Did you know about Pol Pot
Pol Pot was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 until his overthrow in 1979 during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
Notable Deaths on April 15
April 15 has 113 recorded notable deaths across history, from 628 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1998 — Pol Pot
Cambodian general and politician, 29th Prime Minister of Cambodia (born 1925)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
113 source records
628 – 2026
Today in history
Major events on April 15
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1960 At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Source
- 1861 President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 militiamen to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War. Source
Did you know about Victims of the Titanic disaster:
A writer, as well as a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish–American War, he was among the most prominent American passengers aboard RMS Titanic and perished along with 1,495 others when the ship sank on her maiden voyage.
Did you know about Wallace Beery
(1934) for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Did you know about Filippo Brunelleschi
In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world.
Did you know about George Calvert
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English politician.
More major people who died on April 15
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1912
Victims of the Titanic disaster:
John Jacob Astor IV was an American business magnate, real estate developer, and investor who was a member of the Astor family and also the Livingston family. A writer, as well as a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish–American War, he was among the most prominent American passengers aboard RMS Titanic and perished along with 1,495 others when the ship sank on her maiden voyage. Astor was the richest passenger aboard the RMS Titanic and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87 million when he died.
1949
Wallace Beery
American actor, director, and screenwriter (born 1885)
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as the pirate Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934) for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
1446
Filippo Brunelleschi
Italian sculptor and architect (born 1377)
Filippo di ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi, commonly known as Filippo Brunelleschi and also nicknamed Pippo by Leon Battista Alberti, was an Italian architect, designer, goldsmith, and sculptor. He is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture. He is recognized as the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world. He is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and for the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science. His accomplishments also include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design. Most surviving works can be found in Florence.
1632
George Calvert
1st Baron Baltimore, English politician, English Secretary of State (born 1580)
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English politician. He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland upon his resignation. Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland.
1912
Victims of the Titanic disaster:
Archibald Willingham DeGraffenreid Clarendon Butt was an American Army officer and aide to presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. After a few years as a newspaper reporter, he served two years as the First Secretary of the American embassy in Mexico. He was commissioned in the United States Volunteers in 1898 and served in the Quartermaster Corps during the Spanish–American War. After brief postings in Washington, D.C., and Cuba, Butt was appointed military aide to Republican presidents Roosevelt and Taft. He was a highly influential advisor on a wide range of topics to both men, and his writings are a major source of historical information on the presidencies. He died in the sinking of the British liner Titanic in 1912.
2011
Vittorio Arrigoni
Italian journalist, author, and activist (born 1975)
Vittorio Arrigoni was an Italian journalist and activist. He worked with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM), through which he arrived in the Gaza Strip in 2008. He maintained a website called Guerrilla Radio and also published a book about his experiences in Gaza City during the 2008–2009 Gaza War between Hamas and Israel. In 2011, he was abducted and murdered by a group of Salafi jihadists. The Hamas government, which identified the perpetrators as Palestinian and Jordanian affiliates of al-Qaeda, subsequently initiated a manhunt and arrested the accused suspects during a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Arrigoni was the first foreign national to have been involved in such an incident in the Gaza Strip since the kidnapping of British journalist Alan Johnston in 2007.
1962
Arsenio Lacson
Filipino journalist and politician, Mayor of Manila (born 1912)
Arsenio Hilario Sison Lacson Sr. was a Filipino lawyer, journalist and politician who gained widespread attention as the 17th Mayor of Manila and the first to be democratically elected. An active executive likened by Time and The New York Times to New York City's Fiorello La Guardia, he was the first Manila mayor to be reelected to three terms, remaining in office for over a decade from January 1952 to April 1962. Nicknamed "Arsenic" and described as "a good man with a bad mouth", Lacson's fiery temperament became a trademark of his political and broadcasting career. He died suddenly from a stroke amidst talk that he was planning to run in the 1965 presidential election.
2022
Bilquis Edhi
Pakistani philanthropist and wife of Abdul Sattar Edhi (born 1947)
Bilquis Bano Edhi was a Pakistani nurse who helped save the lives of over 16,000 children. During her career as a nurse and marriage to Abdul Sattar Edhi, she was one of the most active philanthropists in Pakistan. She was the co-chair of the Edhi Foundation, a charity organization that provided many services in Pakistan including a hospital and emergency service in Karachi. For her contributions, she was awarded the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service and the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice in 2015. She was also a recipient of Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan's second highest civilian honour. For her service to the country, she was also referred to as The Mother of Pakistan.
1764
Peder Horrebow
Danish astronomer and mathematician (born 1679)
Peder [Nielsen] Horrebow (Horrebov) was a Danish astronomer. Born in Løgstør, Jutland to a poor family of fishermen, Horrebow entered the University of Copenhagen in 1703. He worked his way through grammar school and university by virtue of his technical knowledge: he repaired mechanical and musical instruments and cut seals. He received his MA from the university in 1716, and his MD in 1725. From 1703 to 1707, he served as an assistant to Ole Rømer and lived in Rømer's home. He worked as a household tutor from 1707 to 1711 to a Danish baron, and entered the governmental bureaucracy as an excise writer in 1711.
2024
Josip Manolić
Croatian politician, prime minister, and speaker of the Chamber of Counties (born 1920)
Josip "Joža" Manolić was a Croatian politician and communist revolutionary during World War II in Yugoslavia. He served as a high-ranking official of the Yugoslav State Security Administration and later as Prime Minister of Croatia, from 24 August 1990 to 17 July 1991. He was the last prime minister of Croatia as a constituent republic of Yugoslavia, as the country formally declared its independence during his term, on 25 June 1991. Following his brief term as prime minister, Manolić served as the first Speaker of the Chamber of Counties, the then upper house of the Croatian Parliament, from 1993 until 1994.
2014
John Houbolt
American engineer and academic (born 1919)
John Cornelius Houbolt was an aerospace engineer credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode, a concept that was used to successfully land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. This flight path was chosen for the Apollo program in July 1962. The critical decision to use LOR was viewed as vital to ensuring that man reached the Moon by the end of the decade as proposed by President John F. Kennedy. In the process, LOR saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using the available rocket and spacecraft technologies.
1967
Totò
Italian comedian (born 1898)
Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi De Curtis di Bisanzio, best known by his stage name Totò, or simply as Antonio de Curtis, and nicknamed il principe della risata, was an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter, dramatist, poet, singer and lyricist. He is commonly referred to as one of the most popular Italian performers of all time. While best known for his funny and sometimes cynical comic characters in theatre and then many successful comedy films made from the 1940s to the 1960s, he also worked with many iconic Italian film directors in dramatic roles.
1944
Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin
Russian general (born 1901)
Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin was a Soviet military commander during World War II who was responsible for many Red Army operations in the Ukrainian SSR as the commander of the Southwestern Front, and of the Voronezh Front during the Battle of Kursk. During the Soviet offensive to retake right-bank Ukraine, Vatutin led the 1st Ukrainian Front, which was responsible for the Red Army's offensives to the west and the southwest of Kiev and the eventual liberation of the city. He was ambushed in February 1944 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and died from his injuries in April.
2012
Dwayne Schintzius
American basketball player (born 1968)
Dwayne Kenneth Schintzius was an American basketball player who played eight seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was born in Brandon, Florida and attended the University of Florida, where he helped lead the Florida Gators men's basketball program to its first three NCAA tournament appearances as an all-conference center. Schintzius was selected in the first round of the 1990 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs, but chronic back problems reduced his effectiveness, and he played for six different NBA teams over ten seasons in the league, mainly as a reserve player.
1938
César Vallejo
Peruvian journalist, poet, and playwright (born 1892)
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only two books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante". The late British poet, critic and biographer Martin Seymour-Smith, a leading authority on world literature, called Vallejo "the greatest twentieth-century poet in any language." He was a member of the intellectual community called North Group formed in the Peruvian north coastal city of Trujillo.
1984
Tommy Cooper
Welsh comedian and magician (born 1921)
Thomas Frederick Cooper was a Welsh prop comedian, actor, entertainer and magician. He was large and lumbering at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and habitually wore a red fez when performing. He served in the British Army for seven years before developing his conjuring skills and becoming a member of The Magic Circle. Although he spent time on tour performing his magical act, which specialised in magic tricks that appeared to fail, he rose to international prominence when his career moved into television, with programmes for London Weekend Television and Thames Television.
1980
Jean-Paul Sartre
French philosopher and author, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1905)
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, political activist, and writer, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and was a proponent of Libertarian Marxism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
1988
Kenneth Williams
English actor and screenwriter (born 1926)
Kenneth Charles Williams was a British actor and comedian. He was best known for his comedy roles and in later life as a raconteur and diarist. He was one of the main cast in 26 of the 31 Carry On films and appeared in many British television programmes and radio comedies, including series with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne, as well as being a frequent panellist on BBC Radio 4's comedy panel show Just a Minute from its second series in 1968 until his death 20 years later.
2017
Clifton James
American actor (born 1920)
George Clifton James was an American actor of film, theatre, and television. He was best known to screen audiences for his various character roles, including prison floorwalker Carr in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Sheriff J.W. Pepper alongside Roger Moore in the James Bond films Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), the sheriff in Silver Streak (1976) and Superman II (1980), a Texas tycoon in The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977), and Charles Comiskey in Eight Men Out (1988).