Notable Deaths on March 15

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general, statesman, and author who was the dictator of the Roman Republic almost continuously from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. A member of the First Triumvirate, he led the Roman armies through the Gallic Wars and defeated his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil war. He consolidated power and was titled as dictator perpetuo in 44 BC, helping create the political conditions that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Roman Empire. For his role in these events, he is regarded as one of history's most influential figures.

Aristotle Socrates Onassis was a Greek and Argentine business magnate and shipping tycoon. He amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. He was married to Athina Mary Livanos, had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas, and in his final years was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, but his legacy is also apparent in terms like "Lovecraftian horror" and an enduring fandom.

Odoacer, also spelled Odovacer or Odovacar, was a barbarian soldier and statesman from the Middle Danube who, as an officer of the Roman army, deposed the Western Roman child emperor Romulus Augustulus to become the ruler of Italy in the period 476–493 AD. His takeover is traditionally understood as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Nathaniel Dwayne Hale, known professionally as Nate Dogg, was an American singer, rapper, and songwriter. He gained recognition for providing soulful choruses and other guest vocals on several notable hip-hop songs between 1992 and 2007, earning him the honorific title "King of Hooks".

Cao Cao, courtesy name Mengde, was a Chinese statesman, warlord, and poet who rose to power during the end of the Han dynasty, ultimately taking effective control of the Han central government. He laid the foundation for the state of Cao Wei, established by his son and successor Cao Pi, who ended the Eastern Han dynasty and inaugurated the Three Kingdoms period. Beginning in his own lifetime, a corpus of legends developed around Cao Cao which built upon his talent, his cruelty, and his perceived eccentricities.

Ronald Arthur Silver was an American actor. He portrayed Henry Kissinger, Alan Dershowitz and Angelo Dundee. He was awarded the 1988 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Speed-the-Plow, a satirical dissection of the American movie business, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his recurring role as political strategist Bruno Gianelli in The West Wing.

David Norris Brenner was an American stand-up comedian, actor and author. The most frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1970s and 1980s, Brenner "was a pioneer of observational comedy." His friend, comedian Richard Lewis, described Brenner as "the king of hip, observational comedy."

Mehmed Talât Pasha, commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was a Turkish activist, revolutionary, politician, and convicted war criminal who served as the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. He was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Empire; during World War I he became Grand Vizier. He has been called the architect of the Armenian genocide, and was responsible for other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.

Benjamin McLane Spock, widely known as Dr. Spock, was an American pediatrician, Olympic medalist, and left-wing political activist. His book Baby and Child Care (1946) is one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, selling 500,000 copies in the six months after its initial publication and 50 million by the time of Spock's death in 1998. The book's premise told mothers, "You know more than you think you do." Spock was widely regarded as a trusted source for parenting advice in his generation.

Ann Sothern was an American actress who worked on stage, radio, film, and television in a career that spanned nearly six decades. Sothern began her career in the late 1920s in bit parts in films. In 1930 she made her Broadway stage debut and soon worked her way up to starring roles. In 1939 MGM cast her as Maisie Ravier, a brash yet lovable Brooklyn showgirl. The character proved to be popular and spawned a successful film series and a network radio series.

Dame Thora Hird was an English actress. In a career spanning over 70 years, she appeared in more than 100 films, as well as many television roles, becoming a household name and a British institution.

Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha was an Ottoman statesman who served as Grand Vizier from 1523 to 1536 during the reign of Suleiman I, and played a role in important political and military events. Because of the authority he wielded, he is regarded as the brains behind the Ottoman Empire's foreign policy.

Philip Charles Testa, also known as "The Chicken Man", was an American mobster known for his brief leadership of the Philadelphia crime family of the Italian-American Mafia. He became boss of the Philadelphia crime family after the previous boss and his close friend, Angelo Bruno, was murdered by Bruno's own consigliere, Antonio Caponigro, who, in turn, was ordered killed by The Commission for murdering a boss without permission.

Michael Joseph Porcaro was an American bassist known for his work with the rock band Toto. He retired from touring in 2007 as a result of being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Sir Joseph William Bazalgette was a British civil engineer. As Chief Engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of the London Main Drainage, the sewerage system for central London, in response to the Great Stink of 1858, which was instrumental in relieving the city of cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames.

Dame Cecily Isabel Fairfield, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman.

Clarissa Theresa Philomena Aileen Mary Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmerelda Johnston Dickson Wright was an English celebrity cook, television personality, writer, businesswoman, and barrister. She was best known as one of the Two Fat Ladies, with Jennifer Paterson, in the television cooking programme from 1996 to 1999.

Sally Forrest was an American film, stage and TV actress of the 1940s and 1950s. She studied dance from a young age and shortly out of high school was signed to a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Rachel Lyman Field was an American novelist, poet, and children's fiction writer. She is best known for her work Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Field also won a National Book Award, a Newbery Honor award and two of her books are on the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.

Sir Henry Bessemer was an English inventor, whose steel-making process was the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years. He played a significant role in establishing the town of Sheffield, nicknamed ‘Steel City’, as a major industrial centre.

Romanos II was Byzantine Emperor from 959 to 963. He succeeded his father Constantine VII at the age of twenty-one and died suddenly and mysteriously four years later. His wife Theophano helped their sons Basil II and Constantine VIII ultimately succeed him in 976.

Sylvia Beatrice Anderson was an English television and film producer, writer, voice actress and costume designer, best known for her collaborations with Gerry Anderson, her husband between 1960 and 1981.

William Miles Malleson was an English actor and dramatist, best remembered for his appearances in British comedy films of the 1930s to 1960s. Toward the end of his career, he also appeared in cameo roles in several Hammer horror films, with a fairly large role in The Brides of Dracula as the hypochondriac and fee-hungry local doctor. Additionally, Malleson worked as a screenwriter on many films, including some in which he had small parts, such as Nell Gwyn (1934) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He also translated and adapted several of Molière's plays.

Arthur Holly Compton was an American physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with C. T. R. Wilson for his discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a significant discovery at the time; the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted.

René Clair, born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films which often featured fantasy comedy themes. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the United Kingdom and the United States for more than a decade. Returning to France in the aftermath of World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1960. Clair's best known films include Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million (1931), À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), and And Then There Were None (1945).

Salvator Rosa is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose romanticised landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th century into the early 19th century. In his lifetime, he was among the most famous painters, known for his flamboyant personality, and regarded as an accomplished poet, satirist, actor, musician and printmaker. He was active in Naples, Rome, and Florence, where on occasion he was compelled to move between cities, as his caustic satire earned him enemies in the artistic and intellectual circles of the day.

Nita Sue Lowey was an American politician who served as a U.S. representative from New York from 1989 until 2021. She was a member of the Democratic Party. Lowey also served as co-dean of the New York congressional delegation, along with former U.S. Representative Eliot Engel. Lowey's district was numbered as the 20th from 1989 to 1993, as the 18th from 1993 to 2013, and as the 17th beginning in 2013. The district included many of New York City's inner northern suburbs, such as White Plains, Purchase, Tarrytown, Mount Kisco, and Armonk.

Antonino Biasetton was an Italian-Argentine professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Antonino Rocca. He innovated the "high-flying" style of wrestling in the United States, and was best known for his work with Capitol Wrestling Corporation (CWC), later known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), both as a singles wrestler and in a tag team with Miguel Pérez.

Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest living composer of his era. Cherubini's operas were heavily praised and interpreted by Rossini.

Kazim Jasir Faraj, better known as Kazim al-Samawi, was an Iraqi poet and journalist known for his humanist worldview. From the 1950s, he spent more than half of his life in exile as a political refuge and was known by title "The Elder of the Iraqi exiles" or "The Shaykh of Exiles". He moved between many countries, such as Lebanon, Hungary, Germany, China, Syria and Cyprus until he finally settled in Sweden. Al-Samawi published his first poetry collection in 1950 and was as a result was persecuted by the Nuri al-Said government. Later, he and his family faced persecution in Ba'athist Iraq, and he experienced the death of almost all his family members, often in quick succession. Through his poetry in various forms, genres and metres, he was very involved in general human affairs. His family name is derived from his hometown demonym, Samawah. He studied in Baghdad and graduated from the Rural Teachers’ House in 1940, continued his higher studies in Hungary and graduated from the Faculty of Arts in 1956. He worked for a while in journalism in Baghdad with a progressive tendency, founded The Humanity in 1956, a twice-weekly leftist newspaper. He left about seven poetry collections that have been translated into several languages. Al-Samawi died at the age of 85 in Stockholm and was buried in Sulaymaniyah.

Abraham Michael Saperstein was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily before those sports were racially integrated.

Isabella of Hainault was a Queen of France as the first wife of King Philip II. She was also formally ruling Countess of Artois de jure between 1180 and 1190.

Eusebio Francisco Kino,, SJ (Italian: Eusebio Francesco Chini, Spanish: Eusebio Francisco Kino, often referred to as Father Kino, was an Austrian Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer, mathematician and astronomer born in the Bishopric of Trent in the County of Tyrol, Holy Roman Empire.

James Joseph Sylvester was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership role in American mathematics in the later half of the 19th century as a professor at the Johns Hopkins University and as founder of the American Journal of Mathematics. At his death, he was a professor at Oxford University.

David Victor Emmanuel, better known as Smiley Culture, was a British reggae singer and DJ known for his "fast chat" style. During a relatively brief period of fame and success, he produced two of the most critically acclaimed reggae singles of the 1980s. He died on 15 March 2011, aged 48, during a police raid on his home. An inquest found that his death was a suicide. Campaigners and his family have expressed scepticism about the official verdict and the police version of events.

Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky, surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association, Der Blaue Reiter group, and later Die Blaue Vier.

George David Low was an American aerospace executive and a NASA astronaut. With undergraduate degrees in physics and mechanical engineering and a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics, he worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology in the early 80's, before being picked as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1984. In addition to holding some technical assignments, he logged more than 700 hours in space, before he left NASA in 1996 to pursue a career in the private sector. He was the son of George M. Low, the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, and later, the 14th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs was an English historian. He was a leading specialist on the Victorian era, and the foremost historian of broadcasting in Britain. Briggs achieved international recognition during his long and prolific career for examining various aspects of modern British history. He became a life peer in 1976.

Tarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Vesaas is widely considered to be one of Norway's greatest writers of the twentieth century and perhaps its most important since World War II.

Clement Mary Hofbauer was a Moravian hermit and later a priest of the Redemptorist congregation. He established his congregation, founded in Italy, north of the Alps. For this, he is considered a co-founder of the congregation. He was widely known for his lifelong dedication to care of the poor during a tumultuous period in Europe, that had left thousands destitute. He laboured in the care of the Polish people until expelled, when he moved to Austria.

William Booth Gardner was an American politician who served as the 19th governor of Washington, from 1985 to 1993. He also served as the ambassador of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. A member of the Democratic Party, Gardner served as a state senator from 1971 to 1973, and was the Pierce County executive prior to his tenure as governor. His service was notable for advancing standards-based education and environmental protection.

Hubert Aquin was a Quebec writer, filmmaker and intellectual. He is particularly known for his novel Next Episode. He is also an important figure in the history of the Quebec independence movement, to which he contributed both as an activist and as an essayist. Tempted by suicide for a great part of his existence, he ended his life in 1977 in the gardens of Villa Maria College.

Rajnikumar Pandya was an Indian Gujarati language writer and journalist from Gujarat. He was known for his short stories, novels, biographical essays, and columns. He had a significant contribution to Gujarati literature and journalism, particularly in the field of rural journalism. He was honored with numerous awards throughout his career, including the Kumar Suvarna Chandrak and awards from the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi and Gujarati Sahitya Parishad.

David Earl Philley was an American professional baseball outfielder who played in Major League Baseball. A switch hitter who threw right-handed, he debuted on September 6, 1941 and played his final game on August 6, 1962. He was born in Paris, Texas and attended East Texas State University prior to his MLB career.

William Hayward Pickering was a New Zealand aerospace engineer who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space. Pickering was also a founding member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.

Otar Korkia was a Georgian professional basketball player and coach. He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players, in 1991. He was also named the Best Georgian Basketball Player of the 20th Century, and the Best Georgian Sportsman of the 20th Century. He was born in Kutaisi.

Robert Ernest Clatworthy RA was a British sculptor and teacher of art. He was head of the fine art department at the Central School of Art and Design in London from 1971 to 1975, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1973.

Farzad Bazoft was an Iranian journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s. He worked as a freelance reporter for The Observer. He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.

Ernulf was a French Benedictine monk who became prior of Christ Church in Canterbury, abbot of Peterborough, and bishop of Rochester in England. A jurist and an architect as well, he was responsible for greatly expanding Canterbury Cathedral during his time there.

Howard Hollis Callaway was an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1965 to 1967 and as the United States secretary of the Army from 1973 to 1975.

Imanuel Lauster was a German engineer and businessman, who worked for Rudolf Diesel and drew up Diesel’s design for the first Diesel engine, Motor 250/400. He also served as the head of M.A.N.'s board of directors from 1932 to 1934.

Samuel Dreben, sometimes misspelled "Drebben" or "Drebin", and known as "The Fighting Jew", was a highly decorated soldier in the US Army and a mercenary who fought in a variety of wars and revolutions.

Ratu Seru Rabeni was a Fijian rugby union player. He played as a centre or wing. At both club and international level, his physicality and heavy tackles earned him the nickname "Rambo".

Sir John Anthony Pople was a British theoretical chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Walter Kohn in 1998 for his development of computational methods in quantum chemistry.

Barbara Joan Gustern was an American vocal coach and singer. She had many noted students, including Blondie singer Debbie Harry, Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, Diamanda Galás, and Kathleen Hanna.

Vittorio Gregotti was an Italian architect, born in Novara. He was seen as both a member of the Neo-Avant Garde and a key figure in 1970s Postmodernism.

Thomas Mervyn Davies, often known as "Merv the Swerve", was a Welsh rugby union player who won 38 caps for Wales as a No. 8.

Johan Jakob Nervander was a Finnish poet, physicist, and meteorologist.

Sir Cornthwaite Hector William James Rason, better known as Hector Rason, was the seventh Premier of Western Australia.

Lester Willis Young, nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.

Thomas Dudley Harmon, nicknamed "Old 98", was an American football player, military pilot, actor, and sports broadcaster.

Lawrence "Bud" Freeman was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing tenor saxophone, but also the clarinet.

Gail Davis was an American actress and singer, best known for her starring role as Annie Oakley in the 1950s television series Annie Oakley.

Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement.

Philippe Lemaire was a French actor. He appeared in more than 90 films from 1946 to 2004.

Georgios Ioannou Rallis, anglicised to George Rallis, was a Greek conservative politician and Prime Minister of Greece from 1980 to 1981.

Michael George Campbell, better known as Mikey Dread, was a Jamaican singer, producer, and broadcaster.

Sarla Thukral was among the first Indian women to fly aircraft.

Scott Randolph Asheton was an American musician, best known as the drummer for the rock band the Stooges.

Curtis Bernard Gans was an American activist, writer, and expert on American voting patterns.