Notable Deaths on July 23

Emmett Evan "Van" Heflin Jr. was an American theatre, radio, and film actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career, but during the 1940s had a string of roles as a leading man. Heflin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Johnny Eager (1942). He also had starring roles in the westerns Shane (1953), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and Gunman's Walk (1958). He portrayed a mentally disturbed airline passenger in the classic disaster film Airport (1970).

Lakshmi Sahgal was an Indian politician and activist. She was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army (INA), and the Minister of Women's Affairs in the Azad Hind Government. She is commonly referred to in India as Captain Lakshmi, a reference to her participation in the INA's Rani Jhansi Regiment during the Second World War. A prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), she was a founding member of the All India Democratic Women's Association. In 1998, Sahgal was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award. Following this, in the 2002 Indian presidential election, she was nominated as the presidential candidate opposite A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. A medical doctor by profession, she practiced till her death in Kanpur in 2012.

Reginald "Leo" McKern was an Australian actor who appeared in numerous British, Australian and American television programmes and films, and in more than 200 stage roles. His notable roles include Clang in Help! (1965), Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Tom Ryan in Ryan's Daughter (1970), Harry Bundage in Candleshoe (1977), Paddy Button in The Blue Lagoon (1980), Dr. Grogan in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Father Imperius in Ladyhawke (1985), and the role that made him a household name as an actor, Horace Rumpole, whom he played in the British television series Rumpole of the Bailey. He also portrayed Carl Bugenhagen in the first and second installments of The Omen series and Number Two in the TV series The Prisoner.

Cordell Hull was an American politician and diplomat who served as the United States secretary of state for nearly twelve years under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, from 1933 to 1944. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the longest-serving secretary of state in United States history. Hull previously represented Tennessee in both houses of the United States Congress for 24 years, first as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1907 to 1921 and again from 1923 to 1931, and as a U.S. senator from 1931 to 1933. Hull also served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1893 to 1897.

Sir William Ramsay was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air" along with his collaborator, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for their discovery of argon. After the two men identified argon, Ramsay investigated other atmospheric gases. His work in isolating argon, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon led to the development of a new section of the periodic table.

John Albert Kundla was an American college and professional basketball coach. He was the first head coach for the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and its predecessors, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL), serving 12 seasons, from 1947 to 1959. His teams won six league championships, one in the NBL, one in the BAA, and four in the NBA. Kundla was the head basketball coach at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul for one season in 1946–47, and at the University of Minnesota for ten seasons, from 1959 to 1968. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995 and the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.

Shigeko Kubota was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.

Mollie Steimer was an anarchist activist. A Ukrainian Jew, she left Russia and settled in New York City in 1913. She quickly became involved in the local anarchist movement and was caught up in the case of Abrams v. United States. Charged with sedition, she was eventually deported to Soviet Russia, where she met her lifelong partner Senya Fleshin and agitated for the rights of anarchist political prisoners in the country. For her activities, she and Fleshin were again deported to western Europe, where they spent time organising aid for exiles and political prisoners, and took part in the debates of the international anarchist movement. Following the rise of the Nazis in Europe, she and Fleshin fled to Mexico, where they spent the rest of their lives working as photographers.

Thoros III or Toros III was king of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, ruling from 1293 to 1296. He was the son of Leo II of Armenia and Kyranna de Lampron, and was part of the House of Lampron. In 1293 his brother Hethum II abdicated in his favour; however, Thoros recalled Hethum to the throne as co-ruler in 1295. The two brought their sister Rita of Armenia to Constantinople to marry the Byzantine emperor Michael IX Palaiologos in 1296, but were imprisoned upon their return in Bardzrberd by their brother Sempad, who had usurped the throne in their absence. Thoros was murdered, strangled to death on 23 July 1298, in Bardzrberd by Oshin, Marshal of Armenia, on Sempad's orders.

Ariano Vilar Suassuna was a Brazilian playwright and author. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Movimento Armorial. He founded the Student Theater at Federal University of Pernambuco. Four of his plays have been filmed, and he was considered one of Brazil's greatest living playwrights of his time. He was also an important regional writer, doing various novels set in the Northeast of Brazil. He received an honorary doctorate at a ceremony performed at a circus. He was the author of, among other works, the Auto da Compadecida and A Pedra do Reino. He was a staunch defender of the culture of the Northeast, and his works dealt with the popular culture of the Northeast.

Esther Applin was an American geologist and paleontologist. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1919 from the University of California, Berkeley. Later, she completed a master's degree which was focused on microfossils. She was a leading figure in the use of microfossils to determine the age of rock formation for use in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico region. Her job was to examine microfossils collected in drill holes to determine the age of the rock into which the company was drilling. Applin's discoveries were crucial to successful drilling operations across the entire oil industry. Additionally, her contribution to geology and the study of micropaleontology was pivotal in earning women geologists respect in the field.

Kamil Özdemir Tolon was a Turkish businessperson, industrialist and inventor, known for the first manufacture of an electric engine in Turkey. Tolon was born in 1912 in Istanbul. He had his secondary and university education in Ankara. He wanted to become an engineer, but went to the Ankara University Faculty of Law instead due to the lack of engineering schools. He graduated in 1935, and started working as a Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı inspector after university, but left the job not long after.

Eudora Alice Welty was an American short-story writer, novelist, and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.

Robert Joseph Flaherty was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the father of both the documentary and the ethnographic film.

Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, PC of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, was an English Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1690 until 1710. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Harcourt in 1711 and sat in the House of Lords, becoming Queen Anne's Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was her solicitor-general and her commissioner for arranging the union with Scotland. He took part in the negotiations preceding the Peace of Utrecht.

Phyo Zeya Thaw, also referred to as Zeya Thaw, was a Burmese politician and hip hop recording artist who was detained and executed due to the perceived anti-junta messages in his lyrics. Amnesty International designated him as a prisoner of conscience. He served as a member of Pyithu Hluttaw, the Lower House of the Burmese parliament. Phyo Zeya Thaw, alongside opposition leader and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, was elected to the lower house on 1 April 2012.

Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset was the son of King Henry VIII of England and his mistress Elizabeth Blount, and the only child born out of wedlock whom Henry acknowledged. He was the younger half-brother of Mary I, as well as the older half-brother of Elizabeth I and Edward VI. Through his mother, he was the elder half-brother of Elizabeth, George, and Robert Tailboys. His surname means "son of the king" in Norman French.

Donald Oberdorfer Jr. was an American professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University with a specialty in Korea, and was a journalist for 38 years, 25 of them with The Washington Post. He is the author of five books and several academic papers. His book on Mike Mansfield, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, won the D.B. Hardeman Prize in 2003.

William Luther Pierce III was an American neo-Nazi political activist. For more than 30 years, he was one of the highest-profile individuals of the white nationalist movement. A physicist by profession, he authored the novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. The first novel inspired multiple terrorist attacks, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Pierce founded the white nationalist National Alliance, an organization which he led for almost 30 years.