List of Famous people who died in 1969

Robert Rayford, sometimes identified as Robert R. due to his age, was a teenager from Missouri who has been suggested to represent the earliest confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in North America based on evidence which was published in 1988 in which the authors claimed that medical evidence indicated that he was "infected with a virus closely related or identical to human immunodeficiency virus type 1." Rayford died of pneumonia, but his other symptoms baffled the doctors who treated him. A study published in 1988 reported the detection of antibodies against HIV. Results of testing for HIV genetic material were reported once at a scientific conference in Australia in 1999; however, the data has never been published in a peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal.

Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst was a British businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Soon after starting the race, his ship began taking on water and he wrote it would probably sink in heavy seas. He secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's log books, found after his disappearance, suggest that the stress he was under and an associated psychological deterioration possibly led to his suicide.

Leonard Sidney Woolf was a British political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf.

Assia Esther Wevill was a German woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Palestine, via Italy, then later the United Kingdom, where she had a relationship with the English poet Ted Hughes. She killed herself and their four-year-old daughter Alexandra Tatiana Elise using a gas oven, similar to Hughes's first wife Sylvia Plath's suicide six years earlier.

Vito Genovese was an Italian-born American mobster who mainly operated in the United States. Genovese rose to power during Prohibition as an enforcer in the American Mafia. A long-time associate and childhood friend of Lucky Luciano, Genovese took part in the Castellammarese War and helped shape the rise of the Mafia and organized crime in the United States. He would later lead Luciano's crime family, which was renamed the Genovese crime family in his honor.

William Henry Pratt, better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor who was primarily known for his roles in horror films. He portrayed Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932).

Bishnu Prasad Rabha was an Indian cultural figure from Assam, known for his contributions in the fields of music, dance, painting, literature as well as political activism. As an advocate of people's cultural movement, he drew heavily from different genres of classical and folk cultural traditions. Considered a doyen of the Culture of Assam, the Assamese people affectionately call him Kalaguru. He is also called by Marxists as Sainik Silpi for his active participation in the armed struggle, led by the Revolutionary Communist Party of India (RCPI).

Morihei Ueshiba was a Japanese martial artist and founder of the martial art of aikido. He is often referred to as "the founder" Kaiso (開祖) or Ōsensei (大先生/翁先生), "Great Teacher".

Tukaram Bhaurao Sathe, popularly known as Annabhau Sathe, was a social reformer, folk poet, and writer from Maharashtra, India. Sathe was a Dalit born into the untouchable Mang community, and his upbringing and identity were central to his writing and political activism. Sathe was a Marxist-Ambedkarite mosaic, initially influenced by the communists but he later became an Ambedkarite. He is credited as a founding father of 'Dalit Literature'.

Shu Xiuwen, also romanized as Shu Hsiu-wen, was a Chinese film and stage actress, as well as the first voice actress in China. She grew up in poverty but made a name for herself in the drama and film industry of Shanghai before the Second Sino-Japanese War, and then in the wartime capital Chongqing. She starred in numerous films and stage plays, including her most acclaimed film The Spring River Flows East, and was recognized as one of China's top four actresses.