MAN LAUGHING UPROARIOUSLY IN THEATER IS PRONOUNCED DEAD
Reading, Pennsylvania (JFK+50) The Evening Star reports in the February 21, 1924 edition that here in Reading* last evening sixty-four year old Emmet Crowell "was enjoying a comedy and laughed uproariously."
Unfortunately, Mr. Crowell "suddenly slumped in his seat" was carried to a back room in the theater and then taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
*Reading is located in southern Pennsylvania, the county seat of Berks County. It is famous for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, the largest corporation in the world in the 1870s.
JFK+50 NOTE
There has to be a moral lesson for this story, but I'm not certain what it is. Certainly, if one has to go it probably would be better going laughing than crying.
Death from laughter, although extremely rare, has been recorded since ancient times. The laughter usually precedes cardiac arrest or asphyxiation.
SOURCE
"Laughs Himself To Death Over Theater Comedy," The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., February 21, 1924, Chronicling America, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/
