Notable Deaths on August 17

August 17 has 98 recorded notable deaths across history, from 754 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Frederick the Great

1786 — Frederick the Great

Prussian king (born 1712)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 98 source records 754 – 2025

Major events on August 17

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1943 World War II: First Québec Conference of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King begins. Source
  2. 1970 Soviet Union Venera program: Venera 7 launched. It will become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus). Source

Did you know about Frederick the Great

Frederick the Great's most significant accomplishments include military successes in the Silesian wars, reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment.

Did you know about Ken Miles

As an automotive engineer, he is known for developing, along with driver and designer Carroll Shelby, the Ford GT40, the car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969.

Did you know about Yvonne Craig

Yvonne Joyce Craig was an American actress best known for her role as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman.

Did you know about Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance was an American actress best known for playing landlady Ethel Mertz on the sitcom I Love Lucy (1951–1957), for which she won the 1953 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, among other accolades.

Did you know about Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.

Roosevelt was appointed as the first chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1965 to 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

More major people who died on August 17

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

1966 Ken Miles

Ken Miles

English race car driver and engineer (born 1918)
Kenneth Henry Jarvis Miles was an English sports car racing engineer and driver best known for his motorsport career in the U.S. and with American teams on the international scene. He is an inductee to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America. As an automotive engineer, he is known for developing, along with driver and designer Carroll Shelby, the Ford GT40, the car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. Miles and Shelby's efforts at Le Mans were dramatized in the 2019 Oscar-winning film Ford v Ferrari.
Wikipedia source
2015 Yvonne Craig

Yvonne Craig

American ballet dancer and actress (born 1937)
Yvonne Joyce Craig was an American actress best known for her role as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman. Other notable roles in her career include Dorothy Johnson in the 1963 movie It Happened at the World's Fair, Azalea Tatum in the 1964 movie Kissin' Cousins, and the green-skinned Orion Marta in the Star Trek episode "Whom Gods Destroy" (1969). The Huffington Post called her "a pioneer of female superheroes" for television. Craig was a philanthropist and "an advocate for workers unions, free mammograms, and equal pay for women".
Wikipedia source
1979 Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance

American actress and singer (born 1909)
Vivian Vance was an American actress best known for playing landlady Ethel Mertz on the sitcom I Love Lucy (1951–1957), for which she won the 1953 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, among other accolades. She also starred alongside Lucille Ball in The Lucy Show from 1962 until she left the series at the end of its third season in 1965. In 1991, she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is most commonly identified as Lucille Ball’s longtime comedic foil from 1951 until her death in 1979.
Wikipedia source
1988 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.

American lawyer and politician (born 1914)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. was an American lawyer, politician, and businessman. He served as a United States congressman from New York from 1949 to 1955 and in 1963 was appointed United States Under Secretary of Commerce by President John F. Kennedy. Roosevelt was appointed as the first chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1965 to 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Roosevelt also ran for governor of New York twice. Just after World War II, he served on Harry S. Truman's President's Committee on Civil Rights. Roosevelt was a son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and served as an officer in the United States Navy during World War II.
Wikipedia source
754 Carloman

Carloman

mayor of the palace of Austrasia
Carloman was the eldest son of Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and duke of the Franks, and his wife Chrotrud of Treves. On Charles's death (741), Carloman and his brother Pepin the Short succeeded to their father's legal positions, Carloman in Austrasia, and Pepin in Neustria. He was a member of the family later called the Carolingians and it can be argued that he was instrumental in consolidating their power at the expense of the ruling Merovingian kings of the Franks. He withdrew from public life in 747 to take up the monastic habit, "the first of a new type of saintly king", according to Norman Cantor, "more interested in religious devotion than royal power, who frequently appeared in the following three centuries and who was an indication of the growing impact of Christian piety on Germanic society".
Wikipedia source
1510 Edmund Dudley

Edmund Dudley

English politician, Speaker of the House of Commons (born 1462)
Edmund Dudley was an English administrator and a financial agent of King Henry VII. He served as a leading member of the Council Learned in the Law, Speaker of the House of Commons and President of the King's Council. After the accession of Henry VIII in 1509, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed the next year on a treason charge. While waiting for his execution he wrote The Tree of Commonwealth. Edmund Dudley was both the father of John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, Edward VI's second Regent and the grandfather of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth I.
Wikipedia source
1834 Husein Gradaščević

Husein Gradaščević

Ottoman general (born 1802)
Husein Gradaščević (Husein-kapetan), also known as Zmaj od Bosne, was an Ottoman Bosnian military commander who led an uprising against the Tanzimat, a system of political reforms with aim to modernise the Ottoman Empire. Born into a Bosnian noble family, Gradaščević became the captain of Gradačac in the early 1820s, succeeding his relatives in the position. He grew up surrounded by a political climate of turmoil in the western reaches of the Ottoman Empire. With the Russo-Turkish war (1828–29), Gradaščević's importance rose; the Bosnian governor gave him the task of mobilising an army between the Drina and Vrbas.
Wikipedia source
1785 Jonathan Trumbull

Jonathan Trumbull

English-American merchant and politician, 16th Governor of Connecticut (born 1710)
Jonathan Trumbull Sr. was an American politician who served as the governor of Connecticut during the American Revolution. Trumbull and Nicholas Cooke of Rhode Island were the only men to serve as governor of both a British colony and a U.S. state, and he was the only governor to take up the Patriot cause at the start of the Revolutionary War. Trumbull College at Yale University, the town of Trumbull, Connecticut, Trumbull County, Ohio, and Jonathan the Husky the UConn mascot are all named for him. Trumbull was the father of John Trumbull, the noted artist, and Jonathan Trumbull Jr., Governor of Connecticut and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Wikipedia source
2014 Wolfgang Leonhard

Wolfgang Leonhard

German historian and author (born 1921)
Wolfgang Leonhard was a German political author and historian of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Communism. A German Communist whose family had fled Hitler's Germany and who was educated in the Soviet Union, after World War II Leonhard became one of the founders and leaders of the German Democratic Republic until he became disillusioned and fled in 1949, first defecting to Yugoslavia and then moving to West Germany in 1950 and later to the United Kingdom. In 1956 he moved to the United States, where he was a popular and influential professor at Yale University from 1966 to 1987, teaching the history of communism and the Soviet Union, topics about which he wrote several books. After the Cold War ended, he returned to Germany.
Wikipedia source
1875 Wilhelm Bleek

Wilhelm Bleek

German linguist and anthropologist (born 1827)
Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek was a German linguist who lived in the Cape Colony and developed a particular interest for the languages and culture of the San peoples. He is the author of A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages. His great project, jointly executed with Lucy Lloyd in collaboration with San individuals who came to stay at his house for months or years, is the Bleek and Lloyd Archive of ǀXam and ǃKung texts, which has been listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. A collection of these texts eventually reached press with Specimens of Bushman Folklore. Bleek was influenced by scientific racism and this is reflected in some of his scientific practices and theories.
Wikipedia source
1720 Anne Dacier

Anne Dacier

French scholar and translator (born 1654)
Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, better known during her lifetime as Madame Dacier, was a French scholar, translator, commentator and editor of the classics, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. She sought to champion ancient literature and used her great capabilities in Latin and Greek for this purpose as well as for her own financial support, producing a series of editions and translations from which she earned her living. She was the dedicatee of Gilles Ménage's Historia mulierum philosopharum, whose characterisation of her and of Anna Maria van Schurman was used to provide leading examples in treatises arguing for female education across the following centuries.
Wikipedia source
1897 William Jervois

William Jervois

English engineer and diplomat, 10th Governor of South Australia (born 1821)
Lieutenant-General Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois was a British military engineer and diplomat. After joining the British Army in 1839, he saw service, as a second captain, in South Africa. In 1858, as a major, he was appointed Secretary of a Royal Commission set up to examine the state and efficiency of British land-based fortifications against naval attack; and this led to further work in Canada and South Australia. From 1875 to 1888 he was, consecutively, Governor of the Straits Settlements, Governor of South Australia and Governor of New Zealand.
Wikipedia source
2024 Silvio Santos

Silvio Santos

Brazilian media mogul and television host (born 1930)
Senor Abravanel, known professionally as Silvio Santos, was a Brazilian television presenter and business magnate. Widely regarded as the greatest personality in Brazilian television, he was the founder of the television network Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão (SBT) and the conglomerate Grupo Silvio Santos, which holds interests in media and real estate among other assets. Throughout his life, he was also involved in other areas such as music and politics. His net worth was estimated at $1.3 billion in 2013, making him the only Brazilian celebrity on Forbes' billionaires list.
Wikipedia source
1809 Matthew Boulton

Matthew Boulton

English businessman and engineer, co-founded Boulton and Watt (born 1728)
Matthew Boulton was an English businessman, inventor, mechanical engineer, and silversmith. He was a business partner of the Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the mechanisation of factories and mills. Boulton applied modern techniques to the minting of coins, striking millions of pieces for Britain and other countries, and supplying the Royal Mint with up-to-date equipment.
Wikipedia source
1990 Pearl Bailey

Pearl Bailey

American actress and singer (born 1918)
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress, singer, comedian and author. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-Black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
Wikipedia source
1970 Rattana Pestonji

Rattana Pestonji

Thai director and producer (born 1908)
Rattana Pestonji was a Thai film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer and is regarded as the father of contemporary Thai film. Although his filmography was brief, his films placed Thai cinema on the world stage. He also pushed for innovations, and was one of the first Thai directors to use 35-mm film. He died just as he was giving a speech to government officials to call for support of a domestic industry he saw as coming under threat from Hollywood films.
Wikipedia source
1987 Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess

German soldier and politician, convicted Nuremberg war criminal (born 1894)
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a German politician, convicted war criminal, and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Germany. Appointed Deputy to the Führer in 1933, Hess held that position until 1941, when he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate the United Kingdom's exit from the Second World War. He was taken prisoner and eventually convicted of crimes against peace. He was still serving his life sentence at age 93 when he committed suicide in 1987.
Wikipedia source
2008 Franco Sensi

Franco Sensi

Italian businessman and politician (born 1926)
Francesco Sensi, Cavaliere del lavoro was an Italian oil tycoon. He was born in Rome, where he lived throughout his entire life, though he also served time as mayor of Visso, the city where his family came from. He had been for fifteen years, until his death, chairman of Roma, the major football club of Rome. He took control of the club in May 1993, both with Pietro Mezzaroma, and he then became the chairman on 8 November 1993.
Wikipedia source
2013 Gus Winckel

Gus Winckel

Dutch lieutenant and pilot (born 1912)
Willem Frederick August "Gus" Winckel was a Dutch military officer and pilot who flew for the Royal Netherlands East Indies Air Force (ML-KNIL) in World War II. During the attack on Broome, Western Australia, on 3 March 1942, Winckel managed to land his plane full of refugees safely on the Broome airstrip just before the Japanese attack. He then dismounted the plane's machine gun and shot down one of the Japanese fighters, the only Allied "kill" during the attack.
Wikipedia source

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