Premature Obituaries

by eddiego65 in Death, May 29, 2008

Notable people who have been reported as having died while still alive.

There are some notable people who are recipients of erroneous death reports (not necessarily in the form of obituaries) from publications, radio, television and other information sources such as the internet, while they are still alive. Such situations are frequently due to several causes, such as hoaxes, mix-up names or mistaken identities; and will certainly result in great embarrassment or sometimes with greater dramatic consequences. As follows are some of these well known personalities:

Pope Benedict XV (1854 – 1922)

Born Giacomo della Chiesa, he was elected pope in 1914. He fell sick in early January 1922 with pneumonia. Owing to speculations of his imminent death, a New York newspaper mistakenly ran on its front-page “The Pope is Dead,” followed by an later edition that headlined “Pope has Remarkable Recovery.” He eventually passed away due to the sickness on January 22, 1922.
Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971)

Succeeded Stalin as First Secretary leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1953 but was however forced to resign in 1964 for making serious political mistakes such as triggering the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In 1964, his death was wrongly announced by a Cologne radio station, which had received a hoax telex report.
Alice Cooper (1948 – )

Born Vincent Damon Furnier, an American Rock singer who is often called “Father of Metal” and “Founder of Shock Rock.” Many believed that he had died when Melody Maker magazine published a sarcastic review of his concert in obituary form. He later comforted his fans: “I’m alive and drunk as usual.”
James Scott Brady (1940 – )

Assistant to the President and White House Press Secretary under the Reagan administration. Some media reports announced that he had passed away when he was shot in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. After being permanently disabled by the incident, he became an ardent supporter of gun control.
Alfred Nobel (1833 – 1896)

Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor of the dynamite. In 1888, a French newspaper deliberately published his obituary to condemn his invention. However, this incident prompted him to use his great fortune to establish the Nobel Prize with the intention of improving his posthumous legacy.
Paul McCartney (1942 – )

English rock singer-composer-producer, founder of the Beatles and the band Wings. His hits include Beatle’s “Hey Jude” and “Yesterday,” and Wing’s “Live and Let Die” and “Band on the Run.” Though already popular, the Beatles’ popularity intensified in 1966 when an urban legend started to spread through a radio station that one of its member died and was substituted with a look-alike, but the entire thing turned out to be false.
Michael Heseltine (1933 – )

British politician and businessman. After suffering a heart attack, news of his death rapidly escalated when then-BBC Radio DJ Chris Morris implied it as a joke, leading to an on-air tribute by fellow MP Jerry Hayes. Morris was subsequently suspended for the prank.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903)

American-born painter and etcher based in Britain, who is best known for his nearly black and white full-length portrait of his mother entitled “Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1,” better known as “Whistler’s mother.” A Dutch newspaper reported that he had died after a heart attack. He subsequently wrote to the paper concerned, saying that reading his own obituary brought about a “tender glow of health.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

1907 Nobel Prize for Literature winning British writer and poet, whose best known work include the novels “The Jungle Book” and “Kim” and the poem “Gunga Din.” His death was published by mistake in a magazine, to which he humorously wrote: “I’ve just read that I am dead. Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.”
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American humorist, novelist and lecturer, whose best known works include “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Prince and the Pauper.” In 1897, the erroneous publication of his obituary in a New York Journal prompted his famous comment “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”