2015: Leonard Nimoy
2016: Prince Rogers Nelson
Deaths so far (listing 1850-2016 only):
1850: Zachary Taylor, Edward Baker Lincoln
1851: Louis Daguerre, James Fenimore Cooper
1852: Louis Braille, Henry Clay
1853: Christian Doppler, William R. King
1854: Nicolas Bravo, Georg Ohm
1855: Nicholas I of Russia, Charlotte Bronte
1856: William Palmer, Said bin Sultan
1857: Parley P. Pratt, Agustina de Aragon
1858: Dred Scott
1859: Alexis de Tocqueville, George Bush
1860: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Cochrane
1861: Prince Albert, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1862: John Tyler, Uriah Levy
1863: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
1864: John Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne
1865: Abraham Lincoln
1866: George Everest
1867: Emperor Maximilian
1868: Leon Foucault, Gioachino Rossini
1869: Franklin Pierce
1870: Charles Dickens
1871: Robert Houdin, Tad Lincoln
1872: Samuel F.B. Morse, Benito Juarez
1873: Napoleon III, Edward Bulwer-Lytton
1874: Chang and Eng Bunker
1875: Charles Wheatstone, Kicking Bird aka Tene-angop’te
1876: Harriet Martineau, George Armstrong Custer
1877: Crazy Horse, Brigham Young
1878: Pope Pius IX, William M. “Boss” Tweed
1879: James Clerk Maxwell, William Barber
1880: Gustave Flaubert
1881: James A. Garfield
1882: Jesse James, Charles Darwin
1883: Karl Marx, Sojourner Truth
1884: Gregor Mendel
1885: Victor Hugo, Jumbo
1886: Emily Dickinson
1887: Jenny Lind, Delphine von Schauroth
1888: Wilhelm I and Friedrich III, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, & Mary Jane Kelly
1889: Jefferson Davis, Prince Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph and Baroness Marie Vetsera
1890: Vincent Van Gogh, Joseph Merrick
1891: P.T. Barnum, Helena Blavatsky
1892: Walt Whitman, Louis Vuitton
1893: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Rutherford Hayes
1894: Robert Louis Stevenson, Allan Pinkerton
1895: Louis Pasteur, Frederick Douglass
1896: H.H. Holmes, Clara Schumann
1897: Johannes Brahms, Friedrich Franz III
1898: Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll, Sarah Edmonds
1899: Horatio Alger Jr., Martha Place
1900: Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Seymour Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan)
1901: William McKinley, Queen Victoria, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Benjamin Harrison
1902: Emile Zola, Cecil John Rhodes, Charles Lewis Tiffany
1903: Judge Roy Bean, Calamity Jane, Topsy the elephant
1904: Anton Chekhov, Raden Adjeng Kartini, Georges Gilles de la Tourette
1905: Jules Verne, Lew Wallace, Virgil Earp
1906: Princess Alexandrine of Prussia, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Susan B. Anthony
1907: Ida McKinley, Dmitri Mendeleev, Edvard Grieg
1908: Grover Cleveland, Carlos I, Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov
1909: Leopold II, Geronimo, Mary MacKillop
1910: Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, O. Henry
1911: Billy O’Brien, Gustav Mahler, Thursday October Christian II
1912: Robert Falcon Scott and party, Emperor Meiji, Clara Barton
1913: Francisco Maduro, J.P Morgan, Harriet Tubman
1914: Ambrose Bierce, Franz Ferdinand, John Muir
1915: Dikran Chokurian, Albert Spalding, W.G. Grace
1916: Jack London, Rasputin, Hetty Green
1917: Mata Hari, Liliʻuokalani, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
1918: John McCrae, Nicholas II and his immediate family, Charles W. Fairbanks
1919: Teddy Roosevelt, Henry John Heinz, L. Frank Baum
1920: Horace Elgin Dodge and Gaston Chevrolet, Charles Stephens, George Gipp
1921: Edward Douglass White and Annie Edson Taylor, Pinckney Pinchback, Charles Camille Saint-Saëns
1922: Lothar von Richthofen, Alexander Graham Bell, Pope Benedict XV
1923: Pancho Villa, Warren Harding, Gustave Eiffel
1924: Vladimir Lenin, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, Bobby Franks
1925: William Jennings Bryan, Sun Yat-sen, Erik Satie, Rudolph Valentino
1926: Harry Houdini, Claude Monet
1927: Isadora Duncan, Lizzie Borden, Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti
1928: Roald Amundsen, Arnold Rothstein, Charles Rennie Mackintosh
1929: Isidor Fink, J. J. Riordan, Mahidol Adulyadej
1930: William Howard Taft, Arthur Conan Doyle, D.H. Lawrence
1931: Thomas Alva Edison, Peter Kurten, Anna Pavlova
1932: Peg Entwistle, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., John Philip Sousa
1933: Calvin Coolidge, Giuseppe Zangara, Roscoe Arbuckle
1934: Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow, Winsor McCay, Marie Skłodowska-Curie
1935: T. E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, Arizona Donnie “Ma” Barker, Will Rogers
1936: Robert E. Howard, Albert Fish, Ivan Pavlov
1937: Jean Harlow, J. Bruce Ismay, Guglielmo Marconi
1938: Thomas Wolfe, Clarence Darrow, “Typhoid” Mary Mallon
1939: Douglas Fairbanks, Amelia Earhart, Sigmund Freud
1940: Leon Trotsky, Neville Chamberlain, F. Scott Fitzgerald
1941: Virginia Woolf, Annie Jump Cannon, Lord Robert Baden-Powell
1942: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, 184 residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia
1943: Nikola Tesla, Sophie Scholl, Alexander Woollcott
1944: Glenn Miller, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Florence Foster Jenkins
1945: Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Patton
1946: H.G. Wells, Booth Tarkington, Hermann Goering and 10 others convicted at the Nuremburg Trials
1947: Bugsy Siegel, Willa Cather, Al Capone
1948: Mahatma Gandhi, Babe Ruth, D. W. Griffith
1949: Margaret Mitchell, Frank Morgan, Charles Ponzi, Richard Strauss
1950: George Orwell (x3)
1951: Shoeless Joe Jackson, Fanny Brice, Maria Montez
1952: Curly Howard, King George VI, Eva Perón
1953: Edwin Hubble, Hank Williams, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
1954: Alan Turing, Enrico Fermi, Collette (novelist)
1955: James Dean, Emmett Till (x2)
1956: Bela Lugosi, A.A. Milne, Jackson Pollock
1957: Diego Rivera, Humphrey Bogart, and Joseph McCarthy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Oliver Hardy
1958: Julia Lennon, Wolfgang Pauli, W.C. Handy
1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens & J.P. “The Big Bopper” Henderson; John Foster Dulles, Lou Costello
1960: Albert Camus, Emily Post, Clark Gable
1961: Patrice Lubumba, Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber
1962: William Faulkner, Vita Sackville-West, Lucky Luciano
1963: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Patsy Cline, Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis, Sylvia Plath
1964: General Douglas MacArthur, Glenn “Fireball” Roberts, Rudy Lewis, Catherine “Kitty” Genovese
1965: Nat King Cole, Frederick Fleet, Malcolm X
1966: Charles Whitman, Buster Keaton, Lenny Bruce
1967: Edward White, Gus Grissom & Roger Chaffee; Woody Guthrie, John Coltrane
1968: Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy
1969: Sharon Tate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Judy Garland
1970: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Vera Brittain
1971: Jim Morrison; Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev & Vladislav Volkov; James Cash “J.C.” Penney, Jr.
1972: Harry S Truman, J. Edgar Hoover, King Edward VIII
1973: Pablo Picasso, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jeannette Rankin
1974: Agnes Moorehead, Bud Abbott, “Mama Cass” Elliot
1975: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Jimmy Hoffa, Aristotle Onassis, Pete Ham
1976: Mao Tse Tung, Sal Mineo, Howard Hughes
1977: Elvis Aaron Presley, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford
1978: Hubert Humphrey, Terry Kath, Nancy Spungen
1979: Robert Williams, John Wayne, Emmett Kelly
1980: George Pal, John Lennon, Alfred Hitchcock
1981: Joe Louis, Richard Boone, Bill Haley
1982: Grace Kelly, Henry Fonda, John Belushi, 618 people in the US from AIDS
1983: Muddy Waters, Meyer Lansky, Karen Carpenter
1984: Ethel Merman, Michel Foucault, Marvin Gaye
1985: Eugene Ormandy, Roger Maris, Margaret Hamilton
1986: L. Ron Hubbard, Cliff Burton, the seven passengers of the Space Shuttle Challenger
1987: Andy Warhol, Budd Dwyer, Hugh “Lumpy” Brannum (Mr. Green Jeans)
1988: Robert A. Heinlein, Raymond Carver, Heather O’Rourke
1989: the Ayatollah Khomeini, Ferdinand Marcos, Lucille Ball
1990: Jim Henson, Jill Ireland, Sammy Davis Jr.
1991: Frank Capra, Dr. Suess, Kevin Peter Hall (The Predator)
1992: Jose Ferrer, Hal Roach, Nancy Walker (Ida Morgenstern)
1993: Audrey Hepburn, Andre the Giant, Lillian Gish
1994: Kurt Cobain, Nicole Brown Simpson, Richard Nixon
1995: Warren Burger, Jerry Garcia, Patricia Highsmith
1996: King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Tupac Shakur, Jerry Siegel
1997: Jimmy Stewart, The Notorious B.I.G., Deng Xiaoping
1998: Frank Sinatra, Sonny Bono, Pol Pot
1999: John F. Kennedy, Jr., DeForest Kelley, Jean Shepherd
2000: Charles M. Schulz, Tito Puente, Walter Matthau
2001: Dale Earnhardt, Isaac Stern, everyone who died on 9/11, Joey Ramone
2002: Milton Berle, Dudley Moore, and Billy Wilder, Ann Landers, Elizabeth the Queen Mother
2003: Fred Rogers; the seven passengers of the Space Shuttle Columbia; Ty Longley, Mike “The Doctor” Gonsalves, and 98 others in The Station nightclub fire; Susan Travers (the only female French Foreign Legionnaire )
2004: Susan Sontag, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan)
2005: James Doohan, Rosa Parks, Pope John Paul II
2006: Gerald Ford, Syd Barrett, Betty Freidan
2007: Anna Nicole Smith, Merv Griffin, Lady Bird Johnson
2008: Bobby Fischer, Heath Ledger, Gary Gygax
2009: Ricardo Montalban, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Bea Arthur
2010: Ronnie James Dio, Don Van Vliet, Rue McClanahan
2011: Elizabeth Taylor, Osama bin Laden (x2)
2012: Rodney King, Robin Gibb, Neil Armstrong
2013: Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela
2014: Shirley Temple, Lauren Bacall, Ariel Sharon
2015: Wayne Rogers, Johnny Kemp, Leonard Nimoy
2016: David Bowie, Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, Prince Rogers Nelson
This game seems to die with years before the 20th Century, so let’s make this an easier round:
1950: Edgar Rice Burroughs
1951: William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate
1952: Elmo Lincoln
First actor to portray Tarzan in a movie.
1953: Joseph Stalin
1954: Emilie Dionne, first of the Dionne quintuplets to die.
1955: Albert Einstein
1956: Alfred Kinsey
1957: Humphrey Bogart
1958: 23 members of Manchester United’s football team in the Munich air disaster.
1959: Cecil B. DeMille
1960: Leonard Warren, operatic baritone. On March 4, 1960, during a Met performance of Verdi’s “La forza del destino,” Warren died on stage. He had just sung the aria that begins Morir, tremenda cosa (“to die, a momentous thing”), he reportedly went silent and fell face-forward to the floor. He was 48.
1961: Carl Jung
1962: Marilyn Monroe
1963: Robert Frost
1964: Peter Lorre
1965: Adlai Stevenson II
1966: Margaret Sanger
1967: Dorothy Parker, six months to the day after I was born.