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Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures of the Seven Seas : WET & HOT NEWS !

10 February 2011

Don't laugh too much, it can kill you !

Fatal hilarity is death as a result of laughter. In the third century B.C. the Greek philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after seeing a donkey eating figs. 

On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, literally died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing whilst watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye".

After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure. His widow later sent the Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments so pleasant.

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