Louis Braille

popular name: Eddie Rickenbacker

date_of_death: July 23, 1973

age: 82

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker was called America’s Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the ‘luckiest man alive,’ however, since he survived — by his own count — 135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime. With 26 aerial victories, he was the United States' most successful fighter ace in the war and is considered to have received the most awards for valor by an American during the war. He was also a race car driver, an automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the long-time head of Eastern Air Lines. At one time he even owned and raced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Towards the end of his life as CEO of Eastern Air Lines, the company was the most profitable airline in the postwar era. However during the late 1950s Eastern Air Lines' fortunes declined, and Rickenbacker was forced out of his position as CEO in 1959. Rickenbacker also resigned as the chairman of the board in 1963, at the age of 73. After that, Captain and Mrs. Rickenbacker traveled extensively for a number of years and in the 1960s, Rickenbacker became a well-known speaker, sharing shared his vision for the future of technology and commerce. Upon his death, he was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

popular name: Leonardo da Vinci

date_of_death: May 2, 1452

age: 67

cause_of_death: Stroke

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Leonardo da Vinci (Italian for “Leonardo from Vinci”) was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495–98), Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. The world's most expensive painting to sell at auction is Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million on November 15, 2017 at Christie's auction house.

popular name: Rose Kennedy

date_of_death: January 22, 1995

age: 104

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was the mother of President John F. Kennedy and of two United States Senators, the long-suffering wife of a fabulously wealthy businessman-ambassador and the matriarch of a family whose political triumphs and personal tragedies she carried with quiet dignity until her dying days. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy will be best remembered as an American philanthropist, socialite, and matriarch of the Kennedy family. She was deeply embedded in the "lace curtain" Irish American community in Boston. Her father, John F. Fitzgerald, served in the Massachusetts State Senate (1892–1894), in the U.S. House of Representatives (1895–1901, 1919), and as Mayor of Boston (1906–1908, 1910–1914). Her husband, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., chaired the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (1934–1935) and the U.S. Maritime Commission (1937–1938), and served as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1938–1940). Their nine children included United States President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith.