Did you know
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
2024 — Glynis Johns
British actress and singer (born 1923)
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.
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.
- 2004 Mikheil Saakashvili is elected President of Georgia following the November 2003 Rose Revolution. Source
- 1958 Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, falls to Earth from orbit. Source
- 1909 Explorer Aeneas Mackintosh of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition escaped death by fleeing across ice floes. Source
- 1642 English Civil War: King Charles I, accompanied by 400 soldiers, attempts to arrest five members of Parliament for treason, only to discover the men had been tipped off and fled. Source
Did you know
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 industry.
Did you know
Iron Eyes Cody also played a Native American shedding a tear about pollution in one of the most well-known television public service announcements in the United States.
Did you know
Hasan Al-Askari was born in Medina in 844 and brought with his father 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
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 industry.
1999
Iron Eyes Cody
American actor and stuntman (born 1904)
Iron Eyes Cody was an American actor who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films. Cody's film roles included the role of Chief Iron Eyes in Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948).
874
Hasan al-Askari
eleventh of the Twelve Imams (probable; b. 846)
Hasan al-Askari was a descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is regarded as the eleventh of the Twelve Imams, succeeding his father, Ali al-Hadi.
1786
Moses Mendelssohn
German philosopher and theologian (born 1729)
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
1961
Erwin Schrödinger
Austrian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1887)
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, sometimes written as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, was an Austrian theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum 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.
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.
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.
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…
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…