Notable Deaths on January 3

Jack Leon Ruby was an American nightclub owner. He murdered Lee Harvey Oswald two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He was born in Chicago, and operated nightclubs in Texas.

Conrad Nicholson Hilton was an American hotel magnate and politician who founded the Hilton Hotels chain. From 1912 to 1916, Hilton was a Republican representative in the first New Mexico Legislature, but became disillusioned with the "inside deals" of politics. In 1919, he purchased his first hotel, the Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas, for US$40,000 and subsequently capitalized on the oil boom. The rooms were rented out in eight-hour shifts. He continued to purchase and sell hotels, and eventually established the world's first international hotel chain. When he died in 1979, he left the bulk of his estate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

Edgar Cayce was an American clairvoyant who reported and chronicled an ability to diagnose diseases and recommend treatments for ailments while asleep. During thousands of transcribed sessions, Cayce answered questions on subjects including healing, reincarnation, dreams, the afterlife, past lives, nutrition, Atlantis, and future events. Cayce said he was a devout Christian and was not a spiritualist or communicating with spirits. Cayce is regarded as a founder of the New Age movement and a principal source of many of the movement's characteristic beliefs.

Catherine of Valois or Catherine of France was Queen of England from 1420 until 1422. A daughter of King Charles VI of France, she married King Henry V of England and was the mother of King Henry VI. Catherine's marriage was part of a plan to eventually place Henry V on the throne of France, and perhaps end what is now known as the Hundred Years' War. But, although her son Henry VI was later crowned in Paris, the war continued.

Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served as the 2nd commander of the Quds Force from March 1998 until his assassination by the United States in January 2020. He was described as "the single most powerful operative in the Middle East" and a "genius of asymmetric warfare". Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen said Soleimani's strategies had "personally tightened a noose around Israel's neck".

William Brooke Joyce, nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born Nazi propaganda broadcaster during the Second World War. After moving from New York to Ireland and subsequently to England, Joyce became a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) from 1932, before finally moving to Germany at the outset of the war where he took Nazi German citizenship in 1940.

Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, was a member of the British royal family. She was the longest-lived princess of the blood royal, and one of the longest-lived British royals. Princess Alice was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria, the sister-in-law of Queen Mary, and the first cousin of Queen Mary's husband, King George V, and was the sister of Charles Edward the last Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Princess served as Viceregal Consort of both the Union of South Africa and of Canada.

Martin Patterson Hingle was an American actor. He was best known to screen audiences for his character roles, often as tough blue-collar authority figures, in over 200 productions between 1954 and 2008.

Edward William Brooke III was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1967 to 1979. He was the first African American elected to the United States Senate by popular vote. Prior to serving in the Senate, he served as the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1963 until 1967. He was the first African-American since Reconstruction in 1874 to be elected to the United States Senate, and the first African-American since 1881 to hold a United States Senate seat. Brooke was also the first African-American U.S. senator to ever be re-elected. He was the longest-serving African-American U.S. senator at twelve years, until he was surpassed by Tim Scott in 2025.

Philip V, known as the Tall, was King of France and Navarre from 1316 to 1322. Philip engaged in a series of domestic reforms intended to improve the management of the kingdom. These reforms included the creation of an independent Court of Finances, the standardization of weights and measures, and the establishment of a single currency.

Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre was a French general who served as Commander-in-Chief of French forces on the Western Front from the start of World War I until the end of 1916. He is best known for regrouping the retreating allied armies to defeat the Germans at the strategically decisive First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.

Friederike Victoria "Joy" Adamson was a Czech-born Austrian-Kenyan naturalist, artist and author. Her book, Born Free, describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. Born Free was printed in several languages and made into an Academy Award–winning movie of the same name. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

Saul Zaentz was an American film producer and record company executive. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

Satish Dhawan was an Indian mathematician and aerospace engineer. He served as the chairman of ISRO from 1972 to 1984 and is often regarded as the father of experimental fluid dynamics research in India.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese maritime explorer best known for investigations of the west coast of North America, undertaken on behalf of the Spanish Empire. He was the first European to explore present-day Alta California, navigating along the coast of California in 1542–1543 on his voyage from New Spain.

Gladys May Aylward was a British evangelical Christian missionary to China, whose story was told in the book The Small Woman: The Heroic Story of Gladys Aylward, by Alan Burgess, published in 1957. The book served as the basis for the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman, in 1958. The film was produced by Twentieth Century Fox, and filmed entirely in North Wales and England.

Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter, entrepreneur and abolitionist. Founding the Wedgwood company in 1759, he developed improved pottery bodies by systematic experimentation, and was the leader in the industrialisation of the manufacture of European pottery.

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle was a professional soldier from Devon who fought on both sides during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A prominent military figure under the Commonwealth, his support was crucial to the 1660 Stuart Restoration of Charles II.

Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist, bohemian, first anarchist and then communist, and commissar of the Red Army against the Czechoslovak Legion. He is best known for his novel The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, an unfinished novel about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures. The novel has been translated into about 60 languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature.

Sidney Gillman was an American football player, coach and executive. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes, instead of short passes to running backs or wide receivers at the sides of the line of scrimmage, was instrumental in making football into the modern game that it is today. He was inducted as a coach into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989.

Alfred Jesse Smith, known professionally as Brenton Wood, was an American singer and songwriter. Three 1967 singles of Wood's, "The Oogum Boogum Song", "Gimme Little Sign", and "Baby You Got It" were hits.

Herbert David Kelleher was an American billionaire airline businessman and lawyer. He was the co-founder, later CEO, and chairman emeritus of Southwest Airlines until his death in 2019.

Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing Roman Catholic, she had disavowed Christianity by the early 1970s. Daly was fired from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes.

Saint Kuriakose Elias Chavara, CMI was an Indian Catholic priest, religious, philosopher and social reformer. He is the first canonised Catholic male saint of Indian origin and was a member of the Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic church. He was the co-founder and first Prior General of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI), the first religious congregation for men in the Syro-Malabar Church. The Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC), originally known as the Third Order of Discalced Carmelites (TOCD), was founded by St Kuriakose Elias Chavara in 1866 in Kerala.

John Charles Smith, known professionally as Jack Pickford, was a Canadian-American actor, film director, and producer. He was the younger brother of actresses Mary and Lottie Pickford.

Eric Jerome Dickey was an American author. He wrote several crime novels involving grifters, ex-cons, and assassins, the latter novels having more diverse settings, moving from Los Angeles to the United Kingdom to the West Indies, each having an international cast of characters. Dickey was a New York Times bestselling novelist.

Louis-Gabriel Suchet, duc d'Albuféra, was a French Marshal of the Empire and one of the most successful commanders of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. During the Peninsular War, he was remembered as a skilled administrator. He is placed among the greatest commanders of the Napoleonic Wars.

William Harrison Ainsworth was an English historical novelist, born at King Street in Manchester. He trained as a lawyer, but the legal profession held no attraction for him. While completing his legal studies in London he met the publisher John Ebers, at that time manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket. Ebers introduced Ainsworth to literary and dramatic circles, and to his daughter, who became Ainsworth's wife.

Paul Bley, CM was a Canadian jazz pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing and his early live performance on the Moog and ARP synthesizers. His music has been described by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times as "deeply original and aesthetically aggressive". Bley's prolific output includes influential recordings from the 1950s through to his solo piano recordings of the 2000s.

Luca Giordano was an Italian late-Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Giordano was one of the most celebrated artists of the Neapolitan Baroque, whose vast output included altarpieces, mythological paintings and many decorative fresco cycles in both palaces and churches. He moved away from the dark manner of early 17th-century Neapolitan art as practised by Caravaggio and his followers and Jusepe de Ribera, and, drawing on the ideas of many other artists, above all the 16th-century Venetians and Pietro da Cortona, he introduced a new sense of light and glowing colour, of movement and dramatic action. He was internationally successful and travelled widely, working in Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain.

Karl Joseph Wirth was a German politician of the Catholic Centre Party who was chancellor of Germany from May 1921 to November 1922, during the early years of the Weimar Republic. He was also minister of four government departments between 1920 and 1931. Wirth was strongly influenced by Christian social teaching throughout his political career.

Grenville Mellen Dodge was a Union Army general on the frontier and a pioneering figure in military intelligence during the Civil War, who served as Ulysses S. Grant's intelligence chief in the Western Theater. He served in several notable assignments, including command of the XVI Corps during the Atlanta campaign.

Ali-Shir Nava'i, also known as Nizām-al-Din ʿAli-Shir Herawī was a Timurid poet, writer, statesman, linguist, Hanafi Maturidi mystic and painter who was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature.

Milton Clark Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He was the husband of artist Sally Michel Avery and the father of artist March Avery.

Winifred Milius Lubell was an American illustrator, artist and writer. In her early adult years, Milius was active in the Communist Party of the United States and an advocate for social justice. She began her artistic career creating pen and ink portraits of victims of the Great Depression, before proceeding to examine the struggles of the working poor in the towns of the Eastern United States through woodcuts, as well as producing drawings from the sit down strikes in Chicago. An artist and an illustrator, Milius' most notable publications include the illustrations for Dorothy Sterling's Cape Cod natural history book The Outer Lands. In her eighties she wrote and illustrated the women's studies exploration of feminism, sexuality and mythology: The Metamorphosis of Baubo, Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy. She died on January 3, 2012, of congestive heart failure. She was 97.

Josef Škvorecký was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.

James Desmond Corcoran was an Australian politician who served as the 37th premier of South Australia between February and September 1979, following the resignation of Don Dunstan. During his brief premiership Corcoran also served as state treasurer. Born at Millicent in the southeast of the state, he served in the Australian Army in the Korean War and Malayan Emergency, reaching the rank of captain, and being twice mentioned in despatches. Following his discharge in 1961, Corcoran was elected to the House of Assembly, succeeding his father Jim Corcoran – who retired at the 1962 election – as the member for the electoral district of Millicent representing the Australian Labor Party.

Halahalli Shreekantha Shetti Mahadeva Prasad was an Indian politician from the state of Karnataka and five-time Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Gundlupet constituency of the Chamarajanagar district. He first won the Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections in 1994 while representing Janata Dal. He was re-elected in five straight subsequent elections in 1999, 2004, 2008 and 2013. Throughout his political career he had been member of Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular) and the Indian National Congress. At the time of his death in January 2017, he was the incumbent state minister for Cooperation and Sugar in the Government of Karnataka led by Siddaramaiah as Chief Minister.

Walkelin was the first Norman Bishop of Winchester. He began the construction of Winchester Cathedral in 1079 and had the Old Minster demolished. He reformed the cathedral's administration, although his plan to replace the monks with priests was blocked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc. Walkelin was important in beginning St Giles's Fair in Winchester and was greatly active in national politics. For example, he signed the Accord of Winchester, was involved in the Council of London in 1075, and sought to resolve a conflict between Anselm of Canterbury and William II. He was regent of England for a few months at the end of his life.

Jeremiah Horrocks, sometimes given as Jeremiah Horrox, was an English astronomer. He was the first person to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record. Most remarkably, Horrocks correctly asserted that Jupiter was accelerating in its orbit while Saturn was slowing and interpreted this as due to mutual gravitational interaction, thereby demonstrating that gravity's actions were not limited to the Earth, Sun, and Moon.

Baldassare Galuppi was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are emblematic of the prevailing galant music that developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments.

Martin Anderson was an American academic, economist, author, policy analyst, and adviser to U.S. politicians and presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. In the Nixon administration, Anderson was credited with helping to end the military draft and creating the all-volunteer armed forces. Under Reagan, Anderson helped draft the administration's original economic program that became known as “Reaganomics.” A political conservative and a strong proponent of free-market capitalism, he was influenced by libertarianism and opposed government regulations that limited individual freedom.

Ivan Mackerle was a Czech cryptozoologist, author, design engineer and explorer. He organized expeditions to search for the Loch Ness monster of Scotland, the Tasmanian tiger in Australia, and the elephant bird in Madagascar. He was most notable for his search of the Mongolian death worm, and he conducted three trips to Mongolia in 1990, 1992, and 2004. He authored numerous books and publications and from 1998 until 2002 he was chief editor of the Czech paranormal magazine Fantastická fakta.

Reginald Crundall Punnett FRS was a British geneticist who co-founded, with William Bateson, the Journal of Genetics in 1910. Punnett is probably best remembered today as the creator of the Punnett square, a tool still used by biologists to predict the probability of possible genotypes of offspring. His Mendelism (1905) is sometimes said to have been the first textbook on genetics; it was probably the first popular science book to introduce genetics to the public.

Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno was a German businessman and politician who was the chancellor of Germany from 1922 to 1923 for a total of 264 days. His tenure included the beginning of the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops and the period in which inflation in Germany accelerated towards hyperinflation.

Mary Garden was a Scottish-American operatic lyric soprano, then mezzo-soprano, with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century. She spent the latter part of her childhood and youth in the United States and eventually became an American citizen, although she lived in France for many years and eventually retired to Scotland, where she spent the last 30 years of her life and died.

Alfred George Fripp, known as "Alfie" or "Bill", was a British Royal Air Force squadron leader who was a flight sergeant during the Second World War. He was shot down by the Luftwaffe in 1939 and held in twelve different prisoner of war camps, including Stalag Luft III, later the site of the "Great Escape". As the last of the "39ers", he was the oldest surviving and longest serving British POW.

Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. was a civil rights and voting rights activist who was murdered for trying to desegregate a "whites only" restroom. Younge was an enlisted service member in the United States Navy, where he served for two years before being medically discharged. Younge was an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a leader of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League.

Koo Chen-fu, also known as C.F. Koo, was a Taiwanese businessman, diplomat, and film producer. He led the Koos Group of companies from 1940 until his death. As a chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Koo arranged the first direct talks between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China since 1949 and served as Taiwan's negotiator in both the 1993 and 1998 Wang-Koo summit.

Sir William Jack Skate was a prominent Papua New Guinea politician. He was the son of an Australian father and a Papua New Guinean mother. Though his career was turbulent and often marked by setbacks, he served in the highest posts in his country: prime minister of Papua New Guinea, speaker of the National Parliament, and as acting governor-general of Papua New Guinea.

Elena Huelva Palomo was a Spanish cancer activist, influencer, and writer. Through her regular use of social media, she divulged information about Ewing sarcoma, the type of cancer she was suffering from, to a wider audience, and demanded more investment for cancer research. She was credited with increasing the visibility of childhood bone cancer while dispelling misconceptions and myths about the disease.

Edwin Muir CBE was a Scottish poet, novelist and translator. Born on a farm in Deerness, a parish of Orkney, Scotland, he is remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry written in plain language and with few stylistic preoccupations.

Jyotindra Nath Dixit was an Indian diplomat of Indian Foreign Service, who served as the National Security Advisor of India to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and is mostly remembered for his role as a negotiator in disputes with Pakistan and China. He also served as Foreign Secretary (1991–1994), the highest bureaucratic post in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Joachim II was a Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1535–1571), the sixth member of the House of Hohenzollern. Joachim II was the eldest son of Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg and his wife Elizabeth of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He received the cognomen Hector after the Trojan prince and warrior for his athel qualities and prowess.

Rose Ausländer was a Jewish poet writing in German and English. Born in Czernowitz in the Bukovina, she lived through its tumultuous history of belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kingdom of Romania, and eventually the Soviet Union. Rose Ausländer spent her life in several countries: Austria-Hungary, Romania, the United States, and West Germany.

Emperor Yuan of Jin, personal name Sima Rui (司馬睿), courtesy name Jingwen (景文), was an emperor of the Jin dynasty and the first emperor of the Eastern Jin. He was the son of Sima Jin (司馬覲), the grandson of Prince of Langya Sima Zhou and the great-grandson of Sima Yi.

Peter Naur was a Danish computer science pioneer and 2005 Turing Award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for most programming languages. He also contributed to creating the language ALGOL 60.

Robert Lee Carter was an American lawyer, civil rights activist, who argued the Brown v Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Egidio Galea OSA MBE was a Maltese Augustinian Roman Catholic priest, missionary, and educator, and a significant figure in the Catholic resistance to Nazism in Italy during World War II. He was a close aide to the Irish priest Hugh O'Flaherty.

Betty Freeman was an American philanthropist and photographer. She had originally trained to be a concert pianist, practicing six to eight hours per day for twenty years, but eventually, by the mid-1960s, gave up this dream to pursue concert managing.

Igor Dmitrievich Sergun was a Russian military officer who was a director of GRU, Russia's military intelligence service, from 2011 until his death in January 2016. He was promoted to colonel general on 21 February 2015.

Jurgis Baltrušaitis was a Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator who wrote in Lithuanian and Russian, and was an exponent of iconology. He was the father of art historian and critic Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr.

Pierre Athanase Larousse was a French grammarian, lexicographer and encyclopaedist. He published many of the outstanding educational and reference works of 19th-century France, including the 15-volume Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle.

James Merritt Ives was an American lithographer, bookkeeper, and businessman. He oversaw the business and financial side of the firm, Currier and Ives, which he co-managed with his business partner, Nathaniel Currier.

Hisayasu Nagata was a Japanese politician born in Nagoya City in Aichi Prefecture. He was well known for falsely accusing the former Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie of bribing the Liberal Democratic Party.

Calvin William Verity Jr. was an American government official and steel industrialist who served as the 27th United States secretary of commerce between 1987 and 1989, under President Ronald Reagan.

Victor Kraft was an Austrian philosopher. He is best known for being a member of the Vienna Circle. He defended an epistemology grounded in ontological realism.

Fujiwara no Yukinari or Kōzei was a Japanese calligrapher (shodoka) during the Heian period. He was memorialized for his prowess in his chosen art by being remembered as one of the outstanding Three Brush Traces, along with Ono no Michikaze and Fujiwara no Sukemasa.

Pope Anterus was the bishop of Rome from 21 November 235 until his death on 3 January 236.

Fujiwara no Michinaga was a Japanese statesman. The Fujiwara clan's control over Japan and its politics reached its zenith under his leadership.

Mathieu Molé was a French statesman.

Louis I was Prince of Monaco from 1662 until 1701.

Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, surname also spelt Galli da Bibiena or Bibbiena, was an Italian Baroque-era architect, designer, and painter.

Alois Hitler was an Austrian civil servant in the customs service and the father of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany.

Alexandros Papadiamantis was an influential Greek novelist, short-story writer and poet.

James Elroy Flecker was a British novelist, playwright, and poet, whose poetry was most influenced by the Parnassian poets.

Carl David Tolmé Runge was a German mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist.

Sir Walter Hartwell James, was the fifth Premier of Western Australia and an ardent supporter of the federation movement.

Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninov was a Russian Romantic composer.

Dimitrios Vergos was a Greek champion in wrestling, weightlifting and shot put.

George Sutherland Fraser was a Scottish poet, literary critic and academic.

Prof Sergei Lvovich Sobolev, FRSE was a Soviet mathematician working in mathematical analysis and partial differential equations.

Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film, and television.

Choi Yo-sam was a Korean world boxing champion. He was born in Jeongeup, Jeollabukdo, South Korea.

Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt was a Chilean composer.

Vicar, a pseudonym for Víctor José Arriagada Ríos, was a Chilean cartoonist, known for his prolific career drawing Disney comics.

Sergiu Florin Nicolaescu was a Romanian film director, actor and politician.

William B. Maxson was an American Air Force Major General and vice commander, 15th Air Force, Strategic Air Command, March Air Force Base, Calif.

Phillip Everly was an American musician, who was one half of the duo The Everly Brothers alongside his older brother Don.

William Ronald Plager was a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman.

Colin James Brumby was an Australian composer and conductor.