1970 deaths

René_Rocher

René Rocher (5 August 1890, in Paris – 24 June 1970) was a France stage actor and theater director.
In 1923, René Rocher gave its name to the current Comédie-Caumartin. He was managing director of the Théâtre Antoine from 1928 to 1933, then the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier from 1935 to 1943, and the Théâtre de l'Odéon from 1940 to 1944.

Jean_De_Briac

Jean De Briac (born Jean-Frederic Weitler, 15 August 1891 – 18 October 1970) was a French film actor. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1920 and 1962. He was born in France and died in Los Angeles, California. He immigrated to the United States in 1915.

Marcel_Minnaert

Marcel Gilles Jozef Minnaert (12 February 1893 – 26 October 1970) was a Belgian-Dutch astronomer. He was born in Bruges and died in Utrecht. He is notable for his contributions to astronomy and physics and for a popular book on meteorological optics: Light and colour in the open air, first published in English in 1940.

Georges_Weill

Georges Weill (17 September 1882 – 10 January 1970) was an Alsatian politician who was a Socialist member of parliament for Metz in the German Reichstag from 1912 to 1914. After the outbreak of World War I, he declared his loyalty to France and joined the French Army. In response he was stripped of German citizenship on 5 August 1914. After the Allied victory the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine returned to France, he was elected general counsel of the Lower Rhine in 1919 and became a socialist member of the French Parliament for the Bas-Rhin district.

Jerzy_Szaniawski

Jerzy Szaniawski (Zegrzynek, 10 February 1886 – 16 March 1970, Warsaw) was a Polish writer, playwright, and essayist; an elected member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature in the interwar period. He is best remembered for his series of short stories about the fictitious Professor Tutka, published in daily press in postwar Poland. During Stalinism his writing was temporarily banned as "ideologically adverse".

Arturo_Merino_Benítez

Commodore Arturo Merino Benítez (April 17, 1888 in Chillán, Ñuble Province – May 2, 1970 in Santiago), was an aviator with rank of Commodore, and the founder of both the Chilean Air Force (1930) and LAN Chile (1929) the national airline. Known as the “Father of Chilean Aeronautics.” Chile's largest airport was named in his honour, Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport. His parents were Pedro Merino Feliú and Clorinda Benítez Labbé. He was considered a close ally of Chilean socialist President Salvador Allende. He died from a stroke at age 82, his remains are at the Cementerio General de Santiago.

Julia_Culp

Julia Bertha Culp (6 October 1880 – 13 October 1970), the "Dutch nightingale", was an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano in the years 1901–1919.

"You might describe Julia Culp as a connoisseur’s singer," Michael Oliver wrote in the International Opera Collector in 2000. "Her voice was not large, her compass not wide. She never sang in opera; striking dramatic gesture were not her line. What she excelled in were the singer’s rather than the vocal actress’s virtues: sustained legato line, remarkable breath control, subtle colour, immaculate care for words…. But ‘connoisseur’s singer’ does not mean that only connoisseurs can appreciate her; one becomes a connoisseur by listening to her."