Notable Deaths on December 8

December 8 has 121 recorded notable deaths across history, from 855 to 2024. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

William Henry Vanderbilt

1885 — William Henry Vanderbilt

American businessman and philanthropist (born 1821)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 121 source records 855 – 2024

Major events on December 8

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1987 Cold War: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the White House. Source
  2. 2010 With the second launch of the Falcon 9, and the first launch of the Dragon, SpaceX becomes the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft. Source

Did you know about William Henry Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt became the richest American after he took over his father's fortune in 1877 until his own death in 1885, passing on a substantial part of the fortune to his wife and children, particularly to his sons Cornelius II and William.

Did you know about Elizabeth Charlotte

Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orléans, also known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach who married into the French royal family.

Did you know about Tris Speaker

Tris Speaker's 792 career doubles represent an MLB career record.

Did you know about Arnulf of Carinthia (born 850)

Arnulf of Carinthia was King of East Francia since 887, King of Italy since 894, and Emperor since 896.

Did you know about Maximilian von Spee

During his time in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he married his wife, Margareta, and had three children, his sons Heinrich and Otto and his daughter Huberta.

More major people who died on December 8

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

1722 Elizabeth Charlotte

Elizabeth Charlotte

Princess Palatine (born 1652)
Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orléans, also known as Liselotte von der Pfalz, was a German member of the House of Wittelsbach who married into the French royal family. She was the second wife of Monsieur Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. By Philippe, Liselotte was the mother of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, and Élisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Lorraine. Philippe II was France's ruler during the Regency. Liselotte gained literary and historical importance primarily through preservation of her correspondence, which is of great cultural and historical value due to her sometimes very blunt descriptions of French court life and is today one of the best-known German-language texts of the Baroque period.
Wikipedia source
1958 Tris Speaker

Tris Speaker

American baseball player and manager (born 1888)
Tristram Edgar Speaker, nicknamed "the Gray Eagle", was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a center fielder from 1907 to 1928. Considered one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball, he compiled a career batting average of .345. His 792 career doubles represent an MLB career record. His 3,514 hits are fifth in the all-time hits list. Defensively, Speaker holds career records for assists, double plays, and unassisted double plays by an outfielder. He held the major league career record for putouts by a center fielder (6,592) until he was surpassed by Willie Mays in 1971. His fielding glove was known as the place "where triples go to die."
Wikipedia source
899 Arnulf of Carinthia (born 850)

Arnulf of Carinthia (born 850)

Arnulf of Carinthia was King of East Francia since 887, King of Italy since 894, and Emperor since 896. Initially, he was the Duke of Carinthia who overthrew his uncle Emperor Charles the Fat to become the Carolingian king of East Francia in late 887. He also ruled Lotharingia, and tried to impose suzerainty over West Francia, and rule over Burgundy and Italy. In 894, he invaded Italy and took Pavia, but soon returned to East Francia. Upon invading Italy again, he was crowned Emperor on 22 February 896 in Rome by Pope Formosus, but soon returned again to East Francia. He died on 8 December 899 at Ratisbon, in Bavaria. He was the last member of the Carolingian dynasty from the male line to rule in Italy as both King and Emperor, despite his rule being contested by his rivals Lambert of Italy and Berengar I of Italy.
Wikipedia source
1914 Maximilian von Spee

Maximilian von Spee

Danish-German admiral (born 1861)
Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf von Spee was a German naval officer in the Imperial German Navy, who commanded the East Asia Squadron during World War I. Spee entered the navy in 1878 and served in a variety of roles and locations, including on a colonial gunboat in German West Africa in the 1880s, the East Africa Squadron in the late 1890s, and as commander of several warships in the main German fleet in the early 1900s. During his time in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he married his wife, Margareta, and had three children, his sons Heinrich and Otto and his daughter Huberta. By 1912, he had returned to the East Asia Squadron as its commander, and was promoted to the rank of Vizeadmiral the following year.
Wikipedia source
2005 Rose Heilbron

Rose Heilbron

British barrister and judge (born 1914)
Dame Rose Heilbron, DBE was a British barrister who served later as a High Court judge. Her career included many "firsts" for a woman – she was the first woman to achieve a first class honours degree in law at the University of Liverpool, the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn, one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel in England, the first woman to lead in a murder case, the first woman recorder, the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey, and the first woman treasurer of Gray's Inn. She was also the second woman to be appointed a High Court judge, after Elizabeth Lane.
Wikipedia source
1922 LIam Mellows

LIam Mellows

executed Irish Republican Army leader (born 1892)
William Joseph Mellows was an Irish republican and Sinn Féin politician. Born in England to an English father and Irish mother, he grew up in Ashton-under-Lyne before moving to Ireland, being raised in Cork, Dublin and his mother's native Wexford. He was active with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers, and participated in the Easter Rising in County Galway and the War of Independence. Elected as a TD to the First Dáil, he rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty. During the Irish Civil War Mellows was captured by Pro-Treaty forces after the surrender of the Four Courts in June 1922. On 8 December 1922 he was one of four senior IRA men executed by the free state Government.
Wikipedia source
1946 Tex O'Reilly

Tex O'Reilly

American mercenary (born 1880)
Edward Sinnott "Tex" O'Reilly was an American soldier of fortune, writer, journalist, and film actor. He is said to have fought in ten wars under many flags. Initially serving in the U.S. Army in the Spanish–American War, the Philippine–American War, and the Boxer Rebellion, he would claim to fight in several conflicts in Central America and to have fought with Pancho Villa in Mexico and claimed to have fought in the Rif War with the Spanish Foreign Legion in North Africa. He worked as a reporter for the Associated Press. He wrote an autobiography, Roving and Fighting, and Lowell Thomas wrote Born to Raise Hell about him. The latter book has been reprinted and is distributed by The Long Riders' Guild Press. He was the author of Pecos Bill.
Wikipedia source
1922 Rory O'Connor

Rory O'Connor

executed Irish Republican Army leader, (born 1883)
Roderick O'Connor was an Irish republican who was Director of Engineering for the IRA in the Irish War of Independence. O'Connor opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and was chairman of the republican military council that became the Anti-Treaty IRA in March 1922. He was the main spokesman for the republican side in the lead-up to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June of that year. On 30 June, O'Connor was taken prisoner at the conclusion of the attack by Free State forces on the Four Courts in Dublin. On 8 December 1922, he was executed along with three other senior members of the IRA Four Courts garrison. All four men were executed without trial or court martial.
Wikipedia source
1922 Joe McKelvey

Joe McKelvey

executed Irish Republican Army leader (born 1898)
Joseph McKelvey was an Irish Republican Army officer who was executed during the Irish Civil War without trial or court martial. He participated in the Anti-Treaty IRA's repudiation of the authority of the Dáil Éireann, the civil government of the Irish Republic declared in 1919 in March 1922, and was elected to the IRA Army Council as Deputy Chief of Staff. In April 1922, he helped command the occupation of the Four Courts in defiance of the new Irish Free State. This action helped to spark the civil war, between pro- and anti-treaty factions. McKelvey was among the most hardline of the republican side and, briefly in June 1922, became IRA Chief of Staff.
Wikipedia source
1815 Mary Bosanquet Fletcher

Mary Bosanquet Fletcher

Methodist preacher and philanthropist (born 1739)
Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was an English preacher credited with persuading John Wesley, a founder of Methodism, to allow women to preach in public. She was born into an affluent family, but after converting to Methodism, rejected its luxurious life. She was involved in charity work throughout her life, operating a school and orphanage until her marriage to John Fletcher. She and a friend, Sarah Crosby, began preaching and leading meetings at her orphanage and became the most popular female preachers of their time. Fletcher was known as a "Mother in Israel", a Methodist term of honour, for her work in spreading the denomination across England.
Wikipedia source
2012 Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown

American football player (born 1987)
Jerry Jerome Brown Jr. was an American professional football linebacker who played in the National Football League (NFL). In college, he played on the defensive line for the University of Illinois. In his professional career, he was a member of the Indianapolis Colts and Dallas Cowboys of the NFL, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League, and the Jacksonville Sharks and San Antonio Talons of the Arena Football League (AFL). He was signed as a free agent by the Sharks in 2011; in the team's ArenaBowl XXIV victory, he had one tackle assist, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.
Wikipedia source
1734 James Figg

James Figg

English prizefighter
James Figg was an English prizefighter and instructor in historical European martial arts. While Figg primarily fought with weapons including short swords, quarterstaffs, and cudgels, he also played a role in boxing's development. In 1719, he opened a London fighting venue that could seat more than 1,000 spectators and was one of the first of its kind. In 1725, he organised and promoted modern history's first international boxing match at his amphitheatre. He claimed to have won more than 200 matches during his career, and was posthumously considered the first boxing champion.
Wikipedia source
1963 Sarit Thanarat

Sarit Thanarat

Thai field marshal and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Thailand (born 1908)
Sarit Thanarat was a Thai politician and military commander. He served as commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army and as Minister of Defense during Plaek Phibunsongkhram's premiership. In 1957, he became chief of a military junta after leading a coup in which Phibun was overthrown. Sarit lasted the de facto prime minister only five days before was replaced by Pote Sarasin, but assumed power again as the head of the Revolutionary Council after 1958 coup and then as the eleventh Prime Minister of Thailand in February 1959 until his death in 1963.
Wikipedia source
1869 Narcisa de Jesús

Narcisa de Jesús

Ecuadorian saint (born 1832)
Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán was an Ecuadorian virgin and Dominican tertiary in the Roman Catholic Church. Martillo was known for her charitable giving and strict devotion to Jesus Christ while living a virginal and austere life of prayer and penance. Her devotion to prayer and the mortification of the flesh was strong and it led her to the decision to live as a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic in Patrocínio (Peru), where she died on 8 December 1869. Narcisa de Jesús was beatified on 25 October 1992.
Wikipedia source
1996 Howard Rollins

Howard Rollins

American actor (born 1950)
Howard Ellsworth Rollins Jr. was an American stage, film and television actor. He was best known for his role as Andrew Young in 1978's King, George Haley in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, Coalhouse Walker Jr. in the 1981 film Ragtime, as civil rights activist Medgar Evers in PBS' American Playhouse production of For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story in 1983, Captain Davenport in the 1984 film A Soldier's Story, and as Virgil Tibbs on the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night (1988–1995).
Wikipedia source
1941 Izidor Kürschner

Izidor Kürschner

Hungarian football player and coach (born 1885)
Izidor "Dori" Kürschner, in Brazil primarily known as Dori Kruschner,, was a Hungarian football player and coach. As player he was successful with Budapest club MTK, and also played for the Hungary national team. As coach he succeeded in Germany, winning the national championship with 1. FC Nürnberg. His greatest triumphs were to follow in Switzerland with the Grasshopper Club Zürich, where he won seven titles. Kürschner's arrival to Brazilian football brought tactical innovations which helped to establish the country as one of the world leaders in the sport.
Wikipedia source
1994 Antônio Carlos Jobim

Antônio Carlos Jobim

Brazilian singer-songwriter and pianist (born 1927)
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, also known as Tom Jobim, was a Brazilian composer, pianist, guitarist, songwriter, arranger and singer. Jobim is considered a great exponent of Brazilian music and one of the fathers of bossa nova for having merged samba with cool jazz in the 1960s as a pioneer of the genre. He is also regarded as one of the most celebrated songwriters of the 20th century, and his compositions have been played and recorded by many singers and instrumentalists internationally since the early 1960s.
Wikipedia source
2008 Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate

English voice actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1925)
Richard Oliver Postgate was an English animator, puppeteer, and writer. He was the creator and writer of several popular British children's television programmes. Bagpuss, Pingwings, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Pogles' Wood, were all made by Smallfilms, the company he set up with collaborator, artist and puppet maker Peter Firmin. The programmes were originally broadcast by the BBC from the 1950s to the 1980s. In a 1999 BBC poll Bagpuss was voted the most popular children's television programme of all time.
Wikipedia source
1914 Melchior Anderegg

Melchior Anderegg

Swiss mountain guide (born 1828)
Melchior Anderegg, from Zaun, Meiringen, was a Swiss mountain guide and the first ascensionist of many prominent mountains in the western Alps during the golden and silver ages of alpinism. His clients were mostly British, the most famous of whom was Leslie Stephen, the writer, critic and mountaineer; Anderegg also climbed extensively with members of the Walker family, including Horace Walker and Lucy Walker, and with Florence Crauford Grove. His cousin Jakob Anderegg was also a well-known guide.
Wikipedia source

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