Famous People Who Died in August a to z

Signed to a recording contract at the age of 12, Aaliyah became an overnight R&B sensation. At the height of her stardom, a fatal plane crash ended her life.

Red Adair was an American oil well firefighter best known for completing over 1,000 jobs internationally.

Ira Aldridge was a 19th century African-American actor who became a renowned interpreter of Shakespearean tragedy on the European stage.

One of America's best-loved comediennes, Gracie Allen developed the Burns and Allen weekly radio program with husband George Burns.

Kay Amin was the fourth wife of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and was mysteriously and brutally murdered.

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author best known for writing children's stories including "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling."

Marcus Antonius is best known as the Roman general who was a lover of Cleopatra. The two committed suicde after their defeat by Octavian.

Corazon Aquino was the 11th president (and first female president) of the Philippines. She restored democracy after the long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

James Armistead was an enslaved African American, best known for his work as a spy during the American Revolution.

Astronaut, military pilot, and educator, Neil Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, by becoming the first man to walk on the moon.

Brooke Astor was a philanthropist who served on the boards of many cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tex Avery was an American cartoonist best known for creating characters such as Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Droopy and Chilly Willy.

Roger Baldwin was an American civil rights activist who co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a Neo-Expressionist painter in the 1980s. He is best known for his primitive style and his collaboration with pop artist Andy Warhol.

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet best known for his controversial volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

Henri Becquerel was a French physicist who discovered radioactivity, an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

Alexander Graham Bell was one of the primary inventors of the telephone, did important work in communication for the deaf and held more than 18 patents.

Ingrid Bergman was one of the most popular motion-picture actresses in the United States from the 1940s until her death in 1982. She was also an international star across Europe.

William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.

Hieronymus Bosch was a European painter of the late Middle Ages. His two most famous works are "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "The Temptation of St. Anthony."

Subhas Chandra Bose was a 20th century organizational and military leader who fought for India’s freedom from British rule.

Charles Boyer was an Oscar-nominated French actor of stage, film and television with a career that spanned almost six decades.

Georges Braque, the French painter who invented Cubism, with Pablo Picasso, and became the first living artist to be exhibited at The Louvre in 1961.

American film Charles Bronson is best known for playing tough-guy, vigilante roles in films like The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Death Wish (1974).

Ron Brown was a lawyer and Democratic politician who served as commerce secretary under the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Lenny Bruce was an American stand-up comic and satirist who became a target for prosecutors and a poster boy for freedom of speech.

Macfarlane Burnet was an Australian physician and researcher who made groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of immunology and virology.

William S. Burroughs was a Beat Generation writer known for his startling, nontraditional accounts of drug culture, most famously in the book Naked Lunch.

Richard Burton was a highly regarded Welsh actor of stage and screen. He earned seven Oscar nominations and was married twice to actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Susan Butcher was a champion American dog musher and four-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Helen Churchill Candee was a writer and a survivor of the RMS Titanic disaster.

Calamity Jane was a woman of the Wild West who was respected for her talent with a gun and kindness toward others.

Truman Capote was a trailblazing writer of Southern descent known for the works Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, among others.

Andrew Carnegie, a self-made steel tycoon and one of the wealthiest 19th century U.S. businessmen, donated towards the expansion of the New York Public Library.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer whose humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form.

Lon Chaney was an actor known for his use of makeup to great effect in such films as The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Broadway playwright Pddy Chayefsky picked up two Academy Awards for his films The Hospital and Network.

TV chef and author Julia Child adapted complex French cooking for everyday Americans, with her groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Alice Childress is an African-American playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She is also the author of several young adult novels.

Short-story writer and novelist Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, a novel about a young mother who abandons her family, initially condemned but later acclaimed.

Jacqueline Cochran is a pioneering 20th century pilot who was an advocate for female aviators during WWII and the first woman to break the sound barrier.

Michael Collins was a hero of the Irish struggle for independence, who directed guerrilla warfare during the intensification of the Anglo-Irish War.

English novelist and short-story writer Joseph Conrad’s works include the novels Lord Jim, Nostromo and The Secret Agent and the story “Heart of Darkness”.

Robin Cook was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Livingston from 1983 until his death.

Le Corbusier was a Swiss-born French architect who belonged to the first generation of the so-called International school of architecture.

Idi Amin was a Ugandan president best known for his brutal regime and crimes against humanity while in power from 1971-1979.

Kim Dae-jung was president of South Korea from 1998 to 2003. He arranged an historic summit with North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il.

Charles Coulomb was a French engineer and physicist who made pioneering discoveries in his field and came up with the theory called Coulomb’s Law.

Cosimo de' Medici was the "Elder" and start of the Medici dynasty that ruled Florence (Italy) from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance, and after.

Eugène Delacroix, considered one of the greatest French Romantic painters, was influential in the development of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting.

French bicyclist Henri Desgrange is best known for organizing the first Tour de France.

Art critic Sergei Diaghilev started the artistic collaboration the Ballet Russes, which toured worldwide and was a forerunner of the Royal Ballet.

First noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx's game show in 1955, Phyllis Diller went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author.

W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most important African-American activists during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and supported Pan-Africanism.

Paul Ehrlich is a German Jewish medical scientist best known for discovering the first effective treatment for syphilis.

Dodi Fayed was an Egyptian heir and film producer who dated and was dled with Princess Diana of Wales in a Paris car crash.

Roger Fenton was a British photographer best known for his 1855 documentation of the ravages of the war in Crimea.

Ibrahim Ferrer was a singer and Cuban musician who performed as part of the Grammy Award-winning Buena Vista Social Club.

Ian Fleming is a 20th-century novelist known for inventing popular spy character James Bond.

Henry Fonda was an award-winning American actor best known for him film roles in The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and On Golden Pond (1981).

Actor Glenn Ford rose to fame after serving in World War II, thanks to several film roles in the '30s and beyond.

An Academy Award-winning director, John Ford is considered to be one of the best filmmakers of all time. He is best known for directing Westerns.

Empress Frederick was the oldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of England. She married the future German Emperor Frederick III in 1858, thusly becoming empress of Germany and queen of Prussia.

Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great, was Prussia's king from 1740 to 1786. By winning wars and expanding territories, he established Prussia as a strong military power.

Thomas Gainsborough was an 18th century English painter known for his suggestive portraiture and landscapes.

Federico García Lorca is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and dramatists. One of his most successful poetry collections was The Gypsy Ballads.

A pioneer in early filmmaking, Léon Gaumont saw the possibilities of what moving pictures could be and making film equipment unavailable for the masses, establishing what is now the oldest surviving film company.

Lyricist Ira Gershwin wrote for popular musicals like Porgy and Bess in the 1920s and '30s. He was in the first writing team to win a Pulitzer for songwriting.

Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman penned the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper." A feminist, she encouraged women to gain economic independence.

Leon Golub was an American painter who was both horrified and inspired by the Vietnam War.