September 23

Deaths

438 deaths recorded on September 23 throughout history

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Antiquity 1

Pope Linus

He was allegedly Peter's immediate successor — which would make him the second pope in history — and almost nothing else is certain. Pope Linus appears in exactly one unambiguous historical record: a letter from Paul, listed by name in Second Timothy. The date of his death is disputed. The cause is unknown. His papacy lasted somewhere between nine and fifteen years, depending on which ancient source you trust. He left behind a name on a list, a tradition that built a church around that list, and almost nothing else.

Medieval 26

788

Ælfwald I

He was murdered — and his killer was reportedly sanctioned by the very church he'd supported. Ælfwald I ruled Northumbria from 779 to 788, a period of relentless dynastic violence in the north of England. He was killed by a nobleman named Sicga, who may have acted with aristocratic or ecclesiastical backing. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes his death without much sentiment. A saint named Cuthbert had once prophesied about the bloodiness of Northumbrian kingship. By 788, that prophecy had been confirmed many times over.

867

Michael III., Kaiser von Byzanz

965

Al-Mutanabbi

He'd insulted so many powerful men in his poems that his enemies had a long list to choose from when someone finally killed him. Al-Mutanabbi — the name means 'one who claims to be a prophet' — wrote Arabic verse so precise and proud that lines of it are still quoted in political speeches today. He died in an ambush near Baghdad at 50, reportedly killed by the brother of a man he'd mocked in a poem. His collected works became a required text in Arab schools for a thousand years.

972

Michael, Bischof von Regensburg

1193

Robert de Sablé

Robert de Sablé was the Master of the Knights Templar — the man running the most powerful military-religious organization in the medieval world — at the exact moment Saladin was dismantling Crusader power in the Holy Land. He served during the Third Crusade alongside Richard I of England, helping negotiate the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192. He died in 1193, just a year after that treaty was signed. What he left was an order still intact, still funded, still formidable — and about a century away from being burned out of existence by a French king who wanted their money.

1220

Ulrich von Sax, Abt von St. Gallen

1241

Snorri Sturluson

He was stabbed to death in his own cellar by men sent by a Norwegian king — which is not the ending you'd predict for a poet-historian who'd spent decades preserving Norse mythology. Snorri Sturluson had made political enemies faster than he'd made sagas. But the work survived the man. He left behind the Prose Edda and Heimskringla — the primary sources for almost everything modern culture thinks it knows about Norse gods and Viking kings, written by someone who died hiding under his own stairs.

1253

Wenceslaus I of Bohemia

He survived a assassination attempt that left him partially blind in one eye — and then ruled Bohemia for another two decades. Wenceslaus I, who died in 1253, spent much of his reign fending off Mongol invasions, including the devastating 1241 incursion that swept through Poland and Hungary. He left behind a kingdom that had held. Not gloriously, not easily, but it held. That's rarer than it sounds.

1267

Beatrice of Provence

Beatrice of Provence was the youngest of four sisters, all of whom became queens — but she got Provence itself, the actual land, while her sisters got crowns attached to it by marriage. Her husband Charles of Anjou used her inheritance to build a Mediterranean empire. She died in 1267 at 33, long before Charles's ambitions peaked or collapsed. She left behind a county that became the engine of Angevin power across southern Italy and Sicily. The youngest sister's dowry turned out to be the most consequential asset in the family.

1319

Henri de Wierzbno, évêque polonais (° inconnue).

1346

Ulrich II.

Ulrich II. von Hanau, Herr von Hanau

1350

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, jurista musulmán suní (n.

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, jurista musulmán suní (n. 1292).

1373

Diedrich Morneweg, Ratsherr der Hansestadt Lübeck

1386

Dan I of Wallachia

He ruled Wallachia at a moment when ruling anything on the Ottoman frontier was essentially a wager against your own survival. Dan I, who died in 1386, is credited as the founder of the House of Danești — one of the two royal lines that would compete, sometimes violently, for Wallachian power for generations. He was likely killed in battle. What he left behind was a dynasty that kept fighting long after he couldn't.

1390

John I

John I of Lorraine ruled a duchy that sat at one of medieval Europe's most contested crossroads — squeezed between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, every decision carried existential weight. He'd navigated those pressures for decades, keeping Lorraine intact through diplomacy more than force. He died in 1390 after 44 years of ruling a buffer state that everyone wanted and he somehow kept. The duchy outlasted him by centuries.

1408

Adolph I

Adolph I of Cleves lived to 75 in an era when that was genuinely extraordinary, dying in 1448 after ruling for decades in the lower Rhine region. He'd built alliances through his children's marriages — his daughter Mary married the Duke of Burgundy, pulling Cleves into Burgundy's orbit and reshaping the political geography of the Low Countries. He was present at the Council of Constance in 1415 that ended the papal schism. He left behind a duchy more strategically positioned than he'd found it, and grandchildren ruling courts across northern Europe.

1450

Ludwig I., Graf von Württemberg

1461

Charles

Charles of Viana spent most of his adult life in conflict with his own mother, Queen Joan of Navarre, over his inheritance — a legal and political struggle that eventually involved the Crown of Aragon, Catalonia, and half of what would become Spain. Born in 1421, he was a serious scholar who translated Aristotle into Castilian and wrote a chronicle of the Kings of Navarre. He died in 1461 at 40, still fighting for recognition. The Catalans had already declared him their patron. He left behind a translation, a chronicle, and a cause his supporters wouldn't drop.

1463

Juan de Cosme de Médici, banquero, humanista, artista y mecenas italiano (n.

Juan de Cosme de Médici, banquero, humanista, artista y mecenas italiano (n. 1421).

1468

Sejo, 7.

Sejo, 7. König der Joseon-Dynastie in Korea

1479

Lucrezia d’Alagno, italienische Adelige, Mätresse von König Alfons V. von Aragón

1483

Johann Kolowrat, Administrator des Erzbistums Prag

1500s 12

1508

Beatrice of Naples

She was married at fifteen to a Hungarian king twice her age, and when he died she fought — badly — to hold onto the throne. Beatrice of Naples spent years in legal battles trying to claim her queenship was still valid, even after Hungary had moved on entirely. She'd been queen consort of one of Europe's most powerful courts. She died in Naples, having lost nearly everything she'd gained, fifty-one years after she was born into the family that gave her the title in the first place.

1525

Giovanni Gonzaga, italienischer Condottiere

1527

Carlos de Lannoy, aristócrata borgoñón (n.

Carlos de Lannoy, aristócrata borgoñón (n. 1487).

1532

Rudolf von Baden, Prinz von Baden und Domherr

1535

Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg

Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg became Queen of Sweden when she married Gustav Vasa in 1531, cementing a dynastic alliance during the period when Sweden was consolidating its break from the Kalmar Union. Gustav had just finished a long war for Swedish independence and needed the legitimacy that a high-status marriage provided. Catherine bore him a son, Eric, who would later become King Eric XIV. She died in 1535, just four years into the marriage, leaving her son without a mother before he was two years old. Eric's troubled reign — he was eventually deposed and imprisoned — became one of the more dramatic chapters in Swedish royal history.

1543

Johanna von Hachberg-Sausenberg, Gräfin von Neuchâtel

1550

Innocenzo Cibo, italienischer Kardinal

1552

Barbara von Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, Landgräfin von Leuchtenberg

1571

John Jewel

He wrote his Apology in 1562 — a 60,000-word defense of the Church of England against Catholic criticism — and it became one of the most widely distributed religious texts of the Elizabethan era, translated into multiple languages within years. John Jewel hadn't planned a publishing career; he'd been in exile under Mary I and returned to England only when Elizabeth took the throne. He left behind a document that shaped how Protestant England understood itself for generations.

1573

Azai Hisamasa

Azai Hisamasa retired early, handing power to his son Nagamasa — then watched helplessly as Nagamasa's alliance with Oda Nobunaga collapsed and the clan disintegrated around him. He'd stepped aside to give the family a better future. Instead he died in 1573 as Nobunaga's forces destroyed everything, forced to commit seppuku alongside his son after the fall of Odani Castle. He gave up power to save his family and lost both.

1582

Luis III de Montpensier, aristócrata francés (n.

Luis III de Montpensier, aristócrata francés (n. 1513).

1598

Jacob Mahu, navegante neerlandés (n.

Jacob Mahu, navegante neerlandés (n. ¿?).

1600s 13

1604

Gabriel Vázquez, jesuita y teólogo español (n.

Gabriel Vázquez, jesuita y teólogo español (n. 1549 o 1551).

1605

Pontus de Tyard

He was one of the original members of the Pléiade — the group of French Renaissance poets who decided, collectively, that French was as worthy a literary language as Latin and Greek. Pontus de Tyard spent decades writing love sonnets, then became a bishop, then a mathematician, then an astronomer. He lived to eighty-four, which in 1605 was extraordinary. He left behind poetry that helped establish French as a language serious literature could live in, written by a man who then moved on to entirely different disciplines.

1612

Johann Glandorp, Lübecker Ratsherr und Mäzen

1624

Willem Pietersz.

Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, niederländischer Maler

1633

Gregorio Arce de Sevilla, funcionario colonial español (n.

Gregorio Arce de Sevilla, funcionario colonial español (n. ¿?).

1633

Juan de Torres Osorio, religioso español (n.

Juan de Torres Osorio, religioso español (n. 1562).

1657

Joachim Jung, filósofo y matemático alemán (n.

Joachim Jung, filósofo y matemático alemán (n. 1587).

1666

Hannibal Sehested, dänischer Staatsmann

1666

François Mansart, arquitecto francés (n.

François Mansart, arquitecto francés (n. 1598).

1675

Valentin Conrart

Valentin Conrart was the first Permanent Secretary of the Académie française — the body that has guarded the French language since 1635. He held that position for 40 years. But he was famously reluctant to publish anything himself, so cautious about putting words in print that Boileau immortalized his silence in a satirical poem. The man who ran French literature's highest institution left almost no writing of his own. He shaped the language and then refused to be judged by it.

1689

Johann Caspar Pflaume, Leipziger Ratsherr und Stadtrichter

1692

Dorothea Hedwig von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Norburg, Äbtissin des Stiftes Gandersheim

1695

Karl II.

Karl II. von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, deutscher römisch-katholischer Bischof von Olmütz und Breslau

1700s 19

1700

Nicolaus Adam Strungk, deutscher Komponist

1705

Johann Heinrich Schweizer, Schweizer evangelischer Geistlicher und Hochschullehrer

1706

Ana Francisca de Borja y Doria, aristócrata española (n.

Ana Francisca de Borja y Doria, aristócrata española (n. 1640).

1716

Rodrigo Arias Maldonado y Góngora, misionero español (n.

Rodrigo Arias Maldonado y Góngora, misionero español (n. 1637).

1725

John Clayton, britischer Geistlicher, Geograph und Naturforscher

1728

Christian Thomasius

He lectured in German at a time when every serious academic in Europe lectured in Latin — a choice that got him mocked by colleagues and adored by students who could actually understand him. Christian Thomasius fought against witch trials and torture as forms of legal evidence in 18th-century Prussia, when both were still standard practice. He died in 1728 having helped dismantle two institutions most of his peers considered normal. The mockery didn't slow him down at all.

1736

Tatjana Fjodorowna Prontschischtschewa, erste russische Arktis-Forschungsreisende

1738

Herman Boerhaave

He was the most consulted physician in Europe and never accepted payment from poor patients. Herman Boerhaave taught medicine at Leiden by bringing students to actual bedsides — radical for an era when medical education was mostly lectures about ancient texts. His reputation spread so far that a letter addressed simply 'Boerhaave, Europe' was delivered correctly. He left behind clinical teaching as a method, and a generation of students who spread that method across a continent.

1739

Johann Christoph Aurbach, deutscher Beamter und Kanzleidirektor des Stifts Quedlinburg

1743

Erik Benzelius der Jüngere, schwedischer lutherischer Theologe und Erzbischof von Uppsala

1757

Florentinus Reinking, westfälischer Priester und Abt des Klosters Marienfeld

1764

Robert Dodsley

He started as a footman, wrote a play in secret, and handed it to Alexander Pope — who liked it enough to help him get it staged. Robert Dodsley parlayed that break into a bookshop, then a publishing house, then became the printer and patron of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith simultaneously. He left behind 'A Collection of Poems,' a multi-volume anthology that preserved hundreds of eighteenth-century works that would otherwise have vanished, assembled by a man who'd once been a servant.

1773

Johan Ernst Gunnerus

He was a Norwegian bishop who spent his sermons thinking about plants. Johan Ernst Gunnerus co-founded the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1760 and spent decades cataloguing flora across Norway — work he documented in his Flora Norvegica, one of the first systematic botanical surveys of the country. Carl Linnaeus, who was naming everything alive, named a genus after him: Gunnera, the giant-leafed plant that looks prehistoric. A bishop who moonlighted as a botanist left his name on a plant that looks like it belongs to the dinosaurs.

1780

Ernst Friedrich III., Herzog von Sachsen-Hildburghausen

1789

John Rogers

John Rogers practiced law in Connecticut and New York in the colonial and early republic era, served in the Continental Congress, and was among the founders working in the unglamorous middle — not drafting declarations but building procedural structures. He died in 1789, the year the Constitution he'd operated under was finally ratified and Washington took office. He spent his public life constructing a republic he just barely lived to see actually function.

1789

Silas Deane, Abgeordneter des amerikanischen Kontinentalkongresses und Diplomat der USA

1790

Rambaldo degli Azzoni Avogaro, italienischer katholischer Geistlicher, Heimatforscher und Numismatiker

1791

Carl von Gontard, deutscher Architekt

1793

Christianus Carolus Henricus van der Aa, niederländischer lutherischer Theologe

1800s 53

1803

Joseph Ritson, englischer Antiquar und Rechtsgelehrter

1814

Johann Jakob von Pistor, russischer Generalleutnant

1820

Friedrich Ludwig Abel, deutscher Geiger, Pianist, Musikpädagoge und Komponist

1820

François Christophe Kellermann, militar francés (n.

François Christophe Kellermann, militar francés (n. 1735).

1823

Nicolas Coquiart, homme politique belge (° 11 octobre 1752).

1825

Pedro Marieluz Garcés, prêtre catholique et martyr péruvien (° 1780).

1828

Richard Parkes Bonington, pintor británico (n.

Richard Parkes Bonington, pintor británico (n. 1802).

1830

Elizabeth Monroe, mujer estadounidense, esposa del presidente James Monroe (n.

Elizabeth Monroe, mujer estadounidense, esposa del presidente James Monroe (n. 1768).

1830

Elizabeth Monroe

Elizabeth Monroe redefined the role of First Lady by replacing the informal, open-house style of her predecessor with the rigid, European-style protocol she mastered as a diplomat’s wife. Her death in 1830 ended a tenure that transformed the White House into a formal center of executive power, establishing the social expectations that governed presidential hospitality for decades.

1832

José Félix de Restrepo fue un educador, escritor y abogado neogranadino.

José Félix de Restrepo fue un educador, escritor y abogado neogranadino. (n. 1760).

1835

Vincenzo Bellini

He was 33 years old and had written ten operas. Vincenzo Bellini died of acute dysentery at a friend's house outside Paris, probably from contaminated water, before he'd had a single bad decade. Wagner, who despised nearly everyone, wept. Chopin was a pallbearer. 'Norma,' written four years earlier, contained an aria — 'Casta Diva' — that Maria Callas would later call the most difficult ever composed for soprano. Bellini left behind a handful of scores so melodically pure that composers twice his age couldn't explain how he'd done it.

1835

Georg Adlersparre, político, escritor y militar sueco (n.

Georg Adlersparre, político, escritor y militar sueco (n. 1760).

1836

Andréi Razumovski, aristócrata y diplomático ruso (n.

Andréi Razumovski, aristócrata y diplomático ruso (n. 1752).

1836

María Malibrán, cantante de ópera francesa de origen español (n.

María Malibrán, cantante de ópera francesa de origen español (n. 1808).

1838

Gerhardus Marthinus Maritz, burischer Unternehmer und Voortrekker-Anführer

1844

Pjotr Kirillowitsch Essen, russischer General und Staatsmann

1844

Alexander von Benckendorff

Alexander von Benckendorff served as head of the Russian secret police — the Third Section — under Tsar Nicholas I, making him one of the most powerful men in Russia from 1826 until his death in 1844. He supervised the surveillance of Alexander Pushkin for years, reading the poet's correspondence and reporting on his movements. Pushkin described him as an implacable bureaucrat. Benckendorff described Pushkin as a dangerous talent worth watching. They were both right. The apparatus Benckendorff built — systematic political surveillance, informants in every institution — became the template for the Soviet secret police 80 years later.

1844

Alexander von Benckendorff, russischer General

1846

John Ainsworth Horrocks

John Ainsworth Horrocks was 28 years old when his own camel shot him. He was exploring South Australia's interior in 1846, reaching for his gun while mounted, when the camel lurched and triggered the weapon. The shot hit his hand and jaw. He survived long enough to order the camel destroyed — apparently it had a history of bad behavior — then died of his wounds. He left behind geographical surveys of South Australia and one of exploration history's most absurd exit stories.

1849

Juan Casacuberta, actor argentino (n.

Juan Casacuberta, actor argentino (n. 1798).

1850

Sukaseum, König von Luang Phrabang

1850

José Gervasio Artigas

José Gervasio Artigas died in exile in Paraguay, 30 years after the country he'd spent his life trying to liberate stopped fighting for him. He'd been the most powerful military leader in the Río de la Plata region, commanding a coalition that threatened Buenos Aires as much as the Spanish — which is why both eventually turned against him. He fled in 1820 and never returned. Uruguay declared independence without him. He died in 1850 at 86. They named the country's main square after him anyway.

1851

Jorge Torino, militar argentino (n.

Jorge Torino, militar argentino (n. 1786).

1851

Émilie Gamelin

Émilie Gamelin gave away most of what she had — first her inheritance, then her house, eventually everything — to build a refuge for poor and sick women in Montreal when no civic institution was doing it. She founded what became the Sisters of Providence in 1843. She died during a cholera outbreak in 1851, still inside the walls of the house she'd turned into a shelter. She was canonized as a saint in 2001, 150 years after the epidemic took her.

1852

John Vanderlyn, pintor estadounidense (n.

John Vanderlyn, pintor estadounidense (n. 1776).

1861

Therese Brunsvik, ungarische Adlige, Vertraute von Ludwig van Beethoven und Gründerin der Kindergärten in Ungarn

1863

Johannes Voigt, Historiker und Vater des Humanismusforschers Georg Voigt

1863

Juan Francisco de Vidal La Hoz, militar y político peruano (n.

Juan Francisco de Vidal La Hoz, militar y político peruano (n. 1800).

1867

Pedro Nolasco Vergara Albano, político chileno (n.

Pedro Nolasco Vergara Albano, político chileno (n. 1800).

1867

Michael O'Laughlen

Michael O'Laughlen was Lincoln's childhood friend. They'd grown up blocks apart in Washington. He joined the conspiracy anyway — not the assassination itself, but the plot to kill Secretary of State Seward. Convicted and sentenced to life, he died of yellow fever in a Florida prison in 1867, one of the epidemic's victims at Fort Jefferson. The man who conspired against his old neighbor outlived Lincoln by just two years.

1869

Johann Georg von Hahn, diplomático y filólogo austríaco (n.

Johann Georg von Hahn, diplomático y filólogo austríaco (n. 1811).

1870

Prosper Mérimée

He wrote 'Carmen' as a short story in 1845 — 45 pages, almost nobody noticed. Then Bizet turned it into an opera, and suddenly Mérimée was famous for something he'd dashed off in a notebook. He spent most of his actual career as Inspector General of Historical Monuments, saving buildings like the Cluny and Vézelay abbeys from demolition. He died days after France's catastrophic defeat at Sedan, reportedly from grief at what was happening to his country. He left behind a novella that became one of the most performed operas in history.

1870

Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer, pintor español (n.

Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer, pintor español (n. 1833).

1871

Louis-Joseph Papineau

He led an armed rebellion against British rule in 1837, fled to the United States when it failed, spent a decade in exile, and then returned to Canada to serve in its parliament — legally, officially, unremarkably. Louis-Joseph Papineau outlived not just his rebellion but the political order he'd fought against. He lived to eighty-four, long enough to see Confederation in 1867. He left behind the rebellion that Canada sometimes calls a failed revolution and sometimes calls a necessary provocation, depending on who's writing the textbook.

1871

Anselmo Llorente y La Fuente, obispo costarricense (n.

Anselmo Llorente y La Fuente, obispo costarricense (n. 1800).

1872

Feodora zu Leiningen, Fürstin zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg

1873

Jean Chacornac

He discovered six asteroids while working night shifts at the Paris Observatory with equipment that made his eyes ache for years. Jean Chacornac drew detailed maps of the moon's surface so precise they were used by astronomers for decades after his death. His name appears on a lunar crater. He left behind charts made by hand at a telescope in the dark, which is both the least glamorous and most patient form of scientific contribution imaginable.

1874

Santiago Arcos, ensayista y político chileno (n.

Santiago Arcos, ensayista y político chileno (n. 1822).

1875

Ulrike von Pogwisch, deutsche Priorin

1877

Urbain Le Verrier

He predicted the existence of Neptune purely through mathematics — never looked through a telescope, just noticed that Uranus was moving wrong and calculated what had to be pulling it. Urbain Le Verrier sent his numbers to a Berlin astronomer who found the planet on the first night he looked. Le Verrier was reportedly so difficult to work with that his own observatory staff celebrated when he died. He left behind Neptune, found exactly where he said it would be, which is an argument for tolerating difficult geniuses.

1879

Gustav von Epstein, österreichischer Bankier und Unternehmer

1882

Friedrich Wöhler, químico y pedagogo alemán (n.

Friedrich Wöhler, químico y pedagogo alemán (n. 1800).

1885

Carl Spitzweg, pintor alemán (n.

Carl Spitzweg, pintor alemán (n. 1808).

1886

Thomas Webster, peintre britannique (° 10 mars 1800).

1888

François Achille Bazaine, mariscal francés (n.

François Achille Bazaine, mariscal francés (n. 1811).

1889

Wilkie Collins

He was addicted to laudanum, kept three separate households running simultaneously, and wrote 'The Woman in White' while managing all of it. Wilkie Collins invented the modern detective novel almost accidentally, more interested in sensation than in genre. He refused to marry any of the women he lived with, which scandalized Victorian England considerably less than his plots did. He left behind 'The Moonstone,' which T.S. Eliot called the first and greatest English detective novel — written by a man whose personal life was its own unsolved mystery.

1889

Placido Maria Schiaffino, italienischer Abt und Kardinal

1890

Lorenz von Stein, deutscher Ökonom und Staatsrechtler

1891

Andrés Lamas, escritor uruguayo (n.

Andrés Lamas, escritor uruguayo (n. 1817).

1896

Ivar Aasen, filólogo noruego (n.

Ivar Aasen, filólogo noruego (n. 1813).

1896

Gilbert Duprez, französischer Operntenor und Komponist

1896

Ricardo Gutiérrez, cirujano y poeta argentino (n.

Ricardo Gutiérrez, cirujano y poeta argentino (n. 1836).

1896

Emmanuel Benner

Emmanuel Benner spent his career in Paris painting the female nude in landscapes — luminous, technically skilled work that sold well at the Salon and has since faded almost entirely from art historical consciousness. Born in Mulhouse in 1836, he came from a family of painters and chose the path of least resistance: beautiful figures, sunlit settings, appreciative buyers. He died in 1896 with a full career behind him. He left behind canvases in private collections across Europe, admired in their moment and largely uncollected now. The Salon rewarded him. Posterity shrugged.

1900s 168

1900

Arsenio Martínez Campos, militar y político español (n.

Arsenio Martínez Campos, militar y político español (n. 1831).

1900

William Marsh Rice

William Marsh Rice died in his New York apartment, the victim of a cold-blooded murder plot orchestrated by his valet and a lawyer to seize his massive fortune. This betrayal backfired when the resulting investigation uncovered the forged will, securing his estate for the endowment of the William M. Rice Institute, now Rice University.

1901

Alfred Pernice, deutscher Professor für römisches Recht

1902

John Wesley Powell, explorador estadounidense (n.

John Wesley Powell, explorador estadounidense (n. 1834).

1904

Émile Gallé, artista francés (n.

Émile Gallé, artista francés (n. 1846).

1905

Giuseppe Sacconi, arquitecto italiano (n.

Giuseppe Sacconi, arquitecto italiano (n. 1854).

1905

Karl Schilling, deutsch-baltischer Pastor und evangelischer Märtyrer

1909

Ernst aus’m Weerth, deutscher Historiker und Archäologe

1911

Samuel Oettli, Schweizer evangelischer Geistlicher und Hochschullehrer

1912

María Teresa de Borbón, Infanta de España y princesa de Baviera.

María Teresa de Borbón, Infanta de España y princesa de Baviera. (n. 1882).

1913

Donato Álvarez

Donato Álvarez was born in 1825 and died in 1913 at 88 — which means he was born under the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and died in the Argentine Republic, having lived through the entire formation of modern Argentina. He fought as a general through the country's wars of the mid-19th century, including conflicts that defined Argentina's borders and internal politics for generations. Soldiers who live long enough to become old generals become living connections between the founding violence and the settled state. Álvarez was that connection.

1913

Julius Anton Adam, deutscher Genre- und Tiermaler sowie Lithograf

1915

Frederick Hamilton Davey, botánico británico (n.

Frederick Hamilton Davey, botánico británico (n. 1868).

1916

Kiffin Rockwell, pilote américain pendant la Première Guerre mondiale (° 20 septembre 1892).

1916

Oliver Godfrey, britischer Motorradrennfahrer und Flieger im Ersten Weltkrieg

1917

Werner Voss

He was 20 years old and had already shot down 48 Allied aircraft. On September 23, 1917, Werner Voss flew his Fokker triplane alone into a squadron of seven British SE.5s — including some of the RAF's best pilots — and fought them all simultaneously for ten minutes before they brought him down. The British pilots who killed him filed reports expressing open admiration for what they'd just witnessed. He left behind 48 kills and one last fight that his enemies couldn't stop talking about.

1918

Matilde De Fassi, acrobate équestre italo-espagnole (° 13 février 1845).

1919

Seth Bullock, comerciante, ranchero y alguacil estadounidense (n.

Seth Bullock, comerciante, ranchero y alguacil estadounidense (n. 1849).

1919

Heinrich Bruns, deutscher Mathematiker und Astronom

1920

Juan Manuel Cafferata, político argentino (n.

Juan Manuel Cafferata, político argentino (n. 1852).

1920

Heinrich Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden, deutscher Politiker

1924

Julius Keck, deutscher Politiker

1926

Stanislas Touchet , französischer Bischof

1926

Paul Kammerer, österreichischer Zoologe

1928

Matthew Arthur, 1.

Matthew Arthur, 1. Baron Glenarthur, schottischer Geschäftsmann und Peer

1928

María Larraín de Vicuña, activista y escritora chilena (n.

María Larraín de Vicuña, activista y escritora chilena (n. ¿?).

1929

Richard Adolf Zsigmondy

Richard Zsigmondy wanted to understand why gold ruby glass was red — specifically, what was happening at the scale smaller than light could reveal. To answer it, he co-invented the ultramicroscope, a device that let scientists observe particles previously invisible to any instrument. It opened up colloid chemistry as a legitimate scientific field. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1925. The question started with glass color. The answer reshaped how we understand matter at the nanoscale.

1929

Louis-Ernest Dubois, cardinal français (° 1er septembre 1856).

1930

Manuel Sebastián Campos Sánchez, político chileno (n.

Manuel Sebastián Campos Sánchez, político chileno (n. 1853).

1932

Jules Chéret, pintor francés (n.

Jules Chéret, pintor francés (n. 1836).

1933

Theodor Fuchs, deutscher Verwaltungsjurist und Politiker

1936

Rafael Salazar Alonso, político español (n.

Rafael Salazar Alonso, político español (n. 1895).

1937

Cleto González Víquez, político costarricense (n.

Cleto González Víquez, político costarricense (n. 1858).

1938

Aurelio Giorni, italienisch-amerikanischer Pianist und Komponist

1939

Francisco León de la Barra

Francisco León de la Barra served as Mexico's interim president for just six months in 1911 — the bridge between Porfirio Díaz's 35-year dictatorship and Francisco Madero's elected government. A diplomat by training, he was chosen precisely because he seemed unthreatening. But he undermined Emiliano Zapata's negotiations during that window, allowing federal troops to move against Zapatista forces when peace was still possible. Whether deliberately or through miscalculation, that choice helped shatter the fragile post-Díaz peace. He lived until 1939. Madero was dead by 1913.

1939

Floyd Gibbons, periodista estadounidense (n.

Floyd Gibbons, periodista estadounidense (n. 1887).

1939

Louis Levin, deutscher Jurist

1939

Jimmy Windridge, futbolista británico (n.

Jimmy Windridge, futbolista británico (n. 1882).

1939

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud built a theory of the unconscious that reshaped how Western culture thinks about the self, motivation, and desire — and was wrong about a significant portion of it. The Oedipus complex, penis envy, the death drive: most of his more specific claims haven't survived scientific testing. What has survived is the framework: that people are driven by motivations they don't fully understand, that childhood experience shapes adult behavior, that language and narrative structure the mind, that there is more going on beneath the surface than people are willing to admit. He died in London in September 1939, weeks into the war that had driven him from Vienna, of oral cancer, attended by the physician he'd asked to end his suffering when the pain became unbearable. The physician did.

1940

Hale Holden

Hale Holden ran the Southern Pacific Railroad and then the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad during the first decades of the 20th century — which meant managing thousands of miles of track, tens of thousands of employees, and the political relationships that kept rail monopolies alive in an era when Congress kept trying to regulate them. Born in 1869, he was a lawyer before he was a railroad man, which turned out to be exactly the right preparation. He died in 1940, just as air travel was beginning to suggest that railroads weren't permanent. He didn't live to see the suggestion become a fact.

1940

Marcel Van Crombrugge

Marcel Van Crombrugge won a bronze medal rowing for Belgium at the 1900 Paris Olympics, part of an era when the competition schedule was so chaotic that some athletes didn't realize they'd competed in the Olympics until years later. He died in 1940, as Belgium fell to German occupation — a country that had once celebrated international sport suddenly consumed by something far darker. He left behind a medal from a Games the world had barely noticed.

1940

Fusajiro Yamauchi, empresario japonés, fundador de Nintendo (n.

Fusajiro Yamauchi, empresario japonés, fundador de Nintendo (n. 1859).

1941

Delfín Lévano, revolucionario peruano (n.

Delfín Lévano, revolucionario peruano (n. 1885).

1942

Wilhelm Wandschneider, deutscher Bildhauer

1942

Alfredo Carricaberry, futbolista argentino (n.

Alfredo Carricaberry, futbolista argentino (n. 1900).

1942

غمام الهمذاني، شاعر إيراني.

1943

Elinor Glyn

She invented the concept of the 'It girl' — literally coined the term in her 1927 novel, meaning a quality of magnetic personal appeal that couldn't be taught or bought. Elinor Glyn had also scandalized Edwardian England by writing Three Weeks, a novel so sexually suggestive that it was banned in libraries and became a bestseller immediately. She died in 1943, broke, having spent a fortune on clothes and parties. She left behind a two-letter word the internet still uses daily.

1943

Salvo D'Acquisto, militar italiano (n.

Salvo D'Acquisto, militar italiano (n. 1920).

1943

Ernst Trygger, político sueco (n.

Ernst Trygger, político sueco (n. 1857).

1943

Lucien Sicotte, kanadischer Violinist und Musikpädagoge

1943

Theodor Wolff, deutscher Schriftsteller, Publizist und Kritiker, Opfer der Shoah

1943

Salvo D'Acquisto

Salvo D'Acquisto was 22 years old when he told German SS officers that he alone was responsible for a resistance attack he had nothing to do with — stepping forward to save 22 Italian civilians from execution. The SS shot him instead. Born in Naples in 1920, he'd joined the Carabinieri at 18 and had served barely four years when the occupation forced that moment in September 1943. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1983. What he left was a name that Italy has given to streets, schools, and barracks — and a choice that most people never have to make.

1944

Eduard Hamm, deutscher Politiker

1944

Matylda Pálfyová, slowakische Turnerin

1944

Jakob Schaffner

He'd been a socialist labor organizer before becoming a Nazi propagandist — which is a journey that requires specific self-explanation. Jakob Schaffner wrote working-class fiction that earned genuine praise, then spent the 1930s writing pro-Hitler pamphlets distributed across occupied Europe. He was shot by French forces after liberation. He left behind novels about poverty that Swiss literary history doesn't know quite what to do with, written by someone who later helped build the system that made poverty worse for millions.

1945

Honorio Pueyrredon, catedrático y político argentino (n.

Honorio Pueyrredon, catedrático y político argentino (n. 1876).

1946

أبو الحسن الموسوي الأصفهاني، مرجع وفقيه شيعي إثني عشري.

1947

Nikola Petkow, bulgarischer Politiker

1948

Gustav Ricker, deutscher Arzt und Pathologe

1949

Pierre de Bréville, französischer Komponist

1950

Sam Barry

Sam Barry coached basketball, football, AND baseball at USC — simultaneously, for stretches — which is either genius or a scheduling catastrophe. He built the USC Trojans basketball program into a genuine powerhouse during the 1930s and 40s, winning multiple Pacific Coast Conference titles. He died in 1950 at 58, still active in coaching. Three sports, one man, zero off-seasons.

1951

Siegfried Bettmann

He named his bicycle company after a town he found on a map — Coventry — and the brand became Triumph. Siegfried Bettmann started with bicycles, moved to motorcycles, and eventually put Triumph on roads across the British Empire. He was German-born, became mayor of Coventry, and was then interned as an enemy alien during WWI in the very city he'd helped build. The motorcycles outlasted every irony.

1952

Karel Hoffmeister, tschechischer Pianist und Musikwissenschaftler

1953

Carlos Haverbeck Richter, político chileno (n.

Carlos Haverbeck Richter, político chileno (n. 1894).

1955

Konstantin Hierl, deutscher Offizier, Politiker und Parteifunktionär

1955

Ludwig Adamovich senior, deutscher Jurist, Präsident des österreichischen Verfassungsgerichtshofes

1956

Lo Simons, niederländischer Motorradrennfahrer

1958

Jacob Nicol

He ran the Sherbrooke La Tribune for decades, sat in the Quebec Legislative Council, and served as provincial secretary — a man who collected powerful positions the way others collect stamps. Jacob Nicol died in 1958 having shaped Quebec's French-language press infrastructure at a time when that infrastructure was the primary way a community held itself together. He left behind newspapers. Newspapers outlasted most of what politicians built.

1958

Walter F. Otto, deutscher Altphilologe und Religionswissenschaftler

1959

George Padmore, político trinitense (n.

George Padmore, político trinitense (n. 1902).

1961

John Eldredge, US-amerikanischer Schauspieler

1961

Hans Schaefer deutscher Althistoriker

1962

Patrick Hamilton, escritor británico (n.

Patrick Hamilton, escritor británico (n. 1904).

1962

Ernst von Leyser, deutscher General, Kriegsverbrecher

1963

Willie Eckstein, kanadischer Pianist und Komponist

1963

Silvia Koller, österreichische Malerin

1963

Margarethe Faas-Hardegger, Schweizer Frauenrechtlerin und Gewerkschafterin

1964

Fred M. Wilcox, cineasta estadounidense (n.

Fred M. Wilcox, cineasta estadounidense (n. 1907).

1965

Jean Goulet, kanadischer Geiger, Klarinettist, Dirigent und Musikpädagoge

1965

Joseph Ferche, Weihbischof in Breslau und Köln

1966

Carlo Colombi, Schweizer Ingenieur und Hochschullehrer

1967

Giovanni Barrella, escritor y pintor italiano (n.

Giovanni Barrella, escritor y pintor italiano (n. 1884).

1967

Stanislaus Zbyszko

Stanislaus Zbyszko won the World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship in 1921 by defeating Joe Stecher in a match that lasted over two hours. He was 42. He'd started as a genuine Greco-Roman competitor in Europe before wrestling turned theatrical in America — and he straddled both worlds without apology. He died in 1967 at 88, still the most decorated Polish wrestler most Americans had never heard of.

1968

Rosa Bartl, deutsche Zauberkünstlerin

1968

Pio of Pietrelcina

Padre Pio bore the stigmata — wounds on his hands, feet, and side corresponding to the crucifixion — for fifty years, from 1918 until his death. The Vatican investigated him twice and suspended him from public ministry for a decade, suspicious of the attention the wounds attracted. He received thousands of letters a year from people seeking intercession. He spent up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional. He was also reportedly capable of bilocation — being in two places at once — which the Vatican neither confirmed nor denied. He died in September 1968, and the stigmata wounds that had been visible for fifty years were completely healed by the time of his death. No medical explanation was offered.

1968

Jules Fil, homme politique français (° 2 février 1899).

1968

Francesco Forgione

He bore stigmata — the wounds of Christ — for fifty years, and the Vatican spent decades trying to prove he was faking. They never could. Padre Pio was investigated, suspended from public ministry, and monitored by church authorities who were deeply skeptical. He spent those suspended years praying in a small room. When he died in 1968, his wounds had closed completely — no scars remaining. He left behind a friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, a hospital he'd fundraised to build, and a medical mystery nobody officially resolved.

1969

Crestoper William Wijeyekoon Kannangara, sri-lankischer Anwalt und Politiker

1969

Hans Deppe, deutscher Regisseur

1970

Esteban de Bilbao Eguía, político español (n.

Esteban de Bilbao Eguía, político español (n. 1879).

1970

Mariano Castillo, ajedrecista chileno (n.

Mariano Castillo, ajedrecista chileno (n. 1905).

1970

Charlotte Armbruster, deutsche Politikerin

1970

Bourvil

His real name was André Rimbaud — he took Bourvil as a stage name from his Norman village — and he started performing to make farm work bearable. He became one of France's best-loved comic actors, then proved he was something else entirely with his heartbreaking performance in The Crossing of the Rhine in 1960. He died of bone cancer in 1970 at 53, still working. He left behind Le Corniaud, La Grande Vadrouille, and the face of a man who made sadness look like warmth.

1970

John Gawsworth, escritor británico (n.

John Gawsworth, escritor británico (n. 1912).

1970

Bourvil, actor y cantante francés (n.

Bourvil, actor y cantante francés (n. 1917).

1971

Billy Gilbert, actor y humorista estadounidense (n.

Billy Gilbert, actor y humorista estadounidense (n. 1894).

1971

Billy Gilbert

His sneeze could fill a theater. Billy Gilbert built an entire career on that one physical gag — a slow, torturous, full-body buildup to an explosion — and Disney came calling specifically because of it. He voiced Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, recording the role in a single session. He left behind one of animation's most remembered supporting characters, built entirely from a bit he'd been doing in vaudeville since he was a teenager.

1971

J. W. Alexander

He tied knots for a living — mathematically speaking. James Waddell Alexander II spent his career at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study finding ways to prove that two knots weren't the same knot, inventing what's now called the Alexander polynomial to do it. He also refused a pay raise during the Depression so junior colleagues could keep their salaries. He left behind tools that modern DNA researchers still use to understand how strands tangle inside cells.

1972

Nikolái Turovérov, escritor ruso (n.

Nikolái Turovérov, escritor ruso (n. 1899).

1972

Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, empresario mexicano (n.

Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, empresario mexicano (n. 1895).

1972

Theodor Auer, deutscher Diplomat

1972

Gerard Boedijn, niederländischer Komponist

1973

Eduard Berend, deutscher Germanist

1973

Alexander Sutherland Neill, pedagogo británico (n.

Alexander Sutherland Neill, pedagogo británico (n. 1883).

1973

Pablo Neruda Dies: Nobel Poet Silenced After Chilean Coup

Pablo Neruda died on September 23, 1973 — twelve days after the military coup that killed his friend Salvador Allende. The official cause was heart failure. Neruda's driver claimed the Nobel Prize-winning poet had been injected with something by a doctor in the clinic where he was being treated, and in 2023 forensic investigators found evidence of bacterial compounds in his remains consistent with assassination. The Pinochet regime denied involvement. His funeral became one of the first public acts of resistance against the new dictatorship. Thousands came despite the danger. His house in Santiago was ransacked by soldiers. His poems survived.

1974

Pierre Lepage, homme politique français (° 5 avril 1909).

1974

Willem van der Woude, niederländischer Mathematiker

1974

Hanada Kiyoteru, japanischer Literaturkritiker

1974

Cliff Arquette

Cliff Arquette spent decades playing Charlie Weaver on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" — a folksy small-town character he'd invented for radio and somehow kept alive through television's entire golden age. Born in 1905, he worked in almost every medium that existed during his lifetime. He died in 1974, and his grandson is Alexis Arquette, his granddaughter Patricia. He built a family of performers without apparently trying.

1974

Robbie McIntosh

Robbie McIntosh’s sudden death from a heroin overdose at age 24 silenced one of the most promising funk drummers of the 1970s. His precise, syncopated grooves defined the Average White Band’s signature sound, and his loss forced the group to navigate the sudden vacuum in their rhythm section just as they reached international fame.

1974

José Alvarado Santos, escritor y periodista mexicano (n.

José Alvarado Santos, escritor y periodista mexicano (n. 1911).

1975

René Thomas, französischer Automobilrennfahrer und Flugpionier

1975

Ian Hunter, acteur britannique (° 13 juin 1900).

1976

Raúl Soulés Baldó, médico y político venezolano (n.

Raúl Soulés Baldó, médico y político venezolano (n. 1907).

1978

Lyman Bostock

He was 27, hitting .296, and had just donated his September salary to charity because he felt he hadn't earned it. Lyman Bostock was riding in a car in Gary, Indiana when a man fired a shotgun at another passenger — and hit Bostock instead. A bystander. Wrong place, nothing more. He'd signed a $2.25 million contract with the Angels that spring, one of the biggest in baseball. He left behind a reputation so generous it almost doesn't seem real.

1978

Ernst Kolb, österreichischer Politiker und Jurist

1979

حسني كابو، سياسي وعسكري ألباني.

1979

Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey worked steadily in British film and television for five decades, the kind of actor directors trusted with a single scene and got three characters instead. She appeared in The Lady Vanishes in 1938, running alongside Hitchcock's paranoia at its sharpest. She left behind 70 years of craft — no signature role, just an extraordinary record of never wasting a moment on screen.

1980

Jiří Hrzán, tschechischer Schauspieler

1980

Jim Fouché

He was a farmer from the Free State before he became South Africa's State President — a largely ceremonial role he held from 1968 to 1975 under the apartheid government. Jim Fouché was 70 when he took office and served through some of the most internationally isolated years of the regime. He died in 1980 at 82, on his farm outside Bloemfontein, where he'd started. The office he held was abolished in 1984, replaced by an executive presidency. The farm outlasted the constitution.

1981

Francisco Labbé Labbé, político chileno (n.

Francisco Labbé Labbé, político chileno (n. 1897).

1981

Chief Dan George

Chief Dan George didn't act in a film until he was 71. His performance in 'Little Big Man' in 1970 — dignified, devastating, quietly funny — earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He'd been a longshoreman, a school bus driver, and a chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation before Hollywood noticed him. He died in 1981 at 82. What he left behind: a speech he gave in 1967 called 'Lament for Confederation' that Canadians still quote without always knowing who wrote it.

1982

Jimmy Wakely, US-amerikanischer Sänger

1982

Richard Müller-Lampertz, deutscher Dirigent, Pianist und Komponist

1983

Fritz von Borries, deutscher Komponist, Kapellmeister und Musikpädagoge

1984

Harald Meschendörfer, rumänisch-deutscher Maler und Grafiker

1984

Tilsa Tsuchiya, pintora peruana (n.

Tilsa Tsuchiya, pintora peruana (n. 1929).

1984

Anatoli Novikov, compositeur soviétique (° 30 octobre 1896).

1984

Octavio Suárez, piloto de carreras argentino (n.

Octavio Suárez, piloto de carreras argentino (n. 1932).

1985

Beppe Assenza, italienischer Maler

1986

Jelena Maximowa, sowjetische Filmschauspielerin

1987

Maria Müller-Gögler, deutsche Schriftstellerin

1987

Homero Expósito, poeta y letrista argentino de tangos (n.

Homero Expósito, poeta y letrista argentino de tangos (n. 1918).

1987

Louis Kentner, ungarisch-britischer Pianist und Komponist

1987

Bob Fosse

Bob Fosse collapsed on a sidewalk in Washington D.C. on September 23, 1987 — he was 60 years old and had just watched a revival of "Sweet Charity" go up. His heart simply stopped. He'd had open-heart surgery in 1974, the year he simultaneously won the Oscar, the Tony, and the Emmy — a triple nobody's matched. He left behind "Chicago," "Cabaret," and a physical vocabulary for jazz dance that every choreographer since has borrowed from.

1987

Erland van Lidth de Jeude, acteur américain (° 3 juin 1953).

1988

Luis Losada, periodista español (n.

Luis Losada, periodista español (n. 1929).

1988

Tibor Sekelj

Tibor Sekelj was Croatian, wrote in Esperanto by choice, explored the Amazon, climbed in the Himalayas, and documented indigenous communities across South America — all while maintaining that Esperanto would someday become a genuine lingua franca. He published in a language most people considered a pleasant failure. He left behind 60 books, a mountain of geographical research, and the rare distinction of being an explorer who was also a committed utopian, and who never stopped being either.

1988

Friedrich Jost, deutscher Physikochemiker

1989

Julio Corzo, político argentino (n.

Julio Corzo, político argentino (n. 1927).

1989

Bradley Kincaid, US-amerikanischer Folk- und Old-Time-Musiker

1992

Arístides Bastidas, periodista venezolano (n.

Arístides Bastidas, periodista venezolano (n. 1924).

1992

Glendon Swarthout

Glendon Swarthout spent years as a university professor before 'The Shootist' — his 1975 novel about a dying gunfighter — became John Wayne's final film. Wayne reportedly said the role was the best of his career. Swarthout wrote it in the voice of a man making peace with death, which hit differently given what Wayne was quietly battling himself. The professor from Michigan handed a legend his exit.

1992

Roberto Rodríguez Luna, guitarrista y cantante estadounidense (n.

Roberto Rodríguez Luna, guitarrista y cantante estadounidense (n. 1927).

1992

Mary Santpere, actriz española (n.

Mary Santpere, actriz española (n. 1913).

1992

James Van Fleet

James Van Fleet commanded U.S. forces in Korea and is credited with stabilizing the front after the chaos of 1950 — but he was famously furious at the ammunition restrictions Washington imposed on him, arguing he could've ended the war faster. He called it "the greatest complication." He died in 1992 at age 100. He left behind a combat record spanning two World Wars and Korea, and a quote about bureaucracy that military historians still argue about.

1992

Ivar Ivask

Ivar Ivask edited World Literature Today for 22 years from Oklahoma — a Baltic exile editing a global literary journal from the American midwest, writing poetry in Estonian and German simultaneously. He championed writers the Cold War tried to silence. When he died in 1992, Estonia had just regained independence. He didn't quite make it home, but the country he carried in his poems did.

1994

Alfred Lemmnitz, deutscher Schriftsetzer, Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und Minister in der DDR

1994

Jerry Barber

Jerry Barber was 45 years old when he won the 1961 PGA Championship — sinking three long putts on the final three holes to force a playoff, then winning it the next day. At 45. Against players half his age. He stood 5-foot-5 and weighed 130 pounds and was putting on greens that weren't built for someone his size to dominate. He left behind that playoff, and a lesson about what's possible on the last Sunday when nobody expects you.

1994

Robert Bloch

He was seventeen when he began corresponding with H.P. Lovecraft — actual letters, back and forth, with the man who terrified a generation — and Lovecraft encouraged him to write horror seriously. Robert Bloch took the advice. He left behind 'Psycho,' a novel he wrote in six weeks based on Ed Gein, which Alfred Hitchcock bought for nine thousand dollars and turned into the film that changed what movies were allowed to show. Bloch always said the killer's psychology interested him more than the knife.

1994

Madeleine Renaud

She spent 60 years on stage with the same man — her husband, director Jean-Louis Barrault — and never seemed to need anywhere else. Madeleine Renaud was still performing into her 80s, still drawing Paris crowds who'd been watching her since the silent film era. She turned down Hollywood. Repeatedly. She left behind a theater company, the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, that she and Barrault built from nothing after the Comédie-Française fired him for supporting a student revolt in 1968.

1994

Jochen Allihn, deutscher Dirigent und Komponist

1994

Severino Minelli, Schweizer Fußballspieler

1995

Booker T. Laury, cantante y pianista estadounidense (n.

Booker T. Laury, cantante y pianista estadounidense (n. 1914).

1996

František Rauch, tschechischer Pianist und Musikpädagoge

1996

Fujiko F. Fujio, mangaka japonés (n.

Fujiko F. Fujio, mangaka japonés (n. 1933).

1996

Károly Kárpáti, lutteur hongrois (° 2 juillet 1906).

1996

Fujiko F. Fujio, mangaka japonais (° 1er décembre 1933).

1996

Fujiko F. Fujio

Fujiko F. Fujio created Doraemon — the robotic cat from the future — in 1969, and it became one of the best-selling manga series in history with over 100 million copies sold. But he co-created it with his childhood friend under a shared pen name, and when they split professionally in 1987, Doraemon stayed with him. A character born from friendship, divided by professional separation, kept alive by one half of the partnership. He left behind a blue cat and 45 volumes.

1997

Natalie Savage Carlson

She grew up hearing stories from her French-Canadian grandmother and never quite stopped writing them down. Natalie Savage Carlson turned those inherited tales into The Family Under the Bridge, a 1958 Newbery Honor Book about a Paris hobo and three homeless children — tender without being sentimental. She wrote over 20 books for children, almost all of them rooted in real places and real people she'd actually known. The grandmother made it possible.

1997

Albert Debille, französischer Automobilrennfahrer

1997

Shirley Clarke, réalisatrice américaine (° 2 octobre 1919).

1998

Thelma del Río, actriz argentina (n.

Thelma del Río, actriz argentina (n. 1926).

1998

Héctor Vilches, footballeur uruguayen (° 14 février 1926).

1998

Ray Bowden

Ray Bowden was part of the Arsenal side that won back-to-back First Division titles in 1934 and 1935 — the most dominant English club of that era. He was quick, creative, and perpetually underrated next to the bigger names around him. A knee injury ended his career earlier than anyone expected. He left behind a brief but decorated run with one of English football's most celebrated pre-war squads.

1998

Lilico, humorista brasileiro (n.

Lilico, humorista brasileiro (n. 1937).

1998

Mary Frann

Mary Frann was best known as Joanna Loudon on "Newhart" — the calm, warm center of one of television's most beloved sitcoms. But she'd spent years in soap operas before that, grinding through "Days of Our Lives" and "The Bold and the Beautiful." She died suddenly of a heart attack in 1998, at 55, just months after "Newhart" had ended. She left behind eight seasons of a show that ended with what many consider the greatest sitcom finale ever written.

1999

Ivan Goff

Ivan Goff co-wrote 'White Heat' — the 1949 James Cagney film that ends with one of cinema's most famous final lines, 'Made it, Ma! Top of the world!' — and later created the TV series 'Charlie's Angels.' The distance between those two projects is the whole story of Hollywood's shift from noir to jiggle TV in 25 years. He left behind both, which means he understood what audiences wanted in two completely different eras. That's rarer than one good script.

2000s 146

2000

Aurelio Rodríguez

Aurelio Rodríguez redefined defensive standards at third base, earning a Gold Glove in 1976 for his exceptional range and arm strength. His sudden death in a traffic accident in Detroit cut short a transition into coaching, silencing one of the most reliable gloves in Major League Baseball history.

2000

Carl Rowan

Carl Rowan grew up in a Tennessee town with no electricity, became a Navy officer in 1944 when the Navy barely accepted Black officers, and by 1964 was running the United States Information Agency — the first Black American to sit on the National Security Council. He later shot a teenager who'd trespassed in his pool, which became a strange coda to a career spent arguing for civil rights. He left behind a syndicated column read in 600 papers and a life that made almost every room he entered more complicated.

2000

Aída Poblete, pintora chilena (n.

Aída Poblete, pintora chilena (n. 1914).

2000

Raoul Berger

He was born in Ukraine in 1901, immigrated to America, worked as a violinist, then taught himself law and didn't pass the bar until he was in his forties. Raoul Berger became one of the most influential constitutional scholars of the 20th century, writing 'Government by Judiciary' in 1977 — a book that challenged the expansion of judicial power so directly it became required reading for both those who agreed and those who were furious. He died in 2000 at 99. Still arguing, right up to the end.

2001

Ron Hewitt

Ron Hewitt scored the goal that sent Wales to their only-ever World Cup. In a 1958 qualifier against Israel, his strike sealed the result that put a Welsh side — including a 18-year-old John Charles — on a plane to Sweden. They made it to the quarterfinals. He left behind that singular moment: the goal that gave an entire nation its one and only taste of the game's biggest stage.

2001

Elton Hayes, guitarrista y actor británico (n.

Elton Hayes, guitarrista y actor británico (n. 1915).

2001

Eugenio Hirsch, artista austríaco (n.

Eugenio Hirsch, artista austríaco (n. 1923).

2001

Henryk Tomaszewski, polnischer Schauspieler und Pantomime

2001

Emilio Saraco, artista argentino (n.

Emilio Saraco, artista argentino (n. 1912).

2002

Eberhard Werner, deutscher Künstler und Landschaftsmaler

2002

Erich Oberdorfer, deutscher Pflanzenbiologe

2002

Eduard Gufeld, ajedrecista ucraniano (n.

Eduard Gufeld, ajedrecista ucraniano (n. 1936).

2002

Vernon Corea

He made Sri Lanka sound like the rest of the world. Vernon Corea joined the BBC World Service and spent decades as one of its most recognized voices — a Sri Lankan accent in an institution built almost entirely around received British pronunciation. He helped open the door. He left behind a broadcasting career that spanned continents and showed a generation of South Asian journalists that the microphone wasn't reserved for one kind of voice.

2002

John Baptist Wu Cheng-Chung, cardinal chinois (° 26 mars 1925).

2003

Yuri Senkevich

Yuri Senkevich sailed with Thor Heyerdahl on the Ra II expedition in 1970 — across the Atlantic on a papyrus boat — as the expedition's physician. Then he hosted 'Travelers Club' on Soviet television for 30 years, bringing the outside world into living rooms that couldn't go there. A doctor who became an explorer who became the face of curiosity for an entire country. He left behind 30 years of broadcasts and the specific gift of making the world feel accessible from inside a closed one.

2003

Zubayr Al-Rimi

Zubayr Al-Rimi was identified as a senior al-Qaeda operative in Saudi Arabia and was killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces in Riyadh in 2003. He was 29. Saudi authorities had listed him among the 19 most-wanted terrorists following the Riyadh compound bombings that May. The operation that killed him was part of a crackdown that reshaped Saudi counterterrorism for the decade that followed.

2003

Ronnie Dawson

Ronnie Dawson cut 'Action Packed' in 1958 for Columbia Records, one of the rawest rockabilly tracks to come out of Texas, and the label promptly had no idea what to do with it. He was 19. He spent decades being rediscovered by people who understood what he'd done before the industry caught up. He left behind recordings that kept finding new listeners 20, 30, 40 years later — which is what happens when you're early enough that the world has to come back to you.

2003

Paul Almásy, fotógrafo húngaro (n.

Paul Almásy, fotógrafo húngaro (n. 1906).

2004

André Hazes

He grew up selling newspapers on Amsterdam street corners and never lost the rough edges. André Hazes became the Netherlands' most beloved working-class singer by sounding exactly like what he was — a man who drank too much, loved too hard, and meant every word. His funeral drew 50,000 people to the Ajax stadium. He left behind albums that Dutch people still play at weddings and funerals with equal conviction, which is about as high as a singer can aim.

2004

Billy Reay

He coached the Chicago Blackhawks for 13 seasons — the longest tenure in franchise history — and never won a Stanley Cup, which somehow doesn't diminish what he built. Billy Reay took a moribund team and made them competitive year after year through the 1960s and 70s with almost no margin for error. He left behind a coaching record of 516 wins that stood as a Blackhawks standard for decades.

2004

Bob Mason

Bob Mason worked steadily through British television for decades — the kind of actor directors called when they needed a scene anchored by someone utterly reliable. Character work, mostly. The roles that don't get nominated but without which nothing holds together. He left behind dozens of appearances across BBC dramas and comedies that still turn up in late-night repeats, his face recognizable even when nobody can quite place the name.

2004

Yang Huanyi, dernière chinoise de la minorité Yao sachant écrire en nüshu (° 1906).

2004

Raja Ramanna, physicien et homme politique indien (° 28 janvier 1925).

2004

Escadinha, criminoso brasileiro (n.

Escadinha, criminoso brasileiro (n. 1956).

2004

Johann Scherz, österreichischer Karambolagespieler

2004

Dido Sotiriou, griechische Schriftstellerin

2004

André Hazes, cantante neerlandés (n.

André Hazes, cantante neerlandés (n. 1951).

2005

Roger Brierley

Roger Brierley specialized in authority figures who were quietly, completely wrong. Judges, headmasters, pompous officials — he played them all with a precision that made you laugh and wince at the same time. British television used him constantly for 40 years. He left behind a filmography full of supporting turns that elevated every scene he entered, including a memorable run on Last of the Summer Wine that audiences still quote.

2005

Peter Thom, deutscher Schauspieler

2005

Peter Tettinger, deutscher Rechtswissenschaftler, Richter am Verfassungsgerichtshof Nordrhein-Westfalen

2005

Apolonio de Carvalho, homme politique brésilien (° 9 février 1912).

2005

Filiberto Ojeda Ríos

Filiberto Ojeda Ríos led the Macheteros, a Puerto Rican independence group the FBI spent decades trying to dismantle. He'd been under house arrest awaiting trial when he cut off his monitoring bracelet and vanished in 1990 — staying underground for 15 years. The FBI finally tracked him down and surrounded his house on September 23, 2005 — Puerto Rican Grito de Lares day, the anniversary of an 1868 independence uprising. They shot him during the standoff. The timing was not coincidental, and Puerto Rico noticed.

2006

Etta Baker

She didn't record her first album until she was 81. Etta Baker had been playing Piedmont blues guitar since the 1920s, taught by her father, teaching her own children, keeping the style alive in the North Carolina foothills while the music industry looked everywhere else. That 1994 debut finally introduced her to the wider world. She left behind a fingerpicking technique so clean and precise that guitar conservatories now teach it as its own discipline.

2006

Malcolm Arnold

Malcolm Arnold wrote the Bridge on the River Kwai march in ten minutes. He said so himself. It won him an Academy Award in 1958 and became one of the most recognizable film scores of the century. But Arnold spent decades battling severe mental illness, alcoholism, and a feeling that serious musicians didn't take him seriously. He wrote nine symphonies, hundreds of works, and one ten-minute march that everyone whistles. He died in 2006 knowing exactly which one would follow him.

2006

Tim Rooney, actor estadounidense (n.

Tim Rooney, actor estadounidense (n. 1947).

2007

Renzo Barbieri, escritor y dibujante italiano (n.

Renzo Barbieri, escritor y dibujante italiano (n. 1940).

2007

Pepe Marchena (bailaor), bailaor flamenco español (n.

Pepe Marchena (bailaor), bailaor flamenco español (n. 1941).

2008

Wally Hilgenberg, US-amerikanischer American-Football-Spieler

2008

Rudolf Illovszky, footballeur hongrois (° 21 février 1922).

2008

Pedro Masó, director y productor de cine español (n.

Pedro Masó, director y productor de cine español (n. 1927).

2008

Peter Leonard

Peter Leonard spent decades as a journalist covering Australian and international affairs — the kind of career built on shoe leather and source relationships rather than bylines. Born in 1942, he worked through the transformation of media from print dominance to the early digital era. He died in 2008. He left behind decades of reporting that informed how Australians understood events they'd never witness themselves. The work that disappears into the historical record is still work.

2008

Esther de Figueiredo Ferraz, advogada e professora brasileira (n.

Esther de Figueiredo Ferraz, advogada e professora brasileira (n. 1915).

2008

Loren Pope

He wrote a 1966 Washington Evening Star article arguing that most colleges weren't worth attending — a radical position for a journalist with no academic credentials to say it. Loren Pope then founded the College of That Change Lives project, steering thousands of students toward smaller, less famous schools. He died in 2008 at 98, having spent four decades insisting that prestige and education weren't the same thing. He was right, and it cost him nothing to say so.

2009

Paul B. Fay

Paul 'Red' Fay was John F. Kennedy's PT boat buddy from World War Two — they'd served together in the Pacific — and Kennedy made him Undersecretary of the Navy partly out of genuine affection. Fay later wrote a memoir about their friendship that the Kennedy family hated intensely for being too honest and too warm at the same time. The book was called 'The Pleasure of His Company.' He lived to 91. He was a sailor who became a politician because his friend became a president and never forgot his name.

2009

Klaus Riebschläger, deutscher Politiker

2009

Alois Harrer, deutscher Skilangläufer

2010

Fernando Riera, futbolista y entrenador chileno (n.

Fernando Riera, futbolista y entrenador chileno (n. 1920).

2010

Jorge Briceño Suárez, guérillero colombien (° 2 mai 1953).

2010

Teresa Lewis

Teresa Lewis had an IQ measured at 72 — below the threshold the Supreme Court had used to bar execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Virginia executed her anyway in 2010, the first woman put to death in the state in nearly a century. She'd arranged her husband and stepson's murders for life insurance. The case became a flashpoint in debates about intellectual disability, gender, and who the death penalty is actually applied to.

2010

Malcolm Douglas

Malcolm Douglas spent 40 years filming wildlife across Australia's most unforgiving terrain — the Kimberley, the Pilbara, places that actively resist cameras and the people carrying them. He did it mostly alone or in tiny crews, self-distributing films before anyone called that indie. He died in a vehicle accident on his own property in 2010. He left behind 40 documentary films and a crocodile park he'd built himself.

2010

Stephen Pace, pintor estadounidense (n.

Stephen Pace, pintor estadounidense (n. 1918).

2011

Josep Maria Sarriegui, periodista español (n.

Josep Maria Sarriegui, periodista español (n. 1961).

2011

José Miguel Varas, locutor, periodista y escritor chileno (n.

José Miguel Varas, locutor, periodista y escritor chileno (n. 1928).

2011

Marlene França, atriz brasileira (n.

Marlene França, atriz brasileira (n. 1943).

2011

Hubert Constant, prélat catholique haïtien (° 18 septembre 1931).

2011

Marcel Boishardy, cycliste sur route (° 7 février 1945).

2012

Maths O. Sundqvist

Maths O. Sundqvist ran Ratos, the Swedish investment firm, through decades of acquisitions that reshaped Nordic industry in ways most people never traced back to a single name. He was 62 when he died. Swedish business culture rarely produces celebrities — it produces Sundqvists, quiet architects of large structures. He left behind a portfolio that outlasted him and board members who'd learned to think the way he did.

2012

Roberto Rodríguez

Roberto Rodríguez pitched in the major leagues for parts of five seasons across the 1960s and '70s — a Venezuelan right-hander who bounced between rosters at a time when Latin American players were still navigating a league that didn't always want them there. He became a coach after his playing days and spent more years developing players than he ever spent pitching. The ERA doesn't tell that part.

2012

Pavel Grachev

Pavel Grachev once boasted he could take Grozny with a single airborne regiment in two hours. The First Chechen War lasted 20 months and cost tens of thousands of lives. His troops called him 'Pasha Mercedes' — a nickname about the bribes, not the car. Russia's first post-Soviet Defence Minister presided over a military in freefall: underpaid, undersupplied, demoralized. He died in 2012, and the army he'd mismanaged had already been rebuilt around his failures.

2012

Jean Taittinger, homme politique et entrepreneur français (° 25 janvier 1923).

2012

Henry Champ

Henry Champ covered American politics for CBC for decades — Watergate, Vietnam, Reagan, the Gulf War — from Washington bureaus that smelled of cigarettes and deadline pressure. He was trusted precisely because he was Canadian: close enough to understand America, distant enough to describe it clearly. He left behind a generation of journalists who learned the job by watching him file under pressure.

2012

Godfrey Milton-Thompson

Godfrey Milton-Thompson rose to Surgeon Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, the kind of career that combined medicine with the particular demands of naval service — treating men in conditions that no land-based hospital ever faced. He served during a period when naval medicine was being fundamentally rethought, and he left behind institutional reforms that outlasted his retirement. The admiral who kept his stethoscope.

2012

Corrie Sanders

He knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in two rounds in 2003 — a result so shocking the boxing world spent weeks trying to explain it away. Corrie Sanders was a southpaw from Pretoria with hand speed that didn't match his frame, and he'd upset the entire heavyweight division's hierarchy in one Saturday night. He was shot during an armed robbery in Brits, South Africa, in 2012. The man who floored a Klitschko was killed over a cellphone.

2012

Karl Michael Komma, tschechisch-deutscher Komponist und Musikpublizist

2012

Sam Sniderman

The giant spinning records on Yonge Street were visible from a block away — Sam Sniderman's way of saying a record store could be a landmark. He opened Sam the Record Man in Toronto in 1937 and built it into a Canadian institution, fighting chain stores and streaming long before streaming had a name. He'd personally call artists. Knew the inventory cold. When the flagship closed in 2007, people left flowers outside. He died at 92, having outlasted almost everyone who said physical music was finished.

2013

António Ramos Rosa, écrivain portugais (° 17 octobre 1924).

2013

Heimo Kuchling, österreichischer Kunsttheoretiker

2013

Óscar Espinosa Chepe, kubanischer Ökonom, Diplomat und Dissident

2013

Harry Goodwin, photographe britannique (° 21 juillet 1924).

2013

Anthony Hawkins, acteur australien (° 30 septembre 1932).

2013

John Hipwell, joueur de rugby à XV australien (° 24 janvier 1948).

2013

Annette Kerr, actrice britannique (° 2 juillet 1920).

2013

Christopher Koch, écrivain australien (° 16 juillet 1932).

2013

Paul Kuhn, musicien, chanteur et pianiste de jazz allemand (° 12 mars 1928).

2013

Trevor Lummis, historien, sociologue et auteur britannique (° 25 août 1930).

2013

Vlatko Marković, footballeur et ensuite entraîneur yougoslave puis croate (° 1er janvier 1937).

2013

Hugo Raes, écrivain et poète belge (° 26 mai 1929).

2013

Stanisław Szozda, cycliste sur route polonais (° 25 septembre 1950).

2013

Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj

Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj ran Syrian intelligence with a grip so tight that even his allies feared him. As head of the Syrian secret police in the late 1950s, he knew where every body was buried — often literally. He was a key architect of the short-lived United Arab Republic with Egypt, then helped destroy it. A man who spent his life accumulating power, dying in 2013 as Syria tore itself apart around a different kind of strongman.

2013

Gil Dozier

Gil Dozier was Louisiana's Agriculture Commissioner when a federal investigation caught him taking kickbacks in the late 1970s — a conviction that briefly put him in federal prison. But Louisiana politics being what it is, he staged a comeback, running again after his release. He'd been a decorated veteran and a lawyer before the fall. The arc from hero to convict to candidate is unusual most places. In Louisiana, it barely raised eyebrows.

2013

Anthony Hawkins

Anthony Hawkins worked in Australian television and theatre from the 1950s onward, one of those actors whose face audiences recognized before they ever caught his name. He appeared in Homicide and Number 96 — two shows that built Australian television drama from scratch. He was 80 when he died, having spent nearly six decades making fictional people feel real. That's the whole job.

2013

Paul Kuhn

Paul Kuhn was still performing jazz piano into his 80s, which tells you everything about the man. He'd led the SFB Big Band in Berlin for decades, introduced generations of Germans to American jazz, and recorded prolifically across six decades. He survived the war as a teenager, rebuilt himself around music, and never stopped. He left behind more than 60 albums and a reputation as the most stubbornly joyful musician in German jazz.

2013

Gia Maione

Gia Maione married comedian Pat Cooper and largely stepped away from performing to raise their family — a choice that buried her own considerable voice. She'd sung professionally and could hold a room. She died in 2013 at 72. Pat Cooper spent years after her death talking about her in interviews, still shaping punchlines around grief. She left behind a husband who never stopped telling people about her.

2013

Vlatko Marković

Vlatko Marković managed the Yugoslav national football team through the 1970s, navigating Cold War-era football politics where selecting the wrong player from the wrong republic carried consequences beyond the pitch. Yugoslavia reached the UEFA European Championship final in 1968 under his watch, losing to Italy on a coin toss after a draw. A coin toss. He coached 76 internationals and lost one to a coin.

2013

Ruth Patrick

Ruth Patrick spent decades wading into rivers with collection jars, building the science of using diatoms — microscopic algae — to measure water quality. She was doing environmental monitoring before 'environmental monitoring' was a phrase anyone used. Patrick died at 105, having published research into her 90s. She left behind a methodology that water scientists still use to assess river health today. The woman with the jar changed how we read rivers.

2014

John Toner

John Toner served as athletic director at the University of Connecticut for 22 years and was president of the NCAA during one of its most contentious periods — Title IX compliance, amateurism debates, the early stirrings of commercialization. He played football himself before the war changed everything for his generation. He left behind a UConn athletic program that barely resembled the one he'd inherited.

2014

A. W. Davis

A.W. Davis played college basketball at Tennessee in the 1960s and moved into coaching, spending decades building programs at the high school and college level in Tennessee. The players he developed over 40-plus years of coaching represent his real record — a number that doesn't fit neatly in a box score. He left behind a reputation as the kind of coach players called when they needed advice long after graduation.

2014

Gilles Latulippe, acteur, humoriste et directeur de théâtre québécois (° 31 août 1937).

2014

Antònia Fontanillas Borràs, anarcosindicalista española (n.

Antònia Fontanillas Borràs, anarcosindicalista española (n. 1917).

2014

Al Suomi

Al Suomi played goal for the Boston Olympics and the US national team in the 1930s, when American ice hockey existed in a small, devoted, largely unnoticed corner of the sporting world. He played in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen — the Games overshadowed by Nazi pageantry. He was 23, from the Upper Midwest, standing in goal while the world worried about something much larger. He left behind a career that deserved more attention than it got.

2014

Don Manoukian

Don Manoukian was a Stanford-trained offensive guard who made the AFL All-Star team — and then, improbably, became a professional wrestler after football. The transition from blocking defensive linemen to performing in the ring isn't as strange as it sounds; both require a very large man to convince another very large man that the ground is the safest place to be. He did both with distinction.

2014

Irven DeVore

Irven DeVore spent months living among baboon troops in Kenya in the early 1960s, producing fieldwork that helped establish primate behavior as a serious scientific discipline. He later co-developed sociobiology at Harvard with E.O. Wilson, sparking debates about human nature that got genuinely heated. DeVore had a gift for making students feel the urgency of evolutionary questions. He left behind a generation of anthropologists who still argue about what he taught them.

2015

Jean-Marie Drot, écrivain et documentaliste français (° 2 mars 1929).

2015

Tor Arneberg, skipper norvégien (° 4 septembre 1928).

2015

Dragan Holcer, footballeur yougoslave puis croate (° 19 janvier 1945).

2015

Denis Sonet, prêtre catholique français (° ?

Denis Sonet, prêtre catholique français (° ? 1926).

2015

Dayananda Saraswati

Swami Dayananda Saraswati taught Vedanta in a specific way: slowly, in full residence courses that lasted three years, refusing to compress ancient texts into weekend seminars. He ran teaching ashrams in Rishikesh and Pennsylvania. He trained more than 700 monks. He also co-founded the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha to give Hindu teachers a collective institutional voice in Indian public life — something that hadn't existed in organized form. He died in 2015. He left behind the largest tradition of formally trained Vedanta teachers in the modern world.

2015

Andrea Ludolph, deutsche Psychiaterin

2015

Dieter Wiesmann, Schweizer Liedermacher

2015

Kārlis Zariņš, sowjetischer bzw.

Kārlis Zariņš, sowjetischer bzw. lettischer Opernsänger

2016

Alain Bertaut, französischer Automobilrennfahrer und Motorsportfunktionär

2016

Frances Dafoe, patineuse artistique canadienne (° 17 janvier 1929).

2016

Yngve Brodd, footballeur puis entraîneur suédois (° 9 juin 1930).

2016

Marcel Artelesa, footballeur international français (° 2 juillet 1938).

2016

Joaquín Tejedor, footballeur espagnol (° 9 mars 1930).

2016

Andrzej Tarkowski, embryologiste polonais (° 4 mai 1933).

2016

Max Mannheimer, deutscher Holocaustüberlebender

2016

Herman Joseph Sahadat Pandoyoputro, prélat catholique indonésien (° 23 avril 1939).

2016

Michel Rousseau, cycliste sur piste français (° 5 février 1936).

2017

Walter Lehmann, Schweizer Turner

2017

Charles Bradley, US-amerikanischer Soul-Sänger

2018

Afërdita Tusha, albanische Sportschützin

2018

Jane Fortune

She didn't start hunting down lost Renaissance paintings until her fifties — then spent decades tracking overlooked works by women artists in Florentine churches, funding their restoration out of her own pocket. Jane Fortune wrote two books documenting what she found. Hundreds of paintings that had gathered dust for centuries were cleaned, reframed, and finally seen. She left behind a foundation still doing the work.

2018

Gary Kurtz

He produced the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back — then walked away before Return of the Jedi over creative disagreements about the film's direction. Gary Kurtz believed the ending should be darker, messier, more real. George Lucas disagreed. Kurtz left, the Ewoks stayed, and the franchise became something he no longer recognized. He spent the rest of his career on smaller, stranger films. He left behind two of the most-watched movies ever made.

2018

Charles Kuen Kao

He figured out in the 1960s that hair-thin glass fibers could carry light — and therefore information — across vast distances with almost no signal loss. Charles Kuen Kao's math said it was possible decades before anyone built it. The world's internet now runs on fiber optic cables, moving data at the speed of light through glass. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009, after Alzheimer's had already begun to take his memory of the work that earned it.

2019

Peter-Hugo Scholz, deutscher Journalist, Autor und Bergsteiger

2019

Elaine Feinstein, britische Schriftstellerin

2020

Pierre Troisgros, cuisinier français (° 3 septembre 1928).

2020

Gale Sayers, US-amerikanischer American-Football-Spieler

2020

Juliette Gréco

She was 19 and living in the cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés when Sartre handed her his poems to sing. Juliette Gréco didn't have classical training — she had presence, and a voice that sounded like it had been through something. She became the face of existentialist Paris without ever writing the philosophy. Miles Davis fell in love with her in 1949; racism made a life together impossible, and he said so plainly in his autobiography. She kept performing into her 80s. The black dress and the straight hair never changed.

2021

Nino Vaccarella

He was a schoolteacher who raced on weekends — which made him one of the most unusual drivers ever to win at Le Mans. Nino Vaccarella took the overall victory there in 1964 while holding down a day job in Palermo. He also won the Targa Florio three times, racing roads so narrow and dangerous that most professionals refused to treat them casually. A teacher who drove like that on Saturdays. He left behind lap records and a reputation the professionals respected.

2021

Jorge Urosa, cardinal vénézuélien, archevêque émérite de Caracas (° 1942).

2021

Hans Nordin, schwedischer Skispringer und Skisprungfunktionär

2021

John Elliott

He took over Elders IXL and turned it into one of Australia's largest conglomerates — then watched it collapse under $1.3 billion in debt. John Elliott was acquitted of fraud charges after a trial that ran for years and became one of Australia's most expensive legal proceedings. He'd been president of the Carlton Football Club and nearly led the Liberal Party. Big, loud, and genuinely hard to ignore. He left behind a business story nobody in Australia has quite managed to repeat.

2022