www.nytimes.com /spotlight/overlooked

Overlooked

Seth Mydans 2-2 minutes

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Highlights

  1. Photo

    Maria Orosa, a food scientist and nationalist, sought to make the Philippines less dependent on imported food. Banana ketchup was one result.

    Creditvia Orosa family
  2. Photo

    The singer and songwriter Sylvia Rexach. An eminent musicologist described her as virtually unclassifiable within the Latin American music of her time.

    CreditArchivo General de Puerto Rico
    1. Photo

      Vera Menchik in 1939. She began playing chess when she was 9, and her skills would later garner international attention.

      CreditWorld Wide Photos
    2. Photo

      Regina Jonas in 1936, a year after she was officially ordained as the world’s first woman rabbi.

      CreditStiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin — Centrum Judaicum
  1. Photo

    Alda Merini in 1995. Today her poems and aphorisms are widely shared on social media.

    CreditLeonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
  2. Photo

    Lottie Brunn in 1949. She performed in circuses, nightclubs and variety shows and shared the stage with Tony Bennett, the Supremes and others.

    CreditSverre Braathen/Illinois State University's Special Collections, Milner Library
  3. Photo

    Klaus Nomi in 1980. His music combined opera, infectious melodies, disco beats and German-accented countertenor vocals.

    CreditMichael Halsband
  4. Photo

    William B. Gould around 1870. Though his descendants knew he served in the Civil War, it was only after his death that they learned he had escaped from slavery.

    Creditvia Gould family
  5. Photo

    CreditClockwise from top left: Chicago History Museum/Getty Images; National Portrait Gallery, London; Roz Kelly/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images; Lacks Family/The Henrietta Lacks Foundation, via Associated Press; Paul Fearn/Alamy; James Burke/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

    Remarkable People We Overlooked in Our Obituaries

    The poet Sylvia Plath and the novelist Charlotte Brontë. Ida B. Wells, the anti-lynching activist. These extraordinary people — and so many others — did not have obituaries in The New York Times. Until now.

    January 29, 2019By Amisha Padnani and Jessica Bennett