Notable Deaths on August 13

August 13 has 106 recorded notable deaths across history, from 587 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Ignaz Semmelweis

1865 — Ignaz Semmelweis

Hungarian physician and obstetrician (born 1818)

By · Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 106 source records 587 – 2026

Major events on August 13

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1969 The Apollo 11 astronauts enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York City. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon. Source
  2. 1779 American Revolutionary War: The Royal Navy defeats the Penobscot Expedition with the most significant loss of United States naval forces prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Source

Did you know about Ignaz Semmelweis

In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had thrice the mortality of midwives' wards.

Did you know about Tony Jay

A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was known for his voice work in radio, animation, film, and video games.

Did you know about Brian Adams

In 2002, he briefly tried a career in boxing until retiring due to back and shoulder injuries.

Did you know about Jim Neidhart

Jim Neidhart also won titles in Stampede Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Florida, Mid-South Wrestling, Memphis Championship Wrestling and the Mid-Eastern Wrestling Federation.

Did you know about Collis Potter Huntington

Collis Potter Huntington was one of the Big Four tycoons of western railroading who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad.


More major people who died on August 13

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

2006 Tony Jay

Tony Jay

English actor and singer (born 1933)
Tony Jay was a British actor. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was known for his voice work in radio, animation, film, and video games. Jay was particularly noted for his distinctive raspy baritone voice, which often led to him being cast in villainous or authoritative roles. His voice acting roles included Judge Claude Frollo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Megabyte in ReBoot (1994–2001), Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2, as well as the TV series TaleSpin, the Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series of video games and Dr. Lipschitz in Rugrats.
2007 Brian Adams

Brian Adams

American wrestler (born 1964)
Brian Keith Adams was an American professional wrestler. Adams is known for his time with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), under the name Crush, and for World Championship Wrestling (WCW) under his real name Brian Adams. Trained in Japan by Antonio Inoki, he was a two-time WCW World Tag Team Champion, a one-time WWF Tag Team Champion and a one-time AJPW World Tag Team Champion, among other accomplishments. He was a challenger for various singles titles in the WWF and WCW, including the WWF Championship. In 2002, he briefly tried a career in boxing until retiring due to back and shoulder injuries.
2018 Jim Neidhart

Jim Neidhart

American wrestler (born 1955)
James Henry Neidhart was an American professional wrestler known for his appearances in the 1980s and 1990s in the World Wrestling Federation as Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart, where he was a two-time WWF Tag Team Champion with his real-life brother-in-law Bret Hart in the Hart Foundation. He also won titles in Stampede Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Florida, Mid-South Wrestling, Memphis Championship Wrestling and the Mid-Eastern Wrestling Federation. He was part of the Hart wrestling family through marriage to his wife Ellie Hart, teaming with various members throughout his career, and appearing with his daughter Natalya Neidhart on the reality television show Total Divas.
1900 Collis Potter Huntington

Collis Potter Huntington

American railway magnate (born 1821)
Collis Potter Huntington was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four tycoons of western railroading who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. Huntington helped lead and develop other major interstate lines, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O), which he was recruited to help complete. The C&O, completed in 1873, fulfilled a long-held dream of Virginians of a rail link from the James River at Richmond to the Ohio River valley. The railroad facilities adjacent to the river there resulted in expansion of the former small town of Guyandotte, West Virginia, into part of a new city which was named Huntington in his honor.
2012 Johnny Pesky

Johnny Pesky

American baseball player and manager (born 1919)
John Michael Pesky, nicknamed "the Needle" and "Mr. Red Sox", was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach in Major League Baseball (MLB). He was a shortstop and third baseman during a ten-year major league playing career, appearing in 1,270 games played in 1942 and from 1946 to 1954 for three teams. He missed the 1943–45 seasons while serving in World War II. Pesky was associated with the Boston Red Sox for 61 of his 73 years in baseball—from 1940 through June 3, 1952, 1961 through 1964, and from 1969 until his death. Pesky also managed the Red Sox from 1963 to 1964, and in September 1980.
1986 Helen Mack

Helen Mack

American actress (born 1913)
Helen Mack was an American actress. She started her career as a child actress in silent films, moving to Broadway plays and touring one of the vaudeville circuits. Her greater success as an actress was as a leading lady in the 1930s. She made the transition to performing on radio and then into writing, directing, and producing shows during the Golden Age of Radio. She later wrote for Broadway, stage and television. Her career spanned the infancy of the motion picture industry, the beginnings of Broadway, the final days of vaudeville, the transition to sound movies, the Golden Age of Radio, and the rise of television.
1998 Julien Green

Julien Green

American author (born 1900)
Julien Green, often Julian Green, was an American writer who lived most of his life in France and wrote primarily in French, although he also wrote some works in English. Over a long and prolific career, he authored novels and essays, several plays, and a biography of Francis of Assisi, produced a four-volume autobiography, and for decades maintained a daily journal that he edited and published in nineteen volumes. The posthumous publication of the unexpurgated journals revealed aspects of his personality and sexuality that had been omitted from the published editions, revealed details about many of his prominent contemporaries, and documented the gay subculture of 20th-century France.
2014 Eduardo Campos

Eduardo Campos

Brazilian politician, 14th Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology (born 1965)
Eduardo Henrique Accioly Campos was a Brazilian congressman and governor. Born and raised in Recife, in the Northeast Brazil, he graduated in Economics from the Recife's Federal University of Pernambuco. Campos' maternal grandfather, the governor of the Brazilian state, Pernambuco, made him his Financial Secretary. Campos became a federal congressman in Brazil and got Pernambuco federal money for a shipyard, railways and an oil refinery. Later, as Brazil's Minister for Science and Technology, he supported stem-cell research. He served two terms as governor of his home state, Pernambuco. He helped hospitals, secondary schools, wind power, farms, poor people and anti-crime data-mining. In his 2014 campaign for president of Brazil he criticized the incumbent and her Workers' Party and positioned himself as the business-friendly leader of the Brazilian Socialist Party. For outdoor rallies and local radio interviews, he criss-crossed the country by rented jet. He died on 13 August 2014, three days after his 49th birthday, when his plane crashed in poor weather in the city of Santos.
908 Al-Muktafi

Al-Muktafi

Abbasid caliph
Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṭalḥa ibn Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Muktafī bi'Llāh, better known by his regnal name al-Muktafī bi-Llāh, was the caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 902 to 908. More liberal and sedentary than his militaristic father al-Mu'tadid, al-Muktafi essentially continued his policies, although most of the actual conduct of government was left to his viziers and officials. His reign saw the defeat of the Qarmatians of the Syrian Desert, and the reincorporation of Egypt and the parts of Syria ruled by the Tulunid dynasty. The war with the Byzantine Empire continued with alternating success, although the Arabs scored a major victory in the Sack of Thessalonica in 904. His death in 908 opened the way for the installation of a weak ruler, al-Muqtadir, by the palace bureaucracy, and began the terminal decline of the Abbasid Caliphate that ended in 946 with the caliphs becoming puppet rulers under the Buyid dynasty.
2001 Jim Hughes

Jim Hughes

American baseball player and manager (born 1923)
James Robert Hughes was an American professional baseball player. The right-handed pitcher appeared in all or part of six seasons (1952–1957) in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox and worked in 172 games, all but one as a relief pitcher. In 1954, he led the National League in saves with 24 and tied for the league leadership in games pitched with 60. Hughes was a native of Chicago who was listed as 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m) tall and 200 pounds (91 kg). His baseball career began in 1946, after he had served in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific theatre of World War II.
2024 Sergio Donati

Sergio Donati

Italian screenwriter (born 1933)
Sergio Donati was an Italian screenwriter. He wrote for more than 70 films beginning in 1952. He was born in Rome, Italy. He started as a writer and had some of his books optioned for film. He is well known for his collaboration with Italian director Sergio Leone, who encouraged him to take up screenwriting as a full-time career, and with Italian producer Dino de Laurentis.What is film? In the first act, you hang a man up in a tree. In the second act, you throw stones at him. In the third act, he falls down. If he is alive, it is a comedy. If he is dead, it is a drama.
1996 António de Spínola

António de Spínola

Portuguese general and politician, 14th President of Portugal (born 1910)
António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola was a Portuguese military officer, author and conservative politician. During the Estado Novo regime he became one of Portugal's most senior military commanders, leading military operations against independence movements. After the Carnation Revolution, partially organised by under-ranked military captains, he was invited to be the president of Portugal. His role in Portugal's transition to democracy remains highly controversial, particularly regarding his role in leading the 11 March 1975 attempted coup as well as the anticommunist terrorist organisation Movimento Democrático de Libertação de Portugal. He was noted for wearing a monocle on his right eye.
1826 René Laennec

René Laennec

French physician, invented the stethoscope (born 1781)
René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec was a French medical doctor and musician. His skill at carving his own wooden flutes led him to invent the stethoscope in 1816, while working at the Hôpital Necker. He pioneered its use in diagnosing various chest conditions. He became a lecturer at the Collège de France in 1822 and professor of medicine in 1823. His final appointments were that of head of the medical clinic at the Hôpital de la Charité and professor at the Collège de France. He went into a coma and subsequently died of tuberculosis on 13 August 1826, at age 45.
1971 W. O. Bentley

W. O. Bentley

English race car driver and engineer, founded Bentley Motors Limited (born 1888)
Walter Owen Bentley, was an English engineer who founded Bentley in London. He was a motorcycle and car racer as a young man. After making a name for himself as a designer of aircraft and automobile engines, Bentley established his own firm in 1919. He built the firm into one of the world's premier luxury and performance auto manufacturers, and led the marque to multiple victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. After selling his namesake company to Rolls-Royce in 1931, he was employed as a designer for Lagonda, Aston Martin and Armstrong Siddeley.
2015 Bob Fillion

Bob Fillion

Canadian ice hockey player and manager (born 1920)
Joseph Louis Robert Edgar Fillion was a Canadian professional ice hockey player who played seven seasons for the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League (NHL) between 1943 and 1950. He was a member of two Stanley Cup-winning teams during his career with Montreal; in 1944 and 1946. He also spent time with the Buffalo Bisons of the AHL and the Sherbrooke Saints of the Quebec Senior Hockey League (QSHL). He died on August 13, 2015. At the time of his death, Fillion was the last surviving member of the Canadiens' 1944 Stanley Cup team.
1958 Francis J. McCormick

Francis J. McCormick

American football, basketball player, and coach (born 1903)
Francis J. "Mickey" McCormick was an American football and basketball player and coach. He served as the head football coach at St. Norbert College from 1934 to 1942 and at Carroll College—now known as Carroll University—in Waukesha, Wisconsin from 1949 to 1957, compiling a career college football record of 69–57–9. McCormick was also the head basketball coach at St. Norbert from 1934 to 1943 and again during the 1944–45 season, tallying a mark of 62–74. He was one of the more outspoken coaches against the NCAA rule change on "free substitution" in 1953.
2021 Nanci Griffith

Nanci Griffith

American singer-songwriter (born 1953)
Nanci Caroline Griffith was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She often appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits, starting in 1985 during season 10. Griffith's career spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, folk, and what she termed "folkabilly." She won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her 1993 recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms. The album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who were her major influences. One of her better-known songs is "From a Distance," which was written and composed by Julie Gold.
2026 Prichard Colón

Prichard Colón

Puerto Rican boxer (born 1992)
Prichard Colón Meléndez was a Puerto Rican professional boxer, honorary WBC World Champion, and gold medal winner at the 2010 Pan American Youth Championship in the 64 kg category. After a 2015 match with Terrel Williams, in which he was repeatedly struck in the back of the head with a rabbit punch, Colón collapsed in the dressing room and remained in a coma for 221 days due to a brain hemorrhage. He remained in a persistent vegetative state and was unable to speak, receiving physiotherapy until his death in 2026.
1523 Gerard David

Gerard David

Flemish painter (born 1460)
Gerard David was an Early Netherlandish painter and manuscript illuminator known for his brilliant use of color. Only a bare outline of his life survives, although some facts are known. He may have been the Meester gheraet van brugghe who became a master of the Antwerp guild in 1515. He was very successful in his lifetime and probably ran two workshops, in Antwerp and Bruges. Like many painters of his period, his reputation diminished in the 17th century until he was rediscovered in the 19th century.

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