Famous People Who Died Today

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish travel writer, poet, and novelist. A popular writer in his lifetime, Stevenson went about traveling widely and writing prolifically even as he suffered from bronchial trouble; his will power and love for writing won the hearts of many other writers. In 2018, he was ranked as the world's 26th-most-translated author.

Madeline Kahn was an American actress, singer, and comedian. She is best remembered for her comedic roles in movies like Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I, and High Anxiety. Over the course of her career, Madeline Kahn received several prestigious awards such as the Drama Desk Award, People's Choice Award, and Daytime Emmy Award.

Scott Weiland was an American singer and songwriter. He is credited with co-creating the popular rock band Stone Temple Pilots where he served as the lead singer. He was also part of two supergroups, namely Velvet Revolver and Art of Anarchy. Known for his chaotic and flamboyant onstage persona, Weiland is widely viewed as a versatile vocalist.

French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, father of actor Pierre Renoir and director Jean Renoir, was a key Impressionist painter. His best-known works include The Swing, Diana, and Seated Girl. He was known for his use of vibrant colors and feminine sensuality in his works. He also painted landscapes and portraits.

Richard Todd was an Irish actor best remembered for his portrayal of Corporal Lachlan MacLachlan in the movie The Hasty Heart, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination. One of the most bankable actors of his generation, Richard Todd was frequently listed among the most popular British stars throughout the 1950s. 

Known as The Magician of field hockey, Dhyan Chand, one of the greatest hockey players from India, is remembered for his three Olympic gold medals and for his ability to control the ball. The Padma Bhushan awardee initially loved wrestling but deviated to hockey after joining the army.

Arul Pragasam was a Sri Lankan Tamil activist and revolutionary. He played an important role in the formation of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students during the Tamil independence movements in England. The movement, which originated in Sri Lanka, aimed at securing an independent Tamil state in the island country due to the oppression of Sri Lankan-Tamils by the government.

Edmond Safra was a Lebanese Brazilian banker. His father was a prominent banker, and he began his career working at his father’s bank. He was hardworking, ambitious, and street-smart and started earning millions while still in his teens. He was also a major philanthropist. He died in an arson that attracted wide media interest.  

Remembered as one of the founders of the avant-garde movement named Russian constructivism, Alexander Rodchenko has experimented with photography, paintings, posters, photomontage, and sculpture. Most of his works have political overtones. He was a prominent member of the October Group and was geared toward making art for the working classes.

Shiing-Shen Chern was a Chinese-American poet and mathematician. He is best remembered for making significant contributions to topology and differential geometry. Referred to as the father of modern differential geometry, Shiing-Shen Chern is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest mathematicians. He won several prestigious awards, such as the National Medal of Science, Wolf Prize, and Lobachevsky Medal.

Mary Gilmore was an Australian writer and journalist. She wrote both prose and poetry and is recognized for her tremendous contribution to Australian literature. As a young woman, she became a school teacher and held utopian socialist views. She eventually started writing and gained fame as an author and poet later in life. 

Giovanni Battista Belzoni was an Italian explorer and archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities. A pioneer in the field of Egyptian archaeology, Belzoni was the first person to enter the famous Pyramid of Khafre. Belzoni is also credited with unblocking the entrance of the temple at Abu Simbel and discovering the tomb of Seti I, which is referred to as Belzoni's Tomb. 

Russian actor and director Alexander Kaidanovsky initially trained to be a welder but switched to acting later. Known for his roles in Soviet films such as At Home Among Strangers and Stalker, he also directed the drama A Simple Death, which was featured at the Cannes. His career was eventually ruined by alcoholism.

One of the greatest 20th-century Hungarian poets, Attila József was a washerwoman’s son and had begun writing poems since age 17 but soared to fame only after his death. He was also a co-founder of the literary journal Szép Szó, or Beautiful Word. He later showed signs of mental illnesses.

Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma was an Italian condottiero and noble. He is best remembered for his service as a general in the Spanish army. From 1578 to 1592, Alexander Farnese served as the Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. He was also the Duke of Parma and Piacenza from 15 September 1586 to 3 December 1592.

Considered as one the Four Heavenly Kings of the Tokugawa, Honda Tadakatsu was an important samurai general of the Sengoku and a veteran of over one hundred battles. Known for his loyalty to Tokugawa Ieyasu, he was later rewarded with the fief of Otaki and the domain of Kuwana. Also known as Honda Heihachirō, he never suffered any major wound.  

Educator Janet Smith is best remembered as the wife of former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith. Born to Scottish parents in Cape Town, Janet was a talented hockey player and later married a rugby player. Her first husband died in an accident during a rugby practice match.

Georges Duby was a French historian best remembered for his work on the economic and social history of the medieval period. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most influential medieval historians, Georges Duby was also considered one of France's most important public intellectuals from the 1970s to his demise in 1996.

South African Party leader Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr lost his father at 3. After recovering from hydrocephaly at age 2, he turned into a child prodigy and completed his bachelor’s degree at 15. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he later served as the deputy prime minister of South Africa.

One of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang Guotao had been a rival of fellow party member Mao Zedong and contested for the party’s leadership. However, he later joined the Chinese Nationalists. He spent his final years in Canada and became a Christian shorty before death.

While Archibald Campbell Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is best remembered for trying to mitigate the Church of England conflict during the Oxford Movement, his contributions in other fields were of no less importance. His inauguration of the Bishop of London's Fund and his work on the Royal Commission on Ritual are still remembered by one and all.

Best remembered for his short fiction and epigrams, Juan José Arreola was one of the first Latin American authors to exclude realism. He included elements of fantasy and absurdism and was a pioneer of the hybrid format of the essay-story. His only novel, La feria, was also one of his best works.

Bulgarian author and poet Dimitar Ivanov Stoyanov, better known by his pseudonym Elin Pelin, was a teacher and then a university librarian before he stepped into full-fledged writing. He had also been a World War I correspondent. His works include Stories and The Gerak Family, and he mostly wrote about the Bulgarian countryside.

Ahmed Fouad Negm was an Egyptian vernacular poet best remembered for his work with composer Sheikh Imam. He is also remembered for his revolutionary and patriotic Egyptian Arabic poetry. Ahmed Fouad Negm's life and career inspired a book titled A Homeland Called Desire by Egyptian poet Rana al-Tonsi.

Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney was an English photographer, chemist, and astronomer. A pioneer of many technical facets of photography, Abney's work in the chemistry of photography led to developments in astronomy apart from producing useful photographic products. Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney also wrote several books on photography that went on to become standard texts at that time.

Astronomer and physicist James Challis had been a professor of astronomy and the director of the Cambridge Observatory. Throughout his career, he published over 200 academic papers. Though he had observed Neptune a month before its official discovery, he had failed to identify as a separate planet.

Legendary British rower Jack Beresford is best known for winning five Olympic medals back-to-back. The son of a rower and an Olympic silver medalist, he had been part of the army during World War I. Though a talented rugby player, too, he took up rowing owing to a war injury.