List of Famous people who died in 1996

Jonathan David Larson was an American composer and playwright noted for exploring the social issues of multiculturalism, addiction, and homophobia in his work. Typical examples of his use of these themes are found in his works Rent and Tick, Tick... Boom! He received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the rock musical Rent.

Tupac Amaru Shakur, better known by his stage name 2Pac and by his alias Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential rappers of all time. Much of Shakur's work has been noted for addressing contemporary social issues that plagued inner cities, and he is considered a symbol of resistance and activism against inequality.

Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, was an Indian actor, producer, director, film editor and politician who served as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for seven years over three terms. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema and one of the two legends of Telugu cinema, along with Akkineni Nageswara Rao. NTR received three National Film Awards for co-producing Thodu Dongalu (1954) and Seetharama Kalyanam (1960) under National Art Theater, Madras, and for directing Varakatnam (1970). NTR has received the erstwhile Rashtrapati Awards for his performance(s) in the Raju Peda (1954) and the Lava Kusa (1963). He garnered the Nandi Award for Best Actor for Kodalu Diddina Kapuram in 1970, and the Inaugural Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Telugu in 1972 for Badi Panthulu.

François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.

Eugene Curran Kelly was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, and the likable characters that he played on screen. He starred in, choreographed, or co-directed some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s, until they fell out of fashion in the late 1950s.

Christopher Robin Milne was an English author and bookseller and the only child of author A. A. Milne. As a child, he was the basis of the character Christopher Robin in his father's Winnie-the-Pooh stories and in two books of poems.

Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, poet, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now-accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.

Robert Edwin Hall was a New Zealand mountaineer. He was the head guide of a 1996 Mount Everest expedition during which he, a fellow guide, and two clients died. A best-selling account of the expedition was given in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, and the expedition has been dramatised in the 2015 film Everest. At the time of his death, Hall had just completed his fifth ascent to the summit of Everest, more at that time than any other non-Sherpa mountaineer.

Matthew Charles Harding was a British businessman, vice-chairman of Chelsea Football Club and a major financial supporter of New Labour.

Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, commonly known as Baba Vanga, was a Bulgarian mystic, clairvoyant, and herbalist.

José Santacruz Londoño, also known as Chepe Santacruz, was a Colombian drug lord. Along with Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, Santacruz was a leader of the Cali Cartel.

Janaki Ramachandran, commonly known as V. N. Janaki, was an Indian politician, activist and the first woman Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. She was the third wife of the actor and politician M. G. Ramachandran.

Marianne Bachmeier became famous in Germany after she shot the alleged murderer of her daughter Anna Bachmeier in an act of vigilantism in the hall of the District Court of Lübeck in 1981.

Richa Sharma also known by her married name Richa Sharma Dutt was an Indian film actress known for her works in Bollywood. Richa married actor Sanjay Dutt in New York City, United States in 1987. The couple has a daughter, Trishala Dutt. Within two years of marriage, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Richa died at her parents' home in New York on December 10, 1996.

Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian-British writer who spent most of her career in England. She is best known for the Mary Poppins series of children's books, which feature the magical nanny Mary Poppins.

Vijayalakshmi Vadlapatla, better known by her stage name Silk Smitha, was an Indian film actress who worked predominantly in Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi films. She entered the industry as a sideto supporting actress, and was first noticed for her role as "Silk" in the 1979 Tamil film, Vandichakkaram. She became a major sex symbol and was the most sought-after erotic actress in the 1980s. In a career spanning 17 years, she appeared in over 450 films. Due to uncanny similarities, Silk Smitha was popularly known as Marilyn Monroe of Indian cinema.

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian-American poet and essayist.

Rio Reiser, was a German rock musician and singer of rock group Ton Steine Scherben. Reiser supported squatting in the early 1970s and later the green political party Die Grünen. After the German reunification, he joined the Party of Democratic Socialism.

Luis Miguel González Lucas, better known as Luis Miguel Dominguín, was a bullfighter from Spain. His father was the legendary Domingo Dominguín; he adopted his father's name to gain popularity.

JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty queen who was killed at the age of six in her family's home in Boulder, Colorado. A lengthy handwritten ransom note was found in the home. Her father, John, found the girl's body in the basement of their house about seven hours after she had been reported missing. She had sustained a broken skull from a blow to the head and had been strangled; a garrote was found tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma". Her death was ruled a homicide. The case generated nationwide public and media interest, in part because her mother Patsy Ramsey had entered JonBenét into a series of child beauty pageants. The crime is still unsolved and remains an open investigation with the Boulder Police Department.