A number of well-known folks have died on their birthdays. Here are 18 of the most famous of them.
Renowned Renaissance painter Raphael died April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday.
William Shakespeare, a.k.a. The Bard, passed away on April 23, 1616, what is thought to be his 52nd birthday.
Edna May Oliver, a popular character actress in early Hollywood who earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in 1939’s “Drums Along the Mohawk,” died on her 59th birthday — November 9, 1942 — following an intestinal ailment. (By the way, Hattie McDaniel won the Oscar that year for “Gone With the Wind.)
George Francis Barnes (a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly), the Prohibition-era gangster, died in prison of a heart attack on July 18, 1954, his 59th birthday.
Early jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet died of lung cancer on May 14, 1959, his 62nd birthday.
Swede Risberg, an early 20th century baseball player best known for being one of the members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team accused of intentionally losing the World Series in exchange for payments from gamblers, died on his 81st birthday on Oct. 13, 1975.
Country singer Mel Street died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on his 43rd birthday, on Oct. 21, 1978.
Ingrid Bergman, three-time Oscar winner and one of the biggest stars in the history of cinema, died of breast cancer on Aug. 29, 1982, her 67th birthday.
Corrie Ten Boom, who along with her family helped Jews escape the Holocaust when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands during World War II, died of a stroke on her 91st birthday on April 15, 1983.
Feminist activist Betty Friedan, who co-founded the National Organization for Women, died on her 85th birthday on Feb. 4, 2006.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., congressman and son of four-term U.S. president FDR, died on his 74th birthday on Aug. 17, 1988.
Mike Douglas, a Big Band-era singer, found a second career as the genial host of a syndicated daytime talk show in the 1960s and ’70s that helped introduce stars like Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin. He died on August 11, 2006, exactly 81 years after he was born.
Big Band singer and actress Fran Warren died March 4, 2013, on her 87th birthday.
Country singer Merle Haggard died on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday.
Ed Aschoff, college football reporter for ESPN, died on his 34th birthday, Dec. 24, 2019, after a bout with pneumonia.
Milton Glaser, the graphic designer who created the “I ❤ NY” logo and co-founded New York magazine, died on June 26, 2020, on his 91st birthday.
Frankie Lons, the mother of R&B singer Keyshia Cole and star of the BET reality series “Frankie & Neffe,” died on her 61st birthday — July 18, 2021.
Max Julien, an actor best known for playing a pimp named Goldie opposite Richard Pryor in 1973’s “The Mack,” died on New Year’s Day, 2022 — which happened to be his 88th birthday.
