Deaths
- 721 – Empress Gemmei of Japan (b. 661)
- 1170 – Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (assassinated) (b. 1118)
- 1563 – Sebastian Castellio, French theologian (b. 1515)
- 1634 – John Albert Vasa, Polish bishop (b. 1612)
- 1661 – Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant, French poet (b. 1594)
- 1689 – Thomas Sydenham, English physician (b. 1624)
- 1731 – Brook Taylor, English mathematician (b. 1685)
- 1737 – Joseph Saurin, French mathematician (b. 1659)
- 1785 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian poet (b. 1742)
- 1825 – Jacques-Louis David, French painter (b. 1748)
- 1891 – Leopold Kronecker, German mathematician (b. 1823)
- 1894 – Christina Rossetti, English poet (b. 1830)
- 1897 – William James Linton, American wood engraver and political reformer. (b. 1812)
- 1910 – Reginald Doherty, British tennis player (b. 1872)
- 1916 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk (b. 1869)
- 1924 – Carl Spitteler, Swiss writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1845)
- 1926 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian writer (b. 1875)
- 1929 – Wilhelm Maybach, German automobile designer (b. 1846)
- 1934 – Alma Tell, American stage and film actress (b. 1898)
- 1937 – Don Marquis, American author (b. 1878)
- 1941 – Tullio Levi-Civita, Italian mathematician (b. 1873)
- 1953 – Violet MacMillan, American Broadway theatre actress(b. 1887)
- 1959 – Robin Milford, British composer (b. 1903)
- 1960 – Eden Phillpotts, British writer (b. 1862)
- 1960 – Philippe Panneton, Quebec physician, diplomat and writer (b. 1895)
- 1967 – Paul Whiteman, American musician and conductor (b. 1890)
- 1968 – Austin Farrer, English theologian and philosopher (b. 1904)
- 1970 – Marie Menken, American experimental filmmaker and socialite (b. 1909)
- 1972 – Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos, Greek missionary (b. 1903)
- 1976 – Ivo Van Damme, Belgian athlete (b. 1954)
- 1980 – Tim Hardin, American musician (b. 1941)
- 1980 – Nadezhda Mandelstam, Russian writer (b. 1899)
- 1981 – Miroslav Krleža, Croatian writer (b. 1893)
- 1986 – Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
- 1986 – Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian director (b. 1932)
- 1988 – Mike Beuttler, British racing driver (b. 1940)
- 1993 – Frunzik Mkrtchyan, Soviet Armenian actor (b. 1930)
- 1995 – Lita Grey, American actress (b. 1908)
- 1996 – Mireille Hartuch, French singer and actress (b. 1906)
- 1998 – Jean-Claude Forest, writer and illustrator of comics (Barbarella) (b. 1930)
- 1999 – Leon Radzinowicz, British criminologist (b. 1906)
- 2001 – Takashi Asahina, Japanese conductor (b. 1908)
- 2001 – Cássia Eller, Brazilian musician (b. 1962)
- 2003 – Earl Hindman, American actor (b. 1942)
- 2003 – Dinsdale Landen, English actor (b. 1932)
- 2003 – Bob Monkhouse, English comedian and game show host (b. 1928)
- 2004 – Julius Axelrod, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1912)
- 2004 – Ken Burkhart, American baseball player (b. 1915)
- 2004 – Liddy Holloway, New Zealand actress (b. 1947)
- 2005 – Gerda Boyesen, Norwegian-born body psychotherapist (b. 1922)
- 2007 – Kevin Greening, British radio presenter (b. 1962)
- 2007 – Phil O'Donnell, Scottish footballer (b. 1972)
- 2008 – Freddie Hubbard, American jazz trumpet player (b. 1938)
- 2009 – "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, American former professional wrestler and football player (b. 1960)
- 2009 – Akmal Shaikh, British drug trafficker, executed by lethal injection in the People's Republic of China (b. 1956)
- 2010 – Bill Erwin, American actor (b. 1914)
- 2011 – Tyron Perez, Filipino actor and model (b. 1985)
Read more about this topic: December 29
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“This is the 184th Demonstration.
...
What we do is not beautiful
hurts no one makes no one desperate
we do not break the panes of safety glass
stretching between people on the street
and the deaths they hire.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)