On 21 April 2016, I posted a list of celebrities whose deaths during the first 112 days of the year had been noted on Wikipedia and whose names I recognized.*  As the year has gone on, more and more people have remarked on the number of well-known people who have died in 2016. Maybe that’s because television and transistor radios became widespread in the 1960s, making a larger than usual number of people famous who are now in their old age. Or maybe it is because social media has led people to share more news about the deaths of their favorite celebrities. Or maybe it’s an illusion, and the sheer act of complaining about celebrity deaths has become a fashion. Or maybe something else is going on altogether.

I suppose one way to figure out if 2016 really has been deadlier for the famous than most years would be to take the number of people born in the last 80 years who have articles devoted to them on Wikipedia, divide by 80, and compare the result with the number of “Deaths in 2016” on the site.  Repeat that procedure for each of the previous 20 years; for example, you would compare the number of “Deaths in 1996” to the number of people born between 1916 and 1996. I’m not going to do that, but someone could.

That might be better than just comparing the length of “Deaths in 2016” to the length of Wikipedia’s other necrology sections, for two reasons. First, the rate at which Wikipedia acquires new articles is not constant from year to year; for example, it seems that the site used to be much stricter about its “notability” requirements. A person still alive in, let’s say, 2016 might have been much likelier to qualify to be the subject of an article than would an equally notable person who died in 2009.  Second, just because the “Come ON, 2016!” thing has been so widespread, obituaries have been getting a lot of attention, so more people than usual might have had articles added immediately after their deaths. For example, master chef Peng Chang-kuei’s Wikipedia article was created the day after his obituary appeared in the papers, as was art historian Yuri Bychkov‘s.

Anyway, here’s the list from April. Some of the links lead to obituaries, some lead to still photos, some to videos of them at work, some to other kinds of things:

1. Prince, musician
2. Guy Hamilton, filmmaker known for the James Bond films
3. Victoria Wood, comedian
4. Chyna, professional wrestler
5. Milt Pappas, baseball player
6. Billy Redmayne, motorcycle racer
7. Pete Zorn, musician
8. Duane Clarridge, highly publicized secret agent
9. Yuri Bychkov, art historian with a name that makes teenage boys laugh
10. Doris Roberts, actor who appeared frequently on Barney Miller, among other things
11. David Gest, man who married Liza Minnelli
12. Ed Snider, hockey team owner
13. Howard Marks, marijuana smuggler
14. William Hamilton, cartoonist
15. Jimmie Van Zant, musician
16. Merle Haggard, musician
17. Ogden Phipps, horse breeder
18. Antonin Scalia, jurist
19. Henry Harpending, anthropologist
20. Patty Duke, actor
21. James Noble, actor who was in the movie 1776
22. Winston Moseley, serial killer
23. Mother Angelica, nun
24. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, military strongman
25. Lester Thurow, economist
26. Garry Shandling, comedian
27. Nicholas Scoppetta, civil servant
28. Tibor Machan, philosopher
29. Earl Hamner, screenwriter
30. Maggie Blye, actor whose films included 1969’s The Italian Job
31. Tom Whedon, screenwriter
32. Ken Howard, actor who was in the movie 1776
33. Joe Garagiola, baseball player, media personality
34. Rob Ford, mayor who openly committed crimes while in office
35. Joe Santos, actor
36. Bandar bin Saud bin Abdulaziz al Saud, nobleman
37. Ralph Abernathy III, politician and son of a more famous man
38. Frank Sinatra Jr., musician and son of a more famous man
39. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, musician
40. Martin Olav Sabo, politician
41. Hilary Putnam, philosopher
42. Louise Plowright, actor
43. Pat Conroy, novelist
44. Ben Bagdikian, reporter
45. Anita Brookner, writer
46. Ken Adam, set designer known for, among many other things, Guy Hamilton’s Bond films
47. Sir George Martin, record producer
48. Wally Bragg, footballer
49. Paul Ryan, cartoonist
50. Nancy Reagan, political spouse
51. George Kennedy, actor
52. Douglas Slocombe, cinematographer whose films included 1969’s The Italian Job
53. Peter Mondavi, wine mogul
54. Harper Lee, novelist
55. Umberto Eco, philosopher and novelist
56. Humbert Allen Astredo, actor known for parts in Dark Shadows
57. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, diplomat
58. Edgar Mitchell, astronaut turned crazy person
59. Bob Elliott, comedian
60. Buddy Cianci, mayor who openly committed crimes while in office
61. Abe Vigoda, actor known for parts in Dark Shadows (where he played a character named “Ezra Braithwaite,” no relation to Guyanese diplomat/ author E. R. Braithwaite or Grenadian statesman Nicholas Braithwaite, both of whom also died this year,) and Barney Miller, among many other things
62. Marvin Minsky, prophet of AI
63. Cecil Parkinson, politician
64. Dan Haggerty, actor
65. Sylvan Barnet, art critic
66. Richard Libertini, actor known for parts in Barney Miller, among others
67. Kitty Kallen, singer
68. Judith Kaye, jurist
69. Florence King, writer
70. Pat Harrington, actor
71. Pierre Boulez, musician
72. Helmut Koester, historian
73. Dale Bumpers, politician
74. Guido Westerwelle, politician
75. Ronnie Corbett, comedian
76. Cliff Michelmore, whom I miss every election night
77. David Bowie, musician
78. Carolyn D. Wright, poet
79. Alan Rickman, actor
80. Glenn Frey, musician
81. Forrest McDonald, historian

And here are some notables who have died since, in no particular order:

1. Drew Lewis, the archenemy of American organized labor
2. Billy Paul, who sang “Me and Mrs Jones”
3. Jenny Diski, novelist and critic
4. Daniel Berrigan, priest and antiwar activist
5. Abel Fernandez, actor
6. Candye Kane, musician and sex worker
7. Mark Lane, eminence grise of the “Who Killed Kennedy?” industry
8. Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, symbol of a forlorn hope
9. Julius LaRosa, singer, actor
10. Fritz Stern, historian
11. Morley Safer, newsman
12. Burt Kwouk, actor
13. Mell Lazarus, cartoonist
14. Ivor Robinson, physicist
15. Morton White, philosopher, intellectual historian
16. Muhammad Ali, boxer
17. Theresa Saldana, actor
18. George Voinovich, politician
19. Ann Morgan Guilbert, actor
20. Jo Cox, politician
21. Anton Yelchin, actor
22. Ralph Stanley, musician
23. Bud Spencer, actor
24. Alan Young, actor
25. Michael Cimino, filmmaker
26. William Armstrong, former US Senator from Colorado who moved to Maryland and explored the idea of running for US Senator from there
27. Alvin Toffler, futurist
28. Yves Bonnefoy, poet
29. Elie Wiesel, writer and activist
30. Noel Neill, the real Lois Lane, and apparently part of the visual inspiration for Lisa Simpson
31. Abbas Kiarostami, filmmaker, central figure of the Iranian New Wave of the 1990s
32. Abner Mikva, politician and jurist
33. John McMartin, actor
34. Norman Abbott, pioneering television director
35. Sydney Schanberg, who told us about the killing fields of Cambodia, then kept telling us other things we didn’t want to know
36. John Brademas, politician and educator
37. Carolyn See, novelist and educator
38. Billy Name, photographer and eccentric
39. Garry Marshall, film-maker
40. Elaine Fantham, classical scholar
41. Mari Gilbert, who campaigned to make us remember homicide victims, dead as the result of a homicide
42. Tim LaHaye, fantasy novelist
43. Jack Davis, cartoonist and writer for Mad magazine
44. Piet de Jong, onetime Dutch premier
45. Patrice Munsel, singer
46. Pete Fountain, clarinetist
47. Marni Nixon, singer
48. Gloria deHaven, actor who so perfectly embodied Old Hollywood as to have been cast in her first major part because Charlie Chaplin had the hots for her (no apparent relation to Bruce deHaven, a football coach who also died this year)
49. Kenny Baker, who was often inside R2D2 when they were making Star Wars, and who acted in a number of films
50. Fyvush Finkel, actor
51. Ernst Nolte, historian
52. Jack Riley, actor
53. Antony Jay, co-creator of Yes, Minister
54. Toots Thielemans, musician
55. Steven Hill, actor
56. Rudy Van Gelder, recording engineer
57. Gene Wilder, actor
58. Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan
59. Phyllis Schlafly, arch-nemesis of American feminism and all allied movements
60. Robert Timberg, journalist
61. Edward Albee, playwright
62. His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej, a.k.a. Rama IX, King of Thailand
63. Dario Fo, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature for reasons that have never been explained
64. W. P. Kinsella, novelist
65. Charmian Carr, actor
66. Buckwheat Zydeco, musician
67. Herschell Gordon Lewis, film-maker
68. Curtis Roosevelt, author
69. Gloria Naylor, novelist
70. Irving Moskowitz, doctor turned businessman turned well-meaning menace
71. Agnes Nixon, soap opera mastermind (no apparent relation to Marni Nixon)
72. Shimon Peres, statesman
73. Jim Zapp, baseball player
74. Lowell Thomas, junior, film-maker and politician
75. Arnold Palmer, golfer
76. Neville Marriner, conductor
77. Peter Allen, announcer of the Metropolitan Opera’s radio broadcasts
78. Jacob Neusner, the most-published scholar in the world
79. Andrzej Wajda, film-maker
80. Patricia Barry, actor
81. Phil Chess, record producer
82. Robert Weber, cartoonist
83. Donald Henderson, who led the project that eliminated smallpox (who died shortly after I mentioned that his portrait ought someday to adorn US currency)
84. Jack Chick, cartoonist, crackpot
85. Tom Hayden, activist, politician
86. Bobby Vee, singer
87. Nicholas Braithwaite, onetime Grenadian premier
88. Tammy Grimes, actor, star of a show that was on opposite Star Trek in 1966
89. Don Marshall, actor, one-time guest star on Star Trek (after Tammy Grimes’ show was off the air)
90. Natalie Babbitt, children’s author
91. Gene LaRocque, naval officer, antiwar activist
92. Clive Derby-Lewis, pro-Apartheid politician and murderer (but I repeat myself…)
93. Kay Starr, singer
94. Leonard Cohen, poet, songwriter, singer
95. Janet Reno, politician
96. Robert Vaughan, actor, political scientist
97. Pat Summitt, basketball coach
98. Maurice White, musician
99. Gordie Howe, hockey player
100. John McLaughlin, Jesuit priest turned Washington pundit
101. Leon Russell, musician
102. Gwen Ifill, journalist
103. Mose Allison, singer, songwriter
104. Melvin Laird, politician
105. Ralph Branca, baseball player
106. Denton Cooley, heart surgeon
107. Florence Henderson, actor
108. Fidel Castro, tyrant
109. Ron Glass, actor known for a part on Barney Miller, among other things
110. Fritz Weaver, actor
111. Van Williams, actor, star of a TV series spoofed by Burt Kwouk
112. Bruce Mazlish, historian
113. Grant Tinker, television executive
114. Mark Taimanov, chess champion and concert pianist
115. Don Calfa, actor known for parts on Barney Miller, among other things
116. Peng Chang-kuei, the inventor of General Tso’s Chicken
117. Philip Knightley, writer
118. John Glenn, on two separate occasions holder of the record as the oldest man to visit outer space
119. A. A. Gill, writer
120. Jim Prior, politician (not to be confused with hockey announcer Jim Prior, who also died in 2016)
121. Ralph Raico, economist and staunch disciple of Murray Rothbard
122. Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus
123. Alan Thicke, entertainment personality
124. Thomas Schelling, economist and geopolitiker
125. Bernard Fox, actor best known as Colonel Crittendon from Hogan’s Heroes
126. E. R. Braithwaite, diplomat and author of To Sir, With Love and Honorary White, among other excellent books
127. Henry Heimlich, lifesaver extraordinaire
128. Benjamin Gilman, politician who helped get people out of jail
129. William Hudnut, former mayor of Indianapolis who moved to Maryland, and did William Armstrong one better by actually getting elected to a mayoralty there
130. Zsa Zsa Gabor, who pioneered the art of being well-known for one’s well-knownness
131. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, dutiful grandson
132. Louis Harris, king of the pollsters
133. Lawrence Colburn, one of the helicopter men who stopped the My Lai massacre, saving hundreds of lives and preserving the honor of the American military
134. George Michael, singer and songwriter
135. Vera Rubin, astronomer who played a key role in the discovery of most matter
136. George Irving, actor whose name I noticed for the first time just a day before he died. He played the Heat Miser in 1974’s “Year Without a Santa Claus.”  On Christmas I happened to be in a room where that was playing, the voice struck me as familiar, so I looked at the credits to see if it was associated with a recognizable name.
137. Hans Tietmeyer, central banker who saw better than anyone what the Euro would mean
138. Carrie Fisher, actor and writer, who had hilarious roles in both of the two good movies to come from Saturday Night Live.
139. Richard Adams, novelist
140. Duck Edwing, cartoonist and writer for Mad Magazine
141. Debbie Reynolds, actor, mother of Carrie Fisher, whose most famous ovie role often reminds people of Marni Nixon
142. Joyce Appleby, historian
143. Chris Cannizarro, baseball player
144. Edwin Goldwasser, physicist and administrator
145. William Christopher, actor who appeared in TV military comedies such as Hogan’s Heroes and M*A*S*H

So that averages out to a little more than one person I’d heard of dying every 36 hours. That doesn’t really sound like all that high a rate of death, since the total number of people whose names I would recognize must run into six figures.

*Not including people whose names I didn’t recognize, but who became famous after death. So for example, Ambassador Andrei Karlov and his assassin were household names by the end of 2016, but I’d never heard of either of them until they were both dead.