Notable Deaths on July 2

Stephen III, better known as Stephen the Great, was Voivode of Moldavia from 1457 until his death. He was one of the most prominent rulers of late medieval Eastern Europe, noted for his long reign, military leadership and astute diplomacy. His efforts to preserve Moldavian autonomy from more powerful neighboring states such as the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungary, as well as his aptitude for nation-building and repute as a protector of the Christian faith, made him into a national hero in both Romania and Moldova. He is canonised by the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death in 1743. He sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1698 and 1728, and was then raised to the peerage and sat in the House of Lords. He served as prime minister of Great Britain from 1742 until his death in 1743. He is considered to have been Britain's second prime minister, after Robert Walpole, but worked closely with the Secretary of State, Lord Carteret, in order to secure the support of the various factions making up the government. He is one of only three people in British history to have been the Speaker of the House of Commons and Prime Minister.

Edward James Delahanty, nicknamed "Big Ed", was an American professional baseball player, who spent his Major League Baseball (MLB) playing career with the Philadelphia Quakers, Cleveland Infants, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Senators. He was renowned as one of the game's early power hitters, and while primarily a left fielder, also spent time as an infielder. Delahanty won two batting titles, batted over .400 three times, and has the seventh-highest career batting average in MLB history. In 1945, Delahanty was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Delahanty died by drowning as a result of either falling into the Niagara River or being swept over Niagara Falls, after being removed from a train for being drunk and disorderly.

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie was a French psychologist, pharmacist, and hypnotist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion.It was in no small measure [Coué's] wholehearted devotion to a self-imposed task that enabled him, in less than a quarter of a century, to rise from obscurity to the position of the world’s most famous psychological exponent. Indeed, one might truly say that Coué sidetracked inefficient hypnotism [mistakenly based upon supposed operator dominance over a subject], and paved the way for the efficient, and truly scientific.

Douglas Carl Engelbart was an American engineer, inventor, and a pioneer in many aspects of computer science. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, which resulted in creation of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart's law, the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

Smith Stewart Hart was an American-Canadian professional wrestler and a member of the Hart wrestling family. His parents were Stu and Helen Hart. Smith was the first of their twelve children, being one of their eight sons, Bruce, Keith, Wayne, Dean, Bret, Ross and Owen followed him. Hart is also the father of two professional wrestlers, Mike and Matt Hart. Hart wrestled for the majority of his career in Canada but also worked briefly in other countries and is best known for his time in Stampede Wrestling and for his appearances for WWE. He died in 2017 due to prostate cancer.

Thomas Harriot, also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator to whom the theory of refraction is attributed. Thomas Harriot was also recognized for his contributions in navigational techniques, working closely with John White to create advanced maps for navigation. While Harriot worked extensively on numerous papers on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics and navigation, he remains obscure because he published little of it, namely only The Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). This book includes descriptions of English settlements and financial issues in Virginia at the time. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot invented binary notation and arithmetic several decades before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but this remained unknown until the 1920s. He was also the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 5 August 1609, about four months before Galileo Galilei.

George Florian "Pinch" McBride was an American professional baseball shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, and Washington Senators from 1901 to 1920. He started off with the short-lived Milwaukee Brewers, but he only had 12 at-bats in three games. After stints in semi-pro ball, he joined the Pirates in 1905 but was traded mid-season to the Cardinals. He did not become a regular starter until the 1908 season, when he joined the Senators and became their everyday shortstop. He never hit for a high average, but was very talented with the glove, leading the American League in fielding for four straight seasons. He was given the nickname "Pinch" for his ability to hit in the clutch.

Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning was a Trinidadian politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago twice from 1991 to 1995, and again from 2001 to 2010. A geologist by training, Manning served as Member of Parliament for the San Fernando East constituency from 1971 until 2015 when he was replaced by Randall Mitchell, but with the seat in 2020 being won by his son Brian Manning. Patrick Manning was the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives. He was the Leader of the Opposition from 1986 to 1990 and again from 1995 to 2001.

Tom Richardson was an English cricketer. A fast bowler, Richardson relied to a great extent on the break-back, a relatively long run-up and high arm which allowed him to gain sharp lift on fast pitches even from the full, straight length he always bowled. He played 358 first-class cricket matches including 14 Tests, taking a total of 2,104 wickets. In the four consecutive seasons from 1894 to 1897 he took 1,005 wickets, a figure surpassed over such a period only by the slow bowler Tich Freeman. He took 290 wickets in 1895, again a figure only exceeded by Freeman (twice). In 1963 Neville Cardus selected him as one of his "Six Giants of the Wisden Century".

Li Jing, courtesy name Yaoshi (藥師), posthumous name Jingwu (景武), was a Chinese military general, strategist, and writer who lived in the early Tang dynasty and was most active during the reign of Emperor Taizong. In 630, Li Jing defeated the Eastern Türks, led by Illig Qaghan, with just 3,000 cavalry soldiers in a surprise attack, allowing the Tang Empire to subjugate the Eastern Türks and reduce them to the status of a vassal under the Tang Empire. Li Jing and Li Shiji are considered the two most prominent early Tang generals.

James Maitland Stewart was an American actor and military aviator. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart appeared in 80 films from 1935 to 1991. His films are considered among the greatest of all time. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked him third on its list of the greatest American male actors; he received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1983, as well as the Academy Honorary Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.

Henry the Fowler was the duke of Saxony from 912 and the king of East Francia from 919 until his death in 936. As the first non-Frankish king of East Francia, he established the Ottonian dynasty of kings and emperors, and he is generally considered to be the founder of the medieval German state, known until then as East Francia. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet "the Fowler" because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.

Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca was an American author, engineer, and executive who developed the Ford Mustang, Continental Mark III, and Ford Pinto cars while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, and then revived the Chrysler Corporation as its CEO during the 1980s. He was president of Chrysler from 1978 to 1991 and chairman and CEO from 1979 until his retirement at the end of 1992. He was one of the few executives to preside over the operations of two of the United States' Big Three automakers.

Harold William Kuhn was an American mathematician who studied game theory. He won the 1980 John von Neumann Theory Prize jointly with David Gale and Albert W. Tucker. A former professor emeritus of mathematics at Princeton University, he is known for the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, for Kuhn's theorem, and for developing Kuhn poker. He described the Hungarian method for the assignment problem, but later a paper by Carl Gustav Jacobi was discovered that had described the Hungarian method a century before Kuhn, published posthumously in 1890 in Latin.

Mochtar Lubis was an Indonesian journalist and novelist who co-founded Indonesia Raya and monthly literary magazine Horison. His novel Senja di Jakarta was the first Indonesian novel to be translated into English. He was a critic of Sukarno and was imprisoned by him, as well as by Suharto on several later occasions. He held strong anti-leftist views and was seen by critics as aligned with Indonesian National Armed Forces and pro-U.S forces that were opposed to Sukarno’s non-aligned policies, a charge that he himself denied.

Mario Francis Puzo was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for its sequel Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for Superman (1978) and its 1980 sequel. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.

Itamar Augusto Cautiero Franco was a Brazilian politician who served as the 33rd president of Brazil from 29 December 1992 to 1 January 1995. Previously, he was the 21st vice president of Brazil from 1990 until the resignation of President Fernando Collor de Mello. During his long political career Franco also served as Senator, Mayor, Ambassador and Governor. At the time of his death he was a senator from Minas Gerais, having won the seat in the 2010 election.

Adolf was the count of Nassau from about 1276 and the elected king of Germany from 1292 until his deposition by the prince-electors in 1298. He was never crowned by the pope, which would have secured him the imperial title. He was the first physically and mentally healthy ruler of the Holy Roman Empire ever to be deposed without a papal excommunication. Adolf died shortly afterwards in the Battle of Göllheim fighting against his successor Albert of Habsburg.