Talk:List of deaths from laughter

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Death

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Comedy

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Reliable citations needed.

The only deaths in this list of significant reliability are those of Arthur Cobcroft and Alex Mitchell. Pretty much everything else is either not true or is so old there's really no way at all to verify it happened. I went through the citations and edited the article as I felt was appropriate. I Googled the references I couldn't find, but everything I'm seeing seems to just be quoting this Wikipedia list. I'm not feeling froggy enough to look through news reports from the 15th century and so forth to try proving a negative.

Ole Bentzen: I can't find any report of this death except one from the Weekly World News -- a paper dedicated to outlandishly false stories. The existing citation is to an interview with cast members who mentioned trying to, but apparently not succeeding in, contacting the widow. It, along with most other Google hits, is from the last decade and isn't a reliable source. A Gizmodo writer noted in a 2015 article that they also found no reliable references to this supposed laughing death. Removed from article.

Wesley Parsons: This doesn't seem to be a laughing death. The guy laughed a long time, but didn't die until an hour after the laughing stopped. If anything, it's death by hiccups. Further, the citation is a blurb in a BBC article that doesn't fit my idea of reliability. Removed from article.

William Cushing: I found a scanned copy of the May 1799 edition of The Gentlemen's Magazine. That document has the entire year's worth of magazines listed as a single, continuous magazine, with pages numbered sequentially from the beginning of the year. The May edition starts at page 221 (linked) / 219 (printed), with deaths at page 273 / 271. I couldn't find a reference to either William Cushing or anyone who laughed to death. It's possible someone got the wrong month, or that it's an article not in the deaths section, but my internet is slow which makes it difficult to scan through everything in a timely fashion. Added URL link to citation, with a page link to the deaths section. Added verification failed tag.

Thomas Urquhart: The History of Scotish Poetry citation should specify footnote 4. It's hard to read and took me a while to find despite being right on the cited page. They mention the story is "sufficiently probable" because of records of similar cases, but don't apparently have any way to verify its truth. Specified footnote 4 in citation.

King Martin of Aragon: The citation should specifically point to page 8. I'm not sure how reliable this citation is, considering the document in question doesn't cite a source for the laughing death, but it's probably about as reliable as you'll get for a 1410 death. Specified page 8 in citation. 199.127.114.114 (talk) 05:41, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]