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Death

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23 Apr, 1616

William Shakespeare dies on 52nd birthday

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Exactly 52 years after the day of his birth, Shakespeare dies of a fever, supposedly induced by an excess of drinking, one of his contemporaries says

Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.

He dies in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon and is buried in the Holy Trinity Church. Upon his tombstone his own words are engraved.

Good friend for Jesus sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here!

Blest be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones

31 Mar, 1727

Isaac Newton dies age 84

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Newton dies of natural causes at age 84, and is buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey. As a celebrated natural philosopher, he is a new kind of national hero.

I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

7 Oct, 1849

Edgar Allan Poe dies age 40

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Poe dies of mysterious circumstances in Baltimore, Maryland. It is unknown what causes his death, or even the circumstances surrounding it. As he dies, he suffers from fever and delirium.

Lord help my poor soul!

1 Feb, 1851

Mary Shelley dies age 53

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Shelley dies of a cancerous brain tumor in Chester Square, United Kingdom. She has slowly been growing more and more lonely as her life plays itself out.

I have long determined that the best thing I could do was put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature existed

14 Mar, 1883

Karl Marx dies age 64

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Karl Marx dies in London of bronchitis, while sitting in his armchair. He is exiled from much of Europe, and greatly saddened by the recent loss of his daughter. He dies screaming at his maid, who asks him if he has any last words.

Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!

26 Mar, 1892

Walt Whitman dies age 72

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Whitman dies of tuberculosis. He is well cared for as he is dying, and has a nurse by the name of Warry with him when he dies. He doesn’t feel any pain anymore, and is ready to die.

Warry, shift.

30 Nov, 1900

Oscar Wilde dies at 46

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Oscar Wilde dies of meningitis due to infection of his ear at the age of forty six. He is abandoned by most of his friends and family, and is in a cheap french hotel. His last words are reportedly:

This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.

1906

Susan B. Anthony dies age 86

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Anthony dies of heart failure and pneumonia at her home on Madison Street in Rochester. She is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.

May 1907

Elizabeth Keckley dies at 89

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Keckley dies at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, on Euclid St. NW. in Washington, D.C. where she lived. She was 89 years old. She is buried at Columbian Harmony Cemetery.  She had no survivors as her only son was killed fighting in the Civil War.

21 Apr, 1910

Mark Twain dies at 74

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Twain dies from a heart condition at his home in Danbury, CT. Too weak to speak, he writes a note asking for his glasses to read Carlyle’s French Revolution but then pushes them away, falls unconscious and dies a few hours later. His one surviving daughter, Clara and her husband, as well as his biographer, are with him as he dies. He is also survived by a niece and nephew who were on their way to his bedside when he died.

20 Nov, 1910

Leo Tolstoy dies age 82

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Tolstoy dies of pneumonia in his home, surrounded by family. As he dies, friends attempt to redeem Tolstoy’s soul by reconciling with the church and adopting their teachings for his end. He refuses them all, due to principles of pacifism and asceticism that reject the teachings of the Church.

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

18 Mar, 1925

‘Tri-State Tornado’ leaves 695 dead

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Tri-State Tornado aftermath Dubbed the deadliest tornado in U.S history by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the “Tri-State Tornado” tears through Missouri, Southern Illinois, and Indiana. The F5 tornado travels for 300 miles, leaving 695 people dead and 2,027 injured. A description of the storm from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dated two days after the event:

All morning, before the tornado, it had rained. The day was dark and gloomy. The air was heavy. There was no wind. Then the drizzle increased. The heavens seemed to open, pouring down a flood. The day grew black…

Then the air was filled with 10,000 things. Boards, poles, cans, garments, stoves, whole sides of the little frame houses, in some cases the houses themselves, were picked up and smashed to earth. And living beings, too. A baby was blown from its mother’s arms. A cow, picked up by the wind, was hurled into the village restaurant.

18 Oct, 1931

Thomas Edison dies age 84

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Edison dies at age eighty four in New Jersey from Diabetes Mellitus. He dies in his home with his wife, having more patents in the United States than any other inventor of his time. In Edison’s last moments, his wife asks if he is suffering.

No, just waiting. It’s very beautiful over there.

20 Sep, 1939

Sigmund Freud dies age 83

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Freud commits assisted suicide in his home during a Nazi air raid. He has been planning to do this for some time and has been waiting until he could no longer carry on. An overdoes of Morphine is administered by his physician Schur.

My dear Schur, you remember our first talk. You promised to help me when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now, and it has no longer any sense.

7 Jan, 1943

Nikola Tesla dies age 86

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Tesla dies quietly and alone of coronary thrombosis at age 86. He is found dead in his bed by the maid.

30 Apr, 1945

Adolf Hitler dies age 56

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Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker as his imminent defeat approaches. He consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol. He records a last testament for the world.

Above all I enjoin the leaders of the nation and their followers to scrupulous observance of the laws of race, and to merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.

28 Jun, 1946

Antoinette Perry dies at 58

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Perry dies of a heart attack in New York City. She is 58 years old. Daughter:

There were other loves in mother’s life, but theatre was her first. Theatre was what she lived and breathed. If you were an actor, you were on that pedestal of pedestals.

18 Apr, 1955

Albert Einstein dies age 76

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Einstein dies in Princeton Hospital, having refused surgery for internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.

4 Nov, 1955

Yitzhak Rabin assassinated at 73

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Rabin is shot by Amir after a peace rally held in Kings Square in Tel Aviv. Rabin is in the process of retrieving his care when he was shot in the back and the arm. A third shot slightly wounds a security guard. The Prime Minister later dies on the operating table at Ichilov Hospital, in Tel Aviv, from blood loss and a punctured lung within 40 minutes. Announcement:

The government of Israel announces in consternation, in great sadness, and in deep sorrow, the death of prime minister and minister of defense Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered by an assassin, tonight in Tel Aviv. The government shall convene in one hour for a mourning session in Tel Aviv. Blessed be his memory.

3 Feb, 1959

Dies in airplane crash

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Holly-plane-crashOn their wayu to Moorhead, Minnesota, the next venue in their Winter Dance Party Tour, Buddy Holly, 22, Jiles P Richardson, 28, and Ritchie Valens, 17, die in a plane crash shortly after take-off from Clear Lake, Iowa, at 0100 local time. Holly hires the single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza plane after heating problems developed on his tourbus. Reports from the scene suggest the aircraft spun out of control during a light snowstorm. The performers where thrown clear on impact. The pilot is also killed, his body was found inside the wreckage. Only the pilot’s body was found inside the wreckage as the performers were thrown clear on impact.