Ruffin, David
Music
Age 50
January 18, 1941 - June 1, 1991
Woodlawn Cemetery / Detroit / Michigan / USA / North America
David Ruffin is an American soul singer and musician most famous for his work as one of the original members and lead singers of the Temptations from 1964 - 1968. His vocals can be heard on the legendary Motown hits My Girl, Ain't...
Rickenbacker, Eddie
Historical Figure
Age 82
October 8, 1890 - July 23, 1973
Green Lawn Cemetery / Columbus / Ohio / USA / North America
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,’ howeve...
Brown, Les
Music
Age 88
March 14, 1912 - January 4, 2001
Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery / Los Angeles / California / USA / North America
Les Brown was an American musician, big band leader and composer best known for his nearly seven decades of work with the big band Les Brown and His Band of Renown (1938-2001). The Band of Renown began in the late 1930s, initially...
Rathbone, Basil
Show Business
Age 75
June 13, 1892 - July 21, 1967
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Basil Rathbone was an English actor who began his career in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor, and went on to appear in more than 70 films. He is best known for his role as Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood fil...
Berkeley, Busby
Show Business
Age 80
November 29, 1895 - March 14, 1976
Desert Memorial Park / Cathedral City / California / USA / North America
Busby Berkeley was an American film director and musical choreographer best known for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns and showgirls - lots and lots of showgirls. Flamboyant, ...
Jones, Brian
Music
Age 27
February 28, 1942 - July 3, 1969
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire / Cheltenham Cemetery and Crematorium / Europe
Long-time Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman said of Brian Jones, "He formed the band. He chose the members. He named the band. He chose the music we played. He got us gigs. ... he was very influential, very important, and then slo...
Warhol, Andy
Artists
Age 58
August 6, 1928 - February 22, 1987
St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery / Bethel Park / Pennsylvania / USA / North America
Andy Warhol was an American artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol wryly resp...
Upshaw, Berrien
The Odd and the Interesting
Age 47
March 10, 1901 - January 12, 1949
Oakwood Cemetery / Raleigh / North Carolina / USA / North America
Berrien "Red" Upshaw was a mean, nasty, ill-tempered loser and wife beater - and those were some of his good qualities. But he did have one quality that served him well - he was known as a suave and charming man to the ladies. His...
Hart, Mary E.
The Odd and the Interesting
Age 47
December 16, 1824 - October 15, 1872
Evergreen Cemetery / New Haven / Connecticut / USA / North America
As the story goes, at 48 years old Mary E. Hart, as she was known in life, “just drops to the floor” one day at midnight. Believing her dead, her family had her buried at Evergreen Cemetery the very next day. However, one nigh...
Bécaud , Gilbert
Music
Age 74
October 24, 1927 - December 18, 2001
Cimetière du Père Lachaise / Paris / France / Europe
Gilbert Bécaud was a French singer, composer, pianist and actor known as "Monsieur 100,000 Volts" for his energetic performances. His best-known hits are "Nathalie" and "Et maintenant", a 1961 release that became an English langu...
von Neumann, John
Science
Age 53
December 28, 1903 - February 8, 1957
North America
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. Von Neumann was regarded as perhaps the mathematician with the widest coverage of the subject in his time and was said ...
Gowdy, Curt
Sports
Age 86
July 31, 1919 - February 20, 2006
Mount Auburn Cemetery / Cambridge / Massachusetts / USA / North America
In the history of sports broadcasting, few figures have had the power to legitimize an event simply by attending it. For 40 years, Curt Gowdy was that figure. Over the course of a career that spanned five decades and all three bro...
Black, Karen
Show Business
Age 74
July 1, 1939 - August 8, 2013
Eternal Hills Memorial Park / Oceanside / California / USA / North America
Karen Black was an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She rose to prominence for her work in various studio and independent films in the 1970s, frequently portraying eccentric and offbeat characters, and estab...
Todd, Thelma
Show Business
Age 29
July 29, 1906 - December 16, 1935
Bellevue Cemetery / Lawrence / Massachusetts / USA / North America
Thelma Todd was one of early Hollywood's brightest stars — until she was found dead in 1935. Thelma Todd was a talented American actress and businesswoman who was often referred to by the nicknames "The Ice Cream Blonde" and "Ho...
Kennedy, Michael
Historical Figure
Age 39
February 27, 1958 - December 31, 1997
Holyhood Cemetery / Chestnut Hill / Massachusetts / USA / North America
Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was born into a very public family as Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy's middle of 11 children. He graduated from Harvard in 1980 and then went to law school at the University of Virginia, where he earned a law ...