YOU WILL BE SADLY MISSED
Superman’s Henry Cavill was surprised to read he had shuffled off this mortal coil this week. Marion McMullen looks at other famous people who were able to read their own obituaries
1 BRITISH actor Henry Cavill, left, gave a hilarious response for a false internet rumour that he had died on March 3. The Superman star posted a snap of himself on Instagram looking puzzled, along with a screen shot of the web page, and the response: “What you learn when you died 2 days ago.” His post triggered a raft of responses from fans with many joking “RIP Superman”. “The Supes can’t die,” pointed out another, while one fan joked: “At least you make a good looking ghost.”
2 HUCKLEBERRY FINN and Tom Sawyer author Mark Twain famously responded with “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” when a reporter mixed him up with his sick cousin in 1897. The New York Times also wrongly reported the American writer had been lost at sea in 1907 when his yacht was delayed by fog.
3 APPLE co-founder Steve Jobs echoed Mark Twain’s quote in 2008 when a 17 page obituary for him was accidently published in 2008 by news outlet Bloomberg. It called him a pioneer and said he had “helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music, and refashioned the mobile phone.
4 COMEDY star Sir Ken Dodd, 90, below, was distressed by reports he had died when he was admitted to hospital with a severe chest infection. He said of those who had posted the fake reports: “They are horrible monsters. I don’t think they are human beings. I think they are evil.”
5 SEVERAL French newspapers got it wrong when Alfred Nobel’s brother died, but they reported it was the dynamite inventor who had gone to meet his maker. He was so upset by the obituaries about his death – one saying “The Merchant Of Death Is Dead” – that he set up the Nobel Prize, left.
6 RUMOUR had it in the late 1960s that Paul McCartney, right, had died in a car crash and been replaced by a lookalike. In an interview for Life magazine in 1969, Paul said: “Perhaps the rumour started because I haven’t been much in the press lately.”
7 POET Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in a hotel in 1816 when he heard a man reading out a newspaper report saying he had been found hanging from a tree in Hyde Park in London. He asked to see the paper, before he politely informed the man that he was Coleridge and very much alive.
8 IT is said American writer Ernest Hemingway, above, kept a scrapbook of all his premature obituaries and read them each morning after breakfast while drinking champagne. It was first reported he had died in a plane crash in Africa 1954. In fact, he and his wife Mary survived but he suffered extensive injuries.
9 I, CLAUDIUS novelist Robert Graves was left injured by a shell fragment at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 just before his 21st birthday. He was not expected to survive and was officially reported by medics as having died from his wounds. After he recovered he read a report of his death in The Times. He lived until the age of 90.
10 LEGENDARY circus owner P T Barnum, below, asked for the papers to print his obituary before his death so he could read what they said about him. New York newspaper The Evening Sun followed his wishes and printed a tribute on March 24, 1891 – two weeks before he died at the age of 81.