On the morning of June 25, 2009, American television was covering the death of Farrah Fawcett. By the afternoon, the same channels had dropped everything for Michael Jackson. It is the best-known modern case of two famous people dying on the same day, and it is far from the only one.
1. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (July 4, 1826)
The second and third presidents of the United States both signed the Declaration of Independence, fell out bitterly over politics, and then repaired their friendship through letters in old age. Both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. Jefferson died first, at Monticello in Virginia. Adams died a few hours later in Massachusetts, and his last words are reported to have been “Thomas Jefferson survives”, though Jefferson was already dead. A third founding president, James Monroe, died on July 4 five years later.
2. C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy (November 22, 1963)
C.S. Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, died at his home in Oxford in the afternoon of November 22, 1963. Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World, died in Los Angeles later that day. Between their deaths, President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. News of the two writers barely appeared in the papers. The coincidence later inspired a book, Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft, which imagines the three men arguing after death.
3. Orson Welles and Yul Brynner (October 10, 1985)
Orson Welles, who made Citizen Kane at 25, died of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles at 70. On the same day, in New York, Yul Brynner died of lung cancer at 65, months after his last performance in The King and I, a role he had played more than 4,000 times on stage. Brynner had recorded a public message warning against smoking, which was broadcast after his death.
4. Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni (July 30, 2007)
Two of the directors who defined European art cinema in the 1950s and 1960s died on the same day. Ingmar Bergman, the Swede who made The Seventh Seal and Persona, died on the island of Fårö at 89. Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian who made L’Avventura and Blow-Up, died in Rome at 94. Film critics wrote joint obituaries.
5. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (June 25, 2009)
Farrah Fawcett, whose red-swimsuit poster sold millions of copies in the 1970s, died in Santa Monica of anal cancer at 62, after a long and public illness. Michael Jackson died that afternoon in Los Angeles at 50, from an overdose of the anaesthetic propofol. The rush of people searching for news of Jackson’s death slowed parts of the internet, and Fawcett’s death, which had led the morning bulletins, was pushed down the running order within hours.
Close, but not the same day
Some famous deaths are remembered as a pair because they were only days apart. Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, and Groucho Marx three days later. Diana, Princess of Wales died in Paris on August 31, 1997, and Mother Teresa died in Kolkata on September 5. Carrie Fisher died on December 27, 2016, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died the next day; her son said she had wanted to be with Carrie.
The Adams and Jefferson story is the only one on this list that people at the time took as a sign. Americans in 1826 read the double death on the 50th anniversary as proof that the country had been blessed, and Monroe’s death five years later on the same date did nothing to weaken the belief.