Premature Obituaries Two

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:16:52 +0000

For Part 1, click here.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

English poet and philosopher, best known for his poems “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In 1816, he overheard his name mentioned in a hotel by a man who was reading aloud a newspaper account of a coroner’s inquest. Intrigued, he requested for the paper, and was told that “it was very extraordinary that Coleridge the poet should have hanged himself just after the success of his play (”Remorse”), but he was always a strange mad fellow.” Coleridge quickly responded: “Indeed, sir, it is a most extraordinary thing that he should have hanged himself, be the subject of an inquest, and yet that he should at this moment be speaking to you.” In fact, there was a man who had fallen from a tree in Hyde Park; and his sole identification was his shirt which bore the mark “S. T. Coleridge.” Coleridge believed the shirt was probably stolen from him.

Marcus Garvey (1887 – 1940)

National hero of Jamaica; Black nationalist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). After having suffered a stroke in January 1940, he read in the Chicago Defender dated June 10th of the same year his own obituary, negatively describing him as “broke, alone and unpopular.” And as a result, he suffered another stroke and died.

Hiroo Onoda (1922 – )

World War II Japanese army intelligence officer stationed in the Philippines. After the war, he survived three decades hiding in Philippine jungles in the sincere belief that the war had not ended. He, along with three fellow soldiers, continued their battle, executing many local Filipinos in the process. Every effort to convince him that the war was over was considered an enemy trap. Officially declared as dead in 1959, he only yielded himself in 1974, when his commanding officer was called out of retirement to personally order him to surrender. He was accorded a hero’s welcome upon his return to Japan and wrote an autobiography “No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War,” describing his years fighting a war that was long over.

Fidel Castro (1926 – )

Revolutionary leader who led Cuba from 1959 until his retirement in 2008. In 2003, it was discovered that his draft obituary could be accessed from the CNN website without a password. Apparently, it had used Ronald Reagan’s as a template, describing him as “lifeguard, athlete, movie star.”

Joe DiMaggio (1914 – 1999)

New York Yankee baseball player and second husband of Marilyn Monroe. On January 1999, NBC prematurely broadcast his death as a text report moving across the bottom of the TV screen, which was seen by DiMaggio himself. The text was pre-written in response to newspaper reports that DiMaggio was near death due to lung cancer, and put on the air when a technician pushed the wrong button. He died on the 8th of March.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)

1953 Pulitzer and 1954 Nobel Prize-winning American writer and journalist, whose famous novels include “The Old Man and the Sea” and “A Farewell to Arms.” Newspaper reported that he and his fourth wife Mary had perished after both figured in two successive African plane crashes in 1954. However, Hemingway survived, but suffered serious injuries that affected him for the remainder of his life. It was claimed that he reads a collection of his own obituaries every day with a glass of champagne following the incident.

Friedrich Gulda (1930 – 2000)

Austrian classical and jazz pianist and composer. In 1999, he sent a fax report to the Austrian News Agency of his own death from a stroke at the Zurich airport. Not long after, he revealed he was still very much alive and would be performing a “Resurrection Recital” complete with go-go dancers. He frequently played practical jokes to exasperate the musical authorities, thus earning him the title “terrorist pianist.”

Vince McMahon (1945 – )

American professional wrestling promoter and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) chairman. On June 11, 2007 live edition of RAW, he was “presumed dead” after the limousine he entered exploded, and a tribute was instantaneously made in his honor on the WWE website. However, on June 25, 2007, the scheduled memorial for him was cancelled in the wake of the “actual” double murder and suicide of Chris Benoit; instead, he emerged in an empty stadium revealing that the explosion had only been a stunt. The entire planned storyline was immediately discarded in deference for those who had died.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917 – 2007)

American Pulitzer Prize recipient and historian. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mentioned about his death on its November 29 2005 edition. Three days later, it withdrew the reference saying, “We are embarrassed but happy for Mr. Schlesinger.”

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

Welsh philosopher, historian and mathematician. In 1920, he contracted pneumonia during his one-year teaching stint in Beijing accompanied by his fourth wife Dora; and soon, erroneous reports of his demise were published by the Japanese media. So when he and his wife visited Japan on their return trip, Dora informed the media that “Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists.” The press did not take the sarcasm well.

Click on the following for more interesting history articles:

Socyberty » Hiroo Onoda