Did you know
Becker's 1963 book Outsiders provided the foundations for labeling theory
Notable Deaths on August 16
111 people
79 – 2023
August 16 has seen 111 notable figures pass away throughout recorded history — from 79 – 2023. Below are the most significant names who died on this date.
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
2023 — Howard S. Becker
American sociologist (born 1928)
Did you know
Howard Saul Becker was an American sociologist who taught at Northwestern University
Did you know
A graduate of the University of Chicago, Becker was considered part of the second Chicago School of Sociology, which also includes Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss.
Did you know
Becker made contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music
Did you know
Becker also wrote extensively on sociological writing styles and methodologies
Chinese Han dynasty consort (born 40)
AD 79 (LXXIX) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Titus and Vespasianus. The denomination AD 79 for this year has been used since the…
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79
bishop of Langres
Theutbald I was the bishop of Langres from when he was elected to succeed Alberic until his death. He is first securely attested as bishop in 842. He may have belonged to the same Bavarian family that had dominated the…
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856
Byzantine general (born 944)
Marianos Argyros was a Byzantine aristocrat and member of the Argyros family. A monk, in 944 he supported the assumption of sole rule by Constantine VII, and was allowed to leave the monastery and enter imperial…
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963
George I, of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the 2nd king (mepe) of the Kingdom of Georgia from 1014 until his death in 1027.
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1027
fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar
Bernard de Tramelay was the fourth Grand Master of the Knights Templar, serving from 1152 until his death at the Siege of Ascalon.
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1153
Japanese regent and onna-bugeisha (born 1156)
Hōjō Masako was a Japanese female samurai (onna-musha) and politician who exercised significant power in the early years of the Kamakura period, which was reflected by her contemporary sobriquet of the "nun shogun".…
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1225
Byzantine-Greek emperor (born 1222)
Theodore II Doukas Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258. He was the only child of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes and Empress Irene Laskarina. His mother was the eldest daughter of…
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1258
1285
John II Megas Komnenos was Emperor of Trebizond from June 1280 to his death in 1297. He was the youngest son of Emperor Manuel I and his third wife, Irene Syrikaina, a Trapezuntine noblewoman. John succeeded to the…
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1297
1327
founder of the state of Milan (born 1302)
Azzone Visconti was lord of Milan from 1329 until his death. After the death of his uncle, Marco Visconti, he was threatened with excommunication and had to submit to Pope John XXII. Azzone reconstituted his family's…
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1339
1358
Wenceslaus IV was King of Bohemia from 1378 until his death in 1419 and King of the Romans and King of Germany from 1376 until he was deposed in 1400. As he belonged to the House of Luxembourg, he was also Duke of…
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1419
Japanese shōgun (born 1434)
Ashikaga Yoshikatsu was the seventh shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate who reigned from 1442 to 1443 during the Muromachi period of Japan. Yoshikatsu was the son of 6th shōgun Ashikaga Yoshinori with his concubine, Hino…
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1443
Dominican nun
Beatrice of Silva, born Beatriz de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese noblewoman who became the foundress of the monastic Order of the Immaculate Conception. Amadeus of Portugal's younger sister, she is honored as a…
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1492
French composer (born 1445)
Loyset Compère was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. Of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, he was one of the most significant composers of motets and chansons of that era, and one of the first…
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1518
1532
English historian and author (born 1608)
Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first…
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1661
English poet and author (born 1621)
Andrew Marvell was an English poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. A…
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1678
Swiss mathematician and theorist (born 1654)
Jacob Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician. He sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy and was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus, to which he made numerous…
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1705
English philosopher and author (born 1657)
Matthew Tindal was an eminent English deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time.
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1733
marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (born 1719)
Charles François de Broglie, Marquis of Ruffec, was a French soldier and diplomat from the House of Broglie.
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1791
French mathematician and theorist (born 1755)
Marc-Antoine Parseval des Chênes was a French mathematician, most famous for what is now known as Parseval's theorem, which showed that the Fourier transform is unitary.
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1836
1855
Queen consort of Kingdom of Madagascar and then sovereign (born 1778)
Ranavalona I, also known as Ramavo or Ranavalo-Manjaka I or Ranavalona reniny, was the sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar from 1828 to 1861. After positioning herself as queen following the death of her young…
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1861
English-American architect (born 1802)
Richard Upjohn was a British-American architect who immigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to popularity in the…
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1878
Indian mystic and philosopher (born 1836)
Ramakrishna, also called Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Ramakrishna Chattopadhyay, was an Indian Hindu mystic. He was a devotee of the goddess Kali, but adhered to various religious practices from the Hindu traditions of…
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1886
English civil engineer (born 1837)
Webster Paulson was an English civil engineer who is known for his work in Malta in the late 19th century.
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1887
American pharmacist and chemist, invented Coca-Cola (born 1831)
John Stith Pemberton was an American pharmacist, chemist, and Confederate States Army officer who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. On May 8, 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later…
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1888
French neurologist and academic (born 1825)
Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on groundbreaking work about hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot…
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1893
German chemist and academic (born 1811)
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium in 1860 and rubidium in 1861 with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff…
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1899
Portuguese journalist and author (born 1845)
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz or Queirós is generally considered to have been the greatest Portuguese writer in the realist style. Zola considered him to be far greater than Flaubert. In the London Observer, Jonathan…
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1900
American soldier and author (born 1843)
Colonel Prentiss Ingraham was a colonel in the Confederate Army, a mercenary throughout the 1860s, and a fiction writer.
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1904
Irish-Australian cardinal (born 1830)
Patrick Francis Moran was a prelate of the Catholic Church and the third Archbishop of Sydney and the first cardinal appointed from Australia.
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1911
1914
1916
Australian politician, Premier of Western Australia (born 1866)
Henry Daglish was an Australian politician who was the sixth premier of Western Australia and the first from the Labor Party, serving from 10 August 1904 to 25 August 1905. Daglish was born in Ballarat, Victoria, and…
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1920
Peter I was King of Serbia from 15 June 1903 to 1 December 1918. On 1 December 1918, he became King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and he held that title until his death three years later. Since he was the king of…
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1921
Slovak priest, journalist, and politician (born 1864)
Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest and politician who was one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before World War II. He was the leader of the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, a…
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1938
American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1911)
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians. Although his…
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1938
Japanese admiral (born 1891)
Takijirō Ōnishi was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II who came to be known as the father of the kamikaze.
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1945
1948
American journalist and author (born 1900)
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel that was published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the…
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1949
American painter and academic (born 1866)
Lydia Field Emmet was an American artist best known for her work as a portraitist. She studied with, among others, prominent artists such as William Merritt Chase, Harry Siddons Mowbray, Kenyon Cox and Tony…
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1952
Hungarian-American actor (born 1882)
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, better known by the stage name Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor. He was best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the horror film classic Dracula (1931), Ygor in both Son of…
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1956
American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1881)
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist, physicist, and metallurgical engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry.
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1957
Soviet Consul General in New York City, journalist and economist (born 1904)
Jacob Mironovich Lomakin was a Soviet diplomat, journalist and economist.
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1958
Jr., American admiral (born 1882)
William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr. was an American Navy admiral during World War II. He is one of four officers to have attained the rank of five-star fleet admiral of the United States Navy, the others being William…
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1959
Polish-French harpsichord player (born 1879)
Wanda Aleksandra Landowska was a Polish and French harpsichordist and pianist whose performances, teaching, writings and especially her many recordings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord…
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1959
1961
British artist (born 1921)
Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley was a British artist noted for her portraiture of street children in Glasgow and for her landscapes of the fishing village of Catterline and surroundings on the North-East coast of…
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1963
Greek-American businessman (born 1893)
Spyros Panagiotis Skouras was a Greek-American motion picture pioneer and film executive who was the president of 20th Century-Fox from 1942 to 1962. He resigned June 27, 1962, but was chairman of the company for…
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1971
French actor and screenwriter (born 1905)
Pierre Brasseur, born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.
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1972
Ukrainian-American biochemist and microbiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1888)
Selman Abraham Waksman was a Russian-born American inventor, biochemist and microbiologist, whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other…
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1973
American singer and actor (born 1935)
Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Presley's energetic and…
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1977
Dutch soldier and politician, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (born 1888)
Jonkheer Alidius Warmoldus Lambertus Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer was a Dutch nobleman and statesman, primarily noted for being the last colonial Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. He was…
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1978
Canadian lawyer and politician, 13th Prime Minister of Canada (born 1895)
John George Diefenbaker was the 13th prime minister of Canada, serving from 1957 to 1963. He was the only Progressive Conservative party leader between 1935 and 1979 to lead the party to an election victory, doing so…
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1979
American baseball player (born 1902)
Howard Earl Averill was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a center fielder from 1929 to 1941, including 11 seasons for the Cleveland Indians. He was a six-time…
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1983
Serbian children's writer, poet, journalist, aphorist and TV editor (born 1922)
Dušan "Duško" Radović was a Serbian writer, journalist, aphorist and a poet.
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1984
English cricketer and administrator (born 1902)
Ronald Aird was an English first-class cricketer, cricket administrator and British Army officer. Aird began his first-class cricket career with Hampshire County Cricket Club in 1920, making over 100 appearances for the…
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1986
Bolivian author and poet (born 1921)
Jaime Saenz Guzmán was a Bolivian writer, poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, illustrator, dramaturge, and professor, known best for his narrative and poetic works. His poetry, though individual to the point of being…
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1986
American actress (born 1929)
Amanda Blake was an American actress best known for the role of the red-haired saloon proprietress "Miss Kitty Russell" on the Western television series Gunsmoke. Along with her fourth husband, Frank Gilbert, she ran…
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1989
New Zealand wrestler and trainer (born 1925)
Patrick John O'Connor was a New Zealand-American amateur wrestler and professional wrestler. Regarded as one of the premier workers of his era, O'Connor held the AWA World Heavyweight Championship and NWA World…
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1990
1991
American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1951)
John Mark Heard III was an American record producer, folk rock singer and songwriter from Macon, Georgia.
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1992
English-American actor (born 1913)
Stewart Granger was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the…
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1993
Pakistani musician and Qawwali singer (born 1948)
Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, also known by his initials NFAK, was a Pakistani singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music director, primarily associated with qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music…
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1997
Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and teacher (born 1914)
Shah Sultan Ahmad Nanupuri, also known by his daak naam Badshah, was a Bangladeshi Islamic scholar, teacher and author. He established numerous madrasas in Bangladesh and was the founding principal of Al-Jamiah…
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1997
American actor (born 1916)
Phil Leeds was an American character actor. He appeared in many movies and television series, including guest appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Maude, The Monkees, Friends, Barney Miller, The Golden Girls,…
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1998
American journalist and author (born 1907)
Dorothy West was an American novelist, short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music. She was…
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1998
2002
American actor (born 1914)
Jeff Corey was an American actor, television director, and teacher. After being blacklisted in the 1950s, he became one of the most prominent and influential acting coaches in Hollywood, whose students included the…
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2002
American baseball player and coach (born 1933)
John Junior Roseboro was an American professional baseball player and coach. He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball from 1957 until 1970, most prominently as a member of the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers. A…
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2002
Ugandan field marshal and politician, 3rd President of Uganda (born 1928)
Awon'go Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 until his overthrow in 1979. He rose through military ranks until he became commander of…
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2003
Czech ice hockey player and coach (born 1950)
Ivan Hlinka was a Czech professional ice hockey player and coach. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in Czech ice hockey history. A big centre, his playing style was comparable to Phil Esposito,…
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2004
Sri Lankan journalist and poet (born 1957)
Kandasamy Iyer Balanadarajah Iyer (Balanadarasan), also known as Sinna Bala, (6 June 1957 – 16 August 2004) was a Sri Lankan Tamil activist, writer and poet who was a media secretary and a senior member of the Eelam…
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2004
American photographer and journalist (born 1907)
Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine.
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2004
American boxer (born 1969)
Robert Quiroga was the International Boxing Federation Super flyweight champion from 1990 to 1993. Quiroga successfully defended his title five times and retired in 1995. He finished with 20–2 with 11 KOs. Quiroga was…
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2004
American fiddler (born 1928)
Vassar Carlton Clements was an American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass…
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2005
Italian cinematographer (born 1922)
Antonio "Tonino" Delli Colli was an Italian cinematographer.
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2005
English novelist and playwright (born 1938)
William Corlett, was an English author, best known for his quartet of children's novels, The Magician's House, published between 1990 and 1992.
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2005
Swiss monk and mystic (born 1915)
Roger Schutz, popularly known as Brother Roger, was a Swiss Christian leader and monastic brother. In 1940 Schutz founded the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastic community in Burgundy, France, serving as its first…
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2005
Paraguayan general and dictator; 46th President of Paraguay (born 1912)
Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda was a Paraguayan politician, army general, and military dictator who ruled as the 42nd president of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 until his overthrow in 1989. Known as El Stronato, his…
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2006
Iranian engineer and politician (born 1945)
Bahaedin Adab, also spelled Bahaeddin or Bahaoddin Adab, Kurdish "Baha Adab" was an Iranian Kurdish politician, engineer and philanthropist. A reformist, he served as an independent deputy in the Islamic Consultative…
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2007
Brazilian singer-songwriter and actor (born 1914)
Dorival Caymmi was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actor, and painter active for more than 70 years, beginning in 1933. He contributed to the birth of Brazil's bossa nova movement, and several of his samba pieces, such…
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2008
Irish musician, folk singer and actor (born 1934)
Joseph Ronald Drew was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor who had a fifty-year career recording with The Dubliners.
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2008
Japanese farmer and author (born 1913)
Masanobu Fukuoka was a Japanese farmer and philosopher celebrated for his natural farming and re-vegetation of desertified lands. He was a proponent of no-till, herbicide and pesticide-free cultivation methods from…
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2008
Greek general (born 1923)
Dimitrios Ioannidis, also known as Dimitris Ioannidis and as The Invisible Dictator, was a Greek military officer and one of the leading figures in the junta that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. Ioannidis was…
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2010
Turkish activist and politician (born 1916)
Mihri Belli was a prominent leader of the socialist movement in Turkey. He fought for the communist side in the Greek Civil War.
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2011
Princess Lalla Amina was a member of the Moroccan royal family and former President of the Royal Moroccan Federation of Equestrian Sports.
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2012
Belgian photographer and director (born 1938)
Martine Franck was a British-Belgian documentary and portrait photographer. She was a member of Magnum Photos for more than 32 years. Franck was the second wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson and co-founder and president of…
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2012
Ethiopian patriarch (born 1935)
Abune Paulos was the fifth Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church from 1992 to his death in 2012. His full title was "His Holiness Abuna Paulos, Fifth Patriarch of the Orthodox Tewahido Church of Ethiopia,…
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2012
American actor (born 1923)
William Windom was an American actor. He was known as a character actor of the stage and screen. He is well known for his recurring role as Dr. Seth Hazlitt alongside Angela Lansbury in the CBS mystery series Murder,…
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2012
Welsh mathematician and academic (born 1918)
David Rees FRS was a British professor of pure mathematics at the University of Exeter, having been head of the Mathematics / Mathematical Sciences Department at Exeter from 1958 to 1983. During the Second World War,…
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2013
Nigerian general and politician, Governor of Kebbi State (born 1947)
Patrick Aziza was the first military Governor of Kebbi State, Nigeria after it was split off from Sokoto State on 27 August 1991 during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida.
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2014
Ukrainian author (born 1930)
Vsevolod Zinoviiovych Nestaiko or Nestayko was a modern Ukrainian children's writer. In Ukraine he is considered the country's best-known and best loved Ukrainian children’s literature writer.
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2014
Italian-South African lawyer and politician (born 1960)
Mario Gaspare R. Oriani-Ambrosini was an Italian constitutional lawyer and politician who was a Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party.
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2014
German journalist, author, and academic (born 1924)
Peter Roman Scholl-Latour was a French-German journalist, author and reporter. Scholl-Latour was regarded as one of Europe's most important journalists, akin to what Walter Cronkite was in the US. For over six decades,…
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2014
Mexican-American physicist, astronomer, and academic (born 1947)
Jacob David Bekenstein was a Mexican-born American-Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections between…
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2015
British actress (born 1934)
Anna Kashfi was an Anglo-Indian actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950s but was better known for her tumultuous marriage to film star Marlon Brando and the controversies surrounding their son.
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2015
Pakistani colonel and politician (born 1943)
Shuja Khanzada was a Pakistani politician and retired army colonel, who was serving as the Home Minister of Punjab from 2014 until his assassination on 16 August 2015.
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2015
Serb general (born 1947)
Mile Mrkšić was a colonel of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in charge of the unit involved in the Battle of Vukovar during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. He was convicted for not preventing the mass killing…
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2015
Brazilian water polo player, lawyer, and businessman (born 1916)
Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid "João" de Havelange was a Brazilian lawyer, businessman, and athlete who was the seventh president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998. His tenure as president is the second longest in FIFA's history,…
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2016
American television personality (born 1927)
John Joseph McLaughlin (;
was an American television personality and political commentator. He created, produced, and hosted the political commentary series The McLaughlin Group from 1982 to 2016, and hosted and…
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2016
American singer-songwriter (born 1942)
Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Regarded as the "Queen of Soul", she was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time.
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2018
Indian poet and 12th Prime Minister of India (born 1924)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian poet, writer and statesman who served as the prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for 6 years from 1998 to 2004. He was the first non-Congress prime…
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2018
American-Japanese writer (born 1924)
Wakako Yamauchi was a Japanese American playwright and short story writer. Her plays are considered pioneering works in Asian-American theater.
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2018
American actor, director, and screenwriter. (born 1940)
Peter Henry Fonda was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He was twice an Academy Award nominee, both for acting and screenwriting, and a two-time Golden Globe Award winner for his acting. He was a…
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2019
Canadian-British animator (born 1933)
Richard Edmund Williams was a Canadian and British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)—for which he won two…
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2019
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Notable deaths
Who died on August 16?
Howard S. Becker — American sociologist (1928–2023)
FeaturedHoward S. Becker
Death year2023
Known forBecker made contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music
Deaths on this date111 (79 – 2023)
Explore August 16
Jump between the main pages for this date to compare events, people, and the daily quiz.
Also on August 16 in History
2020
The August Complex fire in California burns more than one million acres of land. Wikipedia →
2015
More than 96 people are killed and hundreds injured following a series of air-raids by the Syrian Arab Air Force on the rebel-held market town of Douma. Wikipedia →
2015
See all events on August 16
Trigana Air Flight 267, an ATR 42, crashes in Oksibil, Bintang Mountains Regency, killing all 54 people on board. Wikipedia →
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