Thursday, January 10, 2008

A Fine Way to Go


The Man who Died of Laughing:

Can you laugh to death? As a matter of fact, there are more than 10 registered cases of fatal hilarity.

On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies, featuring a Scotsman in a kilt battling a vicious black pudding with his bagpipes. After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure. His widow later sent the Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments so pleasant.

In 1989 a Danish audiologist, Ole Bentzen, died watching A Fish Called Wanda. His heart was estimated to have beat at between 250 and 500 beats per minute, before he succumbed to cardiac arrest.
There's more at the link. Somehow I just knew that A Fish Called Wanda had killed. I broke several ribs laughing.

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