Many famous people have died on their birthdays. Here are 18 of the most famous.
The famous Renaissance painter Raphael died on April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday.
William Shakespeare, aka “The Bard,” died on April 23, 1616, his 52nd birthday.
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Edna Mae Oliver, a popular early Hollywood character actress who was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role in the 1939 film The Mohawk Drum, died of an intestinal illness on her 59th birthday, November 9, 1942. (The same year Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for Gone with the Wind.)
Prohibition-era gangster George Francis Burns (aka Machine Gun Kelly) died of a heart attack in prison on July 18, 1954, his 59th birthday.
Early jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet died of lung cancer on May 14, 1959, his 62nd birthday.
Risberg, a Swede who was an early 20th century baseball player best known as one of the members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team accused of intentionally losing the World Series in return for money from gamblers, died on October 13, 1975, his 81st birthday.
Country singer Mel Street shot himself to death on his 43rd birthday, October 21, 1978.
Ingrid Bergman, a three-time Academy Award winner and one of the biggest stars in film history, died of breast cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday.
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Corrie ten Boom, who with her family helped Jews escape the Holocaust when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands during World War II, died of a stroke on April 15, 1983, her 91st birthday.
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Feminist activist Betty Friedan, co-founder of the National Organization for Women, died on February 4, 2006, her 85th birthday.
Congressman Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., son of four-term U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, died on August 17, 1988, on his 74th birthday.
Big-band-era singer Mike Douglas, who forged a second career as a daytime talk-show host in the 1960s and '70s and launched stars such as Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin, died on August 11, 2006, exactly 81 years after his birth.
Big band singer and actress Fran Warren passed away on March 4, 2013, her 87th birthday.
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Country singer Merle Haggard died on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday.
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ESPN college football writer Ed Aschoff died of pneumonia on December 24, 2019, his 34th birthday.
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Milton Glaser, the graphic designer who created the “I ❤ NY” logo and co-founded New York magazine, passed away on June 26, 2020, his 91st birthday.
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Frankie Lones, mother of R&B singer Keyshia Cole and star of the BET reality show “Frankie & Neffe,” passed away on July 18, 2021, what would have been her 61st birthday.
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Actor Max Julien, best known for playing a pimp named Goldie opposite Richard Pryor in the 1973 film “The Mack,” passed away on New Year's Day 2022, coincidentally his 88th birthday.
