List of Famous people who died at 81

Terry Downes, BEM was a British middleweight boxer, occasional film actor, and businessman. He was nicknamed the "Paddington Express" for his aggressive fighting style.

Alicia Rosa Maguiña Málaga was a Peruvian composer and singer linked to Peruvian waltz music. Her song Indio is said to express her solidarity with indigenous Peruvians and their suffering.

Dragoslav Šekularac was a Serbian professional footballer and coach. Nicknamed Šeki, he was quick and crafty with the ball, displaying creative skills which turned many heads. Possessing supreme self-confidence along with impeccable technical ability, he was one of the biggest showmen and crowd draws in the history of Yugoslav football. His enormous popularity throughout FPR Yugoslavia during the early 1960s transcended sports as he easily became one of the most recognizable individuals in the country. As a coach, he led several clubs in Canada, Colombia, Australia, Serbia, Mexico, and Spain, as well as the Guatemala national team in the 1986 FIFA World Cup qualification.

Jean Keraudy (1920–2001) was the stage name of Roland Barbat, a French criminal, later came to fame playing himself in the French film "Le Trou". He was one of five inmates involved in a 1947 escape attempt from France's La Santé Prison.

Jesús Silva-Herzog Flores, born as Jesús Silva y Flores was a Mexican economist and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He served as secretary of Finance and Public Credit in the cabinet of President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1986), as ambassador to Spain (1991–1994) and the United States (1995–1997), and as secretary of Tourism (1994) in the cabinet of Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

Stefanie Zweig was a German Jewish writer and journalist. She is best known for her autobiographical novel, Nirgendwo in Afrika (1995), which was a bestseller in Germany. The novel is based on her early life in Kenya, where her family had fled to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. The film adaptation of the novel (2001) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Her books have sold more than seven million copies, and have been translated into fifteen languages.

Luz Amparo Cuevas Arteseros was a Spanish Roman Catholic seer. She claimed that the Virgin of the Sorrows appeared to her in Prado Nuevo estate in the Madrilenian municipality of El Escorial on 14 June 1981. Following these statements arose a religious movement that has mobilized thousands of people who go to the place of Marian apparitions. She was called "El Escorial seer" referring to the village where Amparo claimed to have seen the apparitions.

Hilde (Wundsam) Zimmermann, was a member of the Austrian Resistance. Arrested for her efforts to fight fascism, she was deported with her mother and childhood friend by Nazi officials to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany; she then went on to survive both her imprisonment there and a death march.

Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo was President of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as dictator after toppling the president Arturo Illia in a coup d'état self-named Revolución Argentina.

Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt, KCB, FRS, FRAeS was a British pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology.