Notable Deaths on January 15

January 15 has 125 recorded notable deaths across history, from 69 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

David Lynch

2025 — David Lynch

American television and film director, visual artist and musician, complications from emphysema (born 1946)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 125 source records 69 – 2025

Major events on January 15

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1973 Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam. Source
  2. 1822 Greek War of Independence: Demetrios Ypsilantis is elected president of the legislative assembly. Source

Did you know about David Lynch

David Lynch is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, with his films often characterized by a distinctive surrealist sensibility that gave rise to the adjective "Lynchian".

Did you know about Ray Bolger

Ray Bolger first became interested in dancing as a teenager and, while working as a bank clerk in Boston, participated in dance contests and attended musical performances.

Did you know about Henry H. Arnold

Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold was an American general officer holding the ranks of General of the Army and later, General of the Air Force.

Did you know about Sammy Cahn

Sammy Cahn played the piano and violin, and won an Oscar four times for his songs, including the popular hit "Three Coins in the Fountain".

Did you know about Leo Marks

After the war, Marks became a playwright and screenwriter, writing scripts that frequently utilised his war-time cryptographic experiences.

More major people who died on January 15

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

1987 Ray Bolger

Ray Bolger

American actor, singer, and dancer (born 1904)
Raymond Wallace Bolger was an American vaudevillian, eccentric dancer, comedian, actor and singer best known for his performance as the Scarecrow in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. He first became interested in dancing as a teenager and, while working as a bank clerk in Boston, participated in dance contests and attended musical performances. In 1923, after being fired from a later job as an insurance clerk, he formed a short-lived vaudeville act, Sanford and Bolger, with Ralph Sanford. He went on to perform in several revues in the 1920s and early 1930s, as well as Gus Edwards' variety show Ritz Carlton Nights.
Wikipedia source
1950 Henry H. Arnold

Henry H. Arnold

American general (born 1886)
Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold was an American general officer holding the ranks of General of the Army and later, General of the Air Force. Arnold was an aviation pioneer, Chief of the Air Corps (1938–1941), commanding general of the United States Army Air Forces, the only United States Air Force general to hold five-star rank, and the only officer to hold a five-star rank in two different U.S. military services. Arnold was also the founder of Project RAND, which evolved into one of the world's largest non-profit global policy think tanks, the RAND Corporation, and was one of the founders of Pan American World Airways.
Wikipedia source
1993 Sammy Cahn

Sammy Cahn

American songwriter (born 1913)
Samuel Cohen, known professionally as Sammy Cahn, was an American lyricist, songwriter, and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin, and won an Oscar four times for his songs, including the popular hit "Three Coins in the Fountain".
Wikipedia source
2001 Leo Marks

Leo Marks

English cryptographer, playwright, and screenwriter (born 1920)
Leopold Samuel Marks was an English writer, screenwriter, and cryptographer. During the Second World War he headed the codes office supporting resistance agents in occupied Europe for the secret Special Operations Executive organisation. After the war, Marks became a playwright and screenwriter, writing scripts that frequently utilised his war-time cryptographic experiences. He wrote the script for Peeping Tom, the controversial film directed by Michael Powell that had a disastrous effect on Powell's career, but was later described by Martin Scorsese as a masterpiece. In 1998, towards the end of his life, Marks published a personal history of his experiences during the war, Between Silk and Cyanide, which was critical of the leadership of SOE.
Wikipedia source
2025 Melba Montgomery

Melba Montgomery

American country music singer-songwriter (born 1938)
Melba Joyce Montgomery was an American country music singer and songwriter. She was known for a series of duet recordings made with George Jones, Gene Pitney, and Charlie Louvin. She was also a solo artist, having reached the top of the country charts in 1974 with the song, "No Charge". Born in Tennessee but raised in Alabama, Montgomery had a musical upbringing. Along with her two brothers, she placed in a talent contest which brought her to the attention of Roy Acuff. For several years, she toured the country as part of his band until she signed with United Artists Records in 1963.
Wikipedia source
1968 Bill Masterton

Bill Masterton

Canadian-American ice hockey player (born 1938)
William John Masterton was a Canadian–American professional ice hockey player who was a centre in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Minnesota North Stars in 1967–68. He is the only player in NHL history to die as a direct result of injuries suffered during a game. He died following a hit during a January 13, 1968, contest against the Oakland Seals. Years later, an analysis by The Toronto Star found his brain was already severely damaged from an earlier untreated concussion, and that the January 1968 hit triggered massive head trauma that ultimately killed him.
Wikipedia source
1775 Giovanni Battista Sammartini

Giovanni Battista Sammartini

Italian organist and composer (born 1700)
Giovanni Battista Sammartini was an Italian composer, violinist, organist, choirmaster and teacher. He counted Gluck among his students, and was highly regarded by younger composers including Johann Christian Bach. It has also been noted that many stylizations in Joseph Haydn's compositions are similar to those of Sammartini, although Haydn denied any such influence. Sammartini is especially associated with the formation of the concert symphony through both the shift from a brief opera-overture style and the introduction of a new seriousness and use of thematic development that prefigure Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works are described as galant, a style associated with Enlightenment ideals, while "the prevailing impression left by Sammartini's work... [is that] he contributed greatly to the development of a Classical style that achieved its moment of greatest clarity precisely when his long, active life was approaching its end".
Wikipedia source
1623 Paolo Sarpi

Paolo Sarpi

Italian lawyer, historian, and scholar (born 1552)
Paolo Sarpi, O.S.M. was an Italian Servite friar and Catholic priest who was a notable historian, scientist, canon lawyer, polymath, and statesman active on behalf of the Venetian Republic during the period of its successful defiance of the papal interdict (1605–1607) and its war (1615–1617) with Austria over the Uskok pirates. His writings, frankly polemical and highly critical of the Catholic Church and its Scholastic tradition, "inspired both Hobbes and Edward Gibbon in their own historical debunkings of priestcraft." Sarpi's major work, the History of the Council of Trent (1619), was published in London in 1619; other works: a History of Ecclesiastical Benefices, History of the Interdict and his Supplement to the History of the Uskoks, appeared posthumously. Organized around single topics, they are early examples of the genre of the historical monograph.
Wikipedia source
2002 Michael Anthony Bilandic

Michael Anthony Bilandic

American politician, 49th Mayor of Chicago (born 1923)
Michael Anthony Bilandic was an American Democratic politician, judge, and attorney who served as the 49th mayor of Chicago from 1976 to 1979, after the death of his predecessor, Richard J. Daley. Bilandic practiced law in Chicago for several years, having graduated from the DePaul University College of Law. Bilandic served as an alderman in Chicago City Council, representing the eleventh ward on the south-west side from June 1969 until he began his tenure as mayor in December 1976. After his mayoralty, Bilandic served on the Illinois Appellate Court from 1984 until being elected to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1990. He served on the state supreme court until 2000, and was the court’s chief Justice from 1994 to 1997.
Wikipedia source
2008 Robert V. Bruce

Robert V. Bruce

American historian, author, and academic (born 1923)
Robert Vance Bruce was an American historian specializing in the American Civil War, who won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 (1987). After serving in the Army during World War II, Bruce graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He received his Master of Arts in history and his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University, where he was later a professor. He also taught at the University of Bridgeport, Lawrence Academy at Groton, and the University of Wisconsin. Bruce was also a lecturer at the Fortenbaugh Lecture at Gettysburg College.
Wikipedia source
1864 Isaac Nathan

Isaac Nathan

English-Australian composer and journalist (born 1792)
Isaac Nathan was an Anglo-Jewish emigre Australian musician, composer, musicologist, and music educator, who has been called the "father of Australian music", having assisted the careers of numerous colonial musicians during his twenty-year residence in Australia. He is best known for the success of his Hebrew Melodies (1815–1840) in London. He became a composer of popular operatic comedies in the Royal Theatres (1823–1833), introduced below. After emigrating to Australia in 1840, Nathan wrote Australia's first operas Merry Freaks in Troublous Times (1843) and Don John of Austria (1847) Nathan also wrote the Australian Melodies, which entangled fragments of Aboriginal songlines with European musical traditions.
Wikipedia source
2013 John Thomas

John Thomas

American high jumper (born 1941)
John Curtis Thomas was an American track and field athlete who set several world records in the high jump using the straddle technique. As a youth, he earned the Eagle Scout award. At the age of 17, while a freshman at Boston University, Thomas became the first man to clear 7 feet (2.1 m) indoors. He subsequently pushed the world indoor record to 7 ft 1+1⁄2 in (2.172 m), and broke the world outdoor record three times, with a career best jump of 7 ft 3+3⁄4 in (2.229 m) in 1960, at the age of 19.
Wikipedia source
2015 Ray Nagel

Ray Nagel

American football player and coach (born 1927)
Raymond Robert Nagel was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He was the head football coach at the University of Utah from 1958 to 1965 and the University of Iowa from 1966 to 1970, compiling a career college football coaching record of 58–71–3 (.455). After coaching, Nagel was the athletic director at Washington State University from 1971 to 1976 and the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1976 to 1983. From 1990 to 1995, he was the executive director of the Hula Bowl, a college football invitational all-star game in Hawaii.
Wikipedia source
1998 Gulzarilal Nanda

Gulzarilal Nanda

Indian economist and politician, Prime Minister of India (born 1898)
Gulzarilal Nanda was an Indian politician and economist who specialised in labour issues. He served as the acting Prime Minister of India for two 13-day tenures following the deaths of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966 respectively. Both his terms ended after the ruling Indian National Congress's parliamentary party elected a new prime minister. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1997. Passing away at the age of 99 years and 195 days, he holds the record as the longest-lived Prime Minister in India's history.
Wikipedia source
2014 Roger Lloyd-Pack

Roger Lloyd-Pack

English actor (born 1944)
Roger Anthony Lloyd Pack was a British actor. He is best known for playing Trigger in Only Fools and Horses from 1981 to 2003, and Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley from 1994 to 2007. He later starred as Tom in The Old Guys with Clive Swift. He is also well known for the role of Bartemius Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and for his appearances in Doctor Who as John Lumic in the episodes "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel".
Wikipedia source
1804 Dru Drury

Dru Drury

English entomologist and author (born 1725)
Dru Drury was a British collector of natural history specimens and an entomologist. He received specimens collected from across the world through a network of ship's officers and collectors including Henry Smeathman. His collections were used by many entomologists of his time to describe and name new species and he is best known for his book Illustrations of Natural History which includes the names and descriptions of many insects, published in parts from 1770 to 1782 with most of the copperplate engravings done by Moses Harris.
Wikipedia source
1783 Lord Stirling

Lord Stirling

American Revolutionary War Major General (born 1726)
Major General William Alexander, also known as Lord Stirling was a Continental Army officer who served in the American Revolutionary War. He held a claim to be the male heir to the Scottish title of Earl of Stirling through Scottish lineage, and he sought the title sometime after 1756. His claim was initially granted by a Scottish court in 1759; however, the House of Lords ultimately overruled the court and denied the title in 1762. He continued to hold himself out as "Lord Stirling" regardless.
Wikipedia source
2013 Nagisa Oshima

Nagisa Oshima

Japanese director and screenwriter (born 1932)
Nagisa Ōshima was a Japanese film director, writer, and left-wing activist who is best known for his fiction films, of which he directed 23 features in a career spanning from 1959 to 1999. He is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese directors of all time, and as one of the most important figures of the Japanese New Wave, alongside Shōhei Imamura. His film style was bold, innovative and provocative. Common themes in his work include youthful rebellion, class and racial discrimination and taboo sexuality.
Wikipedia source
1909 Arnold Janssen

Arnold Janssen

German priest and missionary (born 1837)
Arnold Janssen, was a German-Dutch Catholic priest and missionary who is venerated as a saint. He founded the Society of the Divine Word, a Catholic missionary religious congregation, also known as the Divine Word Missionaries, as well as two congregations for women. In 1889 he founded in Steyl, Netherlands, the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit and in 1896 at the same place the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters. He was canonized on 5 October 2003, by Pope John Paul II.
Wikipedia source

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