Famous People Who Died Today

A prolific author, having written 12 published books and several articles, Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, made Keller famous and was adapted for film and stage. She was also an activist and campaigned for women's suffrage, labour rights, socialism and other such causes.

Yves Saint Laurent was a French fashion designer who founded his eponymous fashion label in 1961. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most popular and influential fashion designers, Saint Laurent is credited with helping women all over the world find confidence by looking both elegant and comfortable at the same time. His life and career inspired many films.

James Buchanan was a prominent American lawyer who served as the 15th president of the United States. He is often criticized for failing to address the issue of slavery and is consistently ranked among America's worst presidents. His life and work inspired the 2019 film Raising Buchanan in which he was played by René Auberjonois.

A staunch advocate of progressive education and liberalism, the American philosopher and psychologist was the founder of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. John Dewey’s famous writings included The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology and Human Nature and Conduct. According to him, passion for knowledge and intellectual curiosity were central to a teacher. He called himself a democratic socialist.

Leslie Howard was an English actor, producer, and director. One of the biggest box-office draws during the 1930s, Howard is best remembered for portraying the quintessential Englishman in films like Berkeley Square and Pygmalion. Leslie Howard is also remembered for his performance in the 1939 epic historical romance film Gone with the Wind.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He is considered one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan. He was the son of Matsudaira Hirotada, a minor local warlord. He grew up to be an ambitious young man with exemplary leadership qualities and eventually founded the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. 

Hansie Cronje was a South African international cricketer. He captained the South African national cricket team in the 1990s. In 2000, he was implicated in a cricket match-fixing scandal and banned from the sport for life. He died in a plane crash in 2002. It was rumored that he was murdered on the orders of a cricket betting syndicate.

Jewish doctor Eduard Bloch began his career as a physician for the Austrian Army. He had later treated a young Adolf Hitler and his cancer-stricken mother, charging very little fees owing to their poor financial condition. This act that made Hitler grant Bloch special protection during the Nazi attack on Austria.

American architect Daniel Burnham was one of the pioneering designers of the skyscrapers that populate cities such as Chicago. Part of the Beaux-Arts movement, he had been the director of the World’s Columbian Exposition. He also formed his own firm, Burnham & Root with John Wellborn Root.

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy had initially been part of the Indian independence movement. He was the first chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India and later served as the president of India. He had also headed the Indian National Congress and had been the speaker of the Lok Sabha.

German physician Werner Forssmann is best-known for developing a method that allowed cardiac catheterization. This led him to jointly receive the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Forssmann started clinical application of cardiac catheterization in 1929, when he inserted a catheter into a vein of his forearm and safely passed it into his heart and took an X-ray picture of it.

Author of The Death of a President, William Raymond Manchester was a well-known historian, author and a WWII veteran. On finishing his education after the war, he began his career as a reporter, publishing his master's thesis as Disturber of the Peace in 1951, thereafter, continuing to write, publishing a total of eighteen books, including a three part-biography of Churchill

Hristo Botev was a Bulgarian poet and revolutionary. Widely regarded as a national hero by Bulgarians, Botev was thought to be ahead of his peers in his aesthetic, philosophical, and political views. An influential and important figure in the history of Bulgaria, Botev has several monuments, schools, football clubs, and stadiums named after him.

A 15th-century Byzantine soldier, Giovanni Giustiniani, who belonged to one of the most powerful families of the Republic of Genoa, is remembered for his valiant campaign to defend Constantinople against the Turkish army of Sultan Mehmed II. He was eventually wounded and died, while the Ottomans took control of Constantinople.

While he initially taught and read at the Anglican Church, British author Sir Hugh Walpole later focused on writing. He is perhaps best known for his works such as the Jeremy series of autobiographical novels and Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill. He also penned scripts for a few Hollywood movies.

Known as tennis legend Novak Djokovic's first coach, Jelena Gencic was a talented sportswoman in her own right and represented Yugoslavia in both tennis and handball. She was part of the Yugoslav team that won a bronze at the 1957 handball World Championships. She had also been a director at TV Belgrade.

Born to an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, Ödön von Horváth grew up studying in Hungarian but later became one of the finest writers of German literature. The writer of iconic plays such as Italian Night and Tales from the Vienna Woods, he was a significant anti-fascist playwright. He died in a thunderstorm.

Emperor Gaozu of Han reigned as the first emperor of the famous Han dynasty from 202 to 195 BC. Although he was born into a peasant family, Gaozu of Han went on to found the Han dynasty after emerging victorious in the Battle of Gaixia. He is credited with unifying most of China and popularizing Confucianism.  

The second son of Belgian king Albert I, Prince Charles, Count of Flanders served as the regent of Belgium after the liberation of his country, while his elder brother, King Leopold III, underwent an investigation for his alleged betrayal of the Allies. In his later years, he focused on painting.

Known widely as the father of the Hovercraft, a unique combination of a boat and a plane, Christopher Cockerell was the son of a museum curator, who stunned his father by deciding to study engineering. His hovercraft later revolutionized the air-cushion technology. He also developed radar and radio aids during World War II.

Eric Partridge was a New Zealand–British lexicographer whose writing career was interrupted by his service in the Royal Air Force and the Army Education Corps during World War II. Over the course of his literary career, Partridge wrote over 40 books and his papers are archived at institutions like the University of Birmingham and the University of San Francisco.