Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Statesmanship & Statesmen

Rudolf Caracciola

Otto Wilhelm Rudolf Caracciola

Germany

1901 – 1959 (58 years old)

Three-time European Drivers' Champion for Mercedes-Benz and peerless 'Regenmeister' (Rainmaster) whose supreme wet-weather mastery and 1938 public road speed record of 432.7 km/h stood for nearly eighty years.

Lugano, Switzerland

3 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike

සොලමන් වෙස්ට් රිජ්වේ ඩයස් බණ්ඩාරනායක

British Ceylon

1899 – 1959 (60 years old)

Fourth Prime Minister of Ceylon who founded the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), championed the Sinhala Only Act of 1956, and removed British naval and air bases from the island.

Nittambuwa, Sri Lanka

3 Full Record →

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Raphael Lemkin

Rafał Lemkin

Belarus

24 June 1900 – 28 August 1959 (59 years old)

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish-Jewish international legal scholar and visionary crusader who coined the word 'genocide' in 1944 to define the systematic destruction of national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups. Single-handedly lobbying the fledgling United Nations, he drafted and secured the unanimous adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, forever altering global jurisprudence.

New York City, United States

9 Full Record →

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Eleanora Fagan (Billie Holiday)

Billie Holiday

United States

7 April 1915 – 17 July 1959 (44 years old)

Incomparable jazz vocalist whose conversational phrasing, subtle emotional timing, and fearless 1939 recording of Strange Fruit—the definitive protest anthem against Southern lynchings—transformed American vocal art.

New York City, United States

8 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

George Grosz

Georg Ehrenfried Groß

Germany

1893 – 1959 (65 years old)

German-American caricaturist and painter whose razor-sharp, satirical draughtsmanship savagely unmasked the militarism, corruption, and decadence of Weimar Germany.

West Berlin, Germany

3 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

6

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Carlos Saavedra Lamas

Argentina

1 November 1878 – 5 May 1959 (80 years old)

Carlos Saavedra Lamas was an Argentine jurist, diplomat, and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1932–1938) who drafted the historic 1933 Anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation. He mediated the end of the devastating Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay and served as President of the Assembly of the League of Nations, becoming the first Latin American recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

6 Full Record →

4

Colonel Amirouche

عميروش آيت حمودة

Algeria

1926 – 1959 (32 years old)

Fabled Algerian military commander whose peerless mountain warfare tactics and iron discipline in Wilaya III made him a legendary figure of the National Liberation Army.

Algiers, Algeria

4 Full Record →

Lester Young

Lester Willis Young

United States

1909 – 1959 (49 years old)

American jazz tenor saxophonist dubbed 'Pres', whose relaxed, airy tone, floating rhythmic phrasing, and hipster slang provided the foundational inspiration for cool jazz and bebop.

New York City, United States

3 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

Mike Hawthorn

John Michael Hawthorn

United Kingdom

1929 – 1959 (29 years old)

First British Formula One World Champion (1958) and 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, famed for racing in his trademark bow tie and flat cap, who tragically died in a road crash months after retiring.

Farnham (Surrey), United Kingdom

3 Full Record →

Sciences & Discovery

1,559

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Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli

Austria

1900 – 1958 (58 years old)

Brilliant theoretical physicist who formulated the Pauli exclusion principle and predicted the existence of the neutrino.

Zollikon, Zurich, Switzerland

1,559 Full Record →

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

Humanitarian & Peace

6

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

Robert Cecil

Great Britain

1864 – 1958 (94 years old)

Homme d'État et diplomate britannique, l'un des principaux architectes de la Société des Nations et lauréat du prix Nobel de la paix 1937.

Danehill, East Sussex, United Kingdom

6 Full Record →

Philosophy & Thought

G. E. Moore

George Edward Moore

United Kingdom

1873 – 1958 (84 years old)

British philosopher who co-founded analytic philosophy with Bertrand Russell, famous for Principia Ethica, the concept of the naturalistic fallacy, and his common sense defense of the external world.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

3 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

2,431

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Ralph Vaughan Williams

United Kingdom

1872 – 1958 (85 years old)

Dean of 20th-century British music, acclaimed for The Lark Ascending, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and nine symphonies.

London, United Kingdom

2,431 Full Record →

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Imre Nagy

Nagy Imre

Hungary

7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958 (62 years old)

Imre Nagy was a reform-minded Hungarian communist statesman who served as Prime Minister during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Siding courageously with the popular uprising, he abolished the one-party monopoly, established a multiparty coalition, and declared Hungary's neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Crushed by the Soviet military invasion, he refused to recant and was executed for treason in 1958.

Budapest, Hungary

15 Full Record →