Free 5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback by Karl Shaw Page B

“accidental shooting due to influence 96
    [Ten Hollywood Suicide Shootings]
    of Quaaludes,” despite his suicide note: “I must end it.
    There’s no hope left. I’ll be at peace. No one had anything to do with this. My decision totally.”
    8
    DONALD “RED” BARRY B-Western cowboy star
    who, despite a role in Little House on the Prairie, shot himself in 1980 because his fans had deserted him.
    9
    JON-ERIK HEXUM Committed accidental suicide in 1984 when he shot himself with a pistol loaded with blanks on the set of the TV spy show Cover Up , noting,
    “Let’s see if this will do it.” The concussion forced a chunk of his skull into his brain; he died six days later.
    10
    HERVÉ VILLECHAIZE The diminutive Fantasy Island star brought his life to an end by shooting himself in the stomach in 1993. He muffled the gun under two pillows so as not to disturb his sleeping girlfriend.
    97
    Ten
    10
    Literary Drug Abusers
    1
    CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Hashish and opium addict.
    2
    W. B. YEATS Addicted to mescaline, a hallucinogenic derived from Mexican cactus.
    3
    SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Opium and
    laudanum addict.
    4
    THOMAS DE QUINCEY Opium and laudanum
    addict. The author of Confessions of an Opium Eater quaffed up to eight thousand drops of opium and six or seven glasses of laudanum a day. He started taking drugs for a toothache he suffered while at Oxford University.
    The remedy worked—eventually, all his teeth fell out and he had to live on liquids.
    5
    SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Cocaine user. He also had his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, use it in The Sign of Four .
    6
    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Cocaine addict. Dr.
    Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was created entirely under the influence of cocaine, which helped him write and twice revise the 60,000-word manuscript in six days.
    7
    CHARLES DICKENS Opium user.
    8
    ARTHUR RIMBAUD Absinthe addict.
    9
    DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Morphine addict and alcoholic.
    10
    HUNTER S. THOMPSON, THE CREATOR OF
    “GONZO JOURNALISM” Renowned for excessive alcohol, heroin, and cocaine abuse.
    98
    P
    10
    ennies from Heaven:
    The World’s Ten Highest-
    Earning Dead Artists
    1
    Elvis Presley, the King of Royalties—$45 million per year
    2
    Charles Shulz—$28 million per year
    3
    John Lennon—$20 million per year
    4
    Andy Warhol—$16 million per year
    5
    Theodor S. Geisel (Dr. Seuss)—$10 million per year 6
    Marlon Brando—$11.3 million per year
    7
    Marilyn Monroe—$8 million per year
    8
    J. R. R. Tolkien—$8 million per year
    9
    George Harrison—$7 million per year
    10
    Johnny Cash—$7 million per year
    99

Chapter
Four
    Health & Beauty
    Ten Pr 10
    esidential Illnesses
    1
    GEORGE WASHINGTON During his first year in office, he developed a huge, pus-filled carbuncle that made him seriously ill. Shortly afterward he caught a cold in Boston, the start of a minor epidemic of what his enemies called “Washington Influenza.” In May 1790 he almost died from pneumonia, causing him to reflect that one more serious illness would surely “put me to sleep with my fathers.” Despite his pessimism, death did not come until 1799, two years after his retirement from the presidency. He rode around his plantation in the rain, complained of a sore throat, and by the following evening had suffocated to death, his airway blocked by a swollen epiglottis. Washington, who had a morbid fear of premature burial, had left instructions that he was to be laid out for three days just to be on the safe side.
    2
    WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON He caught a severe cold while giving his two-hour inaugural speech on a wet day in 1841, and within days of taking office was seriously ill with pneumonia and “congestion of the liver,” finally expiring four weeks later. Most people blamed it on poor White House heating; however, Globe editor Francis Preston Blair, not allowing the death of a president to interrupt his assault on the administration, blamed it on the Whigs, who had never before held the presidency.
    3
    ZACHARY TAYLOR Became