Everyone’s got to die from something. Most causes of death are pretty hard to confront or joke about because you’ll probably know someone in your own family who’s died from it, or at least know of someone who has. And that’s not the ideal starting ground for a humourous anecdote.

But whereas pancreatic cancer is generally accepted to be ‘not very funny’, some ways of dying are very funny (or at least pretty cool), and deserve to be celebrated.

My favourite cause of death is Fatal Hilarity, where people laugh so much
they can’t breathe and die. Upon first thoughts, that sounds like a
perfect death; enjoyable, fun and it doesn’t involve months of anguish
as you slowly waste away to a putrid, jaundiced shadow of yourself. But
in reality it would be horrible. Just like when someone’s tickling your
feet and it looks like you’re having the time of your life (but what’s
really happening is that you’re in pain and beside yourself with
panic), the same situation would apply here. It doesn’t matter if
you’re laughing, you’re still suffocating to death and that would be a
pretty distressing way to go.
Some of the deaths in this list are not really funny at all, and the
more recent ones a actually quite grisly, but it makes some good
reading anyway.

Here’s a few of my favourites…

1998: Every player on the visiting soccer team at a game in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was struck by a fork bolt of lightning, killing them all instantly.

1981: Jeff Dailey, a 19-year-old gamer, became the first known person
to die while playing video games. After achieving a score of 16,660 in
the arcade game Berzerk, he succumbed to a massive heart attack. A year
later, an 18-year-old gamer died after achieving high scores in the
same game.

1978: Claude François, a French pop singer, was electrocuted when he
tried to change a light bulb while standing in his bathtub which was
full of water at the time.

1940: Marcus Garvey died after suffering either a cerebral hemorrhage
or heart attack while reading his own obituary, which stated in part
that he died “broke, alone and unpopular”.

1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of
blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked
his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination.

207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died
of laughter after watching his drunk donkey attempt to eat figs.

O’REAL