Notable Deaths on March 18

March 18 has 87 recorded notable deaths across history, from 978 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

John Phillips

2001 — John Phillips

American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1935)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 87 source records 978 – 2025

Major events on March 18

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 1994 Bosnia's Bosniaks and Croats sign the Washington Agreement, ending war between the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Source
  2. 1899 Phoebe, a satellite of Saturn, becomes the first to be discovered with photographs, taken in August 1898, by William Henry Pickering. Source

Did you know about John Phillips

In addition to writing the majority of the group's songs, he wrote "San Francisco " in 1967 for former Journeymen bandmate Scott McKenzie, and the oft-covered "Me and My Uncle", which was a favorite in the repertoire of the Grateful Dead.

Did you know about Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson Berry was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter who was one of the pioneers of rock and roll.

Did you know about Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed became an American icon while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance that he attributed to apples.

Did you know about Edward the Martyr

Edward the Martyr was King of the English from 8 July 975 until he was killed in 978.

Did you know about Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1721 to 1742.

More major people who died on March 18

Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.

2017 Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry

American guitarist, singer and songwriter (born 1926)
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter who was one of the pioneers of rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Wikipedia source
1845 Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed

American gardener and missionary (born 1774)
John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced trees grown with apple seeds to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia. He became an American icon while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance that he attributed to apples. He was the inspiration for many museums and historical sites such as the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio, and today is recognized as an American folk hero.
Wikipedia source
978 Edward the Martyr

Edward the Martyr

English king (born 962)
Edward the Martyr was King of the English from 8 July 975 until he was killed in 978. He was the eldest son of King Edgar. On Edgar's death, the succession to the throne was contested between Edward's supporters and those of his younger half-brother, the future King Æthelred the Unready. As they were both children, it is unlikely that they played an active role in the dispute, which was probably between rival family alliances. Edward's principal supporters were Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, while Æthelred was backed by his mother Queen Ælfthryth and her friend Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester. The dispute was quickly settled. Edward was chosen as king and Æthelred received the lands traditionally allocated to the king's eldest son in compensation.
Wikipedia source
1745 Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole

English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1676)
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1721 to 1742. His formal titles included First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons. He is the longest serving prime minister in UK history, with a tenure of over 20 years.
Wikipedia source
1978 Peggy Wood

Peggy Wood

American actress (born 1892)
Mary Margaret Wood was an American actress of stage, film, and television. She is best remembered for her performance as the title character in the CBS television series Mama (1949–1957), for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series; her starring role as Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, in The Story of Ruth (1960); and her final screen appearance as Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music (1965), for which she received nominations for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Wikipedia source
1978 Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett

American author and screenwriter (born 1915)
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author and screenwriter. Nicknamed "the Queen of Space Opera", she was one of the most prominent female writers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. As a screenwriter, she was best known for her collaborations with director Howard Hawks, mainly writing Westerns and crime films. She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production.
Wikipedia source
1227 Pope Honorius III (born 1148)

Pope Honorius III (born 1148)

Pope Honorius III, born Cencio Savelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 18 July 1216 to his death. A canon at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, he came to hold a number of important administrative positions, including that of Camerlengo. In 1197, he became tutor to the young Frederick II. As pope, he worked to promote the Fifth Crusade, which had been planned under his predecessor, Innocent III. Honorius repeatedly exhorted King Andrew II of Hungary and Emperor Frederick II to fulfill their vows to participate. He also gave approval to the recently formed Dominican and Franciscan religious orders.
Wikipedia source
1984 Charley Lau

Charley Lau

American baseball player and coach (born 1933)
Charles Richard Lau was an American professional baseball player and a highly influential hitting coach. During his playing career in Major League Baseball, Lau appeared in 527 games as a catcher and pinch hitter over all or portions of 11 seasons for four clubs. Then, beginning in 1969, he spent 15 years as a coach for five American League teams, most notably the Kansas City Royals. He was the incumbent hitting coach of the Chicago White Sox when he died, aged 50, from colorectal cancer in 1984.
Wikipedia source
1321 Matthew III Csák

Matthew III Csák

Hungarian oligarch (born c. 1260/5)
Máté Csák or Matthew III Csák, also Máté Csák of Trencsén, was a Hungarian oligarch who ruled de facto independently the north-western counties of Kingdom of Hungary. He held several of the highest royal offices in the kingdom, serving as Master of the Horse (főlovászmester) (1293–1296), Palatine (nádor), and Master of the Treasury (tárnokmester) (1309–1311). During the Hungarian succession crisis that followed the extinction of the House of Árpád in the male line, he was able to maintain his rule over his territories even after his defeat at the Battle of Rozgony against King Charles I of Hungary. In the 19th century, he was often described as a symbol of the struggle for independence in both the Hungarian and Slovak literatures.
Wikipedia source
1907 Marcellin Berthelot

Marcellin Berthelot

French chemist and politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (born 1827)
Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and Republican politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures. "Why not", he asked, "if it proved cheaper and better to make the same materials than to grow them?"
Wikipedia source
1918 Henry Janeway Hardenbergh

Henry Janeway Hardenbergh

American architect, designed the Plaza Hotel (born 1847)
Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was an American architect, best known for his hotels and apartment buildings, and as a "master of a new building form — the skyscraper." He worked three times with Edward Clark, the wealthy owner of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and real estate developer: The Singer company's first tower in New York City, the Dakota Apartments, and its precursor, the Van Corlear. He is best known for building apartment dwellings and luxury hotels.
Wikipedia source
1986 Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud

American novelist and short story writer (born 1914)
Bernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel The Natural was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Wikipedia source
1956 Louis Bromfield

Louis Bromfield

American environmentalist and author (born 1896)
Louis Bromfield was an American writer and conservationist. A bestselling novelist in the 1920s, he reinvented himself as a farmer in the late 1930s and became one of the earliest proponents of sustainable and organic agriculture in the United States. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1927 for Early Autumn, founded the experimental Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio, and played an important role in the early environmental movement.
Wikipedia source
2016 Guido Westerwelle

Guido Westerwelle

German lawyer and politician, 15th Vice-Chancellor of Germany (born 1961)
Guido Westerwelle was a German politician who served as foreign minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011, being the first openly gay person to hold any of these positions. He also led the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) from 2001 until he stepped down in 2011. A lawyer by profession, he was a member of the Bundestag from 1996 to 2013.
Wikipedia source
1086 Anselm of Lucca

Anselm of Lucca

Italian bishop (born 1036)
Anselm of Lucca, born Anselm of Baggio, was a medieval bishop of Lucca in Italy and a prominent figure in the Investiture Controversy amid the fighting in central Italy between Matilda, countess of Tuscany, and Emperor Henry IV. His uncle Anselm preceded him as bishop of Lucca before being elected to the papacy as Pope Alexander II and so he is sometimes distinguished as Anselm the Younger or Anselm II.
Wikipedia source
2007 Bob Woolmer

Bob Woolmer

Indian-English cricketer, coach, and sportscaster (born 1948)
Robert Andrew Woolmer was an English cricket coach, cricketer, and a commentator. He played in 19 Test matches and six One Day Internationals for the England cricket team and later coached South Africa, Warwickshire and Pakistan. During his coaching career with South Africa, he led the team to being the winners of the 1998 ICC KnockOut Trophy, first of the only two ICC titles the country has won to date.
Wikipedia source
2025 Jessie Hoffman Jr.

Jessie Hoffman Jr.

American convicted murderer (born 1978)
Jessie Dean Hoffman Jr. was an American convicted murderer who was sentenced to death in Louisiana for the 1996 rape and murder of Molly Elliott. On November 26, 1996, Hoffman, then 18, abducted the 28-year-old advertising executive in downtown New Orleans. After forcing her to withdraw money from an ATM at gunpoint, he made her drive to a remote area in St. Tammany Parish, where he raped and murdered her.
Wikipedia source
1898 Matilda Joslyn Gage

Matilda Joslyn Gage

American author and activist (born 1826)
Matilda Joslyn Gage was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States, but also campaigned for Native American rights, abolitionism, and freethought. She is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention. She influenced her son-in-law L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Wikipedia source
1871 Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan

Indian-English mathematician and academic (born 1806)
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He is best known for De Morgan's laws relating logical conjunction, disjunction, and negation, and for coining the term "mathematical induction", the underlying principles of which he formalized. De Morgan's contributions to logic are heavily used in many branches of mathematics, including set theory and probability theory, as well as other related fields such as computer science.
Wikipedia source

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