Notable Deaths on December 28

John Earl Madden was an American professional football coach and sports commentator in the National Football League (NFL). He served as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders from 1969 to 1978, leading them to eight playoff appearances, seven division titles, seven AFL/AFC Championship Game appearances, and the franchise's first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XI. Never having a losing season, Madden holds the highest winning percentage among NFL head coaches who coached at least 100 games. He is considered one of the greatest coaches of all time.

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, often referred to by her initials B.B., was a French actress, singer, model, and animal rights activist. She became one of the best-known symbols of the sexual revolution and gained international fame for portraying characters associated with hedonistic lifestyles. Although she withdrew from the entertainment industry in 1973, she remained a major pop culture icon. She appeared in 47 films, performed in several musicals, and recorded more than 60 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985.

Dennis Carl Wilson was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys. He was their drummer and the middle brother of bandmates Brian and Carl Wilson. The only dedicated surfer in the group, his lifestyle embodied the "California myth" that inspired and was celebrated in many of the band's early songs. He later contributed original material to their catalog, including "Forever" (1970), his best-known song.

Ian Fraser Kilmister, better known as Lemmy or Lemmy Kilmister, was an English musician best known for being the founder, lead vocalist, bassist and primary songwriter of Motörhead, of which he was the only continuous member from 1975 to his death. He had been a member of Hawkwind from 1971 to 1975.

Mary II was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband, King William III and II, from 1689 until her death in 1694. She was also Princess of Orange following her marriage on 4 November 1677. Her joint reign with William over Britain is known as that of William and Mary.

Victor Emmanuel III was King of Italy from 29 July 1900 until his abdication on 9 May 1946. A member of the House of Savoy, he also reigned as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941 and King of the Albanians from 1939 to 1943, following the Italian invasions of Ethiopia and Albania. During his reign of nearly 46 years, which began after the assassination of his father Umberto I, the Kingdom of Italy became involved in World War I and in World War II. His reign also encompassed the birth, rise, and fall of the Fascist regime.

Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer and critic. She primarily wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), the short story "The Way We Live Now" (1986) and the novels The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (1999).

James Owen Sullivan, also known by his stage name The Rev, was an American musician and songwriter. He was the drummer, pianist, backing vocalist, and occasional co-lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold, which he co-founded in 1999. He was previously the lead vocalist and pianist of the avant-garde metal band Pinkly Smooth and drummer for the ska punk band Suburban Legends from 1998 to 1999.

Ante Pavelić was a Croatian politician who founded and headed the Ustaše in 1929 and was dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945. Pavelić and the Ustaše persecuted many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Romani, and Yugoslav Partisans, becoming one of the key figures of the genocide of Serbs, the Porajmos and the Holocaust in the NDH.

Igor Youriévitch Bogdanoff and Grégoire "Grichka" Youriévitch Bogdanoff, alternatively spelled Bogdanov, were French television presenters, producers, and essayists who presented a variety of programmes in science fiction, popular science, and cosmology. The brothers – identical twins – were involved in a number of controversies, the most notable being the Bogdanov affair. It brought to light how they received Ph.D. degrees based on largely nonsensical physics papers that were nonetheless peer-reviewed and published in reputable scientific journals. In their later years, they were also the subject of numerous internet memes, particularly in the cryptocurrency community.

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.

David Samuel Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and actor. He was known for his revisionist approach to the Western genre, employing a visually innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence. His 1969 film The Wild Bunch received two Academy Award nominations and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 list.

Vijayaraj Alagarswami, known by his stage name Vijayakanth, was an Indian actor, politician, philanthropist and filmmaker. He worked in Tamil cinema in a career spanning four decades. He ventured into politics in the later part of his career, founding the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam party.

Harry Mason Reid Jr. was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Nevada from 1987 to 2017. He led the Senate Democratic Caucus from 2005 to 2017 and was the Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015.

Rose Marie Guy, known professionally as Rose Marie, was an American actress, singer, comedienne, and vaudeville performer with a career spanning nine decades, which included film, radio, records, theater, night clubs, and television. As a child performer from the late 1920s onward, she had a successful singing career under the stage name Baby Rose Marie.

Clayton Moore was an American actor best known for playing the fictional Western character the Lone Ranger from September 1949 to September 1952 and then again from September 1954 to September 1957 on the television series of the same name and two related films from the same producers.

Terry Peder Rasmussen was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who was convicted of one murder, and linked to at least six more in a series of crimes that stretched across the contiguous United States between 1978 and 2002. Due to his use of many aliases, most notably "Bob Evans", Rasmussen is known as the Chameleon Killer.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay was a British historian, poet and Whig politician who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. He is best known for his The History of England, a seminal example of Whig history, which expressed Macaulay's belief in the inevitability of sociopolitical progress and has been widely commended for its prose style. Whig historians, including Macaulay, supported the position of the Roundheads in the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651.

Francis de Sales was a Catholic prelate from Savoy who served as Bishop of Geneva from 1602 to 1622. He became noted for his deep faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions in his land resulting from the Protestant Reformation. He is known also for his writings on the topics of spiritual direction and spiritual formation, particularly the Introduction to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God. He was a member of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, a tertiary of the Order of Minims, and was canonized in 1665.

Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist, and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. His other notable compositions include the song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938) and the symphony Mathis der Maler (1934), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem. Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music.

William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist, war correspondent, and historian. His history of Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), has been read and cited in scholarly works for more than 60 years; its 50th anniversary was marked by a new edition of the book.

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency. Dreiser's best-known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).

John Dann MacDonald was an American writer of novels and short stories. A prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many set in his adopted home of Florida, he was one of the most successful American novelists of his time. MacDonald sold an estimated 70 million books.

Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, called Piero the Fatuous or Piero the Unfortunate, was the lord of Florence from 1492 until his exile in 1494.

Charles Francis Dolan was an American billionaire businessman and media mogul, best known as founder of Cablevision and HBO. Today, the Dolan family controls Madison Square Garden Sports, MSG Networks, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Madison Square Garden, the Sphere, Radio City Music Hall, BBC America, and AMC Networks. As of December 2024, his net worth was estimated at US$5.4 billion.

Leelah Alcorn was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. Prior to her death, she had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse, and lack of support for transgender people.

Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American actress and inventor. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career. Outside of her film career, she is best known for inventing the car turn and brake signals.

Hermann Julius Oberth was an Austro-Hungarian-born German physicist and rocket pioneer of Transylvanian Saxon descent. Oberth supported Nazi Germany's war effort and received the War Merit Cross in 1943.

Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher, author, and lexicographer. He is best known for his Historical and Critical Dictionary, whose publication began in 1697. Many of the more controversial ideas in the book were hidden away in the voluminous footnotes, or they were slipped into articles on seemingly uncontroversial topics. Bayle is commonly regarded as a forerunner of the Encyclopédistes of the mid-18th century.

Katharine Dexter McCormick was an American suffragist, philanthropist and, after her husband's death, heir to a substantial part of the McCormick family fortune. She funded most of the research necessary to develop the first birth control pill.

Salvatore Anthony Maglie was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB), and later a scout and a pitching coach. He played from 1945 to 1958 for the New York Giants, Cleveland Indians, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals. Maglie was known as "Sal the Barber", because he gave close shaves—that is, pitched inside to hitters. A gentle personality off the field went unnoticed during games, his foreboding physical appearance contributing to his menacing presence on a pitcher's mound. He was the last of 14 players to play for the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees at a time when all three teams were in New York City. During a 10-year major league baseball career, Maglie compiled 119 wins, 862 strikeouts, and a 3.15 earned run average.

Léon (Lev) Samoylovich Bakst, born Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg, was a Russian painter and scene and costume designer of Jewish origin. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes. He designed the décor for such productions as Carnaval (1910), Spectre de la rose (1911), Daphnis and Chloe (1912), The Sleeping Princess (1921) and others.

Billy Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Andrea Gritti was the Doge of the Venetian Republic from 1523 to 1538, following a distinguished diplomatic and military career. He started out as a successful merchant in Constantinople and transitioned into the position of Bailo, a diplomatic role. Gritti was arrested for espionage but was spared execution thanks to his good relationship with the Ottoman vizier. After being freed from imprisonment, he returned to Venice and began his political career. When the War of the League of Cambrai broke out, despite his lack of experience, Gritti was given a leadership role in the Venetian military, where he excelled. After the war, he was elected doge, and he held that post until his death.

Colonel David Lyulph Gore Wolseley Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie, was a Scottish peer, soldier and courtier. He was the father-in-law of Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy.

Jean-Christophe Victor was a French political scientist focusing on international relations. He was the son of the polar explorer Paul-Émile Victor and the television producer Eliane Decrais. He earned master's degrees in Chinese at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, and in political sciences at the University of Paris-1 (1982), as well as a PhD in ethnology on Nepal. He was posted as a diplomat in Afghanistan, worked as policy adviser at NATO in Brussels, and for the Policy Planning Office at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

John "Brad" Bradbury was an English drummer and record producer. He is best known for having been the drummer in the English ska group the Specials.

Konrad Peutinger was a German humanist, jurist, diplomat, politician, economist and archaeologist, serving as Emperor Maximilian I's chief archaeological adviser. A senior official in the municipal government of the Imperial City of Augsburg, he served as a counselor to Emperor Maximilian I and his successor Charles V. Also known as a passionate antiquarian, he collected, with the help of his wife Margareta Welser (1481–1552), one of the largest private libraries north of the Alps.

Eduard "Edi" Strauss I was an Austrian composer who, together with his brothers Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss made up the Strauss musical dynasty. He was the son of Johann Strauss I and Maria Anna Streim. The family dominated the Viennese light music world for decades, creating many waltzes and polkas for many Austrian nobility as well as dance-music enthusiasts around Europe. He was affectionately known in his family as 'Edi'.

Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina, also known as Marija Angelina Nemanjić or Anna Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina, was a Byzantine Greek-Serbian aristocrat and self-proclaimed basilissa of Epirus from 1384 to 1385, succeeding the rule of her murdered husband, Thomas Preljubović. Maria and her husband were a famed couple and patrons of the arts during Thomas's rule of Ioannina from 1366 to 1384. She is depicted in icons.

Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo[a] was a medical pioneer, writer and lawyer of indigenous origin in colonial Ecuador. Although he was a notable scientist and writer, he stands out as a polemicist who inspired the separatist movement in Quito. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in colonial Ecuador. He was Quito's first journalist and hygienist.

Ahmet Mithat was an Ottoman Turkish journalist, author, translator and publisher during the Tanzimat period. In scholarship, he is typically referred to as Ahmet Mithat Efendi to distinguish him from the contemporary politician Midhat Pasha; Ahmet Mithat took on his second name "Mithat" while working for Midhat Pasha as an official and newspaper editor in the Vilayet of the Danube.

Dennis Miller Bunker was an American painter and innovator of American Impressionism. His mature works include both brightly colored landscape paintings and dark, finely drawn portraits and figures. One of the major American painters of the late 19th century, and a friend of many prominent artists of the era, Bunker died from meningitis at the age of 29.

Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac, known simply as Olavo Bilac, was a Brazilian Parnassian poet, journalist and translator. Alongside Alberto de Oliveira and Raimundo Correia, he was a member of the "Parnassian Triad". He was elected the "Prince of Brazilian Poets" in 1907 by the magazine Fon-Fon. He wrote the lyrics of the Brazilian Flag Anthem.

Andrew Jacobs Jr. was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, he served as an Indiana state legislator and Congressman. Jacobs represented part of Indianapolis in the United States House of Representatives for all but two years from 1965 to 1997. His father, Andrew Jacobs Sr., was also a congressman for one term.

Václav Drobný was a Czech footballer who notably played for Sparta Prague having spent time in their youth team as well as spells at Czech, Slovak, French and German sides. Drobný played twice for the Czech Republic and was most known in England for his short stint on loan at Aston Villa.

Clement VIII, born Gil Sánchez Muñoz y Carbón, was one of the antipopes of the Avignon obedience, reigning from 10 June 1423 to 26 July 1429. When King Alfonso V of Aragon reached an agreement with Pope Martin V, Sánchez Muñoz abdicated, made his submission and was appointed bishop of Mallorca.

Louis Richard (Steve) Evans was an American right fielder in Major League Baseball. He played in the National League (NL) for the New York Giants (1908) and St. Louis Cardinals (1910–13), and in the Federal League (FL) for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops (1914–15) and Baltimore Terrapins (1915). Evans batted and threw left-handed.

Peter Frederick Kihss was an American reporter for The New York Times and other news organizations for nearly half a century until his retirement in 1982. Kihss was known for his reporting on a wide range of topics, including immigrants, state and city governments, crime, the weather and other subjects.

Ashikaga Yoshiakira was the second shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate who reigned from 1358 to 1367 during the Muromachi period of Japan. Yoshiakira was the son of the founder and first shōgun of the Muromachi shogunate, Ashikaga Takauji. His mother was Akahashi Tōshi (赤橋登子), also known as Hōjō Nariko.

Irene Lieblich was a Polish-born artist and Holocaust survivor noted for illustrating the books of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer and for her paintings highlighting Jewish life and culture. She is also a distant cousin of noted Yiddish language author and playwright Isaac Leib Peretz.

William Carstares was a Scottish religious minister who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1705, 1708, 1711 and 1715. He was active in Whig politics and was Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1703 to 1715.

Nicholas Neocles Ambraseys was a Greek engineering seismologist. He was emeritus professor of engineering seismology and senior research fellow at Imperial College London. For many years Ambraseys was considered the leading figure and an authority in earthquake engineering and seismology in Europe.

Eulogio Songao "Eloy" Inos was a Northern Marianan politician who served as the eighth governor of the Northern Mariana Islands from 2013 to 2015. Inos, a member of the Republican Party, also served as the eighth lieutenant governor from 2009 to 2013.

Philomena Franz was a Sinti writer and activist from Germany, who was a survivor of the Romani Holocaust, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz. She later published works that recounted her experiences and was recognised as a significant voice in Romani literature.

William Corby, C.S.C. was an American Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a Union Army chaplain in the American Civil War attached to the Irish Brigade. He served twice as president of the University of Notre Dame.

Johannes (Janne) Robert Rydberg was a Swedish physicist known for devising the Rydberg formula, in 1888, which is used to describe the wavelengths of photons emitted by changes in the energy level of an electron in a hydrogen atom.

Robert II of Dreux, Count of Dreux and Braine, was the eldest surviving son of Robert I, Count of Dreux, and Agnes de Baudemont, countess of Braine, and a grandson of King Louis VI of France.

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. Botanist Charles Plumier was his pupil and accompanied him on his voyages.

Vahan Hovhannisyan was an Armenian politician of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). He was Vice-President of the National Assembly of Armenia from 2007 to 2008 and was a candidate in the February 2008 presidential election.

Katharine Byron, a Democrat, was a U.S. Congresswoman who represented the 6th congressional district of Maryland from May 27, 1941, to January 3, 1943. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Maryland.

Hugh Aycelin was a French Cardinal. He was also known as Hughes of Billom, Ugo Billomo, Hughes Séguin, Ugo Seguin de Billon, Hughes Aycelin de Montaigut and Hugues Séguin de Billon.

Francesco Maria Grimaldi was an Italian Jesuit priest, mathematician and physicist who taught at the Jesuit college in Bologna. He was born in Bologna to Paride Grimaldi and Anna Cattani.

Samuel Abraham Goldblith was an American food scientist. While involved in World War II, he studied malnutrition, and later was involved in food research important for space exploration.

Halton Christian "Chip" Arp was an American astronomer. He is remembered for his 1966 book Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which catalogued unusual-looking galaxies and presented their images.

John Edward Lovelock was a New Zealand athlete who became the world 1500m and mile record holder and 1936 Olympic champion in the 1500 metres.

Bertoldo di Giovanni was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and medallist.

Hermann Finck was a German music theorist, composer and organist.

Johann Friedrich Gronovius was a German classical scholar, librarian and critic.

Robert Roy MacGregor was a Jacobite Scottish outlaw, who later became a Scottish and Jacobite folk hero.

Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.

James Van Ness was an American politician who served as the 7th mayor of San Francisco from 1855 to 1856.

Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, Viscount of Serpa Pinto was a Portuguese explorer of southern Africa and a colonial administrator.

Louise Elisabeth Granberg was a Swedish playwright, translator and theatre director.

Captain Alfred Edwin "Eddie" McKay MC was a Canadian flying ace who flew with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War.

John McCarthy Blackham was a Test cricketer who played for Victoria and Australia.

Clarence Shepard Day Jr. was an American author and cartoonist, best known for his 1935 work Life with Father.

Alfred Flatow was a Jewish German gymnast. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was murdered in the Holocaust.

Elie Nadelman was a Polish-American sculptor, draughtsman of the School of Paris and a collector of folk art.

Philippe Panneton was a Canadian physician, academic, diplomat and writer.

Maximilian Raoul Steiner was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and became one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers.

Allan Dwan was a pioneering Canadian and American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.

Rear Admiral Benjamin Thurman Hacker (1935–2003) was a U.S. Naval officer, who became the first Naval Flight Officer (NFO) to achieve Flag rank.

Jerome Bernard Orbach was an American actor and singer described as "one of the last bona fide leading men of the Broadway musical".

Frankie Walsh was an Irish hurler who played as a left wing-forward at senior level for the Waterford county team.

Esther Borja Lima was a Cuban operatic soprano.

Joseph Ruskin was an American character actor.

Frankie Randall was an American singer and pianist.