Famous People Who Died in January a to z

British conspirator Guy Fawkes was executed in 1606 for attempting to blow up the Parliament building in what became known as the Gunpowder Plot.

Bobby Fischer is best known for being the first American grandmaster of chess.

Victor Fleming was a Hollywood director, notably helming Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

Composer Stephen Foster is lauded as the progenitor of American popular music, penning classics like “Oh! Susanna” and “Swanee River.”

Evelyn "Billie" Frechette fell in love and lived with bank robber John Dillinger. She was arrested and served two years in prison for harboring a criminal.

A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, American Robert Frost depicted realistic New England life through language and situations familiar to the common man.

Italian scientist and scholar Galileo made pioneering observations that laid the foundation for modern physics and astronomy.

Francis Galton was an English explorer and anthropologist best known for his research in eugenics and human intelligence. He was the first to study the effects of human selective mating.

Mahatmas Gandhi was the primary leader of India's independence movement and also the architect of a form of civil disobedience that would influence the world.

Actress Ava Gardner was a sultry beauty famous for playing femme fatale roles, and for her marriages to Frank Sinatra, Artie Shaw and Mickey Rooney.

Erroll Garner was a virtuosic and popular jazz pianist known for creating one of the best-selling albums in jazz, Concert by the Sea (1958).

Born in 1865, George V served as king of the United Kingdom from 1910 to 1936, during World War I. He was succeeded by his son, George VI, following his death.

Jean-Leon Gerome was a French painter, sculptor, and teacher. His best-known works are scenes inspired by his travels in Egypt.

As a member of the Bee Gees, Maurice Gibb scored numerous hits during the 1970s.

A jazz trumpeter and composer, Dizzy Gillespie played with Charlie Parker and developed the music known as "bebop." His best-known compositions include "Oop Bob Sh' Bam," "Groovin' High," "Salt Peanuts" and "A Night in Tunisia."

Samuel Goldwyn was a Hollywood film producer who laid the groundwork for the Paramount and MGM movie studios.

Actor, playwright and screenwriter Spalding Gray wrote and performed his own roles in Monster in a Box and Gray’s Anatomy; both became feature films.

The heavy set British actor Sydney Greenstreet made a name for himself as a character actor, taking on villainous, scheming roles, such as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon.

Gus Grissom transitioned from successful Air Force test pilot to NASA astronaut, despite a controversial landing in the Liberty Bell 7.

Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled crime fiction, including the novels The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man.

Playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun and was the first black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award.

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet who set his work--including The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd--in the semi-fictionalized county of Wessex.

Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield led his family in their notorious and bloody feud with the McCoys during the late 1800s along the Kentucky-West Virginia border.

Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th president of the United States and oversaw the end of the rebuilding efforts of the Reconstruction.

Henry VIII, king of England, was famously married six times and played a critical role in the English Reformation, turning his country into a Protestant nation.

Actress Audrey Hepburn, star of Breakfast at Tiffany's, remains one of Hollywood's greatest style icons and one of the world's most successful actresses.

20th century explorer and mountaineer Edmund Hillary was the first to reach the peak of Mt. Everest along with fellow climber Tenzing Norgay.

Conrad Hilton founded the Hilton Hotel empire and grew it into one of the largest private companies in the U.S., consisting of over 3600 hotels worldwide.

Hirohito is best known for being Japan's longest-reigning emperor. His reign lasted from 1926 until his death in 1989. He was a controversial leader who led Japan's military to surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945.

Howlin’ Wolf was a singer and musician famous for his Mississippi Delta style blues singing, guitar and harmonica playing, which he performed in Chicago clubs.

Victoriano Huerta was dictatorial president of Mexico, whose regime united disparate revolutionary forces in common opposition to him.

Hubert H. Humphrey was an assistant majority leader of the Senate who became the 38th U.S. vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson.

E. Howard Hunt was a CIA agent and PR consultant before he teamed up with G. Gordon Liddy to organize the Watergate break-in.

Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

20th century recording artist Mahalia Jackson, known as the Queen of Gospel, is revered as one of the greatest musical figures in U.S. history.

Etta James is a Grammy Award-winning singer known for hit songs like "I'd Rather Go Blind" and "At Last."

Lyndon B. Johnson was elected vice president of the U.S. in 1960 and became the 36th president in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Philip Johnson was an American architect best known for the design for his own home, the Glass House, in New Canaan, CT.

Barbara Jordan was a U.S. congressional representative from Texas and was the first African American congresswoman to come from the Deep South.

James Joyce was an Irish, modernist writer who wrote in a ground-breaking style that was known both for its complexity and explicit content.

William Joyce is best known for his involvement in the British Fascist Party during World War II and immigrating to Nazi Germany.

The matriarch of the Kennedy clan, Rose Kennedy saw three of her sons, Robert, John, and Edward, elected to public office and two of them killed by assassins.

Francis Scott Key was an attorney and poet who wrote the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner," the U.S. national anthem.

Coretta Scott King was an American civil rights activist and the wife of 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Rudyard Kipling was an English author, famous for his works: Just So Stories, The Jungle Book and "Gunga Din." He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

Ray Kroc was an American entrepreneur best known for expanding McDonald’s from a local chain to the world’s most profitable restaurant franchise operation.

The "godfather of fitness," Jack LaLanne, is known for his 1950s TV fitness program and for his endorsement of a power juicer in 2002.

Extraordinarily beautiful, Hedy Lamarr was a Austrian-American actress during MGM's "Golden Age."

James Larkin was an Irish labor organizer and activist who founded the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union.

Heath Ledger was an Academy Award-winning, Australian actor best known for his roles in Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight. He died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in 2008.

Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state.

Sinclair Lewis was a journalist and Nobel Prize winning novelist known for 20th century works like Main Street, Elmer Gantry and Babbitt.

Richard Loeb, of Leopold and Loeb, is best known for murdering 14-year old Bobby Franks with Nathan Leopold in an attempt to carry out the 'perfect crime'.

James Longstreet was the principle general of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, serving under Robert E. Lee.

Louis XII was king of France from 1498 and was noted for his disastrous Italian wars and his domestic popularity.

Louis XVI was the last king of France (1774–92) in the line of Bourbon monarchs preceding the French Revolution of 1789. He was executed for treason by guillotine in 1793.

Juliette Gordon Low is the founder of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.

Lucky Luciano was an Italian-born American mobster best known for engineering the structure of modern organized crime in the United States.

Sean MacBride was an Irish politician and the former chief of staff of the IRA

Kirkpatrick Macmillan is best known for inventing the first pedal bicycle.

Mary Mahoney became the first black woman to complete nurse's training in 1879.

Writer Katherine Mansfield is best known for creating the story collections Bliss and The Garden Party.

Thurgood Marshall was instrumental in ending legal segregation and became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.

High school teacher Christa McAuliffe was the first American civilian selected to go into space. She died in the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion in 1986.