No one knows when they will reach the end of the road and what kind of death they may
be faced with.
It could happen in an instant without warning, or it could be a long dragged out process
leaving a person with plenty of time to reflect on their life.
Samuel Butler, an English author who lived in the 1800’s once said "If life must not
be taken too seriously, then so neither must death."
This quote brings us aptly to today’s topic, about an end that may be one of the better
ways to exit the world.
Welcome to this episode of The Infographics Show: Death by Laughing.
A friend tells you a joke and you laugh.
They tell you a really funny joke and you laugh so hard you fall over.
And then there’s the funniest joke of all, the one that made you laugh yourself to death.
This is of course, just a figure of speech.
I mean if you had really died laughing you wouldn’t be able to tell people about it,
as you’d be lying six feet under in a wooden box.
But can you really die from laughing?
Actually if you laugh hard enough then it is possible to kill yourself.
It can happen due to stress on the body when in hysterical laughter.
Some of the ways include ruptured brain aneurysm, collapsed lung leading to suffocation, heart
attack, strangulated hernia which cuts of blood flow to vital organs, asphyxiation,
seizure or stroke.
None of those circumstances sound very funny at all!
So what about some real cases?
Ones where people have found themselves on the wrong side of the joke.
When we started to research online we were surprised to find there were more than we
had expected.
We’ve looked at some of the more interesting cases to see what was discovered about the
cause of death, beyond the joke that got these people laughing in the first place.
Let’s take a look.
5.
Chrysippus was an Ancient Greek philosopher.
A huge man, he lived more than 200 years before Christ and was known for his work in Stoicism,
an ancient school of philosophy of personal ethics.
This meant Chrysippus valued the qualities of his mind over everyday sensory pleasures,
which makes the story of his death somewhat comical in itself as it involved plenty of
alcohol beverages and a random donkey.
It was at the 143rd Olympiad where the drink would have been flowing.
There are two accounts of the story.
In the first Chrysippus was legless on strong wine and keeled over from the laugher - or
was it too much wine?
The second story is a bit more dramatic.
Having seen a donkey chomping on figs, Chrysippus decided to give the creature some wine to
wash the fruit down.
He found the incident so hilarious that he laughed himself to his grave.
It’s hard to properly verify such an old story but it’s certainly an interesting
one.
4.
Next we have the odd case of Damnoen Saen-um, a 52 year old ice-cream truck driver from
Bangkok in Thailand, who died while laughing in his sleep.
Yes, you heard me right, in his sleep!
Thailand newspaper The Nation reported that Saen-um laughed for about two minutes before
stopping breathing.
His wife tried to wake him up but he continued to laugh.
The autopsy suggested that a heart attack might have been the final cause of death.
“I have never seen a case like this.
But it is possible that a person could have heart seizure while laughing or crying too
hard in their sleep,” said Dr Somchai Chakrabhand, deputy director-general of the Mental Health
Department.
3.
Thomas (Tommy) Frederick Cooper lived from 1921 to 1984.
He was a British comedian and magician who wore a red fez, which is a red cylindrical
hat with a tassel, named after the Moroccan city of Fez.
Cooper was big man standing at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing more than 210 lb. (95
kg).
On 15 April 1984, this British comedian collapsed with a heart attack on live national television.
He may not have technically been the laughing that killed Copper, but he was cracking jokes
at the time and surrounded by laughter as he was onstage in the midst of a comedy routine
at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London.
The live audience and thousands of TV viewers thought it was part of his act and so waited
for him to get up.
But it was soon clear that something was wrong.
2.
To more recent times, in 2013, 22 year old Mangesh Bhogal, visited a multiplex along
with his girlfriend in state of Vasai in India, to watch a Hindi comedy called Grand Masti.
Everyone loves a comedy but Bhogal loved it so much that he laughed himself all the way
to a heart attack.
Bhogal was rushed to Cardinal Gracias Hospital but died before the ambulance could get him
to the emergency room.
Rakesh Shah, director, KT Vision explained that “During the incident I was at the box
office when one of our employees informed me about the incident.
The youth was with his girlfriend and they were watching the 6pm show of Grand Masti.
Those who sat beside the youth said he was laughing his heart out.”
According to Indian newspaper DNA, a police official from Manickpur police station said
that a case of accidental death has been registered.
1.
And finally there is the case of UK citizen Alex Mitchell, who suffered heart failure
after viewing the Ecky-Thump episode of the Goodies in 1975.
Maybe you’ve not heard of the Goodies.
They are made up of three British comedians, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill
Oddie, who wrote and performed comedy shows during the 1970s and early 1980s.
And funny enough to cause heart failure, it seems.
But this mystery further unfolded in 2012, when Mitchell’s 23-year-old granddaughter
Lisa Corke, had a near fatal heart attack at home on the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
She was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome, which doctors believe could also have caused Mitchell's
death.
There are just a few cases of how some people have laughed themselves to death.
The ones we looked at stretch 2000 plus years.
One thing that seems certain is that it’s not actually the laughing and joking that
causes someone’s life to end, but instead an underlying medical condition.
So if you’re fit and healthy it’s probably safe to keep laughing hard at your favorite
jokes.
Do you know of other strange and unlikely ways people have kicked the proverbial bucket?
Let us know in the comments!
Also be sure to check out our other video, What Happens When You Die?
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Infographics Show!
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