Notable Deaths on November 4

November 4 has 103 recorded notable deaths across history, from 604 to 2024. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Michael Crichton

2008 — Michael Crichton

American medical doctor, author, director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1942)

By · Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 103 source records 604 – 2024

Major events on November 4

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 2008 Barack Obama becomes the first person of biracial or African-American descent to be elected as President of the United States. Source
  2. 1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female elected as governor in the United States. Source

Did you know about Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton's books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films.

Did you know about Cy Young

Young entered the major leagues in 1890 with the National League's Cleveland Spiders and pitched for them until 1898.

Did you know about Felix Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.

Did you know about Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen was one of the leading poets of the First World War.

Did you know about Sparky Anderson

Sparky Anderson's 2,194 career wins are the seventh-most for a manager in Major League history.


More major people who died on November 4

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

1955 Cy Young

Cy Young

American baseball player and manager (born 1867)
Denton True "Cy" Young was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher and manager. Born in Gilmore, Ohio, he worked on his family's farm as a youth before starting his professional baseball career. Young entered the major leagues in 1890 with the National League's Cleveland Spiders and pitched for them until 1898. He was then transferred to the St. Louis Cardinals franchise. In 1901, Young jumped to the American League and played for the Boston Red Sox franchise until 1908, helping them win the 1903 World Series. He finished his career with the Cleveland Naps and Boston Rustlers, retiring in 1911.
1847 Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

German pianist, composer, and conductor (born 1809)
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, simply known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic era. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music, organ music and chamber music. His best-known works include the String Octet, the overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian and Scottish Symphonies, the oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, the Hebrides Overture, the mature Violin Concerto, and the melody used in the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.
1918 Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

English lieutenant and poet (born 1893)
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the Armistice, at the age of 25.
2010 Sparky Anderson

Sparky Anderson

American baseball player and manager (born 1934)
George Lee "Sparky" Anderson was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player, coach, and manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds from 1970 to 1978 and the American League's Detroit Tigers from 1979 to 1995. Anderson managed the Reds to two World Series championships in 1975 and 1976, then added a third title in 1984 with the Tigers. Anderson was the first manager to win the World Series in both leagues. His 2,194 career wins are the seventh-most for a manager in Major League history. In his 26-year career, Anderson had only five losing seasons as manager. His 1,331 wins with the Tigers are the most for any manager in team history. Anderson was named American League Manager of the Year in 1984 and 1987. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.
1924 Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré

French pianist, composer, and educator (born 1845)
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
1957 Shoghi Effendi

Shoghi Effendi

Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith (born 1897)
Shoghí Effendi (; Persian: شوقی افندی; 1896 or 1897 – 4 November 1957) was Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith from 1922 until his death in 1957. As the grandson and successor of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he was charged with guiding the development of the Baháʼí Faith, including the creation of its global administrative structure and the prosecution of Baháʼí teaching plans that oversaw the expansion of the religion to several new countries. As the authorized interpreter of the Baháʼí literature, he translated the primary written works of the Faith's central figures, providing unity of understanding of its essential teachings and safeguarding its followers from division. Upon his death in 1957, leadership passed to the Hands of the Cause, and in 1963 the Baháʼís of the world elected the Universal House of Justice, an institution which had been described and planned by Baháʼu’llah.
1856 Paul Delaroche

Paul Delaroche

French painter and educator (born 1797)
Hippolyte-Paul Delaroche was a French painter known for his depiction of scenes from English and French history. The emotions emphasised in Delaroche's paintings appeal to Romanticism while the detail of his work along with the deglorified portrayal of historic figures follow the trends of Academicism and Neoclassicism. Delaroche aimed to depict his subjects and history with pragmatic realism. He did not consider popular ideals and norms in his creations, but rather painted all his subjects in the same light whether they were historical figures like Marie-Antoinette, figures of Christianity, or people of his time like Napoleon Bonaparte. Delaroche was a leading pupil of Antoine-Jean Gros and later mentored a number of notable artists such as Thomas Couture, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Jean-François Millet.
1946 Rüdiger von der Goltz

Rüdiger von der Goltz

German general (born 1865)
Gustav Adolf Joachim Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz was a German army general during the First World War. He commanded the Baltic Sea Division, which intervened decisively in the Finnish Civil War in the spring of 1918, landing at Hanko and capturing Helsinki. After the armistice Goltz remained in Finland until December 1918, exercising significant political influence; the Quartermaster General of the White Army, Hannes Ignatius, described him as the "true regent of Finland". In 1919 he commanded German and Baltic German forces in Latvia, defeating the Bolsheviks and capturing Riga, before being recalled under Allied pressure in October 1919. After the war he was active in right-wing nationalist politics in Germany, participating in the Kapp Putsch and later the Harzburg Front.
1980 Elsie MacGill

Elsie MacGill

Canadian-American engineer and author (born 1905)
Elizabeth Muriel Gregory MacGill, known as the "Queen of the Hurricanes", was a Canadian engineer. She was chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F) in Fort William, Ontario during the Second World War. There she oversaw manufacturing of 1,451 Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force and the British Royal Air Force, then 835 Curtiss Helldivers for the U.S. Navy, which contributed greatly to the war effort and did much to make Canada a powerhouse of aircraft manufacturing. After her work at CC&F, she ran a successful aeronautical engineering consulting business. Between 1967 and 1970, she was a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, which published a report in 1970.
1485 Giovanni Mocenigo

Giovanni Mocenigo

Doge of Venice (born 1408)
Giovanni di Mocenigo was doge of Venice from 1478 to 1485. He fought at sea against the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and on land against Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara, from whom he recaptured Rovigo and the Polesine. He was interred in the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges. His dogaressa was Taddea Michiel, who was to be the last dogaressa to be crowned in Venice until Zilia Dandolo in 1557, almost a century later. His brother, Pietro Mocenigo, served as Doge before him, in 1474–1476.
1992 George Klein

George Klein

Canadian engineer, invented the motorized wheelchair (born 1904)
George Johann Klein, was a Canadian inventor who is widely regarded as the most productive inventor in Canada in the 20th century. Although he struggled as a high school student, he eventually graduated from the University of Toronto in Mechanical Engineering. His inventions include key contributions to the first electric wheelchairs for quadriplegics, a novel microsurgical suturing device, the ZEEP nuclear reactor which was the precursor to the CANDU reactor, the international system for classifying ground-cover snow, aircraft skis, the Weasel all-terrain vehicle, the STEM antenna for the space program, and the Canadarm.
1997 Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker

American novelist (born 1924)
Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's best-known work is his novel MASH (1968), based on his experiences as a wartime United States Army surgeon during the Korean War and written in collaboration with W. C. Heinz. It was used as the basis for the award-winning, critically and commercially successful movie M*A*S*H (1970) — and two years later, the acclaimed long running television series of the same title.
1847 Thiệu Trị

Thiệu Trị

Vietnamese emperor (born 1807)
Thiệu Trị, personal name Nguyễn Phúc Miên Tông or Nguyễn Phúc Tuyền, was the third emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty. He was the eldest son of Emperor Minh Mạng, and reigned from 14 February 1841 until his death on 4 November 1847. He died at the age of 41, according to some reports, of apoplexy. He was interred in the Xương Lăng tomb located in Huế, which was completed by his son and successor, Emperor Tự Đức.
1956 Freddie Dixon

Freddie Dixon

English motorcycle racer and race car driver (born 1892)
Frederick William Dixon was an English motorcycle racer and racing car driver. The designer of the motorcycle and banking sidecar system, he was also one of the few motorsport competitors to have been successful on two, three and four wheels. He was twice awarded the BRDC Gold Star for car racing. Dixon, who had the nickname "Flying Freddie", was born at Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England, one of eight children of John and Martha Dixon.
1411 Khalil Sultan of Timurid (born 1384)

Khalil Sultan of Timurid (born 1384)

Khalil Sultan was the Timurid ruler of Transoxiana from 18 February 1405 to 1409. He was a son of Miran Shah and a grandson of Timur. On Timur's death he took control of Samarkand and held it for four years, until he was displaced by his half-uncle Shah Rukh, who installed his own son Ulugh Beg in the city. Khalil Sultan was afterwards sent to Ray in central Iran, where he died.
1995 Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze

French philosopher and scholar (born 1925)
Gilles Louis René Deleuze was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death, wrote on a variety of subjects including ontology, social critique, film theory, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with long-term collaborator Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered to be his magnum opus.
1969 Carlos Marighella

Carlos Marighella

Brazilian author and activist (born 1911)
Carlos Marighella was a Brazilian politician, writer, and Marxist–Leninist militant. Critical of nonviolent resistance to the Brazilian military dictatorship, he founded the Ação Libertadora Nacional, a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group, which was responsible for a series of bank robberies and high-profile kidnappings. He was killed by police in 1969 in an ambush. Marighella's most famous contribution to revolutionary literature was the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla.
2013 Leonid Stolovich

Leonid Stolovich

Russian-Estonian philosopher and academic (born 1929)
Leonid Naumovich Stolovich was a Russian-Estonian philosopher, Doctor of Philosophy (1966) and professor (1967). Stolovich graduated from the Leningrad University in 1952, from 1953 on he worked at Tartu University, Estonia, from 1994 on as a professor emeritus. Above all, Stolovich studied esthetics: its history, theories of esthetics and axiology. He is the author of more than forty books and 400 publications in 20 languages.
2015 René Girard

René Girard

French-American historian, philosopher, and critic (born 1923)
René Noël Théophile Girard was a French academic best known for developing mimetic theory, which posits that human desire is fundamentally imitative, leading to rivalry, violence and the scapegoat mechanism as foundations of religion and culture. Holding academic appointments primarily in literature departments in the United States, his interdisciplinary work influenced fields ranging from theology to economics to psychology and cultural studies.

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