List of Famous people who died in 1949

Nathuram Vinayak Godse was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, who shot Gandhi in the chest three times at point blank range in New Delhi on 30 January 1948. Godse, a Hindu nationalist from Pune, who believed Gandhi to have favoured the political demands of India's Muslims during the partition of India, plotted the assassination with Narayan Apte and six others. After a trial that lasted over a year, Godse was sentenced to death on 8 November 1949. Although pleas for commutation were made by Gandhi's two sons, Manilal Gandhi and Ramdas Gandhi, they were turned down by India's prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel, and the Governor-General C. Rajagopalachari. Godse was hanged in the Ambala Central Jail on 15 November 1949.

Thomas Charles Longboat was an Onondaga distance runner from the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario and, for much of his career, the dominant long-distance runner. He was known as the "bulldog of Britannia" and was a soldier in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War.

Naguib el-Rihani was an Egyptian actor. He was born in Bab El Shereya, Cairo, Egypt to an Assyrian father from the city of Mosul in Iraq named Elias El Rihani. His father worked as a horse expert and trader and eventually settled in Cairo, where he met and married Naguib's mother, a Coptic Egyptian woman from Cairo. He was one of three sons that his parents would have together. He was educated in the French school "Les Frères" in Cairo.

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. In recent years long after her death, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, titled Lost Laysen, have been published. A collection of newspaper articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form.

Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

James Ernest Newland, VC was an Australian soldier, policeman and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces. Newland was awarded the Victoria Cross following three separate actions in April 1917, during attacks against German forces retreating to the Hindenburg Line. While in command of a company, Newland successfully led his men in several assaults on German positions and repulsed subsequent counter-attacks.

Mary Margaret O'Reilly was an American civil servant who served as the Assistant Director of the United States Bureau of the Mint from 1924 until 1938. One of the United States government's highest-ranking female employees of her time, she worked at the Mint for 34 years, during which she often served as acting director during the Mint Director's absence.

Henri Honoré Giraud was a French general and a leader of the Free French Forces during the Second World War until he was forced to retire in 1944.

Sarojini Naidu was an Indian political activist and poet. A proponent of civil rights, women's emancipation, and anti-imperialistic ideas, she was an important figure in India's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu's work as a poet earned her the sobriquet 'the Nightingale of India', or 'Bharat Kokila' by Mahatma Gandhi because of colour, imagery and lyrical quality of her poetry.

Kim Jong-suk was a Korean anti-Japanese guerrilla, a Communist activist, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung's first wife, former leader Kim Jong-il's mother, and current leader Kim Jong-un's grandmother.