Died on Monday, 29th September – Famous Deaths

29/09/2025

Patrick Murray, British actor (born 1956)

Patrick Noel Murray was a British actor. He was best known for playing Mickey Pearce in the British sitcom television series Only Fools and Horses from 1983 to 2003. He also had roles in ITV Playhouse (1977), Scum and Quadrophenia (1979), Breaking Glass (1980), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), Bergerac (1983), Dempsey and Makepeace (1986), and The Firm (1989).

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Alan McDonald, Scottish Church Minister (born 1951)

Alan Douglas McDonald was a Scottish parish minister who was the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, from the Assembly of May 2006 until May 2007.

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29/09/2024

Ozzie Virgil Sr., Dominican baseball player and coach (born 1932)

Osvaldo José Virgil Pichardo was a Dominican professional baseball player and coach. He was the first person from the Dominican Republic to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) post-integration, appearing in 324 MLB games between 1956 and 1969 as a utility player for the New York / San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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29/09/2022

Kathleen Booth, British computer scientist and mathematician (born 1922)

Kathleen Hylda Valerie Booth was a British computer scientist and mathematician who wrote the first assembly language and designed the assembler and autocode for the first computer systems at Birkbeck College, University of London. She helped design three different machines including the ARC, SEC, and APE(X)C.

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Akissi Kouamé, Ivorian army officer (born 1955)

Brigadier-General Akissi Kouamé was an Ivorian army officer. She joined the army's medical service in 1981, whilst still a medical student. Kouamé became the first woman in the army to qualify as a paratrooper and in 2012 became its first female general.

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29/09/2020

Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti Emir (born 1929)

Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was the Emir of Kuwait from 24 January 2006 until his death in 2020.

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Helen Reddy, Australian-American singer, actress, and activist (born 1941)

Helen Maxine Reddy was an Australian and American singer, actress, television host, and activist. Born in Melbourne to a show business family, Reddy started her career as an entertainer at age four. She sang on radio and television and won a talent contest on the television program Bandstand in 1966; her prize was a ticket to New York City and a record audition, which was unsuccessful. After a short and unsuccessful singing career in New York, she eventually moved to Chicago, and subsequently, Los Angeles, where she made her debut singles "One Way Ticket" and "I Believe in Music" in 1968 and 1970, respectively. The B-side of the latter single, "I Don't Know How to Love Him", reached number eight on the pop chart of the Canadian magazine RPM. She was signed to Capitol Records a year later.

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29/09/2019

Martin Bernheimer, German-American music critic (born 1936)

Martin Bernheimer was a German and American classical music critic. Described as "a widely respected and influential critic, who [was] particularly knowledgeable about opera and the voice", Bernheimer was the chief classical music critic of the Los Angeles Times from 1965 to 1996.

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29/09/2018

Otis Rush, American blues guitarist and singer (born 1934)

Otis Rush Jr. was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow-burning sound and long bent notes. With qualities similar to the styles of other 1950s artists Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and was an influence on many musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, Peter Green and Eric Clapton.

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29/09/2017

Tom Alter, Indian actor (born 1950)

Thomas Beach Alter was an American–Indian actor who worked in Indian cinema. He was best known for his works in Hindi cinema, and Indian theatre. In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

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29/09/2016

Miriam Defensor Santiago, Filipina politician (born 1945)

Miriam Palma Defensor-Santiago was a Filipino politician and lawyer who served in all three branches of the Philippine government: judicial, executive, and legislative. Defensor Santiago was known for being a long serving senator of the Philippines and an elected judge of the International Criminal Court. She is the sole female recipient of the Philippines' highest national honor, the Quezon Service Cross.

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29/09/2015

Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabian prince (born 1932)

Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was a Saudi Arabian businessman and politician. A member of the House of Saud, he became a close ally of King Abdullah. In different periods Prince Nawwaf held significant government posts, including the director of Saudi intelligence agency.

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Hellmuth Karasek, Czech-German journalist, author, and critic (born 1934)

Hellmuth Karasek was a German journalist, literary critic, novelist, and the author of many books on literature and film. He was one of Germany's best-known feuilletonists.

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Phil Woods, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (born 1931)

Philip Wells Woods was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, and composer.

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29/09/2014

Mary Cadogan, English author (born 1928)

Mary Cadogan was an English author. She wrote extensively on popular and children's literature, including biographies of the creator of William Brown from Just William, Billy Bunter.

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John Ritchie, New Zealand composer and educator (born 1921)

John Anthony Ritchie was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at the University of Canterbury.

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29/09/2013

Harold Agnew, American physicist and engineer (born 1921)

Harold Melvin Agnew was an American physicist, best known for having flown as a scientific observer on the Hiroshima bombing mission and, later, as the third director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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S. N. Goenka, Indian teacher of Vipassanā meditation (born 1924)

Satya Narayana Goenka was an Indian teacher of vipassanā meditation. Born in Burma to an Indian family, he learnt Vipassana from Sayagyi U Ba Khin, retired from business in 1962 during business nationalization by military government in Burma, and moved to India in 1969 to start teaching Vipassana meditation. His teachings stay away from rites and rituals and emphasize that Buddha's path to liberation was non-sectarian, universal, and scientific in character, leading to Vipassana meditation appealing to people of all religions as well as no religion, from all parts of the world. He became an influential teacher and played an important role in establishing non-commercial Vipassana meditation centers globally where Vipassana Meditation is taught as a 10 Day residential program with no charges for food, stay as well as for teaching meditation, with centers funded by willful donations from past meditators. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2012, an award given for distinguished service of high order.

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Marcella Hazan, Italian cooking writer (born 1924)

Marcella Hazan was an Italian cooking writer whose books were published in English. Her cookbooks are credited with introducing the public in the United States and the United Kingdom to the techniques of traditional Italian cooking. She was considered by chefs and fellow food writers to be the doyenne of Italian cuisine.

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29/09/2012

Neil Smith, Scottish geographer and academic (born 1954)

Neil Robert Smith was a Scottish geographer and Marxist academic. He was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and winner of numerous awards, including the Globe Book Award of the Association of American Geographers. Smith is known for his analysis of gentrification and his influential rent-gap theory.

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Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, American publisher (born 1926)

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. was an American publisher and a businessman. Born into a prominent media and publishing family, Sulzberger became publisher of The New York Times in 1963 and chairman of the board of The New York Times Company in 1973. Sulzberger relinquished to his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the office of publisher in 1992, and the board chairmanship in 1997.

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Malcolm Wicks, English academic and politician (born 1947)

Malcolm Hunt Wicks was a British Labour Party politician and academic specialising in social policy. He was a member of parliament (MP) from 1992, first for Croydon North West and then for Croydon North, until his death in 2012.

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29/09/2011

Sylvia Robinson, American singer-songwriter and producer (born 1936)

Sylvia Robinson, known mononymously as Sylvia, was an American singer and record producer. Robinson achieved success as a performer on two R&B chart toppers: as half of Mickey & Sylvia with the 1957 single "Love Is Strange", and her solo record "Pillow Talk" in 1973. She later became known for her work as founder and CEO of the pioneering hip hop label Sugar Hill Records.

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29/09/2010

Tony Curtis, American actor (born 1925)

Tony Curtis was an American actor with a career that spanned six decades, achieving the height of his popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films, in roles covering a wide range of genres. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.

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Greg Giraldo, American comedian, actor, and screenwriter (born 1965)

Gregory Carlos Giraldo was an American stand-up comedian, television personality, and lawyer. He is remembered for his appearances on Comedy Central's televised roast specials, and for his work on that network's television shows Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and the programming block Stand-Up Nation, the last of which he hosted.

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29/09/2008

Hayden Carruth, American poet and critic (born 1921)

Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University.

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29/09/2007

Lois Maxwell, Canadian actress (born 1927)

Lois Ruth Maxwell was a Canadian actress. She was best known for portraying Miss Moneypenny in the first 14 Eon-produced James Bond films (1962–1985), from Dr. No in 1962 to A View to a Kill in 1985.

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Katsuko Saruhashi, Japanese geochemist (born 1920)

Katsuko Saruhashi (猿橋 勝子, Saruhashi Katsuko; March 22, 1920 – September 29, 2007) was a Japanese geochemist who created tools that let her take some of the first measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in seawater. She later showed evidence of the dangers of radioactive fallout and how far it can travel. Along with this focus on safety, she also researched peaceful uses of nuclear power.

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29/09/2006

Walter Hadlee, New Zealand cricketer and manager (born 1915)

Walter Arnold Hadlee was a New Zealand cricketer and Test match captain. He played domestic first-class cricket for Canterbury and Otago. Three of his five sons, Sir Richard, Dayle and Barry played cricket for New Zealand. The Chappell–Hadlee Trophy, which is competed for by ODI teams from New Zealand and Australia is named in honour of the Hadlee family and the Australian Chappell family.

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Michael A. Monsoor, American sailor, Medal of Honor recipient (born 1981)

Michael Anthony Monsoor was a United States Navy SEAL who was killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom during the Battle of Ramadi when he dove onto a grenade to shield his fellow SEALs, sacrificing his own life. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 2001 and graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training BUD/S class 250 in 2004. After further training he was assigned to Delta Platoon, SEAL Team 3.

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Louis-Albert Vachon, Canadian cardinal (born 1912)

Louis-Albert Vachon, was a Canadian educator, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and Archbishop of Quebec.

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29/09/2005

Patrick Caulfield, English painter and academic (born 1936)

Patrick Joseph Caulfield,, was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are Pottery and Still Life Ingredients.

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Austin Leslie, American chef and author (born 1934)

Austin Leslie was an internationally famous New Orleans, Louisiana, chef whose work defined 'Creole Soul'. He died in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 71 after having been evacuated from New Orleans; he had been trapped in his attic for two days in the 98 °F heat, in the aftermath of the August 29 Hurricane Katrina. He was honored with the first jazz funeral after Katrina on October 9, 2005, in the still largely-deserted city. The procession, led by the Hot 8 Brass Band, marched through the flood-ravaged remains of Leslie's old Seventh Ward neighborhood, starting out at Pampy's Creole Kitchen and stopping along the way at the location of the original Chez Helene.

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29/09/2004

Richard Sainct, French motorcycle racer (born 1970)

Richard Sainct was a French rally raid motorcycle rider, best known for his three victories on The Paris-Dakar rally in 1999, 2000 and 2003.

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Patrick Wormald, English historian (born 1947)

Charles Patrick Wormald was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald.

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29/09/2001

Mabel Fairbanks, American figure skater and coach (born 1915)

Mabel Fairbanks was an American figure skater and coach. As an African American and Native American woman she paved the way for other minorities to compete in the sport of figure skating such as Tai Babilonia, Debi Thomas, and Naomi Lang. She was inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame, as the first person of African American and Native American descent, and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

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Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, South Vietnamese military officer and politician, 2nd President of South Vietnam (born 1923)

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. He was a general in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF), became head of a military junta in 1965, and then president after winning a rigged election in 1967. He headed the government of South Vietnam until he resigned and left the nation and relocated to Taipei a few days before the fall of Saigon and the ultimate North Vietnamese victory.

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29/09/2000

John Grant, English journalist and politician (born 1932)

John Douglas Grant was a British politician who served as an MP of the United Kingdom parliament from 1970 to 1983. He was as a member of the Labour Party until he left in 1981 to join the new Social Democratic Party (SDP). He represented Islington East from 1970 to 1974 and Islington Central from 1974 to 1983.

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29/09/1999

Edward William O'Rourke, American bishop (born 1917)

Edward William O'Rourke was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Peoria in Illinois from 1971 to 1990.

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29/09/1998

Tom Bradley, American lieutenant and politician, 38th Mayor of Los Angeles (born 1917)

Thomas Bradley was an American politician, athlete, police officer, and lawyer who served as the 38th mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, he was Los Angeles' first black mayor, first liberal mayor, and longest-serving mayor.

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C. David Marsden, British neurologist (born 1938)

(Charles) David Marsden, FRS was a British neurologist who made a significant contribution to the field of movement disorders. He was described as 'arguably the leading academic neurologist and neuroscientist of his generation in the UK'.

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Bruno Munari, Italian artist, designer, and inventor (born 1907)

Bruno Munari was "one of the greatest actors of 20th-century art, design and graphics". He was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non-visual arts with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity. On the utility of art, Munari once said, "Art shall not be separated from life: things that are good to look at, and bad to be used, should not exist".

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29/09/1997

Sven-Eric Johanson, Swedish composer and organist (born 1919)

Sven Eric Emanuel Johanson (10 December 1919 - 29 September 1997) was a Swedish composer and organist.

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Roy Lichtenstein, American painter and sculptor (born 1923)

Roy Fox Lichtenstein was an American artist. A leading figure of the Pop Art movement, he is best known for his large-scale paintings inspired by comic books, advertisements, and mass-produced imagery. Lichtenstein's art is represented in major museum collections worldwide, and he remains one of the most influential and recognizable artists of the 20th century.

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Edith Ballinger Price, American writer and illustrator (born 1897)

Edith Ballinger Price (1897–1997) was a prolific writer and illustrator of children's books, best known for the imaginative stories and illustrations she created for 37 different books and stories. The granddaughter of landscape painter William Trost Richards, who first inspired her to draw, Price trained at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. Oft-published in general-interest magazines like Colliers and those aimed at children, like St. Nicholas Magazine, she was also notable as one of the chief founders of the Brownies, the junior version of the Girl Scouts.

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29/09/1996

Shūsaku Endō, Japanese author (born 1923)

Shūsaku Endō was a Japanese author who wrote from the perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Paul VI.

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29/09/1995

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American atheist and activist (born 1919)

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American activist who supported atheism, separation of church and state, and feminism. In 1963, she founded American Atheists and served as its president until 1986, after which her son Jon Garth Murray succeeded her. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine and identified as a militant feminist.

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29/09/1993

Gordon Douglas, American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1907)

Gordon Douglas Brickner was an American film director and actor, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures.

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29/09/1992

Jean Aurenche, French screenwriter (born 1904)

Jean Aurenche was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy and Claude Autant-Lara. He is often associated with the screenwriter Pierre Bost, with whom he had a fertile partnership from 1940 to 1975.

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William H. Sebrell Jr., American nutritionist, 7th Director of the National Institutes of Health (born 1901)

William H. Sebrell Jr. was an American nutritionist.

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Don West, American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer and civil-rights activist (born 1906)

Donald Lee West was an American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer, civil-rights activist and a co-founder of the Highlander Folk School.

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29/09/1991

Grace Zaring Stone, American novelist and short-story writer (born 1891)

Grace Zaring Stone was an American novelist and short-story writer. She is perhaps best known for having three of her novels made into films: The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Winter Meeting, and Escape. She also used the pseudonym Ethel Vance.

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29/09/1989

Gussie Busch, American businessman (born 1899)

August Anheuser "Gussie" Busch Jr. was an American brewing magnate who built the Anheuser-Busch into the largest brewery in the world by 1957; he served as company chairman from 1946 to 1975.

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Georges Ulmer, Danish-French singer-songwriter and actor (born 1919)

Georges Ulmer (1919–1989) was a Danish-born composer, librettist, and actor who became a naturalized French citizen. He was born Jørgen Frederik Ulmer on 16 February 1919 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and died on 29 September 1989 at Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was the father of singer Laura Ulmer.

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29/09/1988

Charles Addams, American cartoonist (born 1912)

Charles Samuel Addams was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were popularized through various adaptations.

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29/09/1987

Henry Ford II, American businessman (born 1917)

Henry Ford II, commonly known as "Hank the Deuce," was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford. He served as president of the Ford Motor Company from 1945 to 1960, chief executive officer (CEO) from 1947 to 1979, and chairman of the board of directors from 1960 to 1980. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. From 1943 to 1950, he also served as president of the Ford Foundation.

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29/09/1984

Geater Davis, American singer and songwriter (born 1946)

Vernon "Geater" Davis was an American soul singer and songwriter. He has been described as "one of the South's great lost soul singers, an impassioned stylist whose voice was a combination of sweetness and sandpaper grit."

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Hal Porter, Australian novelist, playwright and poet (born 1911)

Harold Edward "Hal" Porter was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer. He is known for his 1963 memoir, The Watcher on the Cast Iron Balcony. The Hal Porter Short Story Competition continues to honour his name, awarding a prize of $1000 to the writer of a short story each year.

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29/09/1983

Alan Moorehead, Australian war correspondent and author (born 1910)

Alan McCrae Moorehead, was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.

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29/09/1982

A. L. Lloyd, English folk singer (born 1908)

Albert Lancaster Lloyd, usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. While Lloyd is most widely known for his work with British folk music, he had a keen interest in the music of Spain, Latin America, Southeastern Europe and Australia. He recorded at least six discs of Australian Bush ballads and folk music.

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Monty Stratton, American baseball player and coach (born 1912)

Monty Franklin Pierce Stratton was an American professional baseball pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was born in Palacios, Texas and lived in Greenville, Texas, for part of his life. His major league career ended prematurely when a hunting accident in 1938 forced doctors to amputate his right leg. Wearing a prosthetic leg, Stratton played in the minor leagues from 1946 to 1953. His comeback was the subject of the 1949 film The Stratton Story, in which he was portrayed by Jimmy Stewart.

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29/09/1981

Bill Shankly, Scottish footballer and manager (born 1913)

William Shankly was a Scottish football player and manager who is best known for his time as manager of Liverpool. Shankly brought success to Liverpool, gaining promotion to the First Division and winning three League Championships and the UEFA Cup. He laid foundations on which his successors Bob Paisley and Joe Fagan were able to build by winning seven league titles and four European Cups in the ten seasons after Shankly retired in 1974. A charismatic, iconic figure at the club, his oratory stirred the emotions of the fanbase. In 2019, 60 years after Shankly arrived at Liverpool, Tony Evans of The Independent wrote, "Shankly created the idea of Liverpool, transforming the football club by emphasising the importance of the Kop and making supporters feel like participants".

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Frances Yates, English historian (born 1899)

Dame Frances Amelia Yates was an English historian of the Renaissance who wrote on the history of esotericism.

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29/09/1980

Harold Alexander Abramson, American physician (born 1889)

Harold Alexander Abramson was an American physician, remembered as a proponent of therapeutic LSD. He played a significant role in the CIA's MKULTRA program to investigate the possible applications for LSD.

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29/09/1979

Francisco Macías Nguema, Equatoguinean politician, 1st President of Equatorial Guinea (born 1924)

Francisco Macías Nguema, often referred to as Macías Nguema or simply Macías, was an Equatoguinean politician who served as the first president of Equatorial Guinea from the country's gaining of independence in 1968, until his overthrow in 1979. He is widely remembered as one of the most brutal dictators in history. As president, he exhibited bizarre and erratic behavior, to the point that many of his contemporaries believed he was insane.

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Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Russian composer (born 1893)

Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky, was a Russian composer primarily known for his microtonal compositions. For most of his life, from 1920 onwards, Wyschnegradsky lived in Paris.

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29/09/1977

Robert McKimson, American animator and illustrator (born 1910)

Robert Porter McKimson Sr. was an American animator and illustrator, best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. Cartoons and later DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. He wrote and directed many animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper, Speedy Gonzales, and the Tasmanian Devil, among other characters. He also developed Bugs Bunny's design in the 1943 short Tortoise Wins by a Hare.

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Alexander Tcherepnin, Russian-American composer and pianist (born 1899)

Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist.

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29/09/1975

Gladys Skelton, Australian-British poet, novelist and playwright (born 1885)

Gladys Skelton was an Australian and United Kingdom poet, novelist and playwright who wrote using the pseudonym John Presland.

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Casey Stengel, American baseball player and manager (born 1890)

Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder and manager, best known as the manager of the championship New York Yankees of the 1950s and later, the expansion New York Mets. Nicknamed "the Ol' Perfessor", he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

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29/09/1973

W. H. Auden, English-American poet, playwright, and critic (born 1907)

Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes, such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".

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29/09/1972

Kathleen Clarke, Irish politician and activist (born 1878)

Kathleen Clarke was a founder member of Cumann na mBan, a women's paramilitary organisation formed in Ireland in 1914, and one of very few people privy to the plans of the Easter Rising in 1916. She was the wife of Tom Clarke and sister of Ned Daly, both of whom were executed for their part in the Rising. She was subsequently a Teachta Dála (TD) and Senator with both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, and the first female Lord Mayor of Dublin (1939–1941).

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29/09/1970

Edward Everett Horton, American actor (born 1886)

Edward Everett Horton, Jr. was an American character actor and comedian. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons.

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Gilbert Seldes, American writer and cultural critic (born 1893)

Gilbert Vivian Seldes was an American writer and cultural critic. Seldes served as the editor and drama critic of the seminal modernist magazine The Dial and hosted the NBC television program The Subject is Jazz (1958). He also wrote for other magazines and newspapers like Vanity Fair and the Saturday Evening Post. He was most interested in American popular culture and cultural history. He wrote and adapted for Broadway, including Lysistrata and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the 1930s. Later, he made films, wrote radio scripts and became the first director of television for CBS News and the founding dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

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29/09/1967

Carson McCullers, American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet (born 1917)

Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes. Most are set in the Deep South.

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29/09/1966

Bernard Gimbel, American businessman (born 1885)

Bernard Feustman Gimbel was an American businessman and president of the Gimbels department store.

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29/09/1960

John Baillie, Scottish theologian (born 1886)

John Baillie was a Scottish theologian, a Church of Scotland minister and brother of theologian Donald Macpherson Baillie.

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Vladimir Dimitrov, Bulgarian artist (born 1882)

Vladimir "the Master/Maystora" Dimitrov Poppetrov was a Bulgarian painter, draughtsman and teacher. He is considered one of the most talented 20th century Bulgarian painters and probably the most remarkable stylist in Bulgarian painting in the post-Russo-Turkish War era.

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John Goodwin, British soldier and medical practitioner, 14th Governor of Queensland (born 1871)

Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Herbert John Chapman Goodwin, was a British soldier and medical practitioner, who served as the Governor of Queensland from 1927 to 1932.

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29/09/1959

Bruce Bairnsfather, British humorist and cartoonist (born 1887)

Captain Charles Bruce Bairnsfather was a prominent British humorist and cartoonist. His best-known cartoon character is Old Bill. Bill and his pals Bert and Alf featured in Bairnsfather's "Fragments from France" cartoons published weekly in The Bystander magazine during the First World War.

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29/09/1958

Aarre Merikanto, Finnish composer (born 1893)

Aarre Merikanto was a Finnish composer.

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29/09/1956

Anastasio Somoza García, Nicaraguan politician, 21st President of Nicaragua (born 1896)

Anastasio Somoza García was the leader of Nicaragua from 1936 until his assassination in 1956. He was officially the 21st President of Nicaragua from 1 January 1937 to 1 May 1947 and from 21 May 1950 until his assassination on 29 September 1956, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military dictator. He was the patriarch of the Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua as a family dictatorship for 42 years.

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29/09/1955

Louis Leon Thurstone, American psychologist (born 1887)

Louis Leon Thurstone was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his contributions to factor analysis. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Thurstone as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.

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Hubert Maitland Turnbull, British pathologist (born 1875)

Hubert Maitland Turnbull FRS was a British pathologist.

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29/09/1953

Ernst Reuter, German politician (born 1889)

Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was a German politician who was the mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the Cold War. He played a significant role in unifying the divided sectors of Berlin and publicly and politically took a stand against the Soviet Union.

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29/09/1952

John Cobb, English race car driver and pilot (born 1899)

John Rhodes Cobb was an early to mid 20th century English racing motorist. He was three times holder of the World Land Speed Record, in 1938, 1939 and 1947, set at Bonneville Speedway in Utah, US. He was awarded the Segrave Trophy in 1947. He was killed in 1952 whilst piloting a jet powered speedboat attempting to break the World Water Speed Record on Loch Ness in Scotland.

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C. H. Douglas, British engineer (born 1879)

Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, MIMechE, MIEE, was a British engineer, economist and pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement.

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29/09/1951

Thomas Cahill, American soccer player and coach (born 1864)

Thomas W. Cahill was one of the founding fathers of soccer in the United States, and is considered the most important administrator in U.S. Soccer before World War II. Cahill formed the United States Football Association in 1913, which later became the United States Soccer Federation. In 1916 he became the first coach of the United States men's national soccer team. Cahill was enshrined in the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1950.

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29/09/1949

Rosa Olitzka, German-American contralto singer (born 1873)

Rosa Olitzka was a German-born contralto singer. She sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1895 to 1901, and with the Chicago Opera from 1910 to 1911.

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29/09/1944

Douglas Crawford McMurtrie, American typeface designer, graphic designer, historian and author (born 1888)

Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was an American typeface designer, graphic designer, historian, author and bibliographer of printing.

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29/09/1937

Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková, Czech botanist and zoologist (born 1877)

Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková was the first female Czech botanist and zoologist. Baborová was born in Prague in a school teacher's family and learned many languages at a young age. She studied at the Minerva secondary school before studying natural sciences at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. She studied zoology and wrote her dissertation on fat bodies in the arthropods and in 1901 became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate. An older brother Josef Florián Babor was also a physician and zoologist at the University. Josef had inspired her own studies but she worked under Frantisek Vejdovsky (1849–1939). She contributed entries on infusoria and protozoa for Otto's Encyclopedia. Baborová married Stanislav Ćihak in 1903. She cut back on her studies in 1906 after the birth of her daughter.

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Ray Ewry, American triple jumper (born 1873)

Raymond Clarence Ewry was an American track and field athlete who won eight gold medals at the Olympic Games and two gold medals at the Intercalated Games. This puts him among the most successful Olympians of all time.

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29/09/1935

Winifred Holtby, English novelist and journalist (born 1898)

Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.

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29/09/1933

Jean-François Delmas, French bass-baritone (born 1861)

Jean-François Delmas, or Francisque Delmas was a French bass-baritone who created roles in many French operas including Athanaël in Thaïs.

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29/09/1931

William Orpen, Irish artist (born 1878)

Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen was an Irish artist who mainly worked in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in Edwardian society, though many of his most striking paintings are self-portraits.

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29/09/1930

Ilya Repin, Ukrainian-Russian painter and illustrator (born 1844)

Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter. He became one of the most renowned artists in Russia in the 19th century. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873), Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883), Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885), and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880–1891). He is also known for the revealing portraits he made of the leading Russian literary and artistic figures of his time, including Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Pavel Tretyakov, and especially Leo Tolstoy, with whom he had a long friendship.

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29/09/1928

John Devoy, Irish-American Fenian rebel leader (born 1842)

John Devoy was an Irish republican rebel and journalist who owned and edited The Gaelic American, a New York weekly newspaper, from 1903 to 1928.

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Ernst Steinitz, German mathematician (born 1871)

Ernst Steinitz was a German mathematician.

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29/09/1927

Arthur Achleitner, German journalist and author (born 1858)

Arthur Achleitner was a German writer. His works are noteworthy because he describes local customs and peculiarities of the people in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, and the Mediterranean regions of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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Willem Einthoven, Indonesian-Dutch physiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1860)

Willem Einthoven was a Dutch medical doctor and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiograph in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it.

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29/09/1925

Léon Bourgeois, French police officer and politician, 64th Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1851)

Léon Victor Auguste Bourgeois was a French statesman. His ideas influenced the Radical Party regarding a wide range of issues.

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Runar Schildt, Finnish author (born 1888)

Ernst Runar Schildt was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author from Helsinki. His son was art historian and author Göran Schildt. Although Schildt wrote his books in Swedish, they have also been translated into Finnish, English, French and German.

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29/09/1923

Walther Penck, German geologist and geomorphologist (born 1888)

Walther Penck was a geologist and geomorphologist known for his theories on landscape evolution. Penck is noted for criticizing key elements of the Davisian cycle of erosion, concluding that the process of uplift and denudation occur simultaneously, at gradual and continuous rates. Penck's idea of parallel slope retreat led to revisions of Davis's cycle of erosion.

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29/09/1919

Edward Pulsford, English-Australian politician and free-trade campaigner (born 1844)

Edward Pulsford was an English-born Australian politician and free-trade campaigner.

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29/09/1918

Lawrence Weathers, Australian soldier (born 1890).

Lawrence Carthage Weathers, was a New Zealand-born Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in battle that could be awarded to a member of the Australian armed forces at the time. His parents returned to their native South Australia when Weathers was seven, and he completed his schooling before obtaining work as an undertaker in Adelaide. He enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in early 1916, and joined the 43rd Battalion. His unit deployed to the Western Front in France and Belgium in late December. After a bout of illness, Weathers returned to his battalion in time to take part in the Battle of Messines in June 1917, during which he was wounded. Evacuated to the United Kingdom, he rejoined his unit in early December.

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29/09/1915

Luther Orlando Emerson, American musician, composer and music publisher (born 1820)

Luther Orlando Emerson was an American musician, composer and music publisher.

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Rudi Stephan, German composer (born 1887)

Rudi Stephan was a German composer of great promise who was considered one of the leading talents of his generation. He was killed in action during World War I.

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29/09/1913

Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the diesel engine (born 1858)

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, best known for inventing the diesel engine, which burns diesel fuel; both are named after him.

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John F. Lacey, American politician (born 1841)

John Fletcher Lacey was an eight-term Republican United States congressman from Iowa's 6th congressional district. He was also the author of the Lacey Act of 1900, which made it a crime to ship illegal game across state lines and to import injurious wildlife species, and the Lacey Act of 1907, which further regulated the handling of tribal funds. As the first federal conservation law, the Lacey Act of 1900 remains one of the foundations of conservation law enforcement.

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29/09/1910

Rebecca Harding Davis, American author and journalist (born 1831)

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis was an American author and journalist. She was a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania. Her most important literary work is the short story "Life in the Iron-Mills," published in the April 1861 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. Throughout her lifetime, Davis sought to effect social change for African Americans, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalized groups in the 19th century.

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Winslow Homer, American painter, illustrator, and engraver (born 1836)

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art in general.

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29/09/1908

Machado de Assis, Brazilian author, poet, and playwright (born 1839)

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, sometimes called Bruxo do Cosme Velho, was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. In 1897, he founded and became the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was multilingual, having taught himself French, English, German and Greek later in life.

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29/09/1905

Alexander Hay Japp, Scottish author, journalist and publisher (born 1836)

Alexander Hay Japp was a Scottish author, journalist and publisher.

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29/09/1904

Alfred Nehring, German zoologist and paleontologist (born 1845)

Alfred Nehring was a German zoologist and paleontologist. He was a founding professor of zoology at the Royal agricultural university in Berlin.

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29/09/1902

William McGonagall, Scottish poet and actor (born 1825)

William McGonagall was a Scottish poet and public performer. He gained notoriety as an exceptionally poor poet who exhibited no recognition of or concern for his peers' opinions of his work. McGonagall wrote about 200 poems, including "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous Tay Whale", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. Groups throughout Scotland engaged him to give recitations from his work, and contemporary descriptions of these performances indicate that many listeners appreciated McGonagall's apparent skill as a comic music hall character. Collections of his verse remain popular, with several volumes available today.

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Émile Zola, French journalist, author, and playwright (born 1840)

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J'Accuse...!  Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature in 1901 and 1902.

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29/09/1900

Samuel Fenton Cary, American lawyer and politician (born 1814)

Samuel Fenton Cary was an American politician who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio and significant temperance movement leader in the 19th century. Cary became well known nationally as a prohibitionist author and lecturer.

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29/09/1898

Thomas F. Bayard, American lawyer, politician and diplomat (born 1828)

Thomas Francis Bayard was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as the United States senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Secretary of State. After four years in private life, he returned to the diplomatic arena as Ambassador to Great Britain.

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29/09/1889

Louis Faidherbe, French general and politician (born 1818)

Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French general and colonial administrator. He created the Senegalese Tirailleurs when he was governor of Senegal.

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29/09/1887

Bernhard von Langenbeck, German surgeon and academic (born 1810)

Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck was a German surgeon known as the developer of Langenbeck's amputation and founder of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery.

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29/09/1867

Sterling Price, American major general and politician (born 1809)

Sterling Price was an American politician and military officer who was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, fighting in both the Western and Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War. He rose to prominence during the Mexican–American War and served as governor of Missouri from 1853 to 1857. He is remembered today for his service in Arkansas (1862–1865) and for his defeat at the Battle of Westport on October 23, 1864.

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29/09/1862

William "Bull" Nelson, American general (born 1824)

William "Bull" Nelson was a United States naval officer who became a Union general during the American Civil War.

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29/09/1861

Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska, Polish composer and pianist (born 1829 or 1834)

Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska, also known as Tekla Bądarzewska was a Polish composer and pianist. She composed mainly for the piano and is internationally known for her composition A Maiden's Prayer.

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29/09/1850

David Keith Ballow, Scottish-Australian doctor (born 1804)

David Keith Ballow was the government medical officer in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and the first doctor to establish a private practice in Brisbane.

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29/09/1833

Ferdinand VII of Spain (born 1784)

Ferdinand VII was King of Spain during the early 19th century. He reigned briefly in 1808 and then again from 1813 to his death in 1833. Before 1813, he was known as el Deseado, and after, as el Rey Felón.

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29/09/1804

Michael Hillegas, American politician, 1st Treasurer of the United States (born 1728)

Michael Hillegas was an American merchant and politician who served as the first Treasurer of the United States from 1775 to 1789.

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29/09/1800

Michael Denis, Austrian poet and author (born 1729)

Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis, also: Sined the Bard, was an Austrian Catholic priest and Jesuit, who is best known as a poet, bibliographer, and lepidopterist.

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29/09/1715

George Haliburton, Scottish bishop (born 1635)

George Haliburton was a Scottish cleric and Jacobite. He was both Bishop of Aberdeen and Chancellor of King's College, Aberdeen.

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29/09/1642

René Goupil, French missionary and saint (born 1608)

René Goupil,, was a French Jesuit lay missionary who became a lay brother of the Society of Jesus shortly before his death. He was the first of the eight North American Martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church to receive the crown of martyrdom and the first canonized Catholic martyr in North America.

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William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Cheshire (born 1561)

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby was an English nobleman and politician. Stanley inherited a prominent social position that was both dangerous and unstable, as his mother was heir to Queen Elizabeth I under the Third Succession Act, a position inherited in 1596 by his deceased brother's oldest daughter, Anne, two years after William had inherited the Earldom from his brother. After a period of European travel in his youth, a long legal battle eventually consolidated his social position. Nevertheless, he was careful to remain circumspect in national politics, devoting himself to administration and cultural projects, including playwriting.

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29/09/1637

Lorenzo Ruiz, Filipino martyr and saint (born 1600)

Lorenzo Ruiz, also called Saint Lorenzo of Manila, was a Filipino Catholic layman and a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. A Chinese Filipino, he became his country's protomartyr after his execution in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate during its persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century. Lorenzo Ruiz is the patron saint of, among others, the Philippines and the Filipino people.

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29/09/1560

Gustav I of Sweden (born 1496)

Gustav Eriksson Vasa, also known as Gustav I, was King of Sweden from 1523 until his death in 1560. He was previously self-recognised Protector of the Realm (Riksföreståndare) from 1521, during the Swedish War of Liberation against King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Gustav rose to lead this war following the Stockholm Bloodbath, where his father was executed. Gustav's election as king on 6 June 1523 and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union.

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29/09/1501

Andrew Stewart, Scottish bishop (born 1442)

Andrew Stewart was a 15th-century Scottish prelate and administrator.

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29/09/1382

Izz al-Din ibn Rukn al-Din Mahmud, malik of Sistan

Izz al-Din was the Mihrabanid malik of Sistan from 1352 until 1380. He was the son of Rukn al-Din Mahmud.

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29/09/1364

Charles I, Duke of Brittany (born 1319)

Charles of Blois-Châtillon, nicknamed "the Saint", was the legalist Duke of Brittany from 1341 until his death, via his marriage to Joan, Duchess of Brittany and Countess of Penthièvre, holding the title against the claims of John of Montfort. The cause of his possible canonization was the subject of a good deal of political maneuvering on the part of his cousin, Charles V of France, who endorsed it, and his rival, John of Montfort, who opposed it. The cause fell dormant after Pope Gregory XI left Avignon in 1376, but was revived in 1894. Charles of Blois was beatified in 1904.

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29/09/1304

John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, English general (born 1231)

John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey was a prominent English nobleman and military commander during the reigns of Henry III of England and Edward I of England. During the Second Barons' War he switched sides twice, ending up in support of the king, for whose capture he was present at Lewes in 1264. Warenne was later appointed as "warden of the kingdom and land of Scotland" and featured prominently in Edward I's wars in Scotland.

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29/09/1298

Guido I da Montefeltro, Italian military strategist (born 1223)

Guido da Montefeltro was an Italian military strategist and lord of Urbino. He became a friar late in life, and was condemned by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy for giving false or fraudulent counsel.

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29/09/1225

Arnaud Amalric, Papal legate who allegedly promoted mass murder

Arnaud Amalric, also known as Arnaud Amaury, was a Cistercian abbot who played a prominent role in the Albigensian Crusade. It is purported that prior to the massacre of Béziers, Amalric, when asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics, responded, "Kill them [all], for God knows which are His own."

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29/09/1186

William of Tyre, Archbishop of Tyre (born 1130)

William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler. As archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from his predecessor, William I, the Englishman, a former prior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who was Archbishop of Tyre from 1127 to 1135. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade, and he spent twenty years studying the liberal arts and canon law in the universities of Europe.

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29/09/0855

Lothair I, Carolingian emperor (born 795)

Lothair I was a 9th-century Emperor of the Carolingian Empire and King of Italy (818–855) and Middle Francia (843–855).

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29/09/0722

Leudwinus, Frankish archbishop and saint (born 660)

Saint Leudwinus, Count of Treves founded an abbey in Mettlach. He was Archbishop of Treves and Laon. As patron saint of the Mettlach parish, his relics are carried through the town by procession at the annual Pentecost celebration. His feast day is September 29. He was the son of Saint Warinus, the paternal grandson of Saint Sigrada, and nephew of Saint Leodegarius.

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