Famous People Who Died Today

Described as America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison’s legacy is an everlasting one. He was the first to help make the incandescent light bulb commercially viable, even though he was not the first inventor of it. Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, motion picture camera and the alkaline storage battery are some the many innovations that made him a worldwide phenomenon and an icon.

A veteran politician who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell was the first African-American Secretary of State. A member of the Republican Party, he was an army man prior to entering politics. He was a  four-star general at the time of his retirement. After leaving politics, he pursued a career as a public speaker.

Four-time Tony-winning actor Gwen Verdon is remembered for her SAG-nominated performance in Marvin’s Room. She was known for her signature red hair and her love for cats. She was nominated for Emmys for the series Magnum, P.I., Dream On, and Homicide: Life on the Street. She inspired the series Fosse/Verdon.

Dee Dee Warwick was a soul singer whose career was largely marred by drug addiction. However, she found success later in her career, recording songs for Private Stock Records and RCA Records. In 1999, she was honored by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation with a Pioneer Award. Warwick is also remembered for being one of the first openly gay singers.

While he apprenticed as a cobbler and a barber in childhood, Santiago Ramón y Cajal later took up medicine inspired by his father, a professor of anatomy. Cajal’s study of the microscopic structure of the human brain later formed the basis of neuroscience and earned him a Nobel Prize.

Charles Gounod was a French composer. Prolific in his career, he wrote 12 operas and a large number of songs and church music pieces including his Ave Maria and Funeral March of a Marionette.  During the Franco-Prussian War, he fled to England, disrupting his career. He later returned to France and regained his position as a respected musical figure.

Alan Coren was an English satirist, writer, and humorist best remembered for his association with the popular quiz show The News Quiz, which was aired on the BBC radio. A multi-talented personality, Coren also worked as a journalist and served as the editor of Punch magazine for almost a decade.

Philosopher and humanist José Ortega y Gasset was a major figure of the 20th-century Spanish literary renaissance. Apart from introducing concepts such as ratiovitalism, he also believed in the philosophy "I am I and my circumstance." Invertebrate Spain and The Revolt of the Masses remain his best works.

Australian actor Timothy Conigrave began his career performing on stage and later wrote plays such as The Blitz Kids. He is remembered for his United Nations Award for Non-Fiction award-winning memoir, Holding the Man, which documented his 15-year love affair with John Caleo. Conigrave later died of AIDS.

Ayub Bachchu was a Bangladeshi singer, songwriter, guitarist, and composer. A rockstar, Bachchu is credited with founding one of the most popular and successful Bangladeshi bands of all time, Love Runs Blind. A pioneer of Bangladeshi Pop music, Bachchu is also counted among the greatest Bangladeshi singers of all time. In 2017, he received the Tele Cine Lifetime Achievement Award.

German physician and botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold was considered a pioneer of Western medicine in Japan. His works include the iconic book Flora Japonica. He fathered a daughter with a Japanese courtesan, who grew up to be Kusumoto Ine, Japan’s first female doctor with knowledge in Western medicine.

Ignacio Ponseti was a Spanish-American orthopedist. He is remembered for his service during the Spanish Civil War, where he treated wounded soldiers for three years as a medic. After the war, Ponseti joined the University of Iowa, where he came up with the Ponseti Method, a pioneering treatment for the clubfoot defect; the treatment achieved popularity as it was non-surgical.

Chilean military and political figure Manuel Bulnes had an illustrious military career, leading and decisively winning several battles most notably the Battle of Yungay, the last battle of War of the Confederation that effectively dissolved the Peru-Bolivian Confederacy. Bulnes served as the 4th President of Chile. During his presidencies, Chile witnessed educational and cultural expansion, economic progress and public works developments.    

The son of renowned French astronomer César-François Cassini de Thury, Dominique, comte de Cassini followed in his father’s footsteps to serve as the director of the Paris Observatory. He also completed the map of France that his father had begun. His monarchist ideals got him imprisoned by the revolutionary government.