Famous People Who Died Today

Tony Curtis was an American actor who achieved the height of his fame in the 1950s and 1960s in a career spanning six decades. Also a well-known philanthropist, Tony Curtis helped fund the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue in Hungary. In 1998, he founded a non-profit organization called Emanuel Foundation for Hungarian Culture, which works towards the restoration of synagogues.

Emile Zola was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. He played a key role in the development of theatrical naturalism and was a well-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism. He was also a political journalist and was influential in the political liberalization of France. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice.

Australia-born singer-songwriter Helen Maxine Reddy moved to the USA when she won a ticket to New York City, eventually remaining there, struggling to establish herself until she got her first hit, I Don’t Know How to Love Him. However, her best remembered song was I Am Woman, which went on to become a feminist anthem, making her an international star.

W. H. Auden was an Anglo-American poet. His poetry was noted for its technical achievement and versatility. He wrote poems on love, political and social themes, and cultural and psychological themes. Throughout his career, Auden was both influential and controversial. His personal life also attracted attention as he had sexual relationships with men, which was unusual at the time.

Rudolf Diesel was a German mechanical engineer and inventor best remembered for inventing the Diesel engine. After Diesel's demise, his engine became an important substitution for the steam piston engine. The engine became widespread in applications, such as agricultural machines, submarines, ships, and trucks. His life inspired the 1942 biographical film Diesel, in which he was played by Willy Birgel.

Known for her legal expertise and her resolve to fight corruption, Miriam Defensor Santiago also became the first Filipina and the first from an Asian developing country to serve as a judge of the International Criminal Court. The senator was also a Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient and died of lung cancer.

Winslow Homer was an American illustrator and landscape painter. He is best remembered for painting marine subjects. A pre-eminent figure in American art, Homer is widely regarded as one of the most important painters in 19th-century America. Although he never had any students, Winslow Homer's works influenced subsequent generations of American painters.

Mostly known as a cartoonist for The New Yorker, Charles Addams was known for including dark humor in his works. Also known by his pseudonym, Chas Addams, he gained fame for his cartoons about a family of ghosts, which later inspired The Addams Family series of the 1960s.

Born amid poverty in Ukraine, Ilya Repin earned himself an art scholarship and later devoted his life to historical painting. A major figure of the realist movement in painting, he had also been the subject of controversies, such as the withdrawal of his painting of Ivan the Terrible murdering his own son.

Willem Einthoven was a Dutch physiologist and physician whose invention of the electrocardiogram in 1895 earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924. He is also credited with theorizing the existence of Einthoven's triangle, which is named in his honor.

The first president of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema transformed his nation into what critics called the Dachau of Africa, killing or exiling about a third of its population and declaring himself the president for life. He was eventually executed after a coup by his own nephew.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was a Brazilian novelist, playwright, poet, and short-story writer. Hailing from a family of freed slaves, he had a difficult childhood that he overcame to become a famous writer. He founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters and became the organization’s first president. He is credited with having shaped the realism movement in Brazil.   

Tom Alter was an Indian actor best remembered for his contribution to Indian theatre and Hindi cinema. Alter quit his day job as a teacher in order to pursue a career in acting. Although he was of American origin, Alter could speak fluent Hindi and Urdu which made him popular in India. In 2008, Tom Alter received the prestigious Padma Shri.

Anastasio Somoza García was a Nicaraguan leader who served as the president of Nicaragua from 1937 to 1947 and again from 1950 to 1956. Before becoming the president of Nicaragua, Somoza played a major role in ousting the then-President Adolfo Díaz. Somoza is credited with starting the Somoza family, which had absolute control over Nicaragua for more than four decades. 

Georges Charpak was a physicist whose invention and development of the multiwire proportional chamber earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992. He is also credited with co-founding several companies, including SuperSonic Imagine and Molecular Engines Laboratories. Over the course of his illustrious career, Georges Charpak was also honored with other awards, such as the Golden Plate Award.

William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler who lived during the 12th century. He spent two decades studying the liberal arts and canon law in the universities of Europe. He was made the archbishop of Tyre and was also appointed a tutor to the king's son. He is considered one of the best authors of the Middle Ages. 

German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs is remembered for inventing a decimal scale used to measure the hardness of minerals, known as the Mohs scale. A professor at the University of Vienna, he later also became the curator of the Imperial Mineralogical Collection. He also laid down a system of classifying crystals.

Léon Bourgeois was a French statesman known for his progressive political ideals. He studied law as a young man and soon entered politics. With time, he steadily rose through the political ranks and became the prime minister of France in 1895. He promoted social insurance schemes, economic equality, controlled disarmament, economic sanctions, and expanded educational opportunities.

Best remembered for his portraits, Irish artist Sir William Orpen was an official war artist for Britain during World War I and the official artist of the Paris Peace Conference. His initial paintings were largely inspired by Realist artist Édouard Manet. Though knighted later, he was posthumously criticized as flimsy.

Japanese army general Tanaka Giichi had shown his interest in politics quite early, when at age 13, he participated in the Hagi Rebellion. The Rikken Seiyūkai member later became the prime minister of Japan and adopted an aggressive foreign policy toward China, leading to China developing anti-Japanese sentiments.

Known for his pioneering work in the fields of child and educational psychology, Édouard Claparède was also the co-founder of the journal Archives de psychologie. A professor at the University of Geneva, too, he also conducted research on animal psychology and the biological theory of sleep.

Recognized as the pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement, Major Clifford Hugh Douglas was an engineer by professional. His interest turned to economics when he noticed that the weekly total costs of goods was greater than the sums paid to workers, leading to his development of the social credit theory, which encompasses economics, political science, history, and accounting.