September 11, 1978

1978Mike Gazella, American baseball player and manager (born 1895)^[†]

Michael Gazella was an American major league baseball player who played for the New York Yankees on several championship teams in the 1920s.

1978Georgi Markov, Bulgarian author and playwright (born 1929)^[†]

Georgi Ivanov Markov was a Bulgarian dissident writer. He originally worked as a novelist, screenwriter and playwright in his native country, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, until his defection in 1969. After relocating to London, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the Radio Free Europe and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian-Soviet regime.

1978Janet Parker, English photographer (born 1938)^[†]

In 1978, an outbreak of smallpox in the United Kingdom resulted in the death of Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, who became the last recorded person to die from the disease. Her illness and death, which was connected to the deaths of two other people, led to the Shooter Inquiry, an official investigation by government-appointed experts triggering radical changes in how dangerous pathogens were studied in the UK and named after the panel's leader.

1978Ronnie Peterson, Swedish racing driver (born 1944)^[†]

Bengt Ronnie Peterson was a Swedish racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1970 to 1978. Nicknamed "Superswede", Peterson twice finished runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1971 and 1978, and won 10 Grands Prix across nine seasons.