Did you know about Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke is credited as one of the first scientists to investigate living things at microscopic scale in 1665, using a compound microscope that he designed.
Notable Deaths on March 3
March 3 has 100 recorded notable deaths across history, from 532 to 2023. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1703 — Robert Hooke
English architect and philosopher (born 1635)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
100 source records
532 – 2023
Today in history
Major events on March 3
See what else happened on this day in history.
Did you know about Hergé
Hergé is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums that are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century.
Did you know about Alice Pearce
Alice Pearce won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series posthumously after the second season of the series.
Did you know about Andrew Harclay
Shortly after this, he was taken captive by the Scots, and only released after a substantial ransom had been paid.
Did you know about Ivor Cutler
Ivor Cutler became known for his regular performances on BBC radio, and in particular his numerous sessions recorded for John Peel's influential eponymous late-night radio programme, and later for Andy Kershaw's programme.
More major people who died on March 3
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
1983
Hergé
Belgian author and illustrator (born 1907)
Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name Hergé, from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials RG, was a Belgian comic strip artist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums that are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke (1930–1940) and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957). His works were executed in his distinctive ligne claire drawing style.
1966
Alice Pearce
American actress (born 1917)
Alice Pearce was an American actress. She was brought to Hollywood by Gene Kelly to reprise her Broadway performance in the film version of On the Town (1949). Pearce played comedic supporting roles in several films before being cast as nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz in the television sitcom Bewitched in 1964. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series posthumously after the second season of the series. She died from ovarian cancer in 1966.
1323
Andrew Harclay
1st Earl of Carlisle, English military leader
Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, alternatively Andreas de Harcla, was an important English military leader in the borderlands with Scotland during the reign of Edward II. Coming from a knightly family in Westmorland, he was appointed sheriff of Cumberland in 1311. He distinguished himself in the Scottish Wars, and in 1315 repulsed a siege on Carlisle Castle by Robert the Bruce. Shortly after this, he was taken captive by the Scots, and only released after a substantial ransom had been paid. His greatest achievement came in 1322, when he defeated the rebellious baron Thomas of Lancaster at the Battle of Boroughbridge on 16–17 March. For this he was created Earl of Carlisle.
2006
Ivor Cutler
Scottish poet and songwriter (born 1923)
Ivor Cutler was a Scottish poet, singer, musician, songwriter, artist and humorist. He became known for his regular performances on BBC radio, and in particular his numerous sessions recorded for John Peel's influential eponymous late-night radio programme, and later for Andy Kershaw's programme. He appeared in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film in 1967, and on Neil Innes's television programmes. Cutler also wrote books for children and adults, and was a teacher at A. S. Neill's Summerhill School and for 30 years in inner-city schools in London.
1929
Katharine Wright
American educator (born 1874)
Katharine Wright Haskell was an American teacher, suffragist, and the younger sister of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright. She pursued a professional career as a high school teacher in Dayton, Ohio and also managed her brothers' bicycle shop during their trips to Kitty Hawk. She acted as their right-hand woman and aide when the brothers demonstrated their airplanes in Europe, assisting with their correspondence, business affairs, and interactions with royals and captains of industry; she became an international celebrity along with them. A significant figure in the early-twentieth-century women's movement, she worked on behalf of woman's suffrage in Ohio and served as the third female trustee of Oberlin College.
2008
Giuseppe Di Stefano
Italian tenor and actor (born 1921)
Giuseppe Di Stefano was an Italian operatic tenor who sang professionally from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s. Called "Pippo" by both fans and friends, he was known as the "Golden Voice" or "The Most Beautiful Voice", as the true successor of Beniamino Gigli. Luciano Pavarotti said he modeled himself after Di Stefano. In an interview Pavarotti said "Di Stefano is my idol. There is a solar voice...It was the most incredible, open voice you could hear. The musicality of Di Stefano is as natural and beautiful as the voice is phenomenal". Di Stefano was also the tenor who most inspired José Carreras. He died on 3 March 2008 as a result of injuries from an attack by unknown assailants.
1988
Sewall Wright
American biologist and geneticist (born 1889)
Sewall Green Wright ForMemRS HonFRSE was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongside Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, which was a major step in the development of the modern synthesis combining genetics with evolution. He discovered the inbreeding coefficient and methods of computing it in pedigree animals. He extended this work to populations, computing the amount of inbreeding between members of populations as a result of random genetic drift, and along with Fisher he pioneered methods for computing the distribution of gene frequencies among populations as a result of the interaction of natural selection, mutation, migration and genetic drift. Wright also made major contributions to mammalian and biochemical genetics.
1616
Matthias de l'Obel
Flemish physician and botanist (born 1538)
Mathias de l'Obel, Mathias de Lobel or Matthaeus Lobelius was a Flemish physician and botanist who was born in Lille, Flanders, in what is now Hauts-de-France, France, and died at Highgate, London, England. He studied at the University of Montpellier and practiced medicine in the Low Countries and England, including positions as personal physicians to two monarchs. A member of the sixteenth-century Flemish School of Botany, he wrote a series of major treatises on plants in both Latin and Dutch. He was the first botanist to appreciate the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The plant genus Lobelia is named after him, as is Lobel's maple Acer lobelii.
2010
Keith Alexander
English footballer and manager (born 1956)
Keith Alexander was a footballer and manager. Born in Nottingham, England, he was the manager of League Two side Macclesfield Town at the time of his death, in a career that included international appearances for Saint Lucia. Alexander played for a large number of lower league football teams. His main success, however, came from football management – managing in both non-league and the Football League. He took League One side Lincoln City to four consecutive play-offs, taking them to two finals at the Millennium Stadium.
1999
Gerhard Herzberg
German-Canadian chemist and astronomer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1904)
Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg, was a German-Canadian pioneering physicist and physical chemist, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1971, "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals". Herzberg's main work concerned atomic and molecular spectroscopy. He is well known for using these techniques that determine the structures of diatomic and polyatomic molecules, including free radicals which are difficult to investigate in any other way, and for the chemical analysis of astronomical objects. Herzberg served as Chancellor of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada from 1973 to 1980.
1554
John Frederick I
Elector of Saxony (born 1503)
John Frederick I was the Prince-Elector and Arch-Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire (1532–1547) from the Ernestine branch of the Saxon ruling House of Wettin, who initially governed over the Ernestine Electorate of Saxony, centred on Saxe-Wittenberg, until he was deprived of his electoral titles and most domains by the Capitulation of Wittenberg (1547). He was left with the Saxon ducal title, and Ernestine possessions in Thuringia. Previously, he was leading the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance of Lutheran principalities.
1700
Chhatrapati Rajaram
3rd Chhatrapati of Maratha Empire (born 1670)
Rajaram I, also known as Ram Raaje, was the third king (Chhatrapati) of the Maratha Kingdom, who ruled from 1689 to his death in 1700. He was the second son of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of the kingdom, and younger paternal half-brother of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, whom he succeeded. His eleven-year reign was marked with a constant struggle against the Mughals. He was succeeded by his infant son Shivaji II under the regentship of his wife Maharani Tarabai.
1995
Howard W. Hunter
American religious leader, 14th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (born 1907)
Howard William Hunter was an American lawyer and the 14th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1994 to 1995. His nine-month presidential tenure is the shortest in the church's history. Hunter was the first president of the LDS Church born in the 20th century and the last to die in it. He was sustained as an LDS apostle at the age of 51, and served as a general authority for over 35 years.
2023
Kenzaburō Ōe
Japanese novelist, 1994 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (born 1935)
Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".
2008
Norman Smith
English drummer and producer (born 1923)
Norman Smith was an English musician, record producer and engineer. In the 1960s, he notably engineered all of the Beatles' EMI studio recordings up to the end of 1965 and produced three Pink Floyd albums including their first, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). He later had a successful recording career as Hurricane Smith, achieving a transatlantic hit single with "Oh Babe, What Would You Say" in 1972.
2003
Horst Buchholz
German actor (born 1933)
Horst Werner Buchholz was a German actor who appeared in more than 60 feature films from 1951 to 2002. During his youth, he was sometimes called "the German James Dean". He is perhaps best known in English-speaking countries for his roles as Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960), as a communist in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), and as Dr. Lessing in Life Is Beautiful (1997).
2016
Berta Cáceres
Honduran environmentalist (born 1973)
Bertha Isabel Cáceres Flores was a Honduran (Lenca) environmental activist, indigenous leader, co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). She won the Goldman Environmental Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for environmental activism, in 2015 for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque.
2023
Tom Sizemore
American actor (born 1961)
Thomas Edward Sizemore Jr. was an American actor. Born in Detroit, he started his career with supporting appearances in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Lock Up (1989), and Blue Steel (1990). The appearances led to more prominent roles in films like Passenger 57 (1992), True Romance (1993), Striking Distance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Strange Days (1995), Heat (1995), and The Relic (1997).
2001
Eugene Sledge
American soldier, author, and academic (born 1923)
Eugene Bondurant Sledge was a United States Marine, university professor, and author. His 1981 memoir With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa chronicled his combat experiences during World War II and was used as source material for the Ken Burns PBS documentary The War (2007), as well as the HBO miniseries The Pacific (2010), in which he is portrayed by Joseph Mazzello.