List of Famous people who died in 1938

Luigi Capotosti was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Apostolic Datary from 1933 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1926.

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. Possessing a deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was the husband of Nadezhda Mandelstam and one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife.

Kanō Jigorō was a Japanese educator, athlete, and the founder of Judo. Judo was the first Japanese martial art to gain widespread international recognition, and the first to become an official Olympic sport. Pedagogical innovations attributed to Kanō include the use of black and white belts, and the introduction of dan ranking to show the relative ranking among members of a martial art style. Well-known mottoes attributed to Kanō include "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and "mutual welfare and benefit".

Mieczysław Broński Russian: Мечислав Генрихович Бронский (Варшавский); 1882 – 1 September 1938) was a Polish communist, Soviet diplomat and academic, and a victim of the Great Purge.

General Gabriele D'Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso, sometimes written d'Annunzio, was an Italian poet, playwright, orator and journalist and soldier during World War I. He occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and later political life from 1914 to 1924. He was often referred to under the epithets Il Vate or Il Profeta.

Agustín Magaldi was a tango and milonga singer. His nickname was "the sentimental voice of Buenos Aires." Magaldi took part in the opening broadcasts of Argentina's LOY Radio Nacional in July 1924.

Alexander Nikolaevich Samoylovich was a Russian Orientalist-Turkologist who served as a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929), Rector of the Leningrad Oriental Institute (1922–1925), academic secretary of the Humanities Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929–1933), and director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1934–1937). He was arrested by the NKVD in October 1937, and was executed on 13 February 1938.