Did you know about Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s.
Notable Deaths on March 27
March 27 has 139 recorded notable deaths across history, from 710 to 2026. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
2002 — Dudley Moore
English actor (born 1935)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
139 source records
710 – 2026
Today in history
Major events on March 27
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1866 President of the United States of America Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9. Source
- 2014 Philippines signs a peace accord with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, ending decades of conflict. Source
Did you know about Milton Berle
As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television.
Did you know about Farley Granger
Another war film, The Purple Heart (1944), followed, before Granger's naval service in Honolulu, in a unit that arranged troop entertainment in the Pacific.
Did you know about Mary of Burgundy
Mary of Burgundy, nicknamed the Rich, was a member of the House of Valois-Burgundy, and ruler in her own right over much of the Valois-Burgundian lands, from 1477 to 1482.
Did you know about James E. Webb
James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952.
More major people who died on March 27
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
2002
Milton Berle
American comedian and actor (born 1908)
Milton Berle was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over eight decades, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV.
2011
Farley Granger
American actor (born 1925)
Farley Earle Granger Jr. was an American actor. Granger was first noticed in a small stage production in Hollywood by a Goldwyn casting director, and given a significant role in The North Star (1943), a controversial film praising the Soviet Union at the height of World War II, but later condemned for its political position. Another war film, The Purple Heart (1944), followed, before Granger's naval service in Honolulu, in a unit that arranged troop entertainment in the Pacific. Here he made useful contacts, including Bob Hope, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. It was also where he began exploring his bisexuality, which he said he never felt any need to conceal.
1482
Mary of Burgundy
Sovereign Duchess regnant of Burgundy, married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (born 1457)
Mary of Burgundy, nicknamed the Rich, was a member of the House of Valois-Burgundy, and ruler in her own right over much of the Valois-Burgundian lands, from 1477 to 1482. Her effective rule extended over major part of the Burgundian Netherlands, while she also claimed the rest of the Burgundian inheritance, including domains that were seized by her cousin, the French king Louis XI in 1477, such as the Duchy of Burgundy, the Free County of Burgundy and several other lands, both within the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.
1992
James E. Webb
American colonel and politician, 16th Under Secretary of State (born 1906)
James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as Undersecretary of State from 1949 to 1952. He was the second administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961, to October 7, 1968. Webb led NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the end of the Johnson administration, thus overseeing each of the critical first crewed missions throughout the Mercury and Gemini programs until days before the launch of the first Apollo mission. He also dealt with the Apollo 1 fire. He helped found the National Academy of Public Administration, a key locus for governmental reform studies.
2006
Rudolf Vrba
Czech Holocaust survivor and educator (born 1924)
Rudolf Vrba was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. The report, distributed by George Mantello in Switzerland, is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada.
1918
Henry Adams
American journalist, historian, and author (born 1838)
Henry Brooks Adams was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. presidents. As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's minister (ambassador) to the United Kingdom. The posting influenced the younger man through the experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became a political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.
1931
Arnold Bennett
English author and playwright (born 1867)
Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays, and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
1624
Ulrik of Denmark
Danish prince-bishop (born 1578)
Prince Ulrik John of Denmark, was a son of King Frederick II of Denmark and his consort, Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. As the second-born son he bore the merely titular rank of Duke of Holstein and Schleswig, Stormarn and Ditmarsh and had no share in the royal-ducal condominial rule of Holstein and Schleswig, wielded by the heads of the houses of Oldenburg (royal) and its cadet branch Holstein-Gottorp (ducal). Since 1602 he held the religiously defunct position of Bishop of Schleswig, enjoying the revenues of the implied estates and manor. The year after he succeeded his grandfather as Administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Schwerin, holding both posts until his death.
1927
Joe Start
American baseball player and manager (born 1842)
Joseph Start, nicknamed "Old Reliable", was one of the most durable regulars of baseball's earliest era, and one of the top first basemen of his time. He began his playing career in 1859, before the formation of organized leagues and before ballplayers received payment for their services. He continued to play regularly until 1886, when he was 43. Start's career spanned countless innovations that transformed the game in fundamental ways, but he adjusted and continued to play at a high level for almost three decades. Baseball historian Bill Ryczek said that Start "was the last of the pre–Civil War players to hang up his cleats."
1926
Kick Kelly
American baseball player, manager, and umpire (born 1856)
John O. "Kick" Kelly, also nicknamed "Honest John" and "Diamond John", was an American catcher, manager and umpire in Major League Baseball who went on to become a boxing referee and to run gambling houses in his native New York City. He made a notable impact on the development of umpiring, helping to pioneer the use of multiple umpires in games in the 1880s. By the time he initially retired in 1888, he held the record for most games umpired in the major leagues (587); he returned to work the last two months of the 1897 season.
1945
Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil
Turkish author, poet, and playwright (born 1866)
Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil was a Turkish author, poet, and playwright. A part of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide movement of the late Ottoman Empire, he was the founder of and contributor to many literary movements and institutions, including his flagship Servet-i Fünun journal. He was a strong critic of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II, which led to the censorship of much of his work by the Ottoman government. His many novels, plays, short stories, and essays include his 1899 romance novel Aşk-ı Memnu, which has been adapted into an internationally successful television series of the same name.
2006
Stanisław Lem
Ukrainian-Polish author (born 1921)
Stanisław Herman Lem was a Polish writer. He was the author of many novels, short stories, and essays on various subjects, including philosophy, futurology, and literary criticism. Many of his science fiction stories are of satirical and humorous character. Lem's books have been translated into more than 50 languages and have sold more than 45 million copies. Worldwide, he is best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris. In 1976, Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world.
2012
Adrienne Rich
American poet, essayist and feminist (born 1929)
Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized the rigid identities that are sometimes created by feminism, called for feminism that is flexible and open to being transformed, and drew attention to the existing current of solidarity and creativity among women, which she named the "lesbian continuum."
1968
Yuri Gagarin
Russian colonel, pilot, and astronaut (born 1934)
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first person to journey into outer space during the first successful crewed spaceflight. He was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh SSR. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. The flight took 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and earned numerous accolades, including his country's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.
1613
Sigismund Báthory (born 1573)
Sigismund Báthory was Prince of Transylvania several times between 1586 and 1602, and Duke of Racibórz and Opole in Silesia in 1598. His father, Christopher Báthory, ruled Transylvania as voivode of the absent prince, Stephen Báthory. Sigismund was still a child when the Diet of Transylvania elected him voivode at his dying father's request in 1581. Initially, regency councils administered Transylvania on his behalf, but Stephen Báthory made János Ghyczy the sole regent in 1585. Sigismund adopted the title of prince after Stephen Báthory died.
1988
Charles Willeford
American author, poet, and critic (born 1919)
Charles Ray Willeford III was an American writer. An author of fiction, poetry, autobiography and literary criticism, Willeford wrote a series of novels featuring hardboiled detective Hoke Moseley. Willeford published steadily from the 1940s on, but vaulted to wider attention with the first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues (1984), which is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of four of Willeford's novels: Cockfighter, Miami Blues, The Woman Chaser, and The Burnt Orange Heresy.
973
Hermann Billung
Frankish lieutenant (born 900)
Hermann Billung was a prominent German noble from Saxony in the East Frankish Kingdom, who was a notable military commander and count, serving as royal governor of the Duchy of Saxony during the reign of king and emperor Otto I (936–973). As such, he was entrusted with the defense of Saxon eastern regions and borders towards the neighboring Polabian Slavs. He became the founder of the House of Billung, that had a prominent role in the medieval history of northern German lands.
1564
Lütfi Pasha
Turkish historian and politician, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (born 1488)
Lütfi Pasha was an Ottoman-Albanian statesman, general, and Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent from 1539 to 1541. He wrote 21 works mainly on religious topics and history, 13 of them written in Arabic and eight in Turkish. Two of his works are the Asafname, a kind of mirror for ministers, and the Tevâriḫ-i Âl-i ‘Os̱mân, dealing with Ottoman history and including his own experiences in the reign of the sultans Bayezid II, Selim I and Suleyman I.
1994
Lawrence Wetherby
American lawyer and politician, 48th Governor of Kentucky (born 1908)
Lawrence Winchester Wetherby was an American politician who served as 40th lieutenant governor and the 48th governor of Kentucky. He was the first of only two Kentucky governors born in Jefferson County, despite the fact that Louisville is the state's most populous city. The second governor born in Jefferson County is the incumbent governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, who grew up in the Lexington area. Two other governors have been elected when residents of Jefferson: Republicans Augustus Willson, 1907–11, and Matt Bevin, 2015–19.