On July 5, 2025, Ozzy Osbourne sat on a black throne on a stage at Villa Park in Birmingham and sang with Black Sabbath for the last time, in a farewell concert called Back to the Beginning. Seventeen days later he was dead. It was a month of shocking losses: a Liverpool footballer eleven days after his wedding, a much-loved sitcom son in the sea off Costa Rica and the wrestler who had been the face of the 1980s.
1. Julian McMahon (July 2, aged 56)
The Australian actor played the plastic surgeon Christian Troy in Nip/Tuck, Cole in Charmed and Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four. He died of cancer.
2. Diogo Jota (July 3, aged 28)
Diogo Jota had won the Premier League with Liverpool and the Nations League with Portugal in the months before he and his brother, André Silva, also a professional footballer, were killed when their car left the road in northern Spain. He had married the mother of his three children eleven days earlier. Liverpool retired his number 20 shirt.
3. Michael Madsen (July 3, aged 67)
Michael Madsen was Mr Blonde, who dances to “Stuck in the Middle with You” in Reservoir Dogs, and Budd in Kill Bill. He was found unresponsive at his home in Malibu.
4. Connie Francis (July 16, aged 87)
Connie Francis was one of the biggest-selling female singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and “Stupid Cupid”. In the last months of her life her 1962 song “Pretty Little Baby” went viral on TikTok and reached a new generation.
5. Malcolm-Jamal Warner (July 20, aged 54)
Malcolm-Jamal Warner was Theo Huxtable in The Cosby Show and later starred in Malcolm and Eddie and The Resident. He drowned when he was caught in a current while swimming off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica on a family holiday.
6. Ozzy Osbourne (July 22, aged 76)
Ozzy Osbourne sang on the first Black Sabbath albums, which more or less invented heavy metal, and then had a solo career, a reality show, The Osbournes, and a public life that included biting the head off a bat on stage. He had Parkinson’s disease. His family said he died surrounded by love.
7. Chuck Mangione (July 22, aged 84)
The flugelhorn player’s “Feels So Good” was a top five hit in 1978, and a generation later he voiced himself in King of the Hill. He died at home in Rochester, New York, the same day as Ozzy.
8. Hulk Hogan (July 24, aged 71)
Terry Bollea, Hulk Hogan, was the biggest star of the WWF’s boom in the 1980s and main-evented the first WrestleMania. He later starred in the reality show Hogan Knows Best, was dropped by WWE in 2015 over a racist recording, and won a privacy lawsuit against Gawker that bankrupted the site. Police said he died after a cardiac arrest at his home in Florida.
9. Tom Lehrer (July 26, aged 97)
Tom Lehrer was a Harvard mathematician who wrote satirical songs such as “The Elements” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, stopped performing in the early 1970s and in 2020 put all his songs into the public domain. A friend said he died at home.
10. Ryne Sandberg (July 28, aged 65)
The Chicago Cubs second baseman was the 1984 National League MVP and a Hall of Famer. He died of prostate cancer.
Ozzy and Mangione died on the same day, two musicians from opposite ends of 1970s radio: one who sang about war pigs and paranoia, and one whose biggest hit was called “Feels So Good”.