Did you know about Mike
Mike the Headless Chicken was a male Wyandotte chicken that lived for 18 months after he was beheaded, surviving because most of his brain stem remained intact, and a blood clot prevented him from bleeding to death.
Notable Deaths on March 17
March 17 has 109 recorded notable deaths across history, from 45 BC to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1947 — Mike
American Wyandotte chicken, lived 18 months following decapitation (h. 1945)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
109 source records
45 BC – 2025
Today in history
Major events on March 17
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1958 The United States launches the first solar-powered satellite, which is also the first satellite to achieve a long-term orbit. Source
- 2003 Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, Robin Cook, resigns from the British Cabinet in disagreement with government plans for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Source
Did you know about Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough was a British actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances.
Did you know about Alex Chilton
Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was not matched by similar chart success in his later work with Big Star and in his subsequent solo career on independent record labels.
Did you know about Ramon Magsaysay
Ramon Magsaysay was the first Philippine president born in the 20th century and the first to be born after the Spanish colonial era.
Did you know about Daniel Bernoulli
Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel.
More major people who died on March 17
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
2011
Michael Gough
English actor (born 1916)
Francis Michael Gough was a British actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer horror films, with his first role as Sir Arthur Holmwood in Dracula (1958), and for his recurring role as Alfred Pennyworth in the four Batman films directed by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher (1989—1997). He also appeared in Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999), and voiced Elder Gutknecht in Corpse Bride (2005) and the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland (2010).
2010
Alex Chilton
American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1950)
William Alexander Chilton was an American musician, best known as the lead singer of the rock bands the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was not matched by similar chart success in his later work with Big Star and in his subsequent solo career on independent record labels. However, he built a devoted following among indie and alternative musicians, and has been frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands.
1957
Ramon Magsaysay
Filipino captain and politician, 7th President of the Philippines (born 1907)
Ramon del Fierro Magsaysay Sr. was a Filipino politician and military officer who was the seventh president of the Philippines, serving from 1953 until his death in 1957. An automobile mechanic by profession, Magsaysay was appointed military governor of Zambales after serving as a guerrilla leader during the Pacific War. He then served two terms as Liberal Party congressman for Zambales's at-large district before being appointed Secretary of National Defense by President Elpidio Quirino. He was eventually elected as president under the banner of the Nacionalista Party, the youngest to be elected to the position, and second youngest overall. He was the first Philippine president born in the 20th century and the first to be born after the Spanish colonial era. Magsaysay died in a plane crash on March 17, 1957, in Cebu. His successor, Carlos P. Garcia, assumed the presidency. He is the most recent Philippine president to have died in office.
1782
Daniel Bernoulli
Dutch-Swiss mathematician and physicist (born 1700)
Daniel Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician and physicist and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family from Basel. He is particularly remembered for his applications of mathematics to mechanics, especially fluid mechanics, and for his pioneering work in probability and statistics. His name is commemorated in Bernoulli's principle, a particular example of the conservation of energy, which describes the mathematics of the mechanism underlying the operation of two important technologies of the 20th century: the carburetor and the aeroplane wing.
1965
Amos Alonzo Stagg
American football player and coach (born 1862)
Amos Alonzo Stagg was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He introduced many innovations to American football. Stagg served as the head football coach at the International YMCA Training School (1890–1891), the University of Chicago (1892–1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933–1946), compiling a career college football record of 314–199–35 (.605). His undefeated Chicago Maroons teams of 1905 and 1913 were recognized as national champions. He was also the head basketball coach for one season at Chicago (1920–1921), and the Maroons' head baseball coach for twenty seasons.
1893
Jules Ferry
French lawyer and politician, 44th Prime Minister of France (born 1832)
Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican philosopher. He was one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans and served as Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion. Under the Third Republic, Ferry made primary education free and compulsory through several new laws. However, he was forced to resign following the Sino-French War in 1885 due to his unpopularity and public opinion against the war.
2007
John Backus
American mathematician and computer scientist, designed Fortran (born 1924)
John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He also contributed to the design of ALGOL, and later researched the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
2010
Sid Fleischman
American author and screenwriter (born 1920)
Albert Sidney Fleischman was an American author of children's books, screenplays, novels for adults, and nonfiction books about stage magic. His works for children are known for their humor, imagery, zesty plotting, and exploration of the byways of American history. He won the Newbery Medal in 1987 for The Whipping Boy and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in 1979 for Humbug Mountain. For his career contribution as a children's writer he was U.S. nominee for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1994. In 2003, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators inaugurated the Sid Fleischman Humor Award in his honor, and made him the first recipient. The Award annually recognizes a writer of humorous fiction for children or young adults. He told his own tale in The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life (1996).
2014
Marek Galiński
Polish cyclist (born 1974)
Marek Galiński was a Polish professional mountain biker and road racing cyclist. During his sporting career, he won nine Polish national championship titles and a silver medal in men's cross-country racing at the 2003 UCI World Cup series in Sankt Wendel, Germany. Galinski also represented his nation Poland in four editions of the Olympic Games, where he competed in men's mountain biking from the time that it officially became an Olympic sport in 1996. Galinski raced professionally for more than five seasons on the JBG2 Professional MTB Team. After his retirement from the sport in 2011, Galinski worked as an assistant coach of both Polish and Russian mountain bike national teams. Upon his return from a training camp in Cyprus on 17 March 2014, Galinski was suddenly killed in a car accident near Jędrzejów.
1917
Fredericus van Rossum du Chattel
Dutch painter (born 1856)
Fredericus Jacobus van Rossum du Chattel was a Dutch landscape painter who worked primarily with watercolours. The son of an amateur artist, du Chattel took up painting in his youth and received a royal scholarship to study in The Hague in 1873. Apprenticing to Willem Maris, he exhibited his first work two years later, which was positively received. Winning several prizes at exhibitions throughout Europe, in the 1880s du Chattel developed a reputation as a painter of the Vecht River. In 1908, he travelled to the Dutch East Indies, where he captured the landscapes of Java and Sumatra and held several exhibitions. At the time of his death, works by du Chattel were held in several museums.
1199
Jocelin of Glasgow
Scottish monk and bishop (born 1130)
Jocelin was a Scottish Cistercian monk and cleric who became the fourth Abbot of Melrose before becoming Bishop of Glasgow, Scotland. He was probably born in the 1130s, and in his teenage years became a monk of Melrose Abbey. He rose in the service of Abbot Waltheof, and by the time of the short abbacy of Waltheof's successor Abbot William, Jocelin had become prior. Then in 1170 Jocelin himself became abbot, a position he held for four years. Jocelin was responsible for promoting the cult of the emerging Saint Waltheof, and in this had the support of Enguerrand, Bishop of Glasgow.
1958
Bertha De Vriese
Belgian physician (born 1877)
Bertha De Vriese was a Belgian physician. When she earned her degree as a doctor of medicine at Ghent University, where she was the first woman to conduct research and the first woman physician to graduate from the school. Although she was not allowed to pursue an academic career, De Vriese opened a private pediatric clinic and served as the director of the Children's Ward at the Bijloke Hospital in Ghent. In 1914, she married Josef Vercouillie, also a physician.
1620
John Sarkander
Polish-Moravian priest and saint (born 1576)
Jan Sarkander was a Polish-Czech Roman Catholic priest. Sarkander was married for a short period of time before he became widowed and pursued a path to the priesthood where he became active in defence of Catholicism during a period of anti-Catholic sentiment and conflict. He himself was arrested on false accusations as a means of silencing him and he refused to give in to his tormenters who tortured him for around a month before he died.
2025
Lee Shau-kee
Hong Kong real estate billionaire (born 1928)
Lee Shau-kee was a Hong Kong business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He was a real estate tycoon and majority owner of Henderson Land Development, a property conglomerate with interests in property, hotels, restaurants and internet services in Hong Kong and other countries. In 2019, aged 91, Lee stepped down as chairman and managing director of the company, in favour of two of his sons, Peter and Martin Lee. He retained a role as an executive director.
1956
Irène Joliot-Curie
French physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1897)
Irène Joliot-Curie was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. The couple also discovered positron emission in their process. They were the second married couple, after her parents, to win the Nobel Prize, adding to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date.
1974
Louis Kahn
American architect and academic, designed Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban (born 1901)
Louis Isadore Kahn was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
2013
A.B.C. Whipple
American journalist and historian (born 1918)
Addison Beecher Colvin ("Cal") Whipple was an American journalist, editor, historian and author. He was born in Glens Falls, New York, on July 15, 1918, and spent most of his childhood in Suffield, Connecticut. He graduated from the Loomis School, from Yale University in 1940 and received an M.A. from Harvard University before being hired by Life Magazine. He had many positions at Time/Life and wrote a number of books about maritime history.
1976
Luchino Visconti
Italian director and screenwriter (born 1906)
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, theatre and opera director, and screenwriter. He was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Critic Jonathan Jones wrote that "no one did as much to shape Italian cinema as Luchino Visconti.”
1993
Helen Hayes
American actress (born 1900)
Helen Hayes MacArthur was an American actress. Often referred to as the "First Lady of American Theatre", she was the second person and first woman to win the EGOT, and the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.