Did you know about Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis was married to Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed, from 1948 until his death.
Notable Deaths on February 4
February 4 has 82 recorded notable deaths across history, from 211 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
2005 — Ossie Davis
American actor, director, and playwright (born 1917)
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Notable Deaths
82 source records
211 – 2025
Today in history
Major events on February 4
See what else happened on this day in history.
Did you know about Nikolai Yezhov
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge.
Did you know about Franz Reichelt
Franz Reichelt, also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austro-Hungarian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor.
Did you know about Barbara McNair
Barbara Jean McNair (March 4, 1934 – February 4, 2007) was an American singer and theater, television, and film actress.
Did you know about Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch theoretical physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.
More major people who died on February 4
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1940
Nikolai Yezhov
Russian police officer and politician (born 1895)
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell out of favor with Joseph Stalin and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Great Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Great Purge.
1912
Franz Reichelt
French tailor and inventor (born 1878)
Franz Reichelt, also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austro-Hungarian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor. He is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design, a device that today might be called a wingsuit. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft in mid-air. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.
2007
Barbara McNair
American singer and actress (born 1934)
Barbara Jean McNair (March 4, 1934 – February 4, 2007) was an American singer and theater, television, and film actress. McNair's career spanned over five decades in television, film, and stage. McNair's professional career began in music during the late 1950s, singing in the nightclub circuit. In 1958, McNair released "Till There Was You", her debut single for Coral Records, which was a commercial success. McNair performed all around the world, touring with Nat King Cole and later appearing in his Broadway stage shows I'm with You and The Merry World of Nat King Cole in the early 1960s.
1928
Hendrik Lorentz
Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1853)
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch theoretical physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the force acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. He was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency of the material, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.
1505
Jeanne de Valois
daughter of Louis XI of France (born 1464)
Joan of France, sometimes called Joan the Lame, was briefly Queen of France as wife of King Louis XII, in between the death of her brother, King Charles VIII, and the annulment of her marriage. After that, she retired to her domain, where she soon founded the monastic Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where she served as abbess. From this Order later sprang the religious congregation of the Apostolic Sisters of the Annunciation, founded in 1787 to teach the children of the poor. She was canonized on 28 May 1950.
1936
Wilhelm Gustloff
German-Swiss soldier, founded Swiss NSDAP/AO (born 1895)
Wilhelm Gustloff was a German politician and meteorologist who founded the Swiss branch of the Nazi Party/Foreign Organization (NSDAP/AO) at Davos in 1932. The NSDAP/AO was formed as the wing of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) for German citizens living outside Germany. Gustloff continued to lead the Swiss branch of the NSDAP/AO until 1936, when he was assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Croatian Jew who was outraged by the growth of the Nazi Party. After killing Gustloff, Frankfurter immediately surrendered to the authorities and confessed to the Swiss police that "I fired the shots because I am a Jew."
856
Rabanus Maurus
Frankish archbishop and theologian (born 780)
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius, also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis. He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible. He was one of the most prominent teachers and writers of the Carolingian age, and was called "Praeceptor Germaniae", or "the teacher of Germany". In the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrology, his feast is given as 4 February and he is qualified as a Saint ('sanctus').
1926
İskilipli Âtıf Hodja
Turkish author and scholar (born 1875)
Mehmed Âtıf Hoca was a Turkish Islamist. He was born in the village of Toyhane, in the district of Bayat, Çorum Province, in the Ottoman Empire and went to school there. After a couple of years as an imam in İskilip in 1893 he went to Istanbul to continue his education, first at a medrese and from 1902 at Darü'l-fünun Faculty of Divinity. He graduated in 1903 and took a job teaching as Ders-i Amm (Ulama), at the madrasah in the Fatih Mosque, Istanbul. He was later arrested and jailed several times, but freed. He and Mustafa Sabri were the founding members of Cemiyet-i Müderrisin. They were fiercely against the national government in Ankara which led the Turks to the Turkish War of Independence. He referred to Turkish Nationalists as rabid bandits. His father was a Turk from the Akkoyunlu Bayındır tribe, while his mother was an Arab originally from Hijaz.
2007
Ilya Kormiltsev
Russian-English poet and translator (born 1959)
Ilya Valeryevich Kormiltsev was a Russian poet, translator, and publisher. Kormiltsev is most famous for working during the 1980s and the 1990s as a songwriter in Nautilus Pompilius, one of the most popular rock bands in the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. He was also a prominent literary translator and publisher. Since 1997, he translated into Russian many important pieces of modern prose, such as Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, or Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. In 2003, he established Ultra.Kultura publishing house, which immediately gained a scandalous reputation and was closed by the authorities in 2007. Through its brief history, Ultra.Kultura published numerous counter-culture books in a wide range from ultra-right to radical left authors.
2012
Mike deGruy
American director, producer, and cinematographer (born 1951)
Michael V. deGruy was an American documentary filmmaker specializing in underwater cinematography. His credits include Life in the Freezer, Trials of Life, The Blue Planet and Pacific Abyss. He was also known for his storytelling, including a passionate TED talk about his love of the ocean on the Mission Blue Voyage. His company, Film Crew Inc., specialized in underwater cinematography, filming for the BBC, PBS, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. His notable accomplishments include diving beneath thermal vents in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He was a member of many deep sea expeditions and was a part of the team that first filmed the vampire squid and the nautilus.
1781
Josef Mysliveček
Czech composer (born 1737)
Josef Mysliveček was a Czech composer. He contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence.
1995
Patricia Highsmith
American novelist and short story writer (born 1921)
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories in a career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing was influenced by existentialist literature and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene.
1987
Carl Rogers
American psychologist and academic (born 1902)
Carl Ransom Rogers was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. He was also a board member for the CIA's infamous Project MK-Ultra developing illegal torture and experimentation techniques for the U.S. Military. Rogers is widely considered one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research and was honored for his research with the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1956.
1617
Lodewijk Elzevir
Dutch publisher, co-founded the House of Elzevir (born 1546)
Lodewijk Elzevir, originally Lodewijk or Louis Elsevier or Elzevier, was a printer, born in the city of Leuven. He was the founder of the House of Elzevir, which printed works such as "Two New Sciences", written by Galileo, at a time when his work was suppressed for religious reasons. Although the House of Elzevir ceased publishing in 1712, the modern Dutch Elsevier company was founded in 1880 and took its name from the historic Dutch publishing house.
2006
Betty Friedan
American author and activist (born 1921)
Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men."
1933
Archibald Sayce
English linguist and educator (born 1846)
Archibald Henry Sayce was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research. He was a contributor to articles in the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
2019
Matti Nykänen
Finnish Olympic-winning ski jumper and singer (born 1963)
Matti Ensio Nykänen was a Finnish ski jumper who competed from 1981 to 1991. Known as "The Flying Finn", he is one of the most successful ski jumpers of all time, having won five Winter Olympic medals, nine World Championship medals, and 22 Finnish Championship medals. Most notably, he won three gold medals at the 1988 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Yvonne van Gennip of the Netherlands, the most medaled athlete that winter.
211
Septimius Severus
Roman emperor (born 145)
Lucius Septimius Severus was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna, Libya, in the Roman province of Africa. He is of Libyan origin. As a young man, he advanced through the customary succession of offices during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus was the final contender to seize power after the death of the emperor Pertinax in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors.
2024
Barry John
Welsh rugby player (born 1945)
Barry John was a Welsh rugby union fly-half who played in the 1960s and early 1970s during the amateur era of the sport. John began his rugby career as a schoolboy playing for his local team Cefneithin RFC before switching to the first-class west Wales team Llanelli RFC in 1964. Whilst at Llanelli, John was selected for the Wales national team—as a replacement for David Watkins—to face a touring Australian team.