Did you know about Jim Croce
During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write and record songs as well as perform concerts.
Notable Deaths on September 20
September 20 has 103 recorded notable deaths across history, from 855 to 2025. This focused page highlights 20 people with the strongest available profile context.
1973 — Jim Croce
American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1943)
By thisDay.info Editorial Team · — Wikipedia
Notable Deaths
103 source records
855 – 2025
Today in history
Major events on September 20
See what else happened on this day in history.
- 1217 Following the French defeat in the battle of Lincoln, prince Louis of France ratifies the treaty of Lambeth under which he abandons all claims to the English throne and returns to France in exchange of an indemnity payment. Source
- 1946 Six days after a referendum, King Christian X of Denmark annuls the declaration of independence of the Faroe Islands. Source
Did you know about Brian Clough
Brian Clough won the European Cup twice with Nottingham Forest and is one of four managers to have won the English league with two different clubs.
Did you know about Fiorello H. La Guardia
Fiorello Henry La Guardia was an American attorney and politician who served as the 100th mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1946.
Did you know about Polly Bergen
Polly Bergen won an Emmy Award in 1958 for her performance as Helen Morgan in Helen Morgan .
Did you know about Erich Hartmann
During his career, Hartmann was forced to crash-land his fighter 16 times after either mechanical failure or damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had shot down; he was never shot down by direct enemy action.
More major people who died on September 20
Notable people are ranked by substantive profile depth and public notability.
2004
Brian Clough
English footballer and manager (born 1935)
Brian Howard Clough was an English football player and manager, primarily known for his successes as a manager with Derby County and Nottingham Forest. He won the European Cup twice with Nottingham Forest and is one of four managers to have won the English league with two different clubs. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time. Charismatic, outspoken and often controversial, his achievements with Derby and Forest, two clubs with little prior history of success, are rated among the greatest in football history. His teams were also noted for playing attractive football and for their good sportsmanship. Despite applying several times and being a popular choice for the job, he was never appointed England manager and has been dubbed the "greatest manager England never had".
1947
Fiorello H. La Guardia
American lawyer and politician, 99th Mayor of New York City (born 1882)
Fiorello Henry La Guardia was an American attorney and politician who served as the 100th mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1946. He previously represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1923 to 1933. He was known for his irascible, energetic, and charismatic personality and diminutive, rotund stature. A member of the Republican Party, La Guardia was frequently cross-endorsed by parties other than his own, especially parties on the left under New York's electoral fusion laws. A panel of 69 scholars in 1993 ranked him as the best big city mayor in American history.
2014
Polly Bergen
American actress and singer (born 1930)
Polly Bergen was an American actress and singer. She won an Emmy Award in 1958 for her performance as Helen Morgan in Helen Morgan . For her stage work, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Carlotta Campion in Follies in 2001. Her film work included Cape Fear (1962) and The Caretakers (1963), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. She hosted her own weekly variety show for one season, was a regular panelist on the TV game show To Tell the Truth, and later in life had roles in The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives. She wrote three books on beauty, fashion, and charm. She is also the inspiration behind Mother Goose in The Land of Stories.
1993
Erich Hartmann
German soldier and pilot (born 1922)
Erich Alfred Hartmann, nicknamed Bubi, was a German fighter pilot during World War II and the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He flew 1,404 combat missions and participated in aerial combat on 825 separate occasions. He was credited with shooting down a total of 352 Allied aircraft: 345 Soviet and 7 American while serving with the Luftwaffe. During his career, Hartmann was forced to crash-land his fighter 16 times after either mechanical failure or damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had shot down; he was never shot down by direct enemy action.
2016
Curtis Hanson
American film director and screenwriter (born 1945)
Curtis Lee Hanson was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Born in Reno, Nevada, Hanson grew up in Los Angeles. After dropping out of high school, Hanson worked as photographer and editor for Cinema magazine. In the 1970s, Hanson participated as a writer for the horror film The Dunwich Horror (1970) and made his directorial debut the B-Movie Sweet Kill (1973), where he lacked creative control to fulfill his vision. While Hanson continued directing, he rose to prominence screenwriting critically acclaimed films such as The Silent Partner (1978), White Dog (1982), and Never Cry Wolf (1983).
1501
Thomas Grey
1st Marquess of Dorset, stepson of Edward IV of England (born 1457)
Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, Earl of Huntingdon, 7th Baron Ferrers of Groby, was an English nobleman, courtier and the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville and her first husband Sir John Grey of Groby. Her second marriage to King Edward IV made her Queen of England, thus elevating Grey's status at court and in the realm as the stepson of the King. Through his mother's endeavours, he made two materially advantageous marriages to wealthy heiresses, the King's niece Anne Holland and the King’s cousin, Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington. By the latter, he had 14 children.
1839
Sir Thomas Hardy
1st Baronet, English admiral (born 1769)
Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, 1st Baronet, GCB was a Royal Navy officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He took part in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in February 1797, the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 and the Battle of Copenhagen in April 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. Hardy served as flag captain to Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson, and commanded HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson was shot as he paced the decks with Hardy, and as he lay dying, Nelson's famous remark of "Kiss me, Hardy" was directed at him. Hardy went on to become First Naval Lord in November 1830 and in that capacity refused to become a Member of Parliament and encouraged the introduction of steam warships.
1898
Theodor Fontane
German author and poet (born 1819)
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet. He has been called “the greatest German realist novelist” and “clearly the greatest German novelist before Thomas Mann.” He published the first of his novels, for which he is best known today, only at age 58 after a career as a journalist. Many of his novels delve into topics that were more or less taboo for discussion in the polite society of Fontane's day, including marital infidelity, class differences, urban vs. rural differences, abandonment of children, and suicide. His novels sold well during his lifetime and several have been adapted for film or audio works.
1999
Robert Lebel
Canadian businessman (born 1905)
Robert Lebel or LeBel was a Canadian ice hockey administrator, who served as president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA), and the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Lebel founded a senior ice hockey league during World War II, and then became president of the Quebec Amateur Hockey Association (QAHA). He was a mayor of Chambly, Quebec, before joining the CAHA as an executive member and later its president. He was president of the IIHF during the early Cold War era, the last Canadian to lead the federation. He later founded the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for junior ice hockey players. He received the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, the IIHF Hall of Fame, three halls of fame in his native Quebec, and is the namesake of the Robert Lebel Trophy.
2011
Oscar Handlin
American historian and author (born 1915)
Oscar Handlin was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history, virtually inventing the field of immigration history in the 1950s. Handlin won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Uprooted (1951). Handlin's 1965 testimony before Congress played an important role in passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the discriminatory immigration quota system. According to historian James Grossman, "He reoriented the whole picture of the American story from the view that America was built on the spirit of the Wild West, to the idea that we are a nation of immigrants."
2023
Maddy Cusack
English football player (born 1995)
Madeleine Cusack was an English footballer who played as a midfielder. She began her career with local club Nottingham Forest before moving to Aston Villa, where she made her professional debut. She joined Birmingham City in 2017 and spent a year there before moving to Leicester City in 2018. She moved to Sheffield United in January 2019. She played for England U19s at international level. In January 2024, the Football Association opened a formal investigation into her death after reports of wrongdoing by her club manager. The inquest is due to restart on 7 December 2026.
1996
Paul Erdős
Hungarian-Polish mathematician and academic (born 1913)
Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. Erdős pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory. Much of his work centered on discrete mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems in the field. He championed and contributed to Ramsey theory, which studies the conditions in which order necessarily appears. Overall, his work leaned towards solving previously open problems, rather than developing or exploring new areas of mathematics.
1803
Robert Emmet
Irish republican (born 1780)
Robert Emmet was an Irish Republican, orator and rebel leader. Following the suppression of the United Irish uprising in 1798, he sought to organise a renewed attempt in Ireland to overthrow the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, and to break the recently enforced union with Great Britain. Emmet entertained, but ultimately abandoned, hopes of immediate French assistance and of coordination with radical militants in Great Britain. In Ireland, many of the surviving veterans of '98 hesitated to lend their support, and his rising in Dublin in 1803 proved abortive.
1906
Robert R. Hitt
American politician, 13th United States Assistant Secretary of State (born 1834)
Robert Roberts Hitt was an American diplomat and Republican politician from Illinois. He served briefly as assistant secretary of state in the short-lived administration of James A. Garfield but resigned alongside Secretary of State James G. Blaine after Garfield's assassination in 1881. He returned to Washington to represent Northwestern Illinois in the United States House of Representatives from 1882 to his death. After 1885, he was the senior Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which he chaired from 1889 to 1891 and 1895 until his death in 1906.
2013
James B. Vaught
American general (born 1926)
James Benjamin Vaught was a United States Army Lieutenant General who fought in the Korean War and the Vietnam War. In South Korea he served as a company commander in the 24th Infantry Division. In 1967, in South Vietnam, on his first tour he served as the commanding officer of the 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry. He also played a major role in numerous United States Special Forces operations. He was the overall commander of Operation Eagle Claw, the failed rescue mission of U.S. hostages in Iran in 1980.
2000
Gherman Titov
Russian general, pilot, and astronaut (born 1935)
Gherman Stepanovich Titov was a Soviet and Russian cosmonaut who, on 6 August 1961, became the second human to orbit the Earth, aboard Vostok 2, preceded by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. He was the fourth person in space, counting suborbital voyages of US astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. Born in Altai Krai in western Siberia, Titov was the first spacefarer born in Asia. At 25 years old at launch, he remains the youngest professional astronaut and the youngest person to fly in Earth orbit.
1984
Steve Goodman
American singer-songwriter and guitarist (born 1948)
Steven Benjamin Goodman was an American folk and country singer-songwriter from Chicago. He wrote the song "City of New Orleans", which was recorded by artists including Arlo Guthrie, John Denver, Willie Nelson, and Judy Collins. In 1985, Goodman received the Grammy songwriter award for best country song. Goodman co-wrote "You Never Even Call Me by My Name", which became the best-selling song of country musician David Allan Coe. A lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, Goodman wrote "Go Cubs Go". Goodman died of leukemia in September 1984.
2014
Takako Doi
Japanese scholar and politician (born 1928)
Takako Doi was a Japanese politician who served as leader of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) from 1986 to 1991 and later its successor the Social Democratic Party (SDP) from 1996 to 2003. As leader of the JSP, she became the first female leader of a major Japanese political party, and the country's first female opposition leader. Doi's leadership and the result of the 1989 Upper House elections are considered watershed moments for female political participation in Japan.
2024
Daniel J. Evans
American politician, 16th Governor of Washington (born 1925)
Daniel Jackson Evans was an American politician who served as a member of the Washington House of Representatives representing Washington's 43rd legislative district from 1957 to 1965, the 16th governor of Washington from 1965 to 1977, and later served in the United States Senate from 1983 to 1989. He was also the second president of Evergreen State College in Olympia from 1977 to 1983 before being in the U.S. Senate. He was a member of the Republican Party.