Did you know about Glynis Johns
In a career exceeding seven decades on stage and screen, Johns appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays.
Notable Deaths on January 4
January 4 has 99 recorded notable deaths across history, from 871 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
2024 — Glynis Johns
British actress and singer (born 1923)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
99 source records
871 – 2026
Today in history
Major events on January 4
See what else happened on this day in history.
Did you know about R. D. Burman
Rahul Dev Burman was an Indian music director and singer, who is considered to be one of the greatest and most successful music directors of the Hindi film music and Bengali cinema industry.
Did you know about Iron Eyes Cody
Iron Eyes Cody also played a Native American shedding a tear about pollution in one of the country's most well-known television public service announcements from the group Keep America Beautiful.
Did you know about Hasan al-Askari
Hasan al-Askari was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father, Ali al-Hadi, to the garrison town of Samarra in 848, where the Abbasid caliphs held them under close surveillance until their deaths, even though neither were politically active.
Did you know about Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian.
More major people who died on January 4
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1994
R. D. Burman
Indian film composer and music director (born 1939)
Rahul Dev Burman was an Indian music director and singer, who is considered to be one of the greatest and most successful music directors of the Hindi film music and Bengali cinema industry. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Burman composed musical scores for 331 films, bringing a new level of music ensemble with his compositions. Burman did his major work with legendary singers Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi. He also worked extensively with lyricists like Majrooh Sultanpuri, Anand Bakshi and Gulzar, with whom he created some of the most memorable numbers in his career. Nicknamed Pancham, he was the only son of the composer Sachin Dev Burman and his Bengali lyricist wife Meera Dev Burman.
1999
Iron Eyes Cody
American actor and stuntman (born 1904)
Iron Eyes Cody was an American actor who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films, including the role of Chief Iron Eyes in Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948). He also played a Native American shedding a tear about pollution in one of the country's most well-known television public service announcements from the group Keep America Beautiful. Living in Hollywood, he began to insist, even in his private life, that he was Native American, over time claiming membership in several different tribes. In 1996, Cody's half-sister said that he was of Italian ancestry, but he denied it. After his death, it was revealed that he was of Sicilian parentage and not Native American at all.
874
Hasan al-Askari
eleventh of the Twelve Imams (probable; b. 846)
Hasan al-Askari was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the eleventh of the Twelve Imams, and father of Muhammad al-Mahdi. He was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father, Ali al-Hadi, to the garrison town of Samarra in 848, where the Abbasid caliphs held them under close surveillance until their deaths, even though neither were politically active. After the death of al-Hadi in 868, the majority of his followers acknowledged his son, al-Askari, as the next Imam. Al-Askari's contact with Shia Muslims was restricted by the Abbasid caliphs, and he communicated with his followers through the network of representatives (Wokala). He died in Samarra in 873 at the age of about twenty-eight and was buried in the family home next to his father, which later developed into the Al-Askari Shrine, a holy site in Shia Islam.
1786
Moses Mendelssohn
German philosopher and theologian (born 1729)
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the Haskalah, or 'Jewish Enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature. Through his writings on philosophy and religion he came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Christian and Jewish inhabitants of German-speaking Europe and beyond. His involvement in the Berlin textile industry formed the foundation of his family's wealth.
1604
Ferenc Nádasdy
Hungarian noble (born 1555)
Count Ferenc II Nádasdy de Nádasd et Fogarasföld was a Hungarian nobleman and a distinguished soldier. His family, the Nádasdy family, was one of the wealthiest and most influential of the era in Hungary. In 1571, when Ferenc was 16, his mother, Orsolya Nádasdy, using her association with many noble families in Hungary, organized a marriage to the young Elizabeth Báthory, daughter of the Count György Báthory of Ecsed and his wife and cousin, Baroness Anna Báthory of Somlyó (1539–1570). The Báthory family were as rich and illustrious as the Nádasdy family, though older and more influential, since they had several relatives who had the charge of Nádor (palatine) of Hungary. Among them, included a cardinal, a King of Poland-Lithuania, and a Prince of Transylvania.
1943
Marina Raskova
Russian pilot and navigator (born 1912)
Marina Mikhaylovna Raskova was the first woman in the Soviet Union to achieve the diploma of professional air navigator. Raskova went from a young woman with aspirations of becoming an opera singer to a military instructor to the Soviet Union's first female navigator. She was the navigator to many record-setting as well as record-breaking flights and the founding and commanding officer of the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment, a women's aviation regiment which was renamed the 125th M.M. Raskova Borisov Guards Dive Bomber Regiment in her honor. Raskova became one of over 800,000 women in the military service, founding three female air regiments, one of which eventually flew over 30,000 sorties in World War II and produced at least 30 Heroes of the Soviet Union.
2004
Joan Aiken
English author (born 1924)
Joan Delano Aiken was an English writer specialising in supernatural fiction and children's alternative history novels. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature. For The Whispering Mountain, published by Jonathan Cape in 1968, she won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a book award judged by a panel of British children's writers, and she was a commended runner-up for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British writer. She won an Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972) for Night Fall.
2005
Frank Harary
American mathematician and academic (born 1921)
Frank Harary was an American mathematician, who specialized in graph theory. He was widely recognized as one of the "fathers" of modern graph theory. Harary was a master of clear exposition and, together with his many doctoral students, he standardized the terminology of graphs. He broadened the reach of this field to include physics, psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. Gifted with a keen sense of humor, Harary challenged and entertained audiences at all levels of mathematical sophistication. A particular trick he employed was to turn theorems into games—for instance, students would try to add red edges to a graph on six vertices in order to create a red triangle, while another group of students tried to add edges to create a blue triangle. Because of the theorem on friends and strangers, one team or the other would have to win.
2012
Eve Arnold
American photographer and journalist (born 1912)
Eve Arnold, OBE (honorary), FRPS (honorary) was an American photojournalist and long time resident of Mayfair in the UK. She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. She was the first woman to join the agency. She frequently photographed and was trusted by Marilyn Monroe, her work included candid-style photos on the set and post set of The Misfits (1961). Marilyn had invited Arnold, to John F. Kennedy's birthday party, to photograph her singing but she was too exhausted from other work to attend and always regretted declining the commission.
1804
Charlotte Lennox
English author and poet (born 1730)
Charlotte Lennox, née Ramsay, was a Scottish writer and a literary and cultural critic, whose publishing career flourished in London. Best known for her novel The Female Quixote (1752), she was frequently praised for her genius and literary skill. As a result, Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her portrait and she was featured in "The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain" in 1778. Samuel Johnson declared her superior to all other female writers, and Henry Fielding said that she "excelled Cervantes." Her pioneering study of Shakespeare's source material is still cited and her magazine (1760–1761) is the focus of "The Lady's Museum Project."
2017
Milt Schmidt
Canadian ice hockey player, coach and general manager (born 1918)
Milton Conrad Schmidt was a Canadian professional ice hockey centre, coach and general manager, mostly for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL), He was a member of the famed "Kraut Line" with teammates Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart. The trio led the Bruins to two Stanley Cup championships and became the first line to finish first, second and third in NHL scoring, in 1939–40. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961. In 2017, Schmidt was named one of the '100 Greatest NHL Players' in history.
2025
Ana Gligić
Serbian virologist (born 1934)
Ana Gligić was a Yugoslav and Serbian virologist, a specialist in medical microbiology, and a senior research associate at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Medicine. She made important contributions to the understanding and control of viral hemorrhagic fevers, including the Marburg virus, and was instrumental in identifying the cause of the 1967 outbreak in Belgrade. Gligić also played a crucial role in halting the spread of the 1972 smallpox outbreak in Yugoslavia, and her later work included research on the West Nile virus and other zoonotic pathogens.
1695
François-Henri de Montmorency
duc de Luxembourg, French general (born 1628)
François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Piney-Luxembourg, commonly known as Luxembourg, and nicknamed "The Upholsterer of Notre-Dame", was a French general and Marshal of France. A comrade and successor of the Great Condé, he was one of the most accomplished military commanders of the early modern period and is particularly noted for his exploits in the Franco-Dutch War and War of the Grand Alliance. Not imposing physically, as he was a slight man and hunchbacked, Luxembourg was nonetheless one of France's greatest generals.
1961
Erwin Schrödinger
Austrian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1887)
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, sometimes anglicised as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, was an Austrian theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for devising the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term "quantum entanglement" in 1935. Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory".
2006
Irving Layton
Romanian-Canadian poet and academic (born 1912)
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography (2001), Layton fought Puritanism throughout his life:Layton's work had provided the bolt of lightning that was needed to split open the thin skin of conservatism and complacency in the poetry scene of the preceding century, allowing modern poetry to expose previously unseen richness and depth.
1985
Brian Horrocks
Indian-English general (born 1895)
Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Gwynne Horrocks, was a British Army officer, chiefly remembered as the commander of XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden and other operations during the Second World War. He also served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War, was taken prisoner twice, and competed in the modern pentathlon at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Later he was a television presenter, wrote books on military history, and was Black Rod in the House of Lords for 14 years.
1969
Paul Chambers
American bassist and composer (born 1935)
Paul Laurence Dunbar Chambers Jr. was an American jazz double bassist. A fixture of rhythm sections during the 1950s and 1960s, he has become one of the most widely-known jazz bassists of the hard bop era. He was also known for his bowed solos. Chambers recorded about a dozen albums as a leader or co-leader, and more than 100 as a sideman, especially as the anchor of trumpeter Miles Davis's "first great quintet" (1955–63) and with pianist Wynton Kelly (1963–68).
1997
Harry Helmsley
American businessman (born 1909)
Harry Brakmann Helmsley was an American real estate billionaire whose company, Helmsley-Spear, became one of the country's biggest property holders, owning the Empire State Building, the Helmsley Building, the Graybar Building, the Flatiron Building, and some of New York's most noted hotels. His second marriage to Leona Roberts led to charges of false accounting and tax evasion as well as a celebrated trial, where Harry was judged too frail to plead, but Leona was fined and jailed.
2024
David Soul
American-British actor and singer (born 1943)
David Soul was an American-British actor and singer. With a career spanning five decades, he rose to prominence for portraying Detective Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchinson in the American television series Starsky & Hutch from 1975 to 1979. His other notable roles included Joshua Bolt on Here Come the Brides from 1968 to 1970 and as the lead actor in the 1979 American TV movie Salem's Lot. Soul also portrayed Officer John Davis in the 1973 movie Magnum Force.