Saturday 26th of March 1814

Physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin dies of natural causes at the age of 76 in Paris, Île-de-France, France.

Monday 26th of March 1827

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven dies of lead poisoning at the age of 57 in Wien, Wien, Austria.

There is dispute about the cause of Beethoven's death: alcoholic cirrhosis, syphilis, infectious hepatitis, lead poisoning, sarcoidosis and Whipple's disease have all been proposed. Most probably Beethoven was accidentally poisoned to death by excessive doses of lead-based treatments administered under instruction from his doctor.

Monday 26th of March 1849

Automobile designer and manufacturer Armand Peugeot is born in Valentigney, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France.

Thursday 26th of March 1863

Serial killer Karl Hopf is born in Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany.

Saturday 26th of March 1892

Poet and writer Walt Walter Whitman aka The Father of Free Verse dies of at the age of 73 in 328 Mickle Street, Camden, New Jersey, United States.

In the last week of his life Whitman was too weak to lift a knife or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony—monotony—monotony—in pain."

Saturday 26th of March 1904

Bank robber and murderer George Collins is executed by hanging in St. Louis, Missouri, United States.

Collins' neck didn’t break and he slowly strangled to death before the eyes of the appalled executioner and jurors.

Sunday 26th of March 1905

7-year-old Germaine Weber is strangled by serial killer Jeanne Weber aka l’Ogresse de la Goutte d’Or in Paris, Île-de-France, France.

Diphtheria was blamed for Germaine's death.

Thursday 26th of March 1908

SS commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps Franz Paul Stangl aka Der Weiße Tod is born in Altmünster, Oberösterreich, Austria.

Sunday 26th of March 1911

Writer and playwright Tennessee Thomas Lanier Williams is born in Columbus, Mississippi, United States.

Wednesday 26th of March 1913

Murderer Henry Lovell William Clark is executed by hanging at the age of 46 in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Sunday 26th of March 1916

Prison guard Andrew Turner is stabbed through the heart with a six inch shank by 26-year-old Double murderer Robert Franklin Stroud aka The Birdman of Alcatraz in United States Penitentiary, Metropolitan Avenue, Leavenworth, Kansas, United States.

Tuesday 26th of March 1918

Murderer Emile Verfaille is executed by the Guillotine by Anatole Deibler at the age of 26 in Gevangenis, Veurne, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

Verfaille was the last man to die by the Guillotine in Belgium.

Monday 26th of March 1923

Actress Sarah Henrietta Rosine Bernhardt aka The Divine Sarah dies of uremia following kidney failure at the age of 79 in Paris, Île-de-France, France.

Thursday 26th of March 1925

Composer Pierre Boulez is born in Montbrison, Loire, France.

Saturday 26th of March 1927

Cop killer Palle Mogens Fogde Sørensen is born in Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark.

Tuesday 26th of March 1929

Triple cop killer James William Hutchins is born in Rutherford County, North Carolina, United States.

Thursday 26th of March 1931

Actor Leonard Simon Nimoy aka Mr. Spock is born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.

Thursday 26th of March 1942

Writer Erica Jong is born as Erica Mann in New York City, New York, United States.

Friday 26th of March 1943

Sole survivor of the Richard Speck-massacre in Chicago Corazon Amurao is born in San Luis, Batangas, Philippines.

Sunday 26th of March 1944

Black reverend Isaac Simmons is lynched by six white men in Liberty, Mississippi, United States.

The men shot Simmons three times, cut out his tongue and told his son he had ten days to abandon the family property. The killers took possession of the land and an all-white jury later acquitted the only one of the six men to face trial for the murder.

Sunday 26th of March 1944

Singer and actress Diana Ernestine Earle Ross known from The Supremes is born in Hutzel Women's Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, United States.

Sunday 26th of March 1944

Member of the Rote Armee Fraktion Lutz Manfred Taufer is born in Kirchheim unter Teck, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Tuesday 26th of March 1957

Film director Max Ophüls dies of rheumatic heart disease at the age of 55 in Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.

Thursday 26th of March 1959

Writer Raymond Thornton Chandler dies of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia at the age of 71 in Scripps Memorial Hospital, 9888 Genesee Avenue, La Jolla, California, United States.

Thursday 26th of March 1959

18-year-old Karin Walde is raped and beaten to death by serial killer Heinrich Pommerenke aka The Beast of the Black Forest in Hornberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Tuesday 26th of March 1963

Writer Jean Bruce aka Jean Alexandre, Jean Alexandre Brochet, Jean-Martin Rouan or Joyce Lindsay known for the adventures of secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath aka OSS117 dies in a head-on collision of his Jaguar with a truck at 200kms per hour on the RN16 at the age of 42 in Luzarches, Val d'Oise, France.

Friday 26th of March 1965

19-year-old Serial killer Michel Bellen aka The Strangler of the Left Bank is sentenced to death in Assisenhof, Britselei 55-57, Antwerpen, Antwerpen, Belgium.

Monday 26th of March 1973

Playwright, director, actor and singer Noël Peirce Coward dies of heart failure at the age of 74 in Firefly Estate, Oracabessa, St Mary, Jamaica.

Wednesday 26th of March 1980

Literary theorist, philosopher, linguist and semiotician Roland Gérard Barthes died from chest injuries he sustained in a collision with a laundry van in the Rue des Écoles on 25 February 1980 at the age of 65 in Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, Boulevard de l'Hôpital, Paris, XIIIe, Île-de-France, France.

Monday 26th of March 1984

21-year-old Suzanne Wendy Logan is abducted and stabbed to death by serial killer Christopher Wilder aka The Beauty Queen Killer in Milford Reservoir, Junction City, Kansas, United States.

Logan was abducted the day before at the Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City. Wilder took her 180 miles north to Newton, Kansas and checked into room 30 of the I-35 Inn. After breakfast he drove to Milford Reservoir where he stabbed her to death and dumped her body under a cedar tree.

Tuesday 26th of March 1996

Serial killer Joseph Kallinger aka The Shoemaker dies of an epileptic seizure at the age of 61 in State Correctional Institution, Cresson, Pennsylvania, United States.

Kallinger spent the last 11 years of his life on suicide watch.

Wednesday 26th of March 1997

Police find the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate religious group who have comitted suicide by an overdose of phenobarbital and wodka in 18341 Colina Norte, Rancho Santa Fe, California, United States.

Fifteen members died on 24 March, fifteen more on 25 March, and nine on 26 March. 65-year-old leader Marshall Herff Applewhite was the third to last member to die.

Thursday 26th of March 1998

36-year-old Serial killer Guy Georges aka Le Tueur de la Bastille is arrested in Métro Blanche, Paris, IXe, Île-de-France, France.

Friday 26th of March 1999

Double murderer James David Rich is executed by lethal injection at the age of 27 in Raleigh State Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.

Rich' last meal request was for pizza with cheese, black olives, banana peppers and mushrooms with four sodas.

Wednesday 26th of March 2003

Rapist and murderer James Blake Colburn is executed by lethal injection at the age of 43 in Huntsville Prison, 815 12th Street, Huntsville, Texas, United States.

Colburn's last meal request was for tortillas, tacos, burritos, Spanish rice, cheese dips, chips, six Cokes, and chocolate cake. Colburn made one final comment as the lethal dose of drugs entered his system. "It's going to be like passing out on drugs."

Thursday 26th of March 2009

The first wall to go in a dauntless renovation of our kitchen in Oudstrijdersstraat 35, Antwerpen, Borgerhout, Antwerpen, Belgium.

Friday 26th of March 2010

Noise music band Club Moral play their 134th concert in Les Ateliers Claus, Rue Crickx 15, Brussel, Brabant, Belgium.

Tuesday 26th of March 2024

Sculptor Richard Serra dies of pneumonia at the age of 86 in Orient, New York, United States.