Did you know about Güyük Khan
When his father died, he was enthroned as Khagan in 1246.
Notable Deaths on April 20
April 20 has 82 recorded notable deaths across history, from 689 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1248 — Güyük Khan
Mongol ruler, 3rd Great Khan of the Mongol Empire (born 1206)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
82 source records
689 – 2026
Today in history
Major events on April 20
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1898 U.S. President William McKinley signs a joint resolution to Congress for declaration of war against Spain, beginning the Spanish–American War. Source
- 1876 The April Uprising begins. Its suppression shocks European opinion, and Bulgarian independence becomes a condition for ending the Russo-Turkish War. Source
Did you know about Roman Gabriel
Roman Gabriel was notable for being the first Filipino-American quarterback in the NFL and the first and only Asian American to win the NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, which he received in 1969.
Did you know about Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s.
Did you know about Dorothy Height
Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and Foundational Black Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole.
Did you know about Chief Pontiac
Historical accounts from the 19th century portrayed him as the mastermind and leader of the revolt, but some subsequent scholars argued that his role had been exaggerated.
More major people who died on April 20
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
2024
Roman Gabriel
Filipino-American NFL American footballer
Roman Ildonzo Gabriel Jr. was an American professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the NC State Wolfpack, earning first-team All-American honors twice. Gabriel was the second overall pick in the 1962 NFL draft and played 11 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, followed by five seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. He was notable for being the first Filipino-American quarterback in the NFL and the first and only Asian American to win the NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, which he received in 1969.
1982
Archibald MacLeish
American poet, playwright, and lawyer (born 1892)
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
2010
Dorothy Height
American educator and activist (born 1912)
Dorothy Irene Height was an African-American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of Foundational Black American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and Foundational Black Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Height's role in the "Big Six" civil rights movement was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a bioethics report in response to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
1769
Chief Pontiac
American tribal leader (born 1720)
Pontiac or Obwaandi'eyaag was an Odawa war chief known for his role in the war named for him, from 1763 to 1766 leading Native Americans in an armed struggle against the British in the Great Lakes region due to, among other reasons, dissatisfaction with British policies. It followed the British victory in the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War. Pontiac's importance in the war that bears his name has been debated. Historical accounts from the 19th century portrayed him as the mastermind and leader of the revolt, but some subsequent scholars argued that his role had been exaggerated. Historians today generally view him as an important local leader who influenced a wider movement that he did not command.
1932
Giuseppe Peano
Italian mathematician and philosopher (born 1858)
Giuseppe Peano was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation, for instance, notations of set operations. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in his honor. As part of this effort, he made key contributions to the modern rigorous and systematic treatment of the method of mathematical induction. He spent most of his career teaching mathematics at the University of Turin. He also created an international auxiliary language, Latino sine flexione, which is a simplified version of Classical Latin. Most of his books and papers are in Latino sine flexione, while others are in Italian.
1284
Hōjō Tokimune
regent of Japan (born 1251)
Hōjō Tokimune of the Hōjō clan was the eighth shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, known for leading the Japanese forces against the invasion of the Mongols and for spreading Zen Buddhism. He was the second son of Tokiyori, fifth shikken of the Kamakura shogunate. From birth, Tokimune was seen as the successor of tokusō, the head of the Hōjō clan. In 1268 AD, at the age of 18, he became shikken himself. During his lifetime, the seats of power of the Japanese Emperor, Imperial Regent (sesshō), Imperial Chief Advisor (kampaku), and the shōgun had all been completely marginalized by the Hōjō shikken.
1935
John Cameron
Scottish footballer and manager (born 1872)
John Cameron was a Scottish footballer and manager. He played as a forward for Queen's Park, Everton and Scotland and was noted as an effective goal-maker and goalscorer. In 1899 he became player-manager at Tottenham Hotspur and guided them to victory in the 1901 FA Cup. As a result, they became the only club outside the English Football League to win the competition. In 1898 he became the first secretary of the Association Footballers' Union, which was the ill-fated fore-runner of the Professional Footballers' Association. He later coached Dresdner SC and during the First World War he was interned at Ruhleben, a civilian detention camp in Germany. After the war he coached Ayr United for one season and then became a football journalist, author and publisher. He had previously worked as a columnist for various newspapers before the war.
1992
Marjorie Gestring
American springboard diver (born 1922)
Marjorie Gestring was a competitive springboard diver from the United States. At the age of 13 years and 268 days, she won the gold medal in 3-meter springboard diving at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, making her at the time the youngest person ever to win an Olympic gold medal. She remains the second-youngest Olympic gold medalist, as of 2026. A multi-time national diving champion in the United States, she was given a second Olympic gold medal by the United States Olympic Committee after the 1940 Summer Olympics were called off due to the advent of World War II. Gestring attempted to return to the Olympics at the 1948 Games, but failed to qualify for the US team. She has been inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame.
1945
Erwin Bumke
Polish-German jurist and politician (born 1874)
Erwin Konrad Eduard Bumke was the last president of the Reichsgericht, the supreme civil and criminal court of the German Reich, serving from 1929 to 1945. As such, according to the Weimar Constitution, he should have become acting President of Germany upon the death of Paul von Hindenburg in August 1934, and thus the acting Head of State of Nazi Germany. The Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich, passed by the Hitler cabinet, unconstitutionally prevented that by combining the presidency with the chancellorship, making Adolf Hitler the undisputed ruler of Germany. Following the Nazi takeover, Bumke extensively cooperated with the Party in establishing a Verbrecherstaat.
1978
Lord Richard Cecil
British soldier and journalist in the Rhodesian Bush War (born 1948)
Lord Richard Valentine Gascoyne-Cecil was a British soldier, Conservative politician and freelance journalist who was killed in Rhodesia whilst covering the country's Bush War. The second son of the 6th Marquess of Salisbury, Cecil was in Rhodesia with a freelance film-maker, Nick Downie, recording material for a television documentary about the war. Carrying a rifle and wearing a Rhodesian Army uniform, he was shot dead at close range by a member of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army. The Rhodesian government reported that Cecil had been "killed in action"; his body was returned to the United Kingdom for burial.
1918
Karl Ferdinand Braun
German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1850)
Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German applied physicist who shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Guglielmo Marconi for their contributions to the development of radio. With his two circuit system, long range radio transmissions and modern telecommunications were made possible. His invention of the phased array antenna in 1905 led to the development of radar, smart antennas, and MIMO. Braun built the first cathode-ray tube in 1897, which led to the development of television, and the first semiconductor diode in 1874, which co-started the development of electronics and electronic engineering.
1999
Rachel Scott
American victim of Columbine High School massacre (born 1981)
Rachel Joy Scott was an American student who was the first victim of the Columbine High School massacre, in which twelve other students and one teacher were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who then committed suicide. During the time of the massacre, Scott was eating lunch with her friend Richard Castaldo outside the school, when Eric Harris shot them multiple times with a Hi-Point 995. Castaldo survived, but Scott died from her injuries. Her body was left outside and was not retrieved until the following morning.
1993
Cantinflas
Mexican actor, producer, and screenwriter (born 1911)
Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes, known by the stage name Cantinflas, was a Mexican comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He is considered to have been the most widely accomplished Mexican comedian and is well known throughout Latin America and Spain. His humor, loaded with Mexican linguistic features of intonation, vocabulary, and syntax, is beloved in all the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and in Spain. His abilities gave rise to a range of expressions based on his stage name, including: cantinflear, cantinflada, cantinflesco, cantifleando and cantinflero.
1999
Cassie Bernall
American victim of Columbine High School massacre (born 1981)
Cassie René Bernall was an American student who was killed in the Columbine High School massacre, where 12 more students and a teacher were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who then committed suicide. It was reported that Bernall had been asked whether or not she believed in God, and she said "Yes", before being shot during the massacre. However, investigators concluded the person who was asked about her belief in God was not Cassie Bernall, but actually Valeen Schnurr, who survived the shooting.
2016
Victoria Wood
British comedian, actress and writer (born 1953)
Victoria Wood was an English comedian, actress, musician, screenwriter, and director. Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades, and her live comedy act was interspersed with her own compositions which she performed at the piano. Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life and included references to activities, attitudes and products that are considered to exemplify Britain. She was noted for her skills in observational comedy and in satirising aspects of social class.
2021
Les McKeown
Scottish pop singer (born 1955)
Leslie Richard McKeown was a Scottish singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the pop rock band Bay City Rollers during their most successful period in the 1970s. The band's original lead singer, Gordon "Nobby" Clark, decided to leave the band in 1972 after fulfilling his touring obligations and McKeown joined the band as their lead vocalist by 1973 and began to re-record his vocals on tracks including "Remember (Sha-La-La-La)" and "Saturday Night", which then became a US number 1 hit.
1991
Steve Marriott
English singer-songwriter and producer (born 1947)
Stephen Peter Marriott was an English musician, guitarist, singer, songwriter, and actor. He was a student at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London and appeared in the West End, before taking a role in music. He co-founded and played in the rock bands Small Faces and Humble Pie, in a career spanning over 20 years. Marriott was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Small Faces.
1558
Johannes Bugenhagen
German priest and theologian (born 1485)
Johannes Bugenhagen, also called Doctor Pomeranus by Martin Luther, was a German theologian and Lutheran priest who introduced the Protestant Reformation in the Duchy of Pomerania and Denmark in the 16th century. Contributions of Karlstadt and Luther to the translation of theology into social legislation were most fully realized by Bugenhagen. Among his major accomplishments was organization of Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and Scandinavia. He has also been called the "Second Apostle of the North".
2012
Bert Weedon
English guitarist and songwriter (born 1920)
Herbert Maurice William Weedon was an English guitarist whose style of playing was popular and influential during the 1950s and 1960s. He was the first British guitarist to have a hit record in the UK singles chart, in 1959, and his best-selling tutorial, Play in a Day, was a major influence on many leading British musicians, such as Eric Clapton, Brian May and Paul McCartney. He was awarded an OBE in 2001 for services to music.