Notable Deaths on May 27

May 27 has 110 recorded notable deaths across history, from 366 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Jawaharlal Nehru

1964 — Jawaharlal Nehru

Indian lawyer and politician, 1st Prime Minister of India (born 1889)

By · Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 110 source records 366 – 2025

Major events on May 27

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 2016 Barack Obama is the first president of the United States to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet Hibakusha. Source
  2. 1967 The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline. Source

Did you know about Jawaharlal Nehru

Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister, holding office for 16 years 286 days.

Did you know about Gregg Allman

Gregg Allman wrote several of the band's most popular songs, including "Whipping Post", "Melissa", and "Midnight Rider".

Did you know about John Calvin

John Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation.

Did you know about Gil Scott-Heron

Gilbert Scott-Heron was an American jazz poet, singer, musician and author, known for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s.

Did you know about Margo Dydek

Playing center position, she won nine national championships in Poland and four in Spain during her career.


More major people who died on May 27

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

2017 Gregg Allman

Gregg Allman

American musician, singer and songwriter (born 1947)
Gregory LeNoir Allman was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He was known for being a founding member, lead singer, and keyboardist for the Allman Brothers Band. Allman grew up with an interest in rhythm and blues music, and the Allman Brothers Band fused it with rock music, jazz, and country. He wrote several of the band's most popular songs, including "Whipping Post", "Melissa", and "Midnight Rider". Allman also had a successful solo career, releasing eight studio albums.
1564 John Calvin

John Calvin

French pastor and theologian (born 1509)
John Calvin was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was the principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvinist doctrines were influenced by and elaborated upon Augustinian and other Christian traditions. Various Reformed Church movements, including Continental Reformed, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Waldensians, Baptist Reformed, Calvinist Methodism, and Reformed Anglican Churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
2011 Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron

American singer-songwriter and poet (born 1949)
Gilbert Scott-Heron was an American jazz poet, singer, musician and author, known for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson fused jazz, blues and soul with lyrics relative to social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles. He referred to himself as a "bluesologist", his own term for "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues". His poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip-hop music.
2011 Margo Dydek

Margo Dydek

Polish-American basketball player (born 1974)
Małgorzata Teresa Dydek-Twigg, better known as Margo Dydek, was a Polish professional basketball player. Standing 7 ft 2 in (2.18 m) tall, she was the tallest professional female basketball player in the world. Playing center position, she won nine national championships in Poland and four in Spain during her career. Outside of Europe, she played 11 seasons in the WNBA, for three teams, and was a coach for the Northside Wizards in the Queensland Basketball League. She was awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit (1999).
1939 Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth

Austrian-French journalist and author (born 1894)
Moses Joseph Roth was an Austro-Hungarian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life Job (1930) and his seminal essay "Juden auf Wanderschaft", a fragmented account of the Jewish migrations from eastern to western Europe in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution. In the 21st century, publications in English of Radetzky March and of collections of his journalism from Berlin and Paris created a revival of interest in Roth.
1797 François-Noël Babeuf

François-Noël Babeuf

French journalist (born 1760)
François-Noël Babeuf, also known as Gracchus Babeuf, was a French proto-communist, revolutionary, and journalist of the French Revolutionary period. His newspaper Le Tribun du Peuple was best known for its advocacy for the poor and calling for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France. He was a leading advocate for democracy and the abolition of private property. He made his own variant of Jacobinism (Robespierrism) which is called Neo-Jacobinism. Besides the influence of Robespierrism on his thought, due to his proto-communism, his political views were more aligned with the ideology of the Enragés. He angered the authorities who were clamping down hard on their radical enemies. In spite of the efforts of his Jacobin friends to save him, Babeuf was executed for his lead role in the Conspiracy of the Equals.
2025 Freddie Aguilar

Freddie Aguilar

Filipino musician and singer-songwriter (born 1953)
Ferdinand "Freddie" Pascual Aguilar, also known by his Muslim name Abdul Farid, was a Filipino musician regarded as one of the pillars and icons of Original Pilipino Music (OPM). He was best known for his international hit "Anak" (1978), which became the best-selling Philippine music record of all time, selling 33 million copies worldwide. His rendition of "Bayan Ko" became the anthem of the opposition against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos during the 1986 People Power Revolution. He was heavily associated with Pinoy rock.
1661 Archibald Campbell

Archibald Campbell

1st Marquess of Argyll, Scottish general and politician (born 1607)
Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll was a Scottish nobleman, politician, and peer. The de facto head of Scotland's government during most of the conflict of the 1640s and 1650s known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, he was the main leader of the Covenanter movement that fought for the Establishment of Presbyterianism in opposition to the preference of King Charles I and the Caroline Divines for instead establishing both High Church Anglicanism and Bishops. He is often remembered as the principal antagonist to the Royalist general James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose.
1919 Kandukuri Veeresalingam

Kandukuri Veeresalingam

Indian author and activist (born 1848)
Kandukuri Veeresalingam was a social reformer and writer from the Madras Presidency, British India, current Andhra Pradesh. He was considered as the Father of the Telugu Renaissance movement. He was one of the early social reformers who encouraged the education of women and the remarriage of widows. He also fought against child marriage and the dowry system. He started a school in Dowlaiswaram in 1874, constructed the 'Brahmo Mandir' in 1887 and built the 'Hithakarini School' in 1908 in Andhra Pradesh. His novel Rajasekhara Charitramu is considered to be the first novel in Telugu literature.
1984 Vasilije Mokranjac

Vasilije Mokranjac

Serbian composer (born 1923)
Vasilije Mokranjac was a Serbian composer, professor of composition at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was one of the most prominent Serbian composers in the second half of the 20th century. Although famed for his symphonies, he also wrote piano music, as well as music for radio, film and theatre. He won the most prestigious awards in former Yugoslavia, including the October Prize, the award of the Yugoslav Radio-Diffusion, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award.
2009 Clive Granger

Clive Granger

Welsh-American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1934)
Sir Clive William John Granger was a British econometrician known for his contributions to nonlinear time series analysis. He taught in Britain, at the University of Nottingham and in the United States, at the University of California, San Diego. Granger was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2003 in recognition of the contributions that he and his co-winner, Robert F. Engle, had made to the analysis of time series data. This work fundamentally changed the way in which economists analyse financial and macroeconomic data.
2007 Izumi Sakai

Izumi Sakai

Japanese singer-songwriter (born 1967)
Sachiko Kamachi , known professionally as Izumi Sakai , was a Japanese pop singer and core member of the group Zard. As Sakai was the only member in the group for the majority of the 16 years which it was active, Zard and Sakai may be referred to interchangeably. She was the best-selling female recording artist of the 1990s and has sold over 38 million copies of sales, making her one of the best-selling music artists in Japan of all time.
2021 Poul Schlüter

Poul Schlüter

former Prime Minister of Denmark (born 1929)
Poul Holmskov Schlüter was a Danish politician who served as Prime Minister of Denmark from 1982 to 1993. He was the first member of the Conservative People's Party to become prime minister, as well as the first conservative to hold the office since 1901. Schlüter was a member of the Folketing for the Conservative People's Party from 1964 to 1994. He was also Chairman of the Conservative People's Party from 1974 to 1977 and from 1981 to 1993.
1963 Grigoris Lambrakis

Grigoris Lambrakis

Greek physician and politician (born 1912)
Grigoris Lambrakis was a Greek politician, physician, athlete, and lecturer. He participated in track and field sports and was a member of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Athens. A member of the Greek resistance to Axis rule during World War II, he later became a prominent anti-war activist. His assassination by right-wing extremists that were allegedly supported by the police and military provoked mass protests and led to a political crisis.
1831 Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Smith

American hunter, explorer, and author (born 1799)
Jedediah Strong Smith was an American clerk, transcontinental pioneer, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, mountain man and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the Western United States, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile (32 km)-wide South Pass as the dominant route across the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
2011 Jeff Conaway

Jeff Conaway

American actor and singer (born 1950)
Jeffrey Charles William Michael Conaway was an American actor. He portrayed Kenickie in the film Grease and had roles in four television series: struggling actor Bobby Wheeler in Taxi (1978–1982), Prince Erik Greystone in Wizards and Warriors, security officer Zack Allan on Babylon 5, and Howard Griffin on Murder, She Wrote. Conaway was featured in the first and second seasons of the reality television series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.
2018 Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois

American science fiction author and editor (born 1947)
Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies (1984–2018) and was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction (1986–2004), garnering multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works almost every year. He also won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice. He was inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on June 25, 2011.
927 Simeon I of Bulgaria first Bulgarian Emperor (born 864)

Simeon I of Bulgaria first Bulgarian Emperor (born 864)

Simeon I the Great was the ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire from 893 until his death in 927. Simeon's successful campaigns against the Byzantines, Magyars and Serbs led Bulgaria to its greatest territorial expansion ever, making it the most powerful state in contemporary Eastern and Southeast Europe. His reign was also a period of unmatched cultural prosperity and enlightenment later deemed the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture.
1525 Thomas Müntzer

Thomas Müntzer

German mystic and theologian (born 1488)
Thomas Müntzer was a German preacher and theologian of the early Reformation whose opposition to both Martin Luther and the Catholic Church led to his open defiance of late-feudal authority in central Germany. Müntzer was foremost amongst those reformers who took issue with Luther's compromises with feudal authority. He was a leader of the German peasant and plebeian uprising of 1525 commonly known as the German Peasants' War.

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