Notable Deaths on April 4

Manowar is an American heavy metal band from Auburn, New York. Formed in 1980, the group is known for lyrics based on fantasy and mythology as well as numerous songs celebrating the genre and its core audience. The band is also known for a loud and emphatic sound. In an interview for MTV in February 2007, bassist Joey DeMaio lamented that "these days, there's a real lack of big, epic metal that is drenched with crushing guitars and choirs and orchestras... so it's nice to be one of the few bands that's actually doing that". In 1984, Manowar was included in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering the loudest performance, a record that they have since broken on two occasions. They also hold the world record for the longest heavy metal concert after playing for five hours and one minute in Bulgaria in 2008. They are known for their slogan "death to false metal".

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was an American Baptist pastor and politician who represented the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the United States House of Representatives from 1945 until 1971. He was the first African American to be elected to Congress from New York, as well as the first from any state in the Northeast. Re-elected for nearly three decades, Powell became a powerful national politician of the Democratic Party, and served as a national spokesman on civil rights and social issues. He also urged United States presidents to support emerging nations in Africa and Asia as they gained independence after colonialism.

Henry John Heinz III was an American businessman and politician who served as a United States senator from Pennsylvania from 1977 until his death in 1991. An heir to the Heinz family fortune, Heinz entered politics in 1971 when he won a special election to replace Robert Corbett to represent Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district. In 1976, Heinz ran to replace retiring Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott. Heinz narrowly won in the Republican primary over future Senator Arlen Specter and defeated William Green III in the general election. Heinz won re-election in 1982 and 1988 by large margins. On April 4, 1991, Heinz was killed when his plane, facing mechanical problems, collided with a helicopter inspecting the plane, killing all involved in the crash.

Pope Formosus was the pope and ruler of the Papal States from 6 October 891 until his death on 4 April 896. His reign as Pope was troubled, marked by interventions in power struggles over the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Kingdom of West Francia, and the Holy Roman Empire. Because he sided with Arnulf of Carinthia against Lambert of Spoleto, Formosus's remains were exhumed and put on trial in the Cadaver Synod. Several of his immediate successors were primarily preoccupied by the controversial legacy of his pontificate, noting his desertion from the diocese in Portus to pursue personal ambition in Rome. Formosus was seen as failing to uphold the ideals of the Church, which is why Stephen VI judged him for moving into an elevated role while holding another. Due to these controversies, no other pope has ever taken on the papal name Formosus.

Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, playwright, and hack writer. He produced literary works in a variety of genres and is considered one of the most versatile writers of the Georgian era. His works are known for their realistic depictions of British society, and his comedy plays for the English stage are considered second in importance only to those of playwright William Shakespeare. Credited with introducing sentimentalism in English literature in 18th-century Great Britain, several of Goldsmith's publications are popular classics of the period, including his only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the comedy play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).

Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven was a Scottish army officer. Born illegitimate and raised as a foster child, he subsequently advanced to the rank of field marshal in the Swedish Army and a major leader of the Thirty Years' War, and in Scotland became Lord General in command of the Army of the Covenanters, a privy councillor, captain of Edinburgh Castle, Lord Balgonie and Earl of Leven. In England he commanded the Army of the Solemn League and Covenant and was senior commander of the Army of Both Kingdoms (1642–1647). Leslie served in the Thirty Years' War, the Bishops' Wars, and most of the English Civil War, fighting primarily in the First English Civil War. Leslie would live a long life, dying roughly at the age of 80 or 81.

Al-Harith ibn Abi’l-ʿAlaʾ Saʿid ibn Hamdan al-Taghlibi (932–968), better known by his pen name Abu Firas al-Hamdani, was an Arab prince and poet. He was a cousin of Sayf al-Dawla and a member of the Hamdanid dynasty, who were rulers in northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia during the 10th century. He served Sayf al-Dawla as governor of Manbij as well as court poet, and was active in his cousin's wars against the Byzantine Empire. He was captured by the Byzantines in 959/962 and spent several years at their capital, Constantinople, where he composed his most famous work, the collection of poems titled al-Rūmiyyāt (الروميات). He was ransomed in 966, and was killed in 968, when he raised a revolt against his nephew Sa'd al-Dawla, Sayf al-Dawla's successor. He is considered among the greatest figures of classical Arabic poetry.

Stefan Wolpe was a German-born American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz movement to the Eighth Street Artists' Club, Black Mountain College, and the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He lived and worked in Berlin (1902–1933) until the Nazi seizure of power forced him to move first to Vienna (1933–34) and Jerusalem (1934–38) before settling in New York City (1938–72). In works such as Battle Piece (1942/1947) and "In a State of Flight" in Enactments for Three Pianos (1953), he responded self-consciously to the circumstances of his uprooted life, a theme he also explored extensively in voluminous diaries, correspondence, and lectures. His densely eclectic music absorbed ideas and idioms from diverse artistic milieus, including post-tonality, bebop, and Arab classical musics.

Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones was a self-taught programmer and a pioneering British computer and information scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency (IDF), a technology that underlies most modern search engines. She was an advocate for women in computer science, her slogan being, "Computing is too important to be left to men." In 2019, The New York Times published her belated obituary in its series Overlooked, calling her "a pioneer of computer science for work combining statistics and linguistics, and an advocate for women in the field." From 2008, to recognise her achievements in the fields of information retrieval (IR) and natural language processing (NLP), the Karen Spärck Jones Award is awarded annually to a recipient for outstanding research in one or both of her fields.

Florence Laura Goodenough was an American psychologist and professor at the University of Minnesota who studied child intelligence and various problems in the field of child development. She was president of the Society for Research in Child Development from 1946 to 1947. She is best known for publishing the book Measurement Of Intelligence By Drawings, where she introduced the Goodenough Draw-A-Man test to assess intelligence in young children through nonverbal measurement. She is noted for developing the Minnesota Preschool Scale. In 1931, she published two books, titled Experimental Child Study and Anger in Young Children, which analyzed the methods used in evaluating children. She wrote the Handbook of Child Psychology in 1933, becoming the first known psychologist to critique ratio IQ.

Plato the Studite, also Plato of Sakkoudion, was a Byzantine minor official who became a monk in 759. After refusing the metropolitan see of Nicomedia or the headship of a monastery in Constantinople, in 783 he founded the monastery of Sakkoudion on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, of which he became the first abbot. He is notable, along with his nephew Theodore Stoudites, for his iconodule stance during the Byzantine Iconoclasm and his participation in the Second Council of Nicaea, and to his firm opposition to the second marriage of Emperor Constantine VI to his (Plato's) niece Theodote. He was canonized by the Church, and his feast day is April 4.

Egerton Herbert Norman was a Canadian diplomat and historian. Born in Japan to missionary parents, he became a historian of modern Japan before joining the Canadian foreign service. His most influential book was Japan's Emergence as a Modern State (1940) where he argued that persisting feudal class relations were responsible for government oppression at home and the imperialistic expansion that led to World War II in Asia. During the Red Scare of the 1950s Norman was accused of being a communist or even a spy, though investigations found no corroboration and he was defended by Canadian authorities. He committed suicide in 1957.

Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."

Chögyam Trungpa, formally named the 11th Zurmang Trungpa, Chokyi Gyatso, was a Tibetan Buddhist master and holder of both Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. He was recognized by both Tibetan Buddhists and other spiritual practitioners and scholars as a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He was a major figure in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method. The 11th of the Trungpa tülkus, he was a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of Shambhala Buddhist tradition.

John Venn, FRS, FSA was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing Venn diagrams, which are used in logic, set theory, probability, statistics, and computer science. In 1866, Venn published The Logic of Chance, a groundbreaking book which espoused the frequency theory of probability, arguing that probability should be determined by how often something is forecast to occur as opposed to "educated" assumptions. Venn then further developed George Boole's theories in the 1881 work Symbolic Logic, where he highlighted what would become known as Venn diagrams.

Antti Oskari Tokoi was a Finnish socialist politician who served as a leader of the Social Democratic Party of Finland. Tokoi became Chairman of the Senate of Finland in 1917, and thus, he was the world's first social democratic leader of the government. During the short-lived Revolution of 1918, Tokoi participated as a leading figure in the revolutionary government. Tokoi later emigrated to the United States, where he served as the long-time editor of Raivaaja, the newspaper of the Finnish Socialist Federation.

Carmine Infantino was an American comics artist and editor, primarily for DC Comics, during the late 1950s and early 1960s period known as the Silver Age of Comic Books. Among his character creations are the Black Canary and the Silver Age version of the Flash with writer Robert Kanigher, Elongated Man with John Broome, the Barbara Gordon incarnation of Batgirl with writer Gardner Fox, Deadman with writer Arnold Drake, and Christopher Chance, the second iteration of the Human Target, with Len Wein.

Francisco de Jesus Marto and Jacinta de Jesus Marto were siblings from Aljustrel, a small hamlet near Fátima, Portugal, who, with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos (1907–2005), reportedly witnessed three apparitions of the Angel of Peace in 1916, and several apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Cova da Iria in 1917. The title Our Lady of Fátima was given to the Virgin Mary as a result, and the Sanctuary of Fátima became a major centre of global Catholic pilgrimage.

Robert III, born John Stewart, was King of Scots from 1390 to his death in 1406. He was also High Steward of Scotland from 1371 to 1390 and held the titles of Earl of Atholl (1367–1390) and Earl of Carrick (1368–1390) before ascending the throne at the age of about 53 years. He was the eldest son of King Robert II and Elizabeth Mure and was legitimised by his parents' second marriage through papal dispensation in 1349.