List: 1996 deaths

by likeorhate

•  Babrak Karmal

  Babrak Karmal (6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was the third President of Afghanistan (1979 - 1986) during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is the best known of the Marxist leadership. Having been restored to power with Soviet support, he was unable to consolidate his power and, in 1986, he was replaced by Dr. Mohammad Najibullah. He left Afghanistan for Moscow, where he died in 1996.

  

  27.9%
  

  20.9%
  

  51.2%
  
•  Brownie McGhee

  Walter Brown ("Brownie") McGhee (November 30, 1915 - February 16, 1996) was a blues singer and guitarist best known for his collaborations with the harmonica player Sonny Terry.

  

  26.9%
  

  30.3%
  

  42.9%
  
•  Carl Sagan

  Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series ', which has been seen by more than 500 million people in over 60 countries.

  

  34.1%
  

  31.8%
  

  34.1%
  
•  Stephen Donaldson (activist)

  Stephen Donaldson (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996), born Robert Anthony Martin, Jr and also known by the pseudonym Donny the Punk, was an American bisexual-identified LGBT political activist. He is best known for his pioneering activism in gay liberation and prison reform, but also for his writing about punk rock and subculture.

  

  30.9%
  

  34.5%
  

  34.5%
  
•  Gene Kelly

  Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912 – February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer. A major exponent of 20th century filmed dance, Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.

  

  30.9%
  

  27.9%
  

  41.2%
  
•  Kiyoshi Atsumi

  Kiyoshi Atsumi (渥美 清 Atsumi Kiyoshi), born Yasuo Tadokoro (田所康雄 Tadokoro Yasuo, 10 March 1928 in Tokyo—4 August 1996 in Tokyo), was a Japanese film actor. He started his career in 1951 as a comedian at a strip-show theater in Asakusa. After two years of fighting pulmonary tuberculosis, he made his debut on TV in 1956 and on film in 1957. His vivid performance of a lovable, innocent man in a film “Dear Mr. Emperor” (Haikei Tenno-Heika-Sama) in 1963 established his reputation as an actor.

  

  0.0%
  

  75.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  Masaki Kobayashi

  Masaki Kobayashi (小林 正樹, Kobayashi Masaaki, February 14, 1916–October 4, 1996) was a Japanese director. Among his films is Kwaidan (1965), a collection of four ghost stories drawn from by Lafcadio Hearn, each of which has a surprise ending. Kobayashi also directed The Human Condition, a trilogy on the effects of World War II on a Japanese pacifist and socialist. The total length of the films is over 9 hours. Other notable films include Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967).

  

  44.8%
  

  31.0%
  

  24.1%
  
•  Mohammad Najibullah

  Najibullah, originally just Najib, (August 6, 1947 – September 27, 1996) was the fourth and last President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He is also considered the second President of the Republic of Afghanistan.

  

  42.9%
  

  0.0%
  

  57.1%
  
•  Michael Bentine

  Michael Bentine CBE (26 January 1922 – 26 November 1996) was a comedian, comic actor, and founding member of The Goons.

  

  46.2%
  

  15.4%
  

  38.5%
  
•  Seymour Cray

  Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996) was an U.S. electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded the company Cray Research which would build many of these machines. Called "the father of supercomputing," Cray has been credited with creating the supercomputer industry. Joel Birnbaum, then CTO of HP, said of him:

  

  12.5%
  

  50.0%
  

  37.5%
  
•  Thomas Samuel Kuhn

  Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the sociology and philosophy of science.

  

  30.0%
  

  0.0%
  

  70.0%
  
•  Timothy Leary

  Dr. Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

  

  10.0%
  

  30.0%
  

  60.0%
  
•  Tupac Shakur

  Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), known by his stage names 2Pac (or simply Pac) and Makaveli, was an American rapper. He has sold 75 million albums to date and is one of the best-selling music artists in the world. In addition to his status as a top-selling recording artist, Shakur was a promising actor and a social activist. Most of Shakur's songs are about growing up amid violence and hardship in ghettos, racism, problems in society and conflicts with other rappers.

  

  40.9%
  

  19.7%
  

  39.4%
  
•  François Mitterrand

  François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) served as the President of France from 1981 to 1995, elected as representative of the Socialist Party (PS). First elected during the May 1981 presidential election, he became the first socialist President of the Fifth Republic and the first left-wing head of state since 1957. He is to date the only member of the Socialist Party to be elected as the President of France.

  

  37.5%
  

  20.8%
  

  41.7%
  
•  Spiro Agnew

  Spiro Theodore Agnew (November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th Vice President of the United States, serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland. He was also the first Greek American to hold these offices. During his fifth year as Vice President, in the late summer of 1973, Agnew was under investigation by the United States Attorney’s office in Baltimore, Maryland, on charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy.

  

  16.7%
  

  66.7%
  

  16.7%
  
•  Frank Whittle

  Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) officer. Sharing credit with Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain for independently inventing the jet engine, he is hailed as a father of jet propulsion. From an early age Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for engineering and an interest in flying.

  

  60.0%
  

  20.0%
  

  20.0%
  
•  William W. Tunnicliffe

  William W. Tunnicliffe (1922? - September 12, 1996) is credited by Charles Goldfarb as being the first person (1967) to articulate the idea of separating the definition of formatting from the structure of content in electronic documents. In September 1967, during a meeting at the Canadian Government Printing Office, Tunnicliffe gave a presentation on the separation of information content of documents from their format.

  

  33.3%
  

  0.0%
  

  66.7%
  
•  William Vickrey

  William Spencer Vickrey (21 June 1914 – 11 October 1996) was a Canadian professor of economics and Nobel Laureate. Vickrey was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with James Mirrlees for their research into the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. The announcement of the prize was made just three days prior to his death; his Columbia University economics department colleague C. Lowell Harriss accepted the prize on his posthumous behalf.

  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Ella Fitzgerald

  Ella Jane Fitzgerald ' (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

  

  20.0%
  

  40.0%
  

  40.0%
  
•  James Rouse

  James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 - April 9, 1996), founder of The Rouse Company, was a pioneering American real estate developer, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist. He is the maternal grandfather of actor Edward Norton.

  

  57.1%
  

  42.9%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Mohamed Farrah Aidid

  General Mohamed Farrah Aidid (December 15, 1934 – August 2, 1996) was a controversial Somali military leader, often described as a warlord. He claimed to be the President of Somalia from 1995 to 1996. He was the chairman of United Somali Congress (USC) and later Somali National Alliance (SNA), who drove Mohamed Siad Barre’s dictatorial regime from the capital, Mogadishu and eventually from Somalia altogether.

  

  66.7%
  

  0.0%
  

  33.3%
  
•  Jon Pertwee

  John Devon Roland Pertwee (7 July 1919 – 20 May 1996), known as Jon Pertwee, was an English actor. Pertwee is best known for his role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, where he played the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge. He is also well-known for his 18-year stint on BBC Radio as Chief Petty Officer Pertwee in The Navy Lark.

  

  50.0%
  

  50.0%
  

  0.0%
  
•  Willie Rushton

  William George Rushton, commonly known as Willie Rushton was an English cartoonist, satirist, comedian, actor and performer who co-founded the Private Eye satirical magazine.

  

  0.0%
  

  75.0%
  

  25.0%
  
•  Bill Monroe

  William Smith Monroe (September 13, 1911–September 9, 1996) was an American musician who helped develop the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. He is often referred to as The Father of Bluegrass.

  

  20.0%
  

  40.0%
  

  40.0%
  
•  Claudette Colbert

  Claudette Colbert (September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996) was a French-born American stage and film actress. Born in Saint-Mandé, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures and later, as a freelance performer, became one of the highest paid entertainers in American cinema.

  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%
  

  33.3%