List of Famous people who died in 1978

Edith Marie Blossom MacDonald, also known as Blossom Rock, was an American actress of vaudeville, stage, film and television. During her career she was also billed as Marie Blake or Blossom MacDonald. Her younger sister was screen actress and singer Jeanette MacDonald. Rock is probably best known for her role as "Grandmama" on the 1960s horror sitcom The Addams Family.

Joseph Vincent McCarthy was a manager in Major League Baseball, most renowned for his leadership of the "Bronx Bombers" teams of the New York Yankees from 1931 to 1946. The first manager to win pennants with both National and American League teams, he won nine league titles overall and seven World Series championships – a record tied only by Casey Stengel. McCarthy was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1957.

Shukri Mustafa was an Egyptian agricultural engineer who led the extremist Islamist group Jama'at al-Muslimin, popularly known as Takfir wal-Hijra. He began his path toward Islamist thought by joining the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s. After being arrested for activities related to the group he became interested in the works of Sayyid Qutb and other radical thinkers. After being released in 1971, he gathered followers and withdrew from contemporary society. He was executed on March 19, 1978, after kidnapping and killing an Egyptian government minister and mainstream Muslim cleric, Muhammad al-Dhahabi. He was sentenced to death after a swiftly arranged military tribunal, alongside four other leaders.

Dakshayani Velayudhan was an Indian parliamentarian and leader of the Depressed Classes. Belonging to the Pulaya community, she was among the first generation of people to be educated from the community. She holds several distinctions including becoming the first woman from her community to wear an upper cloth, the first Scheduled Caste woman graduate in India, a science graduate, a member of the Cochin Legislative Council and of being one of nine female members of the Constituent Assembly of India.But it is not correct to mention that she was one of the first women from her community to wear an upper cloth.Her elder sister and her mother Thayyithara Maani may be given this credit prior to her. Mother Maani lived lived up to the post independent period in India and died in 1959.

Paul Yoshigoro Taguchi was a Japanese prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Osaka from 1941 until his death in 1978, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1973.