. He served as the 13th Librarian of Congress after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and his appointment was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate. He retired as Librarian on September 30, 2015.

---

Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-English chemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1926)

Sir Aaron Klug was a British biophysicist and chemist. He was a winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.

---

20/11/2017

Peter Berling, German actor, film producer and writer (born 1934)

Peter Berling was a German actor, film producer, and writer. He has worked on several occasions with director Werner Herzog, among them his collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski like Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde.

---

20/11/2016

Gabriel Badilla, Costa Rican footballer (born 1984)

Gabriel Badilla Segura was a Costa Rican footballer who played as a defender.

---

Gene Guarilia, American basketball player (born 1937)

Eugene Michael Guarilia was an American basketball player who played four seasons for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is historically the only NBA player with at least a three-year career to play on a championship team every season of his career.

---

Konstantinos Stephanopoulos, Greek statesman (born 1926)

Konstantinos "Kostis" Stephanopoulos was a Greek conservative politician who served two consecutive terms as the president of Greece from 1995 to 2005.

---

William Trevor, Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer (born 1928)

William Trevor Cox was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language. Trevor won the Whitbread Prize three times and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize, the last for his novel Love and Summer (2009), which was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2011. His name was also mentioned in relation to the Nobel Prize in Literature.

---

20/11/2015

Keith Michell, Australian actor (born 1926)

Keith Joseph Michell was an Australian actor who worked primarily in the United Kingdom, and was best known for his television and film portrayals of King Henry VIII. He appeared extensively in Shakespeare and other classics and musicals in Britain, and was also in several Broadway productions. He was an artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre in the 1970s and later had a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote as the charming thief Dennis Stanton. He was also known for illustrating a collection of Jeremy Lloyd's poems Captain Beaky, and singing the title song from the associated album.

---

Jim Perry, American-Canadian singer and game show host (born 1933)

James Edward Perry was a Canadian television game show host, singer, announcer, and performer in the 1970s and 1980s.

---

Kitanoumi Toshimitsu, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 55th Yokozuna (born 1953)

Kitanoumi Toshimitsu , born Toshimitsu Obata , was a Japanese professional sumo wrestler from Sōbetsu, Hokkaido. He entered professional sumo at the age of 13 and set several youth-related records, including promotion to the highest rank of yokozuna at the age of 21. Despite being the most dominant wrestler in the sport during the 1970s with 24 tournament championships in his career, he was not popular with fans and was viewed as a villain, earning him the nickname the "Hatefully Strong Yokozuna". At the time of his death he still held the records for most tournaments as yokozuna (63) and most bouts won as a yokozuna (670), but these records have now been surpassed. Following his retirement in 1985 he established the Kitanoumi stable. He was chairman of the Japan Sumo Association from 2002 until 2008, and again from 2012 until his death.

---

20/11/2014

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba (born 1926)

María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, 18th Duchess of Alba GE was a Spanish aristocrat.

---

20/11/2013

Sylvia Browne, American author (born 1936)

Sylvia Celeste Browne was an American writer and self-proclaimed medium and psychic. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio.

---

Dieter Hildebrandt, Polish-German actor and screenwriter (born 1927)

Dieter Hildebrandt was a German Kabarett artist.

---

20/11/2012

Kaspars Astašenko, Latvian ice hockey player (born 1975)

Kaspars Astašenko was a Latvian professional ice hockey player. Astašenko was born in Riga, Latvia. Astašenko was drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 1999 NHL Entry Draft, 127th overall. Astašenko played parts of two seasons in the National Hockey League with the Lightning.

---

William Grut, Swedish pentathlete (born 1914)

William Oscar Guernsey Grut was a Swedish modern pentathlete. He competed at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, where he won the gold medal in modern pentathlon. Grut was a multiple Swedish swimming champion and received the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal in 1948.

---

Pete La Roca, American jazz drummer (born 1938)

Pete "La Roca" Sims was an American jazz drummer and attorney. Born and raised in Harlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, he was introduced to jazz by his uncle Kenneth Bright, a major shareholder in Circle Records and the manager of rehearsal spaces above the Lafayette Theater. Sims studied percussion at the High School of Music and Art and at the City College of New York, where he played tympani in the CCNY Orchestra. He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career, when he played timbales for six years in Latin bands. In the 1970s, during a hiatus from jazz performance, he resumed using his original surname. When he returned to jazz in the late 1970s, he usually inserted "La Roca" into his name in quotation marks to help audiences familiar with his early work identify him. He told The New York Times in 1982 that he did so only out of necessity:I can't deny that I once played under the name La Roca, but I have to insist that my name is Peter Sims with La Roca in brackets or in quotes. For 16 or 17 years, when I have not been playing the music, people have known me as Sims....When I was 14 or 15, I thought ["La Roca"] was clever; right now, it's an embarrassment. I thought that it would be something that people would probably remember - boy, was I ever right on that one! I can't make my conversion.

---

Ivan Kušan, Croatian writer (born 1933)

Ivan Kušan was a Croatian writer.

---

20/11/2010

Chalmers Johnson, American author and scholar (born 1931)

Chalmers Ashby Johnson was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973 and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute, an organization that promotes public education about Japan and Asia.

---

20/11/2009

Lino Lacedelli, Italian mountaineer (born 1925)

Lino Lacedelli was an Italian mountaineer. Together with Achille Compagnoni, on 31 July 1954 he was the first to reach the summit of K2.

---

20/11/2007

Kenneth S. Kleinknecht, NASA manager (born 1919)

Kenneth Samuel Kleinknecht worked for the United States National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics as an engineer and continued at NASA to become a manager of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo CSM, Skylab, Shuttle, and Spacelab. After retiring from NASA, he worked for Lockheed Martin for 9 years.

---

Ian Smith, Rhodesian lieutenant and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Rhodesia (born 1919)

Ian Douglas Smith was a Rhodesian and later Zimbabwean politician, farmer, and fighter pilot who served as Prime Minister of Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979. He was the country's first leader to be born and raised in Rhodesia, and led the predominantly white government that unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965 in opposition to the demands for the implementation of majority rule as a condition for independence. His 15 years in power were defined by the country's international isolation and involvement in the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces against the Soviet and Chinese-funded military wings of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).

---

20/11/2006

Robert Altman, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1925)

Robert Bernard Altman was an American filmmaker. He is considered an enduring figure from the New Hollywood era, known for directing subversive and satirical films with overlapping dialogue and ensemble casts. Over his career he received numerous accolades including an Academy Honorary Award, two BAFTAs, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe as well as nominations for seven competitive Academy Awards.

---

Zoia Ceaușescu, Romanian mathematician and academic (born 1950)

Zoia Ceaușescu was a Romanian mathematician, the daughter of Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena and sister of Nicu Ceaușescu and Valentin Ceaușescu. She was also known as Tovarășa Zoia.

---

Donald Hamilton, American author (born 1916)

Donald Bengtsson Hamilton was an American writer of novels, short stories, and non-fiction about the outdoors. His novels consist mostly of paperback originals, principally spy fiction, but also crime fiction and westerns, such as The Big Country. He is known best for his long-running Matt Helm series (1960-1993), which chronicles the adventures of an undercover counter-agent/assassin working for a secret American government agency. The noted critic Anthony Boucher wrote: "Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told."

---

20/11/2005

Manouchehr Atashi, Iranian journalist and poet (born 1931)

Manouchehr Atashi was a Persian poet, writer, and journalist of Kurdish descent.

---

James King, American tenor (born 1925)

James King was an American operatic tenor who had an active international singing career in operas and concerts from the 1950s through 2000. Widely regarded as one of the finest American heldentenors of the post-war period, he excelled in performances of the works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

---

Chris Whitley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1960)

Christopher Becker Whitley was an American blues/rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. Whitley's sound was drawn from the traditions of blues, jazz and rock and he recorded songs by artists from many genres. During his 25-year career, he released 17 albums. While two songs landed in the top 50 of the Billboard mainstream rock charts and he received two Independent Music Awards, he remained on the fringes of both the blues and alternative-rock worlds.

---

20/11/2004

Ancel Keys, American physiologist (born 1904)

Ancel Benjamin Keys was an American physiologist who studied the influence of diet on health. In particular, he hypothesized that replacing dietary saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat reduced cardiovascular diseases. Modern dietary recommendations by health organizations, and national health agencies corroborate this.

---

20/11/2003

Robert Addie, English actor (born 1960 )

Robert Alastair Addie was an English film and theatre actor, who came to prominence playing the role of Sir Guy of Gisburne in the 1980s British television drama series Robin of Sherwood.

---

David Dacko, African educator and politician, 1st President of the Central African Republic (born 1930)

David Dacko was a Central African politician who served as the first President of the Central African Republic from 14 August 1960 to 31 December 1965 and as the third President of the Central African Republic from 21 September 1979 to 1 September 1981. He also served as Prime Minister of the Central African Republic from 1 May 1959 to 14 August 1960. After his second removal from power in a coup d'état led by General André Kolingba, he pursued an active career as an opposition politician and presidential candidate with many loyal supporters; Dacko was an important political figure in the country for over 50 years.

---

Eugene Kleiner, American businessman, co-founded Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (born 1923)

Eugene Kleiner was an Austrian-American engineer and venture capitalist. He is considered a pioneer of Silicon Valley. He was one of the original founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, part of the Traitorous Eight, and Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm which later became Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company was an early investor in more than 300 information technology and biotech firms, including Amazon.com, AOL, Brio Technology, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Google, Hybritech, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems and Tandem Computers.

---

20/11/2002

Kakhi Asatiani, Georgian footballer (born 1947)

Kakhi Asatiani was a Georgian association football player and manager.

---

20/11/2000

Mike Muuss, American computer programmer, created Ping (born 1958)

Michael John Muuss was the American author of the freeware network tool ping, as well as the first interactive ray tracing program.

---

Kalle Päätalo, Finnish author (born 1919)

Kaarlo Alvar Päätalo was a Finnish novelist, the most popular Finnish writer in the 20th century. His Iijoki series, comprising 26 novels, is one of the longest autobiographical works ever written.

---

Barbara Sobotta, Polish athlete (born 1936)

Barbara Sobotta-Janiszewska, née Barbara Lerczak, was a Polish athlete who mainly competed in the women's sprint events during her career.

---

20/11/1999

Amintore Fanfani, Italian journalist and politician, 32nd Prime Minister of Italy (born 1908)

Amintore Fanfani was an Italian politician and statesman who served as 32nd prime minister of Italy for five separate terms. He was one of the best-known Italian politicians after the Second World War and a historical figure of the left-wing faction of Christian Democracy. He is also considered one of the founders of the modern Italian centre-left.

---

20/11/1998

Roland Alphonso, Jamaican saxophonist (born 1931)

Roland Alphonso OD or Rolando Alphonso a.k.a. "The Chief Musician" was a Jamaican tenor saxophonist, and one of the founding members of the Skatalites.

---

Galina Starovoytova, Russian ethnographer and politician (born 1946)

Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova was a Soviet dissident, Russian politician and ethnographer known for her work to protect ethnic minorities and promote democratic reforms in Russia. She was murdered in 1998.

---

20/11/1997

Dick Littlefield, American baseball player (born 1926)

Richard Bernard Littlefield was an American Major League Baseball pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Braves between 1950 and 1958. He batted and threw left-handed, and was listed as 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and 180 pounds (82 kg). He was born and died in Detroit.

---

Robert Palmer, American saxophonist, producer, and author (born 1945)

Robert Franklin Palmer Jr. was an American writer, musicologist, clarinetist, saxophonist, and blues producer. He is best known for his non-fictional writing on the field of music; his work as a music journalist for The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine; his production work for blues recordings ; and his clarinet playing as a member of the 1960s jazz-based rock band the Insect Trust.

---

20/11/1995

Sergei Grinkov, Russian figure skater (born 1967)

Sergei Mikhailovich Grinkov was a Soviet and Russian pair skater. Together with his wife Ekaterina Gordeeva, he was the 1988 and 1994 Olympic Champion and a four-time World Champion.

---

Robie Macauley, American editor, novelist and critic (born 1919)

Robie Mayhew Macauley was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years.

---

20/11/1994

Jānis Krūmiņš, Latvian basketball player (born 1930)

Jānis Krūmiņš was a Soviet-Latvian professional basketball player. Helped by his height, he was the first giant center that dominated under European baskets, for years. As a player of the senior Soviet Union national basketball team, Krūmiņš won 3 gold medals at the 1959, 1961, and 1963 EuroBaskets, as well as 3 silver medals at the 1956, 1960, and 1964 Summer Olympic Games.

---

20/11/1992

Raul Renter, Estonian economist and chess player (born 1920)

Raul Renter was an Estonian economist and chess player, who twice won the Estonian Chess Championship.

---

20/11/1989

Lynn Bari, American actress (born 1913)

Lynn Bari was an American film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 films for 20th Century Fox, from the early 1930s through the 1940s.

---

20/11/1984

Carlo Campanini, Italian actor, singer and comedian (born 1904)

Carlo Campanini was an Italian actor, singer and comedian. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1939 and 1969.

---

Kristian Djurhuus, Faroese politician, 2nd Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (born 1895)

Kristian Djurhuus was a Faroese politician. He was a member of the Union Party.

---

Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Pakistani journalist and poet (born 1911)

Chaudhry Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani poet and author of Urdu and Punjabi literature. Faiz was one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time, and his works and ideas remain widely influential in Pakistan, India and beyond. Outside of literature, he has been described as "a man of wide experience", having worked as a teacher, military officer, journalist, trade unionist, and broadcaster.

---

20/11/1983

Marcel Dalio, French actor and playwright (born 1900)

Marcel Dalio, sometimes credited mononymously as Dalio, was a French actor. He began his career in the 1930s as a leading man, notably starring in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), before becoming known as in-demand character actor. His film career spanned nearly 200 productions released between 1931 and 1982, both in France and the United States.

---

Richard Loo, Chinese-American actor (born 1903)

Richard Loo was an American film actor who was one of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1931 and 1982.

---

20/11/1981

Frank Sheed, Australian-British Catholic writer and apologist (born 1981)

Francis Joseph Sheed was an Australian-born lawyer, Catholic writer, publisher, speaker, and lay theologian. He and his wife Maisie Ward were the names behind the imprint Sheed & Ward and as forceful public lecturers in the Catholic Evidence Guild.

---

20/11/1980

John McEwen, Australian lawyer and politician, 18th Prime Minister of Australia (born 1900)

Sir John McEwen was an Australian politician and farmer who served as the 18th prime minister of Australia from 1967 to 1968, in a caretaker capacity following the disappearance of prime minister Harold Holt. He was the leader of the Country Party from 1958 to 1971, serving as the inaugural deputy prime minister of Australia from 1968 to 1971.

---

20/11/1978

Giorgio de Chirico, Greek-Italian painter and sculptor (born 1888)

Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His best-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective. His imagery reflects his affinity for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and of Friedrich Nietzsche, and for the mythology of his birthplace.

---

Vasilisk Gnedov, Russian soldier and poet (born 1890)

Vasily Ivanovich Gnedov, better known by the pen name Vasilisk Gnedov, was one of the most radically experimental poets of Russian Futurism, though not as prolific as his peers.

---

20/11/1976

Martin D'Arcy, English Jesuit priest (born 1888)

Martin Cyril D'Arcy was an English Jesuit priest, philosopher of love, and a correspondent, friend, and adviser to a range of literary and artistic figures including Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L. Sayers, W. H. Auden, Eric Gill and Sir Edwin Lutyens. He has been described as "perhaps England's foremost Catholic public intellectual from the 1930s until his death".

---

Trofim Lysenko, Ukrainian-Russian biologist and agronomist (born 1898)

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist. He rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism.

---

20/11/1975

Francisco Franco, Spanish general and dictator, Prime Minister of Spain (born 1892)

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a Spanish general who was the leader of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. He had led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain.

---

20/11/1973

Allan Sherman, American actor, comedian, and producer (born 1924)

Allan Sherman was an American musician, comedian, and television producer who became known as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, My Son, the Folk Singer (1962), became the fastest-selling record album up to that time. His biggest hit was "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", a comic song in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours.

---

20/11/1972

Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and journalist (born 1910)

Ennio Flaiano was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic. Best known for his work with Federico Fellini, Flaiano co-wrote ten screenplays with the Italian director, including La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and 8½ (1963). He received the 1947 Strega Prize for his novel A Time to Kill.

---

20/11/1960

Ya'akov Cahan, Israeli writer and translator (born 1881)

Ya'akov Cahan or Kahan was an Israeli poet, playwright, translator, writer and Hebrew linguist.

---

20/11/1959

Sylvia Lopez, French model and actress (born 1933)

Sylvia Lopez was a French model and actress.

---

20/11/1957

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Russian-Lithuanian painter and illustrator (born 1875)

Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky or Dobujinsky was a Russian-Lithuanian artist noted for his cityscapes conveying the explosive growth and decay of the early 20th-century city.

---

20/11/1954

Clyde Vernon Cessna, American pilot and engineer, founded the Cessna Aircraft Corporation (born 1879)

Clyde Vernon Cessna was an American aircraft designer, aviator, and early aviation entrepreneur. He is best known as the principal founder of the Cessna Aircraft Corporation, which he started in 1927 in Wichita, Kansas.

---

20/11/1952

Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher and politician (born 1866)

Benedetto Croce, was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and politician who wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, historiography, and aesthetics. A political liberal in most regards, he formulated a distinction between liberalism and "liberism". Croce had considerable influence on other Italian intellectuals, from Marxists to Italian fascists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Giovanni Gentile, respectively.

---

20/11/1950

Francesco Cilea, Italian composer (born 1866)

Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.

---

20/11/1947

Wolfgang Borchert, German author and playwright (born 1921)

Wolfgang Borchert was a German author and playwright whose work was strongly influenced by his experience of dictatorship and his service in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. His work is among the best-known examples of the Trümmerliteratur movement in post-World War II Germany. His most famous work is the drama Draußen vor der Tür (The Man Outside), which he wrote soon after the end of World War II. His works are uncompromising on the issues of humanity and humanism. He is one of the most popular authors of the German postwar period; his work continues to be studied in German schools.

---

20/11/1946

I Gusti Ngurah Rai, Indonesian officer (born 1917)

Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai was an Indonesian National Hero who commanded Indonesian forces in Bali against the Dutch during the Indonesian War of Independence. He was killed in the Battle of Margarana.

---

20/11/1945

Francis William Aston, English chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1877)

Francis William Aston FRS was a British chemist and physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes in many non-radioactive elements and for his enunciation of the whole number rule. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

---

20/11/1944

Maria Jacobini, Italian actress (born 1892)

Maria Jacobini was an Italian film actress and writer. She was born in Rome. She was married to the film director Gennaro Righelli and appeared in many of his silent films for the Vesuvio Film Company. She and her husband worked in the German film industry in the mid-1920s. She was the older sister of actress Diomira Jacobini. She died in Rome in 1944, at the age of 52.

---

20/11/1941

Elmar Muuk, Estonian linguist and author (born 1901)

Elmar Muuk was an Estonian linguist, lexicographer, and author of a number of dictionaries and textbooks of the Estonian language, and was, together with Johannes Voldemar Veski and Johannes Aavik, responsible for development of Estonian as a modern European language.

---

20/11/1940

Arturo Bocchini, Chief of Police under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini (born 1880)

Arturo Bocchini was an Italian civil servant, who was appointed Chief of the Police under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Bocchini held the office from September 1926 until his death in November 1940, becoming a key figure in the Italian regime.

---

Tim Coleman, English footballer (born 1881)

John George "Tim" Coleman MM was an English footballer who played as a forward for Kettering Town, Northampton Town, Woolwich Arsenal, Everton, Sunderland, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Queen Park Rangers and Tunbridge Wells Rangers. He made a single appearance for the England national football team and later in life was a manager in the Netherlands.

---

Robert Lane, Canadian soccer player (born 1882)

Robert George Lane was a Canadian amateur soccer player who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. He was born in Galt, Ontario and died in Winnipeg. In 1904 he was a member of the Galt F.C. team, which won the gold medal in the soccer tournament. He played both matches as a midfielder.

---

20/11/1938

Maud of Wales, queen of Norway (born 1869)

Maud of Wales was Queen of Norway as the wife of King Haakon VII. The youngest daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom and a sister of King George V, she was known as Princess Maud of Wales before her marriage, as her father was the Prince of Wales at the time.

---

Edwin Hall, American physicist (born 1855)

Edwin Herbert Hall was an American physicist who discovered the Hall effect. He also conducted thermoelectric research and wrote numerous physics textbooks and laboratory manuals.

---

20/11/1936

Buenaventura Durruti, Spanish mechanic and activist (born 1896)

José Buenaventura Durruti Dumange was a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist militant and a leading figure in Spanish anarchism before and during the Spanish Civil War. As a prominent member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), Durruti was a key participant in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, and is remembered as a hero and martyr by the anarchist movement.

---

José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish lawyer and politician (born 1903)

José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquis of Estella GE, often referred to simply as José Antonio, was a Spanish national syndicalist politician who founded the Falange Española, later Falange Española de las JONS.

---

20/11/1935

John Jellicoe, Royal Navy officer and First Sea Lord (born 1859)

Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, was a Royal Navy officer. He fought in the Anglo-Egyptian War and the Boxer Rebellion and commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 during the First World War. His handling of the fleet at that battle was controversial. Jellicoe made no serious mistakes and the German High Seas Fleet retreated to port, at a time when defeat would have been catastrophic for Britain, but the public was disappointed that the Royal Navy had not won a more dramatic victory given that they outnumbered the enemy. Jellicoe later served as First Sea Lord, overseeing the expansion of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty and the introduction of convoys, but was relieved at the end of 1917. He also served as the governor-general of New Zealand in the early 1920s.

---

20/11/1934

Willem de Sitter, Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer (born 1872)

Willem de Sitter was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He is known for the de Sitter universe, which is a cosmological model that was named after him.

---

20/11/1933

Augustine Birrell, British politician (born 1815)

Augustine Birrell KC was a British Liberal Party politician, who was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1907 to 1916. In this post, he was praised for enabling tenant farmers to own their property and for extending university education for Catholics. He was criticised for failing to take action against Irish rebels before the Easter Rising, leading to his subsequent resignation. A barrister by training, he was also an author noted for humorous essays.

---

20/11/1930

Bill Holland, American track and field athlete (born 1874)

William Joseph Holland was an American track and field athlete.

---

20/11/1925

Alexandra of Denmark, Queen of the United Kingdom (born 1844)

Alexandra of Denmark was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of King Edward VII.

---

20/11/1924

Ebenezer Cobb Morley, English sportsman and the father of the Football Association and modern football (born 1831)

Ebenezer Cobb Morley was an English sportsman. He is regarded as one of the fathers of the Football Association (FA) and modern football.

---

20/11/1923

Allen Holubar, American actor and director

Allen J. Holubar was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter of the silent film era. He appeared in 38 films between 1913 and 1917. He also directed 33 films between 1916 and 1923.

---

Denny Barry Irish Republican, died on hunger Strike 1923 Irish hunger strikes (born 1883)

Denis Barry was an Irish Republican who died during the 1923 Irish hunger strikes, shortly after the Irish Civil War.

---

20/11/1918

John Bauer, Swedish painter and illustrator (born 1882)

John Albert Bauer was a Swedish painter and illustrator. His work is concerned with landscape and mythology, but he also composed portraits. He is best known for his illustrations of early editions of Bland tomtar och troll, an anthology of Swedish folklore and fairy tales.

---

20/11/1910

Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright (born 1828)

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time.

---

20/11/1908

Albert Dietrich, German composer and conductor (born 1829)

Albert Hermann Dietrich, was a German composer and conductor. In addition to his work, he is remembered for his friendship with Johannes Brahms.

---

Georgy Voronoy, Ukrainian mathematician and academic (born 1868)

Georgy Feodosevich Voronoy was an Imperial Russian mathematician of Ukrainian descent noted for defining the Voronoi diagram.

---

20/11/1907

Paula Modersohn-Becker, German painter (born 1876)

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German Expressionist painter and draftswoman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is noted for the many self-portraits, including nudes. She is considered one of the most important representatives of early expressionism, producing more than 700 paintings and over 1000 drawings during her active painting life. She is recognized both as the first known woman painter to paint nude self-portraits, and the first woman to have a museum devoted exclusively to her art. Additionally, she is believed to be the first woman artist to depict herself pregnant.

---

20/11/1903

Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, French race car driver (born 1867)

Count Charles-François Gaston Louis Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat was a French aristocrat and race car driver.

---

Tom Horn, American scout, cowboy, soldier

Thomas Horn Jr., was an American cowboy, scout, soldier, range detective, rodeo performer, and Pinkerton agent in the 19th-century and early 20th-century American Old West. Believed to have committed 17 killings as a hired gunman throughout the West, Horn was convicted in 1902 of the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell near Iron Mountain, Wyoming. Willie was the son of sheep rancher Kels Nickell, who had been involved in a range feud with neighbor and cattle rancher Jim Miller. On the day before his 42nd birthday, Horn was executed by hanging in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

---

20/11/1898

Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, English engineer (born 1817)

Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, KCMG, LLD, FRSE was an English civil engineer specialising in the construction of railways and railway infrastructure. In the 1850s and 1860s, he was engineer for the world's first underground railway, London's Metropolitan Railway, built by the "cut-and-cover" method under city streets. In the 1880s, he was chief engineer for the Forth Bridge, which opened in 1890. Fowler's was a long and eminent career, spanning most of the 19th century's railway expansion, and he was engineer, adviser or consultant to many British and foreign railway companies and governments. He was the youngest president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, between 1865 and 1867, and his major works represent a lasting legacy of Victorian engineering.

---

20/11/1894

Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (born 1829)

Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein, who founded the Moscow Conservatory.

---

20/11/1889

August Ahlqvist, Finnish professor, poet, scholar of the Finno-Ugric languages, author, and literary critic (born 1826)

Karl August Engelbrekt Ahlqvist, who wrote as A. Oksanen, was a Finnish professor, poet, scholar of the Finno-Ugric languages, author, and literary critic. He is best remembered as the sharpest critic of writer Aleksis Kivi, who later rose to the position of the national author of Finland.

---

20/11/1886

William Bliss Baker, American painter (born 1859)

William Bliss Baker was an American artist who began painting just as the Hudson River School was winding down. Baker began his studies in 1876 at the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Bierstadt and de Haas. He later maintained studios in Clifton Park, New York, and New York City, where he painted in oils and watercolors. He completed more than 130 paintings, including several in black and white.

---

20/11/1882

Henry Draper, American doctor and astronomer (born 1837)

Henry Draper was an American medical doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography.

---

20/11/1880

Léon Cogniet, French painter (born 1794)

Léon Cogniet was a French history and portrait painter. He is probably best remembered as a teacher, with more than one hundred students, some of them notable.

---

20/11/1866

Otto Karl Berg, German botanist and pharmacist (born 1815)

Otto Karl Berg was a German botanist and pharmacist. The official abbreviation of his name, in botany, is O. Berg.

---

20/11/1864

Albert Newsam, American painter and illustrator (born 1809)

Albert Newsam was an American lithographer and painter. He was born deaf in Steubenville, Ohio, and orphaned as a small child. He displayed artistic talent at an early age, was brought to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. He was an early practitioner of lithography in the United States and contributed numerous images to medical and sheet music books. His portrait work of prominent politicians, doctors, lawyers and businessmen raised the prominence of lithography in the United States.

---

20/11/1856

Farkas Bolyai, Romanian-Hungarian mathematician and academic (born 1775)

Farkas Bolyai was a Hungarian mathematician, mainly known for his work in geometry.

---

20/11/1824

Carl Axel Arrhenius, Swedish chemist (born 1757)

Carl Axel Arrhenius was a Swedish military officer, amateur geologist, and chemist. He is best known for his discovery of the mineral ytterbite in 1787.

---

20/11/1778

Francesco Cetti, Italian priest, zoologist, and mathematician (born 1726)

Francesco Cetti was an Italian Jesuit priest, zoologist and mathematician.

---

20/11/1773

Charles Jennens, English landowner and patron of the arts

Charles Jennens was an English landowner and art patron. As a friend of Handel, he helped author the libretti of several of his oratorios, most notably Messiah.

---

20/11/1764

Christian Goldbach, Prussian mathematician and theorist (born 1690)

Christian Goldbach was a Prussian mathematician connected with some important research mainly in number theory; he also studied law and took an interest in and a role in the Russian court. After traveling around Europe in his early life, he landed in Russia in 1725 as a professor at the newly founded Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Goldbach jointly led the academy in 1737. However, he relinquished duties in the academy in 1742 and worked in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs until his death in 1764. He is remembered today for Goldbach's conjecture and the Goldbach–Euler Theorem. He had a close friendship with famous mathematician Leonhard Euler, serving as inspiration for Euler's mathematical pursuits.

---

20/11/1758

Johan Helmich Roman, Swedish violinist and composer (born 1694)

Johan Helmich Roman was a Swedish Baroque composer. He has been called "the father of Swedish music" or "the Swedish Handel." He was the leader of the Swedish Royal Orchestra during the first decades of Sweden's Age of Liberty.

---

20/11/1742

Melchior de Polignac, French cardinal and poet (born 1661)

Melchior Cardinal de Polignac was a French diplomat, Cardinal and Neo-Latin poet.

---

20/11/1737

Caroline of Ansbach, queen of England and Ireland (born 1683)

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Electress of Hanover from 11 June 1727 (O.S.) until her death in 1737 as the wife of King George II.

---

20/11/1704

Charles Plumier, French botanist and painter (born 1646)

Charles Plumier was a French botanist after whom the frangipani genus Plumeria is named. Plumier is considered one of the most important of the botanical explorers of his time. He made three botanizing expeditions to the West Indies, which resulted in a massive work Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera (1703–1704) and was appointed botanist to King Louis XIV of France.

---

20/11/1695

Zumbi, Brazilian king (born 1655)

Zumbi, also known as Zumbi dos Palmares, was a Brazilian quilombola leader and one of the pioneers of resistance to enslavement of Africans by the Portuguese in colonial Brazil. He was also the last of the kings of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a settlement of Afro-Brazilian people who liberated themselves from enslavement in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. He is revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a symbol of African freedom.

---

20/11/1684

Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, governor of Spanish Florida (1646–48, and 1651–54) (born 1613)

Pedro Benedit Horruytiner y Catalán was a Spanish soldier who served as interim co-governor of Spanish Florida between 1646 and 1648, and as governor between 1651 and 1654. When governor Benito Ruíz de Salazar Vallecilla was suspended from office in 1646, acting royal contador Horruytiner and Francisco Menendez Marquez served as co-governors until Salazar Vallecilla was returned to office in 1648.

---

20/11/1678

Karel Dujardin, Dutch Golden Age painter (born 1622)

Karel Dujardin was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Although he did a few portraits and a few history paintings of religious subjects, most of his work is small Italianate landscape scenes with animals and peasants, and other genre scenes. Dujardin spent two extended periods, at the beginning and end of his career, in Italy, and most of his paintings and landscape etchings have an Italian or Italianate setting.

---

20/11/1662

Leopold Wilhelm, Austrian duke and governor (born 1614)

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, younger brother of Emperor Ferdinand III, was an Austrian soldier, administrator and patron of the arts.

---

20/11/1651

Mikołaj Potocki, Polish nobleman (born 1595)

Mikołaj "Bearpaw" Potocki was a Polish nobleman, magnate and Field Crown Hetman of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1637 to 1646, Grand Hetman of the Crown from 1646 to 1651, governor of Bracław Voivodeship from 1636 and from 1646 Castellan of Kraków.

---

20/11/1612

John Harington, English courtier and author (born 1561)

Sir John Harington, of Kelston, Somerset, England, but born in London, was an English courtier, author and translator popularly known as the inventor of the flush toilet. He became prominent at Queen Elizabeth I's court, and was known as her "saucy Godson", but his poetry and other writings caused him to fall in and out of favour with the Queen. He was the author of the description of a flush-toilet forerunner installed in his Kelston house, appearing in A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), a political allegory and coded attack on the monarchy which is nowadays his best-known work.

---

20/11/1606

John Lyly, English poet and courtier

John Lyly was an English writer, playwright, courtier, and parliamentarian. He first achieved success with his two books Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and its sequel Euphues and His England (1580), and then became a dramatist, writing eight plays which survive, at least six of which were performed before Queen Elizabeth I. Lyly's distinctive and much imitated literary style, named after the title character of his two books, is known as euphuism. He is sometimes grouped with other professional dramatists of the 1580s and 1590s like Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and Thomas Lodge, as one of the so-called University Wits. He has been credited by some scholars with writing the first English novel, and as being 'the father of English comedy'.

---

20/11/1593

Hans Bol, Flemish painter (born 1534)

Hans Bol or Jan Bol, was a Flemish painter, miniature painter, print artist and draftsman. He is known for his landscapes, allegorical and biblical scenes, and genre paintings executed in a late Northern Mannerist style.

---

20/11/1591

Christopher Hatton, English academic and politician, Lord Chancellor of England (born 1540)

Sir Christopher Hatton was an English politician, Lord Chancellor of England and a favourite of Elizabeth I of England. He was one of the judges who found Mary, Queen of Scots guilty of treason.

---

20/11/1559

Lady Frances Brandon, English noblewoman and claimant to the throne of England (born 1517)

Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, was an English noblewoman. She was the second child and eldest daughter of King Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary, and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. She was the mother of Lady Jane Grey, de facto Queen of England and Ireland for nine days, as well as Lady Katherine Grey and Lady Mary Grey.

---

20/11/1518

Pierre de la Rue, Belgian singer and composer (born 1452)

Pierre de la Rue was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. His name also appears as Piersson or variants of Pierchon and his toponymic, when present, as various forms of de Platea, de Robore, or de Vico. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the most famous and influential composers in the Netherlands polyphonic style in the decades around 1500.

---

20/11/1480

Eleanor of Scotland, Scottish princess (born 1433)

Eleanor of Scotland was an Archduchess of Austria by marriage to Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, a noted translator, and regent of Austria in 1455–58 and 1467. She was a daughter of James I of Scotland and Joan Beaufort.

---

20/11/1400

Elisabeth of Moravia, margravine of Meissen

Elisabeth of Moravia was the second daughter and third issue of John Henry of Moravia, and his second wife Margaret of Opava. She became Margravine consort of Meissen by her marriage to William I, Margrave of Meissen (1366).

---

20/11/1316

John I, king of France and Navarra (born 1316)

John I, called the Posthumous, was the King of France and Navarre, as the posthumous son and successor of Louis X, for the four days he lived in 1316. He is the youngest person to be king of France, the only one to have been king from birth, and the only one to hold the title for his entire life. His reign is the shortest of any undisputed French king. Although considered as a king today, his status was not recognized until chroniclers and historians in later centuries began numbering John II, thereby acknowledging John I's brief reign.

---

20/11/1314

Albert II, German nobleman (born 1240)

Albert II, known as Albert the Degenerate, was Margrave of Meissen, Landgrave of Thuringia and Count Palatine of Saxony. He was a member of the House of Wettin.

---

20/11/1022

Bernward of Hildesheim, German bishop (born c. 960)

Bernward was the thirteenth Bishop of Hildesheim from 993 until his death in 1022.

---

20/11/1008

Geoffrey I, duke of Brittany (born 980)

Geoffrey I, also known as Geoffrey of Rennes and Geoffrey Berengar, was Duke of Brittany from 992 until his death, and also Count of Rennes by right of succession. The eldest son of Duke Conan I of Brittany, he assumed the title of Duke of Brittany upon his father's death in 992. Brittany had long been an independent state, but he had little control over much of Lower Brittany.

---

20/11/0996

Richard I, duke of Normandy (born 932)

Richard I, also known as Richard the Fearless, was the count of Rouen from 942 to 996. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, whom Richard commissioned to write the "De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum", called him a dux. However, this use of the word may have been in the context of Richard's renowned leadership in war, and not as a reference to a title of nobility. Richard either introduced feudalism into Normandy or he greatly expanded it. By the end of his reign, the most important Norman landholders held their lands in feudal tenure.

---

20/11/0927

Xu Wen, Chinese general (born 862)

Xu Wen, courtesy name Dunmei (敦美), formally Prince Zhongwu of Qi (齊忠武王), later further posthumously honored Emperor Wu (武皇帝) with the temple name Yizu (義祖) by his adoptive son Xu Zhigao after Xu Zhigao founded the state of Southern Tang, was a major general and regent of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period state Wu. He took over the reins of the Wu state after assassinating, with his colleague Zhang Hao, Yang Wo, the first Prince of Hongnong, and then killing Zhang. Xu was in essence the decision-maker throughout the reign of Yang Wo's brother and successor Yang Longyan and the first part of the reign of Yang Longyan's brother and successor Yang Pu. After his death, Xu Zhigao inherited his position as regent, eventually seizing the Wu throne and establishing Southern Tang.

---

20/11/0869

Edmund the Martyr, English king (born 841)

Edmund the Martyr was king of East Anglia from about 855 until his death.

---

20/11/0855

Theoktistos, Byzantine courtier

Theoktistos or Theoctistus was a leading Byzantine official during the second quarter of the 9th century and the de facto head of the regency for the underage emperor Michael III from 842 until his dismissal and murder in 855. A eunuch courtier, he assisted in the ascent of Michael II to the throne in 820, and was rewarded with the titles of patrikios and later magistros. He held the high posts of chartoularios tou kanikleiou and logothetēs tou dromou under Michael and his son Theophilos. After Theophilos' death in 842, Theoktistos became a member of the regency council, but soon managed to sideline the other members and establish himself as the virtual ruler of the Empire. Noted for his administrative and political competence, Theoktistos played a major role in ending the Byzantine Iconoclasm, and fostered the ongoing renaissance in education within the Empire. He also continued the persecution of the Paulician sect, but had mixed success in the wars against the Arabs. When Michael III came of age in 855, his uncle Bardas persuaded him to throw off the tutelage of Theoktistos and his mother, the Empress-dowager Theodora, and on 20 November 855, Theoktistos was assassinated by Bardas and his followers.

---

20/11/0811

Li Fan, Chinese chancellor (born 754)

Li Fan (李藩), courtesy name Shuhan (叔翰), was an official of the Chinese dynasty Tang dynasty, serving as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Xianzong.

---

20/11/0763

Domnall Midi, High King of Ireland (born 743)

Domhnall Mac Murchada, called Domnall Midi, was High King of Ireland. He belonged to the Clann Cholmáin branch of the Uí Néill. Clann Cholmáin's pre-eminence among the southern Uí Néill, which would last until the rise of Brian Bóruma and the end of the Uí Néill dominance in Ireland, dates from his lifetime.

---

20/11/0284

Numerian, Roman emperor

Numerian was Roman emperor from 283 to 284 with his older brother Carinus. They were sons of Carus, a general raised to the office of praetorian prefect under Emperor Probus in 282.

---