Famous People Who Died Today

American actor, Charles Bronson, had a tough-guy on screen persona and is best known for numerous action and vigilante movies. The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen and Hard Times are some of his notable films. Death Wish was his most popular film and it led to four sequels starring him. He worked from the 1950s to 1990s.

Born into a poor peasant family, Mikhail Gorbachev went on to become one of the most influential figures of the Soviet Union. He served in various positions, most notably as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He is regarded as one of the most prominent personalities of the 20th century.

Glenn Ford was a Canadian-American actor. One of the most bankable stars of classical Hollywood cinema, Ford remained a crowd-puller throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Five of his movies have been chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry. Off-stage, Glenn Ford was a notorious womanizer and had relationships with several actresses, including Marilyn Monroe.

J. J. Thomson was a British physicist credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases. In 1884, he was appointed Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. 

Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet, translator, and playwright. One of the most respected poets of his generation, Heaney was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He also won other prestigious awards, such as the Eric Gregory Award. Several years after his death, Seamus Heaney is still considered one of the main contributors to poetry in Ireland.

Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz had previously worked in the Egyptian civil service. Initially a short story writer, he later wrote novels such as Al-Thulāthiyyah, or The Cairo Trilogy. His novel Children of the Alley was banned for its religious references and led him to be stabbed by Islamists.

Věra Čáslavská was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast who won 22 international titles, including 11 European Championships, four World Championships, and seven Olympic gold medals. The most decorated gymnast in Czech history, Čáslavská is the only gymnast to have won at least one Olympic gold in each individual event. In 1998, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Known for his pioneering contribution to the make-up industry in Hollywood and for his revolutionary products such as Supreme Greasepaint, Max Factor Sr. was a Polish Jew, who moved to the US in the early 1900s. He founded his own brand of cosmetics, popularized the word “make-up,” and won an honorary Academy Award.

Pope Alexander III served as the chief of the Roman Catholic Church and therefore the ruler of the Papal States from 1159 until his death in 1181. A native of Siena, Alexander was chosen as the pope after a contested election.

Mohammad-Ali Rajai was the second president of Iran, in office for just a few weeks in August 1981 before his untimely death. Before this, he served as prime minister under Abolhassan Banisadr. A teacher by profession, he became actively involved in the Iranian Revolution and joined politics. He was assassinated on 30 August 1981. 

An Oxford graduate, Lindsay Anderson had initially launched the film magazine Lindsay Anderson. He later became a celebrated director and even won an Academy Award for the documentary Thursday’s Children. A pioneer of the Free Cinema and the British New Wave movements, he also acted in minor roles.

An army engineer, John C. H. Lee eventually became a lieutenant-general and presided over the ComZ during World War II. He also prepared the US troops for the Normandy Invasion. However, critics often accused him of leading a lavish lifestyle, splurging on hotels and food, amid war.

Part of the Nouveau Réalisme art movement, Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely developed a form of kinetic art known as metamatics, which consisted of self-destructing sculptures. Homage to New York, installed at the Museum of Modern Art was one of his best-known works. He ridiculed man’s dependence on technology through his works.

Harold Gatty was an Australian aviation pioneer and navigator. He is best remembered for his flight alongside Wiley Post in 1931, which set the world record for circumnavigation of the globe. Harold Gatty was Wiley Post's navigator during the record-setting aerial circumnavigation, which took them over eight days to complete.

Wilhelm Wien was a German physicist famous for deducing what became known as Wien's displacement law. He is also credited with formulating an expression for the black-body radiation He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1911 for his work on heat radiation.

A 16th-century Duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, also known as Testa di ferro, was the only child of Charles III, Duke of Savoy. An able soldier, he is remembered for recovering most of the territories his father had lost to Spain and France. He also stressed on Italian as the official language.