1599: Nanda Bayin, a Burman king, reportedly laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that “Venice was a free state without a king.”

1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn’t stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish. The authenticity of this story is quite questionable

1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.

1981: Jeff Dailey, a 19-year-old gamer, became the first known person to die while playing video games. After achieving a score of 16,660 in the arcade game Berzerk, he succumbed to a massive heart attack. A year later, an 18-year-old gamer died after achieving high scores in the same game.

1997: A terrible diet and a room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body, but an autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system, police said. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things).

In 2003, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, is reported to have died while laughing in his sleep at the age of 52. His wife was unable to wake him, and he stopped breathing after two minutes of continuous laughter. It is believed that he died either of heart failure or asphyxiation.

2006: Markus Loffel, a German DJ who was a prominent member in the trance movement, Loffel suffered a heart attack last year when he realized that Trance music was shit.

2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 “The End” radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating

2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man, committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an Internet chat session.

2008: Gerald Mellin, a U.K. businessman, committed suicide by tying one end of a rope around his neck and the other to a tree. He then hopped into his Aston Martin DB7 and drove down a main road in Swansea until the rope decapitated him. He supposedly did this as an act of revenge against his ex-wife for leaving him.

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