Notable Deaths on April 17

April 17 has 103 recorded notable deaths across history, from 485 to 2022. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Gabriel García Márquez

2014 — Gabriel García Márquez

Colombian journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1927)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 103 source records 485 – 2022

Major events on April 17

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1895 The Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan is signed. This marks the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, and the defeated Qing Empire is forced to renounce its claims on Korea and to concede the southern portion of the Fengtian province, Taiwan and the Penghu to Japan. Source
  2. 2014 NASA's Kepler space telescope confirms the discovery of the first Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star. Source

Did you know about Gabriel García Márquez

Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Did you know about Barbara Bush

Barbara Bush was the first lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, as the wife of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States.

Did you know about Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian academic, philosopher and statesman who served as the Vice President of India from 1952 to 1962 and President of India from 1962 to 1967.

Did you know about Chaim Herzog

Chaim Herzog was an Irish-Israeli politician, military officer, lawyer and author who served as President of Israel from 1983 to 1993.

Did you know about Ralph Abernathy

Abernathy became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968 and led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., in addition to other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans.

More major people who died on April 17

Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.

2018 Barbara Bush

Barbara Bush

American political matriarch and literacy advocate, First Lady of the United States (1989–1993), and Second Lady of the United States (1981–1989) (born 1925)
Barbara Bush was the first lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, as the wife of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States. She was previously second lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989, when her husband was vice president under President Ronald Reagan, and founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Among her children are George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, and Jeb Bush, the 43rd governor of Florida. Bush and Abigail Adams are the only two women to be the wife of one U.S. president and the mother of another. At the time she became first lady, she was the second oldest woman to hold the position, behind only Anna Harrison, who never lived in the capital. Bush was generally popular as first lady, recognized for her apolitical grandmotherly image.
Wikipedia source
1975 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Indian philosopher and politician, 2nd President of India (born 1888)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian academic, philosopher and statesman who served as the Vice President of India from 1952 to 1962 and President of India from 1962 to 1967. He was the ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1949 to 1952. He was also the vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University from 1939 to 1948 and the vice-chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. Radhakrishnan is considered one of the most influential and distinguished 20th century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, he held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta from 1921 to 1932 and Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford from 1936 to 1952.
Wikipedia source
1997 Chaim Herzog

Chaim Herzog

Israeli general, lawyer, and politician, 6th President of Israel (born 1918)
Chaim Herzog was an Irish-Israeli politician, military officer, lawyer and author who served as President of Israel from 1983 to 1993. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Dublin, the son of Ireland's Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935. He served in the Haganah Jewish paramilitary group during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt and in the British Army during World War II. Following the end of the British Mandate and Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, he served in the Israel Defense Forces and fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He remained in the Israeli military as an officer following the war until retiring in 1962 with the rank of major-general.
Wikipedia source
1990 Ralph Abernathy

Ralph Abernathy

American minister and activist (born 1936)
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was ordained in the Baptist tradition in 1948. Being a leader of the civil rights movement, Abernathy was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. and collaborated with him and E. D. Nixon to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led and co-created the Montgomery bus boycott and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Abernathy became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968 and led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., in addition to other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans. He also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
Wikipedia source
1695 Juana Inés de la Cruz

Juana Inés de la Cruz

Mexican poet and scholar (born 1651)
Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, was a Hieronymite nun and a Novohispanic writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, nicknamed "The Tenth Muse", "The Mexican Phoenix", and "The Phoenix of America" by her contemporary critics. She was also a student of science. She was among the main contributors to the Spanish Golden Age, alongside Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Garcilaso de la Vega "El Inca", and is considered one of the most important female writers in Spanish language literature and Mexican literature.
Wikipedia source
2019 Alan García

Alan García

Peruvian lawyer and politician, twice President of Peru (born 1949)
Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez was a Peruvian politician who served as President of Peru for two non-consecutive terms, from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2011. He was the second leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), and its only member to serve as president. Mentored by the APRA's founder, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, he served in the Constituent Assembly of 1978–1979. Elected to the Peruvian Congress in 1980, he rose to the position of General Secretary of the APRA in 1982, and was elected to the presidency in 1985 in a landslide.
Wikipedia source
2015 Robert P. Griffin

Robert P. Griffin

American soldier, lawyer, and politician (born 1923)
Robert Paul Griffin was an American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both chambers of the United States Congress as a Representative from 1957 to 1966 and as a U.S. Senator from 1966 to 1979. He later served a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 1987 to 1995. He co-sponsored the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, which regulates the internal affairs of labor unions. As a deputy minority leader in the Senate, he called on President Richard Nixon, a fellow Republican, to resign during the Watergate scandal.
Wikipedia source
1954 Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu

Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu

Romanian lawyer and politician, Romanian Minister of Justice (born 1900)
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania (PCR), also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at the University of Bucharest. Pătrășcanu rose to a government position before the end of World War II and, after having disagreed with Stalinist tenets on several occasions, eventually came into conflict with the Romanian Communist government of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. He became a political prisoner and was ultimately executed. Fourteen years after Pătrășcanu's death, Romania's new communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, endorsed his rehabilitation as part of a change in policy.
Wikipedia source
2013 V. S. Ramadevi

V. S. Ramadevi

Indian politician, 13th Governor of Karnataka (born 1934)
V. S. Ramadevi was an Indian politician who was the first lady to become the 8th Governor of Karnataka and 9th Chief Election Commissioner of India from 26 November 1990 to 11 December 1990. She was the first woman to become Chief Election Commissioner of India. She was succeeded by T. N. Seshan. Ramadevi was the first woman to serve as Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha, from 1 July 1993 to 25 September 1997. She was also the first and to date, the only female Governor of Karnataka, from 2 December 1999 to 20 August 2002.
Wikipedia source
1961 Elda Anderson

Elda Anderson

American physicist and health researcher (born 1899)
Elda Emma Anderson was an American physicist and health researcher. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235 at the laboratory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she became professor of physics at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1929. After the war, she became interested in health physics. She worked in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and established the professional certification agency known as the American Board of Health Physics.
Wikipedia source
1921 Manwel Dimech

Manwel Dimech

Maltese journalist, author, and philosopher (born 1860)
Emmanuel Giovanni Salvatore Pietro Dimech, also known as Manwel Dimech was a Maltese socialist, philosopher, journalist, writer, poet and social revolutionary. Born in Valletta and brought up in extreme poverty and illiteracy, Dimech spent significant portions of his early life in the Maltese prison system, mostly on charges of petty theft. At the age of seventeen, Dimech was arrested for the crime of involuntary murder, and sentenced to seventeen years in jail. After being thrown in jail, Dimech started to educate himself and became a man of letters.
Wikipedia source
1960 Eddie Cochran

Eddie Cochran

American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1938)
Edward Ray Cochran was an American rock and roll musician. His songs, such as "Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", "C'mon Everybody" and "Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desire in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording, distortion techniques and overdubbing, even on his earliest singles. Cochran played the guitar, piano, bass, and drums. His image as a sharply dressed and attractive young man with a rebellious attitude epitomized the stance of the 1950s rocker, and in death, he achieved iconic status.
Wikipedia source
1987 Dick Shawn

Dick Shawn

American actor (born 1923)
Dick Shawn was an American actor and comedian. He played a wide variety of supporting roles and was a prolific character actor. During the 1960s, he played small roles in madcap comedies, usually portraying caricatures of counterculture personalities, such as the hedonistic but mother-obsessed Sylvester Marcus in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and the hippie actor Lorenzo Saint DuBois ("L.S.D.") in The Producers (1967). Beyond his film work, he appeared in numerous television shows from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Wikipedia source
2003 John Paul Getty Jr.

John Paul Getty Jr.

American-English philanthropist (born 1932)
Sir John Paul Getty, known widely as John Paul Getty Jr., was a British-American businessman, philanthropist, and book collector. He was the third son of the American-born British oil tycoon J. Paul Getty (1892–1976), who was once the richest man in the world. His mother was J. Paul Getty's fourth wife, Ann Rork. The Getty family's wealth was the result of the oil business founded by George Franklin Getty. One of his sons, Mark Getty, co-founded the visual media company Getty Images.
Wikipedia source
485 Proclus

Proclus

Greek mathematician and philosopher (born 412)
Proclus Lycius, called Proclus the Successor, was a Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism and, through later interpreters and translators, exerted an influence on Byzantine philosophy, early Islamic philosophy, scholastic philosophy, and German idealism, especially G. W. F. Hegel, who called Proclus's Platonic Theology "the true turning point or transition from ancient to modern times, from ancient philosophy to Christianity."
Wikipedia source
1711 Joseph I

Joseph I

Holy Roman Emperor (born 1678)
Joseph I was Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1705 until his death in 1711. He was the eldest son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor from his third wife, Eleonor Magdalene of Neuburg. Joseph was crowned King of Hungary at the age of nine in 1687 and was elected King of the Romans at the age of eleven in 1690. He succeeded to the thrones of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire when his father died.
Wikipedia source
1080 Harald III of Denmark (born 1041)

Harald III of Denmark (born 1041)

Harald Hen was King of Denmark from 1076 to 1080. Harald III was an illegitimate son of Danish king Sweyn II Estridsson, and contested the crown with some of his brothers. He was a peaceful ruler who initiated a number of reforms. Harald was married to his cousin Margareta Hasbjörnsdatter, but did not leave any heirs, and was succeeded by his brother Canute IV the Saint. Four of his half-brothers were in turn crowned Danish kings.
Wikipedia source
1888 E. G. Squier

E. G. Squier

American archaeologist and journalist (born 1821)
Ephraim George Squier was an American archaeologist, diplomat, and journalist. Born in Bethlehem, New York, he spent his early career in the northeastern United States. There, along with his colleague Edwin H. Davis, he was a prominent investigator of the prehistoric Indian mounds of the Ohio River valley. Squier received national recognition after he co-authored Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848). It was the first publication of the newly established Smithsonian Institution.
Wikipedia source
818 Bernard of Italy

Bernard of Italy

Frankish king (born 797)
Bernard was the King of Italy, from 810 to 817, within the Carolingian Empire. He was an illegitimate son and successor of King Pepin of Italy. He plotted against his uncle, Emperor Louis the Pious, when the latter's Ordinatio Imperii made Bernard a vassal of his cousin Lothair. When his plot was discovered, Louis had him deposed by the end of 817, and then condemned and blinded, a procedure which killed him.
Wikipedia source

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