Famous People Who Died in April a to z

Charlotte Mason was an American socialite and philanthropist who was an important patron of Harlem Renaissance figures, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

Linda McCartney was a photographer who became widely known as the wife of Beatle Paul McCartney.

Recording artist and fashion designer Malcolm McLaren came to fame as manager of the Sex Pistols. Later, he recorded several albums of his own material.

John Mills was an award-winning actor, dancer and producer whose career spanned eight decades with works like Great Expectations and Ryan’s Daughter.

American radio and television news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow gave eyewitness reports of WWII for CBS and helped develop journalism for mass media.

Benito Mussolini created the Fascist Party in Italy in 1919, eventually making himself dictator prior to World War II. He was killed in 1945.

Luis Muñoz Marín was Puerto Rico's first governor, serving four terms.

Louise Nevelson was an iconoclast artist known for her monochromatic abstract expressionist sculptures. She rose to be an internationally known artist and worked into her 80s.

Richard Nixon was the 37th U.S. president and the only commander-in-chief to resign from his position, after the 1970s Watergate scandal.

Laura Nyro is best known for her musical career as a singer-songwriter, which began in the 1960s.

Milo O'Shea was an Irish actor known for starring on the BBC sitcom Me Mammy and in Staircase, Broadway's first serious depiction of homosexual men.

St. Bernadette of Lourdes was best known as a saint who received visions from the Virgin Mary in a cave near Lourdes. Pope Pius XI canonized her as a saint in 1933.

St. Catherine of Siena was a Dominican tertiary who worked to return the papacy from France to Italy. She is one of two patron saints of Italy.

Sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi's collage work combining surrealism with elements of popular culture and technology led him to be credited as the inventor of Pop Art.

Mississippi blues guitarist and singer Charley Patton is remembered as the "Father of the Delta Blues." He played with guitarist Willie Brown, and the Chatmons.

Pope John Paul II made history in 1978 by becoming the first non-Italian pope in more than four hundred years.

I.L. Peretz was a Jewish author who gained fame after writing folktales, ballads and plays about the ideals of Judaism.

Spanish expatriate Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, as well as the co-creator of Cubism.

Pol Pot was the political leader of Cambodia who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people under his reign.

American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter invented the Simplex camera for the Edison Company, and pioneered new techniques in films like The Great Train Robbery.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was a 20th century clergyman and U.S. representative who was a major force in establishing civil rights for African Americans.

Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas, ruled over six Powhatan tribes in the Richmond, Virginia, area during the early 17th century.

Canadian poet E.J. Pratt is the author of several collections of verse, including The Titans (1926) and Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940).

Jean Vander Ply was an American actress on radio, television and film. He is best known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone from the cartoon The Flintstones.

American journalist Ernie Pyle was one of the most famous war correspondents of World War II. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1944.

A leading figure of Italian High Renaissance classicism, Raphael is best known for his "Madonnas," including the Sistine Madonna, and for his large figure compositions in the Palace of the Vatican in Rome.

James Earl Ray is best known for assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968.

Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos received the Premio Cervantes prize in 1989 for books like I, the Supreme (1947).

Robert II was king of Scotland from 1371 to 1390, and is best known for his largely ineffectual reign.

Sugar Ray Robinson was an American professional boxer who is frequently cited as the greatest boxer in history.

Washington Roebling was an engineer and a notable victim of the Titanic disaster.

Ginger Rogers was a prolific Oscar-winning actress, singer and dancer who was revered for her cinematic footwork with Fred Astaire.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only U.S. president to be elected four times. He led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.

Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychoanalyst who created the controversial Rorschach Inkblot Test to measure social behavior.

Artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth became the king of California custom car culture in the 1950s and '60s with his Beatnik Bandit model and characters like Rat Fink.

Helena Rubinstein was a Polish entrepreneur best known for her global cosmetics empire.

Apostle Saint Mark was one of Christ's 70 disciples, one of the four evangelists and the traditional author of the second Gospel, The Book of Mark.

John Singer Sargent was an Italian-born American painter whose portraits of the wealthy and privileged provide an enduring image of Edwardian-age society.

Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th century intellectual, writer and activist who put forth pioneering ideas on existentialism.

Anna Sewell was the British author of the classic children's horse story Black Beauty.

William Shakespeare, often called the English national poet, is widely considered the greatest dramatist of all time.

Photographer Sam Shaw is remembered for his iconic images of such stars as Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. He also produced several films, including 1961's Paris Blues.

Sam Sheppard was an American physician best known as a homicide suspect in his wife’s murder.

American socialite Wallis Simpson became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Edward abdicated the throne to marry her, a period known as the Abdication Crisis.

Captain Edward J. Smith played a role in one of the most famous disasters at sea in history, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Dame Muriel Spark was a Scottish novelist, poet and literary critic best known for her novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Charlotta Spears Bass was a journalist and activist who, as editor of the California Eagle, championed African-American equality and freedom.

William Thomas Stead was a writer of journalistic pieces and ghost stories whose life came to an end on the Titanic.

American designer Gustav Stickley created the simple and functional Craftsman furniture that became highly popular in the early 20th century.

Irish writer Bram Stoker is best known for authoring the classic horror novel Dracula (1897).

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer best known as one of the most influential composers in the twentieth century for ballets such as The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.

Louis H. Sullivan was an architect dubbed the "father of modern American architecture."

Taksin was an 18th century Thai general and king.

Maria Tallchief was a revolutionary American ballerina who broke barriers for Native American women.

The first female prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figurehead of conservative ideology during her time in office.

Football player Pat Tillman enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002. He was killed in action in 2004, and the exact circumstances of his death are still in question.

William Monroe Trotter was a Harvard-educated journalist and activist who championed equal rights for African Americans.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, along with brother Dzhokhar, was named a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013. He was fatally shot by police officers four days later.

An adventurer and wily intellectual, Mark Twain wrote the classic American novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Sarah Vaughan was an American jazz vocalist known for her impressive three octave range. She was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1990.