Famous People Who Died Today

In the 1960s, Sharon Tate was one of Hollywood’s most promising actresses. She won a beauty pageant while still a teenager and soon started modelling and acting in films and television shows. Her big breakout film was Valley of the Dolls. At the age of 26, she was all set to welcome her first child when she was brutally murdered.

Jerry Garcia had an illustrious 30-year career as the lead guitarist and vocalist of the rock band the Grateful Dead. Rolling Stone ranked him 13th on their 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list. He was known for his improvisations, participated in many side projects, and released several solo albums.

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born in August 1963, was the infant son of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who died just a little over 39 hours after his birth. Patrick was born prematurely, with hyaline membrane disease (HMD), now known as infant respiratory distress syndrome (IRDS).

Dmitry Shostakovich was a Soviet and Russian pianist and composer. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's major composers, Shostakovich's music is characterized by ambivalent tonality, elements of the grotesque, and sharp contrasts. He composed 15 symphonies during his lifetime and most of his work came under Joseph Stalin.

German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter Hermann Hesse received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. He explored individuals’ search for authenticity, self-knowledge, and spirituality in his works. An intense and headstrong person from childhood, he developed an early interest in reading. He started writing as a young man and became an influential author in the German-speaking world. 

Canadian musician, songwriter, and film composer Robbie Robertson became popular following his association as lead guitarist and songwriter with the rock group, The Band. He is credited for playing a key role in popularizing the Americana music genre. He also had a successful career as a solo artist. As a film composer, he has often collaborated with director Martin Scorsese.

Hugo Boss was a German businessman and fashion designer. He is credited with founding one of the most popular fashion houses in the world, Hugo Boss AG. Apart from maintaining his business endeavors, Hugo Boss was also a member of the Nazi Party and remained loyal to the ideology of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

Ernst Haeckel had initially practiced medicine before he gained an interest in Charles Darwin’s theory and began exploring zoology and related fields. He not only coined terms such as ecology, but also named numerous species and created a genealogical tree. He drew numerous figures of animals and sea creatures, too.

Aviation engineer Frank Whittle entered the Royal Air Force as an apprentice and rose through the ranks to become a pilot. He invented the jet engine, though his idea of a plane that could fly at a phenomenal speed was initially laughed at. He was later knighted for his achievements.

Edith Stein was a German Jewish philosopher who studied at the University of Freiburg and completed her dissertation on empathy. Always interested in Catholicism, she read the autobiography of the mystic Teresa of Ávila and converted to Christianity, and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp and is canonized as a martyr.

Revered as the Palestinian national poet, Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa, a village that was ravaged by Israelis. He was exiled in Paris and Beirut for many years and was even once put in prison for reciting a poem. His writing style merged traditional Arabic forms with modern elements.

James Armistead Lafayette was an enslaved African American. He is best remembered for his service in the Continental Army during the famous American Revolutionary War, where he worked under the command of a French aristocrat and military officer named Lafayette. He worked as a double agent, feeding the British with wrong information and disclosing accurate information to the Americans.

Franz Jägerstätter was an Austrian conscientious objector who served during the Second World War. He opposed the Nazis and refused to fight for Nazi Germany during the war. He was executed for his stance against Nazi Germany and was later declared a martyr by the Catholic Church.

A pioneer in women’s aviation, US pilot Jacqueline Cochran was the first female pilot to break the sound barrier. She was also the first woman to lead the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale as its president and the first female Bendix race competitor. She held several other records and also led the organization WASP.

Best known for his iconic opera Pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo was one of the greatest opera composers of Italy. He was his own librettist in most of his operas. Mattinata, the song which he wrote for the Gramophone Company, or HMV, is another of his notable works.

Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian-American economist John Harsanyi is best remembered for developing game theory in mathematics. Known as one of the group of scientists called The Martians, he had escaped deportation during World War II and had fled to Austria and Australia, eventually attaining a PhD from Stanford in the U.S.

Friedrich Ratzel was a German ethnographer and geographer. He was the first person to use the term Lebensraum, which would later become an important and popular word among the National Socialists. Also an influential writer, Friedrich Ratzel's works served as a justification for imperial expansion. 

Anton Walbrook was an Austrian actor who established a career in the United Kingdom after leaving Austria in 1936 due to safety concerns. He is best remembered for playing important roles in films like The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, where he played Boris Lermontov and Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff respectively.

Poppo, who later came to be known as Pope Damasus II had initially served as the bishop of Brixen. However, Damascus II had the shortest papal reign in history, as he passed away of malaria just 23 days after assuming papacy. He was the third German to have been the pope.

Chaim Soutine was a Belarussian painter who lived and worked in Paris. Best remembered for his contribution to the expressionist movement, Soutine served as a bridge between the growing form of Abstract expressionism and more traditional approaches. Today, many of his paintings are preserved at places like The Jewish Museum in New York. 

Yellapragada Subbarow was an Indian biochemist who is credited with developing methotrexate, an immune-system suppressant and chemotherapy agent which is widely used to treat autoimmune diseases and cancer. He also helped American plant physiologist Benjamin Duggar discover chlortetracycline, the world's first tetracycline antibiotic.