Notable Deaths on September 16

September 16 has 108 recorded notable deaths across history, from 307 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.

Robert Redford

2025 — Robert Redford

American actor, producer and director (born 1936)

By · — Wikipedia

Notable Deaths 108 source records 307 – 2025

Major events on September 16

See what else happened on this day in history.

  1. 2021 Inspiration4, the first private orbital crewed spaceflight, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center. Source
  2. 1863 Robert College, in Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist. Source

Did you know about Robert Redford

Across a career spanning more than six decades, Redford earned widespread recognition and numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and five Golden Globe Awards, including a Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994.

Did you know about Maria Callas

Maria Callas was an American and Greek soprano, and one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century.

Did you know about Sheb Wooley

Wooley is also believed to be the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major record label during the 1940s.

Did you know about Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit is also credited with producing the first successful mercury-in-glass thermometers, which were more accurate than the spirit-filled thermometers of his time and of a generally superior design.

Did you know about Omar Mukhtar

Beginning in 1911, he organised and led the Libyan resistance movement against the Italian colonial empire during the First and Second Italo-Senussi Wars.

More major people who died on September 16

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

1977 Maria Callas

Maria Callas

Greek operatic soprano (born 1923)
Maria Callas was an American and Greek soprano, and one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Critics praised her bel canto technique, wide-ranging voice, and dramatic interpretations. Her repertoire ranged from classical opera seria to the bel canto operas of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini, and further to the works of Verdi and Puccini, and in her early career to the music dramas of Wagner. Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.
Wikipedia source
2003 Sheb Wooley

Sheb Wooley

American singer-songwriter (born 1921)
Shelby Fredrick Wooley was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He recorded a series of novelty songs, including the 1958 hit rock-and-roll comedy single "The Purple People Eater", and under the name Ben Colder, the country hit "Almost Persuaded No. 2". As an actor, he portrayed Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School and assistant coach in the 1986 film Hoosiers; Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon; Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales; and scout Pete Nolan in the television series Rawhide. Wooley is also believed to be the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major record label during the 1940s.
Wikipedia source
1736 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit

Polish-Dutch physicist and engineer, invented the thermometer (born 1686)
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. He was born in Poland to a family of German origin, although he spent much of his life in the Dutch Republic. Fahrenheit significantly improved the design and manufacture of thermometers; his were accurate and consistent enough that different observers, each with their own Fahrenheit thermometers, could reliably compare temperature measurements with each other. Fahrenheit is also credited with producing the first successful mercury-in-glass thermometers, which were more accurate than the spirit-filled thermometers of his time and of a generally superior design. The popularity of his thermometers also led to the widespread adoption of his Fahrenheit scale, with which they were provided.
Wikipedia source
1931 Omar Mukhtar

Omar Mukhtar

Libyan theorist and educator (born 1862)
ʿUmar al-Mukhtār Muḥammad bin Farḥāt al-Manifī, called The Lion of the Desert, known among the colonial Italians as Matari of the Mnifa, was a Libyan revolutionary and Imam who led the native resistance in Cyrenaica under the Senussids, against the Italian colonization of Libya. A teacher-turned-general, Omar was a prominent figure of the Senussi movement and is considered the national hero of Libya and a symbol of resistance in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Beginning in 1911, he organised and led the Libyan resistance movement against the Italian colonial empire during the First and Second Italo-Senussi Wars. Externally, he also participated in armed opposition against the French in Chad and the British in Egypt. After many attempts, the Italian Armed Forces managed to capture Al-Mukhtar near Slonta when he was wounded in battle by Libyan colonial troops, and hanged him in 1931 after he refused to surrender.
Wikipedia source
1965 Fred Quimby

Fred Quimby

American animator and producer (born 1886)
Frederick Clinton Quimby was an American animation producer best known for producing the Tom and Jerry cartoon series, for which he won seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Films. He was the executive in charge of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio, which included, among others and at various times, animators and directors Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Tex Avery, Michael Lah, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the creators of Tom and Jerry. MGM's cartoon characters included Droopy, Butch Dog, Barney Bear, and others, and they also released multiple one-shot cartoons.
Wikipedia source
1955 Leo Amery

Leo Amery

Indian-English journalist and politician, Secretary of State for the Colonies (born 1873)
Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery, also known as L. S. Amery, was a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. During his career, he was known for his interest in military preparedness, British India and the British Empire and for his opposition to appeasement. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies (1924–29), opposed the National Government of the 1930s and served as Secretary of State for India during the Second World War (1940–45). He was also a prolific writer whose output included a multi-volume history of the Second Boer War and several volumes of memoirs and diaries.
Wikipedia source
655 Pope Martin I

Pope Martin I

Pope Martin I, also known as Martin the Confessor, was the bishop of Rome from 21 July 649 to 653 or 654. He had served as Pope Theodore I's ambassador to Constantinople, and was elected to succeed him as pope. He was the only pope when Constantinople controlled the papacy whose election had not awaited imperial mandate. For his strong opposition to Monothelitism, Pope Martin I was arrested by Emperor Constans II, carried off to Constantinople, and ultimately banished to Cherson. He is considered a saint by both the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the last pope recognised as a martyr.
Wikipedia source
1792 Nguyễn Huệ

Nguyễn Huệ

Vietnamese emperor (born 1753)
Emperor Quang Trung or Nguyễn Huệ, also known as Nguyễn Quang Bình, or Hồ Thơm was the second emperor of the Tây Sơn dynasty, reigning from 1788 until 1792. He was also one of the most successful military commanders in Vietnam's history. Nguyễn Huệ and his brothers, Nguyễn Nhạc and Nguyễn Lữ, together known as the Tây Sơn brothers, were the leaders of the Tây Sơn rebellion. As rebels, they conquered Vietnam, overthrowing the imperial Later Lê dynasty and the two rival feudal houses of the Nguyễn in the south and the Trịnh in the north.
Wikipedia source
2018 James Burdette Thayer

James Burdette Thayer

American brigadier general (born 1920)
James Burdette Thayer was an American brigadier general who served on active duty during World War II. On May 4, 1945, Thayer and his platoon discovered and liberated 15,000 people held at a concentration camp near Wels, Austria. Following the war, he continued his service in the United States Army Reserve. In his civilian life, Thayer founded a successful business supply company in Beaverton, Oregon. He was later appointed Oregon's civilian aide to the Secretary of the Army and then re-activated as commander of the Oregon State Defense Force. The Oregon Military Museum at Camp Withycombe is named in his honor.
Wikipedia source
1976 Bertha Lutz

Bertha Lutz

Brazilian feminist and scientist (born 1894)
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Pan American feminist movement and human rights movement. She was instrumental in gaining women's suffrage in Brazil and represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, signing her name to the United Nations Charter and championing the inclusion of Article 8 in the Charter. In addition to her political work, she was a naturalist at the National Museum of Brazil, specializing in poison dart frogs. She has four frog species and two lizard species named after her.
Wikipedia source
1992 Millicent Fenwick

Millicent Fenwick

American journalist and politician (born 1910)
Millicent Vernon Fenwick was an American fashion model, Vogue magazine editor, socialite, Republican Party politician, and diplomat who represented New Jersey in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1983. She also served in the New Jersey General Assembly from 1970 to 1972 and as the first United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture from 1983 to 1987. She was famous for her energy and colorful enthusiasm and regarded as a political moderate or progressive within her party. She was outspoken in favor of civil rights and the women's movement.
Wikipedia source
2016 Edward Albee

Edward Albee

American director and playwright (born 1928)
Edward Franklin Albee III was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1994). Some critics have argued that some of his work constitutes an American variant of what Martin Esslin identified as and named the Theater of the Absurd. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
Wikipedia source
1919 Maria Nikiforova

Maria Nikiforova

Ukrainian anarchist partisan leader (born 1885)
Maria Hryhorivna Nikiforova was a Ukrainian anarchist partisan leader who led the Black Guards during the Ukrainian War of Independence, becoming widely renowned as an atamansha. A self-described terrorist from the age of 16, she was imprisoned for her activities in Russia before managing to escape to western Europe. With the outbreak of World War I, she took up the defencist line and joined the French Foreign Legion on the Macedonian front before returning to Ukraine with the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution.
Wikipedia source
1932 Ronald Ross

Ronald Ross

Indian-English physician and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1857)
Sir Ronald Ross was a British medical doctor. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it". His discovery of the malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of a mosquito in 1897 proved that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, and laid the foundation for the method of combating the disease.
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1973 Víctor Jara

Víctor Jara

Chilean singer-songwriter, teacher and theatre director (born 1932)
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and Communist political activist. He developed Chilean theater by directing a broad array of works, ranging from locally produced plays to world classics, as well as the experimental work of playwrights such as Ann Jellicoe. He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva canción chilena movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende.
Wikipedia source
1911 Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper

English-French mountaineer, explorer, and author (born 1840)
Edward Whymper FRSE was an English mountaineer, explorer, illustrator, and author best known for the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. Four members of his climbing party were killed during the descent. Whymper also made important first ascents on the Mont Blanc massif and in the Pennine Alps, Chimborazo in South America, and the Canadian Rockies. His exploration of Greenland contributed an important advance to Arctic exploration. Whymper wrote several books on mountaineering, including Scrambles Amongst the Alps.
Wikipedia source
1701 James II of England (born 1633)

James II of England (born 1633)

James II and VII was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII from February 1685 until he was deposed in the 1688 Glorious Revolution. The last Catholic monarch of England, Scotland, and Ireland, his reign was marked by conflicts over religion, absolutism and the divine right of kings; his deposition ended a century of political and civil strife by confirming the primacy of the English Parliament over the Crown.
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1845 Thomas Davis

Thomas Davis

Irish poet and publisher (born 1814)
Thomas Osborne Davis was an Irish writer; with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, a founding editor of The Nation, the weekly organ of what came to be known as the Young Ireland movement. While embracing the common cause of a representative, national government for Ireland, Davis took issue with the nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell by arguing for the common ("mixed") education of Catholics and Protestants and by advocating for Irish as the national language
Wikipedia source
1898 Ramón Emeterio Betances

Ramón Emeterio Betances

Puerto Rican surgeon and politician (born 1827)
Ramón Emeterio Betances y Alacán was a Puerto Rican independence leader, abolitionist and medical doctor. He led the nation's independence movement and was the primary instigator of the Grito de Lares revolt and designer of the Lares flag. Betances is considered to be the father of the Puerto Rican revolutionary movement and El Padre de la Patria . His charitable deeds for people in need, earned him the moniker of El Médico de los Pobres .
Wikipedia source

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