Did you know about Kelly Preston
Kelly Preston appeared in more than 60 television and film productions, including Mischief (1985), Twins (1988), Jerry Maguire (1996), and For Love of the Game (1999).
Notable Deaths on July 12
July 12 has 113 recorded notable deaths across history, from 524 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
2020 — Kelly Preston
American actress and model (born 1962)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
113 source records
524 – 2026
Today in history
Major events on July 12
See what else happened on this day in history.
Did you know about Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became influential in British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge of the region and the contacts built up during her extensive travels there.
Did you know about Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney Jr. also portrayed Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men (1939) and played supporting parts in dozens of mainstream movies, including High Noon (1952), The Defiant Ones (1958), and numerous Westerns, musicals, comedies and dramas.
Did you know about Alfred Dreyfus
In 1894, Dreyfus fell victim to a judicial conspiracy that eventually sparked a major political crisis in the French Third Republic when he was wrongfully accused and convicted of being a German spy due to antisemitism.
Did you know about Bertrada of Laon
Bertrada of Laon, also known as Bertrada the Younger or Bertha Broadfoot, was the first Carolingian Frankish queen.
More major people who died on July 12
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1926
Gertrude Bell
English archaeologist and spy (born 1868)
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became influential in British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge of the region and the contacts built up during her extensive travels there. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials such as High Commissioner for Mesopotamia Percy Cox, giving her great influence. She participated in both the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (briefly) and the 1921 Cairo Conference, which helped decide the territorial boundaries and governments of the post-War Middle East as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Bell believed that the momentum of Arab nationalism was unstoppable, and that the British government should ally with nationalists rather than stand against them. Along with T. E. Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq.
1973
Lon Chaney Jr.
American actor (born 1906)
Creighton Tull Chaney, known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr., was an American actor known for playing Larry Talbot in the film The Wolf Man (1941) and its various crossovers, Count Alucard in Son of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Mummy in three pictures, and various other roles in many Universal horror films, including six films in their 1940s Inner Sanctum series, making him a horror icon. He also portrayed Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men (1939) and played supporting parts in dozens of mainstream movies, including High Noon (1952), The Defiant Ones (1958), and numerous Westerns, musicals, comedies and dramas.
1935
Alfred Dreyfus
French colonel (born 1859)
Alfred Dreyfus was a French Army officer best known for his central role in the Dreyfus affair. In 1894, Dreyfus fell victim to a judicial conspiracy that eventually sparked a major political crisis in the French Third Republic when he was wrongfully accused and convicted of being a German spy due to antisemitism. Dreyfus was arrested, cashiered from the French army and imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana. Eventually, evidence emerged showing that Dreyfus was innocent and the true culprit was fellow officer Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.
783
Bertrada of Laon
Frankish queen (born 720)
Bertrada of Laon, also known as Bertrada the Younger or Bertha Broadfoot, was the first Carolingian Frankish queen. An enduring influence in Frankish politics, she was the wife of Pepin the Short and the mother of Charlemagne, Carloman and Gisela, plus five other children. Her marriage with Pepin was influential in trend setting for future marriages blessed by the pope. She also held considerable influence over Charlemagne and Carloman after Pepin had died, enduring even past her death and through Charlemagne’s eventual rule as the sole King of the Franks.
1980
John Warren Davis
American educator, college administrator, and civil rights leader (born 1888)
John Warren Davis was an American educator, college administrator, and civil rights leader. He was the fifth and longest-serving president of West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia, a position he held from 1919 to 1953. Born in Milledgeville, Georgia, Davis relocated to Atlanta in 1903 to attend high school at Atlanta Baptist College. He worked his way through high school and college at Morehouse and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911. At Morehouse, Davis formed associations with John Hope, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Samuel Archer, Benjamin Griffith Brawley, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He completed graduate studies in chemistry and physics at the University of Chicago from 1911 to 1913 and served on the faculty of Morehouse as the registrar and as a professor in chemistry and physics. While in Atlanta, Davis helped to found one of the city's first chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
1992
Caroline Pafford Miller
American journalist and author (born 1903)
Caroline Pafford Miller was an American novelist. She gathered the folktales, stories, and archaic dialects of the rural communities she visited in her home state of Georgia in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and wove them into her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1934, and the French literary award, the Prix Femina Americain in 1935. Her success as the first Georgian winner of the fiction prize inspired Macmillan Publishers to seek out more southern writers, resulting in the discovery of Margaret Mitchell, whose first novel, Gone with the Wind, also won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Miller's story about the struggles of nineteenth-century south Georgia pioneers found a new readership in 1993 when Lamb in His Bosom was reprinted, one year after her death. In 2007, Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
1067
John Komnenos
Byzantine general
John Komnenos was a Byzantine aristocrat and military leader. The younger brother of Emperor Isaac I Komnenos, he served as Domestic of the Schools during Isaac's brief reign (1057–59). When Isaac I abdicated, Constantine X Doukas became emperor and John withdrew from public life until his death in 1067. Through his son Alexios I Komnenos, who became emperor in 1081, he was the progenitor of the Komnenian dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1081 until 1185, and the Empire of Trebizond from 1204 until 1461.
1979
Olive Morris
Jamaican-English civil rights activist (born 1952)
Olive Elaine Morris was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. At the age of 17, she was assaulted by Metropolitan Police officers following an incident involving Clement Gomwalk, a Nigerian diplomat in Brixton, South London. She joined the British Black Panthers, becoming a Marxist–Leninist communist and a radical feminist. She squatted buildings on Railton Road in Brixton; one hosted Sabarr Books and later became the 121 Centre, another was used as offices by the Race Today collective. Morris became a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the United Kingdom, co-founding the Brixton Black Women's Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London.
2012
Alimuddin
Pakistani cricketer (born 1930)
Alimuddin was a Pakistani cricketer who played 25 Tests for Pakistan between 1954 and 1962. His name is sometimes rendered Alim-ud-Din. A fast-scoring, right-handed opening batsman and occasional right-arm leg break bowler, he was the youngest player ever to appear in first-class cricket, aged 12 years and 73 days. In international cricket, he scored 1,091 runs at the average of 25.37, including two centuries and seven fifties. In 1954, he was a member of the Pakistani squad which toured England and recorded Pakistan's first Test match win. Former Pakistani captain Mushtaq Mohammad said about him that he was "a thorough gentleman as well as a great cricketer for Pakistan".
1998
Arkady Ostashev
Soviet/Russian scientist and engineer (born 1925)
Arkady Ilyich Ostashev was a Soviet and Russian scientist, engineer - mechanic in the former Soviet space program, working on as a designer many of rocket propulsion and control system of Soviet satellites. He was a participant in the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth and the first cosmonaut, candidate of technical sciences, docent, laureate of the Lenin (1960) and State (1979) prizes, one of the leading managers of work in the field of experimental development of rocket technology OKB-1, personal pensioner of republican significance, student and interpersonal relationship of Sergei Korolev.
2013
Elaine Morgan
Welsh writer (born 1920)
Elaine Morgan OBE, FRSL, was a Welsh writer for television and the author of several books on evolutionary anthropology. She advocated the aquatic ape hypothesis, which advocated as a corrective to what she saw as theories that purveyed gendered stereotypes and failed to account for women's role in human evolution adequately. The Descent of Woman, published in 1972, became an international bestseller, translated into ten languages. In 2016, she was named one of "the 50 greatest Welsh men and women of all time" in a press survey.
2003
Benny Carter
American trumpet player, saxophonist, and composer (born 1907)
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s, he worked as an arranger, including writing charts for Fletcher Henderson's big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.
1908
William D. Coleman
13th President of Liberia (born 1842)
William David Coleman was an Americo-Liberian politician. A True Whig Party member, he served as the 13th president of Liberia from 1896 to 1900. Born in Fayette County, Kentucky, United States, he emigrated to Liberia in 1853. In 1877, he was elected to the House of Representatives and served as Speaker of the House of Representatives until 1879. Later he served in the Senate and then as vice president before assuming the presidency when Joseph James Cheeseman died in office.
1966
D. T. Suzuki
Japanese philosopher and author (born 1870)
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki , was a Japanese essayist, philosopher, religious scholar, and translator. He was an authority on Buddhism, especially Zen and Shin, and was instrumental in spreading interest in these to the West. He was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Sanskrit literature. Suzuki spent several lengthy stretches teaching or lecturing at Western universities and devoted many years to a professorship at Ōtani University, a Japanese university of the Ōtani School of Jōdo Shinshū.
2008
Bobby Murcer
American baseball player, coach, and sportscaster (born 1946)
Bobby Ray Murcer was an American professional baseball outfielder who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) between 1965 and 1983. He played the majority of his career for the New York Yankees, whom he later rejoined as a longtime broadcaster. A Gold Glove winner and five-time All-Star, and was voted to the Associated Press's American League 1970s All-Decade team. Murcer led the American League in on-base percentage in 1971, and in runs and total bases in 1972.
2011
Sherwood Schwartz
American screenwriter and producer (born 1916)
Sherwood Charles Schwartz was an American television screenwriter and producer. He worked on radio shows in the 1940s, but he now is best known for creating the 1960s television series Gilligan's Island on CBS and The Brady Bunch on ABC. On March 7, 2008, Schwartz, at the time still active in his 90s, was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year, Schwartz was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
1990
João Saldanha
Brazilian footballer, manager, and journalist (born 1917)
João Alves Jobin Saldanha was a Brazilian journalist and football manager. He coached the Brazil national football team during the South American Qualifying to the 1970 FIFA World Cup. Nicknamed João Sem Medo by Nelson Rodrigues, Saldanha played for Botafogo. He then started a career in journalism and became one of Brazil's most prolific sports columnists. He often criticised players, managers and teams, and was a member of then-illegal Brazilian Communist Party.
2015
Chenjerai Hove
Zimbabwean journalist, author, and poet (born 1956)
Chenjerai Hove, was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona. "Modernist in their formal construction, but making extensive use of oral conventions, Hove's novels offer an intense examination of the psychic and social costs - to the rural population, especially, of the war of liberation in Zimbabwe." He died on 12 July 2015 while living in exile in Norway, with his death attributed to liver failure.
1999
Rajendra Kumar
Indian actor (born 1921)
Rajendra Kumar also alternatively known as Rajinder Kumar was an Indian actor who starred in Bollywood films. Starting his career in 1949, he worked in more than 80 films in a career spanning over four decades. Kumar is considered as one of the greatest and most successful actors in Indian cinema. He was popularly known as the Jubilee Kumar during the 1960s, when he consecutively starred in several commercially successful films.