Did you know about Catherine Howard
Catherine Howard was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper, a first cousin to Anne Boleyn, and the niece of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
Notable Deaths on February 13
February 13 has 115 recorded notable deaths across history, from 106 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1542 — Catherine Howard
Queen Consort of England and English wife of King Henry VIII (executed; b. 1521)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
115 source records
106 – 2025
Today in history
Major events on February 13
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 2004 The Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announces the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Source
- 2011 For the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, are able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855. Source
Did you know about Richard Wagner
Wagner outlined those ideas in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852, most fully realising them in the first half of his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Did you know about Antonin Scalia
For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court.
Did you know about Balu Mahendra
In 1966, he moved to India and gained admission to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) to pursue a course in motion picture photography.
Did you know about Charles X Gustav
Charles X Gustav, also Carl X Gustav, was King of Sweden from 1654 until his death in 1660.
More major people who died on February 13
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1883
Richard Wagner
German composer (born 1813)
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas, although his mature works are often referred to as music dramas. Unlike most composers, Wagner wrote both the libretti and the music for all of his stage works. He first achieved recognition with works in the Romantic tradition of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but revolutionised the genre through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which sought to unite poetic, musical, visual, and dramatic elements. In that approach, the drama unfolds as a continuously sung narrative, with the music evolving organically from the text rather than alternating between arias and recitatives. Wagner outlined those ideas in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852, most fully realising them in the first half of his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
2016
Antonin Scalia
American lawyer and judge, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (born 1936)
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.
2014
Balu Mahendra
Sri Lankan-Indian director, cinematographer, and screenwriter (born 1939)
Balanathan Benjamin Mahendran, commonly known as Balu Mahendra, was a Sri Lankan Tamil cinematographer, director, screenwriter, actor and film editor who worked in various Indian film industries, primarily in Tamil and Malayalam cinema. Born in Sri Lanka, Mahendran developed a passion for photography and literature at a young age, after witnessing the shoot of David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) during a school trip in Sri Lanka, he was drawn towards filmmaking. After graduation he joined as an Aerial photographer in the Sri Lankan Government. In 1966, he moved to India and gained admission to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) to pursue a course in motion picture photography. Upon completion of his diploma, he started working in Malayalam cinema as a cinematographer in the early 1970s.
1660
Charles X Gustav
king of Sweden (born 1622)
Charles X Gustav, also Carl X Gustav, was King of Sweden from 1654 until his death in 1660. He was the son of John Casimir, Count Palatine (Pfalzgraf) of Zweibrücken-Kleeburg, and Catherine of Sweden. After his father's death, he also succeeded him as Pfalzgraf. He was married to Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, who bore his son and successor, Charles XI. Charles X Gustav was the second Wittelsbach king of Sweden after the childless king Christopher of Bavaria (1441–1448) and he was the first king of the Swedish Caroline era, which had its peak during the end of the reign of his son, Charles XI. He led Sweden during the Second Northern War, enlarging the Swedish Empire. By his predecessor Christina, he was considered de facto Duke of Eyland (Öland), before ascending to the Swedish throne. From 1655 to 1657, he also claimed the title of Grand Duke of Lithuania.
1818
George Rogers Clark
American general (born 1752)
George Rogers Clark was an American military officer and surveyor from Virginia who became the highest-ranking Patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Virginia militia in Kentucky throughout much of the war, and is credited for founding Louisville, Kentucky in 1778. He is best known for his captures of Kaskaskia, Illinois, in 1778 and Vincennes, Indiana, in 1779 during the Illinois campaign, which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory and earned Clark the nickname "Conqueror of the Old Northwest". The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
2017
Seijun Suzuki
Japanese filmmaker (born 1923)
Seijun Suzuki , born Seitaro Suzuki , was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their florid visual style, absurd humour, and a playful rejection of traditional film grammar. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō trilogy, Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991).
1954
Agnes Macphail
Canadian educator and politician (born 1890)
Agnes Campbell Macphail was a Canadian politician and the first woman elected to Canada's House of Commons. She served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1921 to 1940; from 1943 to 1945 and again from 1948 to 1951, she served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, representing the Toronto riding of York East. Active throughout her life in progressive politics, Macphail worked for multiple parties, most prominently the Progressive Party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the United Farmers of Ontario. She promoted her ideas through column-writing, activist organizing, and legislation.
2016
O. N. V. Kurup
Indian poet and academic (born 1931)
Ottaplakkal Neelakandan Velu Kurup was a Malayalam poet and lyricist from Kerala, India, who won the Jnanpith Award, the highest literary award in India for the year 2007. He received the awards Padma Shri in 1998 and Padma Vibhushan in 2011, the fourth and second highest civilian honours from the Government of India. In 2007 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by University of Kerala, Trivandrum. O. N. V. was known for his leftist leaning. He was a leader of All India Students Federation (AISF). He died on 13 February 2016 at KIMS hospital in Thiruvananthapuram due to age-related illnesses. He was 84.
2003
Kid Gavilán
Cuban-American boxer (born 1926)
Gerardo González, better known in the boxing world as Kid Gavilan, was a Cuban boxer. Gavilán was the former undisputed world welterweight champion from 1951 to 1954 having simultaneously held the NYSAC, WBA, and The Ring welterweight titles. The Boxing Writers Association of America named him Fighter of the Year in 1953. Gavilán was voted by The Ring magazine as the 26th greatest fighter of the last 80 years. Gavilán was a 1966 inductee to The Ring magazine's Boxing Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the inaugural class of 1990.
1984
Cheong Eak Chong
Singaporean entrepreneur (born 1888)
Cheong Eak Chong was a Chinese businessman of She ethnicity. He was born in Anxi County in Fujian in 1888, but left China in 1921 for Singapore. He began his business career there as a goldsmith, later diversifying into finance and opening a bank with offices in Hong Kong and focused his investments in the real estate and tourism industries in Singapore and Hong Kong, establishing a property empire whose eventual flagship was the Hong Fok Corporation. Throughout his career, Cheong contributed to poverty relief and development in his home county of Anxi, and he is commemorated in the names of a number of public institutions in Fujian.
1859
Eliza Acton
English food writer and poet (born 1799)
Eliza Acton was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together.
1952
Josephine Tey
Scottish author and playwright (born 1896)
Elizabeth MacKintosh, known by the pen name Josephine Tey, was a Scottish author. She is known for her Inspector Alan Grant series, which started with The Man in the Queue (1929). Her 1951 novel The Daughter of Time, from the same series, a detective work investigating the death of the Princes in the Tower, was chosen by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990 as the greatest crime novel of all time. Her first play Richard of Bordeaux, written under another pseudonym, Gordon Daviot, starred John Gielgud in its successful West End run.
1968
Portia White
Canadian opera singer (born 1911)
Portia May White was a Canadian contralto, known for becoming the first Black Canadian concert singer to achieve international fame. Growing up as part of her father's church choir in Halifax, Nova Scotia, White competed in local singing competitions as a teenager and later trained at the Halifax Conservatory of Music. In 1941 and 1944, she made her national and international debuts as a singer, receiving critical acclaim for her performances of both classical European music and African-American spirituals. White later completed tours throughout Europe, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
1976
Lily Pons
French-American soprano and actress (born 1904)
Alice Joséphine Pons, known professionally as Lily Pons, was a French-American operatic lyric coloratura soprano and actress who had an active career from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. As an opera singer, she specialized in the coloratura soprano repertoire and was particularly associated with the title roles in Lakmé and Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition to appearing as a guest artist with many opera houses internationally, Pons enjoyed a long association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where she performed nearly 300 times between 1931 and 1960.
2013
Pieter Kooijmans
Dutch judge and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs for The Netherlands (born 1933)
Pieter Hendrik "Peter" Kooijmans was a Dutch politician, jurist, and diplomat. He was a member of the defunct Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), which later merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party. From 1993 to 1994, he served as Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, succeeding Hans van den Broek. In 1995, he returned to his former position as Professor of Public International Law at the University of Leiden, serving until his appointment to the International Court of Justice. He was granted the honorary title of Minister of State on 13 July 2007.
2017
Kim Jong-nam
North Korean politician (born 1971)
Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. From roughly 1994 to 2001, he was considered the heir apparent to his father. In 2017, Kim was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia; North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his half-brother, was widely believed responsible. Kim was speculated to have fallen out of favor in 2001 following his deportation from Japan to China while attempting to visit Tokyo Disneyland on a forged passport; Kim claimed his fall was due to advocating "reform and market-opening".
2007
Elizabeth Jolley
English-Australian author and academic (born 1923)
Monica Elizabeth Jolley was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s and forged an illustrious literary career there. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels, four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well-known writers such as Tim Winton among her students at Curtin University.
1956
Jan Łukasiewicz
Polish mathematician and philosopher (born 1878)
Jan Leopold Łukasiewicz was a Polish logician, and philosopher who is best known for Polish notation and Łukasiewicz logic. His work centred on philosophical logic, mathematical logic and history of logic. He thought innovatively about traditional propositional logic, the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle, offering one of the earliest systems of many-valued logic. Contemporary research on Aristotelian logic also builds on innovative works by Łukasiewicz, which applied methods from modern logic to the formalization of Aristotle's syllogistic.
2019
Callistus Ndlovu
Zimbabwean academic and politician (born 1936)
Callistus Dingiswayo Ndlovu was a Zimbabwean academic, diplomat, and politician. He joined the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) in 1963 as a teacher in Matabeleland, and went on to serve as its representative to the United Nations and North America in the 1970s. After Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, he was a member of the House of Assembly from 1980 to 1985 and served as a senator from 1985 to 1990. He left ZAPU and joined the ruling ZANU–PF party in 1984.