Luther Ronzoni Vandross Jr.
Music
Age 54
April 20, 1951 - July 1, 2005
George Washington Memorial Park / Paramus / New Jersey / USA / North America
Luther Vandross was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. Throughout his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA-certified platinum albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide. After a short s...
Lafayette, The Great
Other Entertainers
Age 40
February 25, 1891 - May 9, 1911
Piershill Cemetery / Edinburgh / Scotland / Europe
Sigmund Neuberger (aka The Great Lafayette) was a master illusionist and one of the most highly paid entertainers in the world in his era. Sadly, on May 9, 1911 a devastating fire broke out at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburg...
McTell, Blind Willie
Music
Age 61
May 5, 1898 - August 19, 1959
Jones Grove Baptist Church / Thomson / Georgia / USA / North America
“Blind Willie” McTell was one of the great blues musicians of the 1920s and 1930s who continued to play through the 1950s. Displaying an extraordinary range on the twelve-string guitar, this Atlanta-based musician recorded mo...
Dalla, Lucio
Music
Age 68
March 4, 1943 - March 1, 2012
Cimitero Monumentale della Certosa di Bologna / Bologna BO / Italy / Europe
Lucio Dalla was a popular Italian singer-songwriter, musician and actor who belonged to a genre of Italian songwriters known as “cantautori,” whose lyrics gave voice to the aspirations and frustrations of a postwar generation ...
Thurmond, Nate
Sports
Age 74
July 25, 1941 - July 16, 2016
Lake View Cemetery / Cleveland / Ohio / USA / North America
Nathaniel Thurmond was an American basketball player who spent the majority of his 14-year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Golden State Warriors franchise where he played the center and power forward p...
Robeson, Paul
Historical Figure
Age 77
April 9, 1898 - January 23, 1976
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Paul Robeson was an American actor, singer, and activist. Some of his best know work on stage included The Emperor Jones, All God's Chillun Got Wings, and Othello. Robeson best known movies include Show Boat (1936), Sanders of the...
Gray, Judd
Crime and their Victims
Age 35
July 8, 1892 - January 12, 1928
Rosedale Cemetery / Montclair / New Jersey / USA / North America
Judd Gray was a corset salesman and Ruth Brown Snyder's lover and accomplice in the badly planned murder of her husband, Albert Snyder. The bored housewife from Queens, New York who, after 7 or so unsuccessful attempts, finally s...
Dixon, Willie
Music
Age 76
July 1, 1915 - January 29, 1992
Burr Oak Cemetery / Alsip / Illinois / USA / North America
Willie Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar. However he is best known as one of the most prolific songwriters of his ti...
Houdini, Harry
Other Entertainers
Age 52
March 24, 1974 - October 31, 1926
Machpelah Cemetery / Flushing / New York / USA / North America
Harry Houdini is most often remembered as an escape artist and a magician. He was also an actor, a pioneering aviator, an amateur historian, businessman and performance artist of such great success that his name will live in perpe...
True, Andrea
Music
Age 68
July 26, 1943 - November 7, 2011
Calvary Cemetery / Cleveland / Ohio / USA / North America
Andrea True was a porn star turned pop singer who recorded a classic hit of the disco era, "More, More, More,"
Ousley, King Curtis
Music
Age 37
February 7, 1934 - November 13, 1971
Pinelawn Memorial Park / Farmingdale / New York / USA / North America
Playing the saxophone when he was 12, King Curtis turned down college scholarships in order to join the Lionel Hampton Band and in 1952 moved to New York to become a session musician where he recorded Nat Adderley, Wynton Kelly, B...
Cocteau, Jean
Writers and Poets
Age 74
July 5, 1889 - October 11, 1963
Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples / Milly-la-Forêt / France / Europe
Jean Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic whose best known works include the novel Les Enfants Terribles, the stage plays La Voix Humaine, Les Parents Terribles and the fil...
Heublein, Gilbert F.
Business and Finance
Age 87
December 28, 1849 - March 21, 1937
Cedar Hill Cemetery / Hartford / Connecticut / USA / North America
German-born Gilbert F. Heublein was a prominent hotelier, restaurateur, food and liquor distributor in Hartford, Connecticut. While most people remember Gilbert for securing the license and distribution rights of A-1 Steak Sauce t...
Beckett, Samuel
Writers and Poets
Age 83
April 13, 1906 - December 22, 1989
Cimetière du Montparnasse / Paris / France / Europe
Samuel Beckett was an enigmatic and reclusive Irish playwright, poet and novelist who won a Nobel Prize for literature and who was best known for his 1952 drama, "Waiting for Godot". Beckett was considered one of the primary expon...
Rockefeller, John D. Sr.
Business and Finance
Age 97
July 8, 1839 - May 23, 1937
Lakeview Cemetery / Cleveland / Ohio / USA / North America
There’s rich, there’s wealthy, and then there’s John D. Rockefeller. Considered by many to be the most financially-prosperous individual in modern history with an estimated $900,000,000 bank balance (unadjusted for inflation...