Famous People Who Died in October a to z

River Phoenix was an Academy Award nominee and promising young actor who died at the young age of 23 from a drug overdose.

Édith Piaf, also known as “The Little Sparrow,” was a French singer who became an icon of France during World War II.

Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States, signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, prompting a bloody conflict over Kansas' slavery status.

Charles Pinckney was an American Founding Father, governor of South Carolina and signer of the U.S. Constitution.

American writer, critic and editor Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his tales and poems of horror and mystery, including The Raven.

American actor Vincent Price starred as the villain in the 1953 film House of Wax, which revitalized the horror genre, and was one of the first films shot in 3D.

Sir Anthony Quayle was a revered actor of stage and screen known for work that included Hamlet, Lawrence of Arabia and Anne of the Thousand Days.

British social anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown had a profound impact on British and American social anthropology through his version of Functionalism.

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English adventurer and writer who established a colony near Roanoke Island, now known as Virginia. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually put to death for treason.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish histologist and professor whose work led to the discovery of neurons.

Actor Christopher Reeve played Superman in the movie and its sequels. After a spinal cord injury, he started a foundation to help other paraplegics.

Max Reinhardt was one of the first theatrical directors to achieve international recognition. He helped found the annual Salzburg Festival.

Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play major league baseball, becoming Rookie of the Year in 1947, National League MVP in 1949 and a World Series champ in 1955.

American writer and producer Gene Rodenberry created the immensely influential Star Trek television series in the 1960s.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was one of German's most popular generals during World War II, and gained his enemies' respect with his victories as commander of the Afrika Korps. Implicated in a plot to overthrow Hitler, Rommel took his life in 1944.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, spurring the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation.

Alfred Rosenberg served as leader of the Nazi party during Hitler's imprisonment, wrote on German racial purity and was executed as a war criminal.

Nipsey Russell was best known for his comic rhymes and his appearances on TV game shows.

Physicist Ernest Rutherford was the central figure in the study of radioactivity who led the exploration of nuclear physics.

Comedian and pie-throwing television personality Soupy Sales was the popular host of such shows as Lunch with Soupy Sales and the Soupy Sales Show.

Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was part of the Viennese Sezession movement with works like "The Self Seer" (1911) and "Embrace" (1917).

John Scopes is best known as the Tennessee teacher found guilty of breaking the law for teaching evolution in his class room.

William Seward was a New York governor and U.S. senator before serving as secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

Poet Anne Sexton wrote the collections To Bedlam and Part Way Back, as well as Live or Die, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She committed suicide in 1974.

Anne Boleyn's successor, Queen Consort Jane Seymour, was Henry VIII’s third wife. She bore his first male heir, King Edward VI, before dying of complications.

Igor Sikorsky was a Russian aeronautics engineer and inventor known for crafting the first four-engine plane and the first working helicopter.

Ted Sorensen was an American presidential adviser and speech writer, best known for his contributions to President John F. Kennedy's most famous speeches.

Arlen Specter was Philadelphia District Attorney and was elected to the senate five times. He helped initiate the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

St. Francis of Assisi abandoned a life of luxury for a life devoted to Christianity after reportedly hearing the voice of God, who commanded him to rebuild the Christian Church and live in poverty. He is the patron saint for ecologists.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the woman's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality.

Stephen of Blois was king of England from 1135 to 1141. His reign was marked by a civil war known as The Anarchy.

Lucy Stone was a leading activist and pioneer of the abolition and women's rights movements.

Rex Stout was an American crime writer best known as the man who brought the world the fictional New York City detective Nero Wolfe.

Julius Streicher was a Nazi demagogue and politician who gained infamy as one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

Anne Sullivan was a teacher who, at age 21, taught Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind, how to communicate and read Braille.

Ed Sullivan was a journalist, producer and TV host known for his successful variety program The Ed Sullivan Show.

Dame Joan Sutherland is an Australian operatic soprano internationally acclaimed for her coloratura roles.

Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and satirist. Best known for writing Gulliver's Travels, he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.

Tecumseh, a Shawnee Native American chief, opposed white settlement in the United States during the early 1800s. He died in the War of 1812.

Chef Tell was one of the first culinary celebrities, giving cooking demonstrations on television beginning in the 1970s.

Studs Terkel was a Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian who compiled books of interviews with everyday people.

American singer Rosetta Tharpe is credited with popularizing gospel music among secular audiences during the 1930s and '40s.

French director François Truffaut established the New Wave movement in film. He won an Oscar for his 1972 film, Day for Night.

Julia Ward Howe was a women's rights activist, abolitionist and writer who penned the poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Daniel Webster was an American lawyer and Whig Part leader who served as a congressman and secretary of state.

Orson Welles wrote, directed and starred in the film Citizen Kane, among others, which remains one of the most influential films ever made.

Dan White assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist, in 1978.

Playwright August Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990).

Sarah Winnemucca was a member of the Native American Paiutes nation, an activist for her people and the first Native woman to publish in the English language.

An abused child who later earned her living as a sex worker, Aileen Wuornos was found guilty of killing six men and was later executed in a Florida prison.

Emmy-award winning actress Jane Wyatt is best known for her role as housewife and mother Margaret Anderson on the CBS television sitcom Father Knows Best.