The fourth of July is upon us. Let’s celebrate our nation’s independence safely.

Now for our cliché!

I was watching an old streaming episode of Diagnosis Murder, titled “The Last Laugh.” A Doctor Valin, played by Pernell Roberts, was killed by a large discharge of Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) run in through a vent into his office. He literally “died laughing.” This seems an unlikely situation.

But watching that old show reminded me of this old saying. It surprised me when I uncovered its history.

This phrase is thought by most to be a humorous stating of an impossible situation, but in reality, it is anything but funny. In the 3rd century BC, Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, died of laughter after giving his donkey figs then watching it try to eat them.

In 1410, King Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughter.

It is recorded that in 1556 Pietro Aretino died of suffocation from excessive laughter.

Then in 1660 Scottish aristocrat Thomas Urquhart, the first translator of the works of François Rabelais into English, was reported to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.

But there is proof. And not related to laughing gas. Alex Mitchell, a fifty-year-old bricklayer from Kings Lynn, England, in 1975, died laughing from watching a Kung Fu Kapers episode of The Goodies featuring a Scotsman in a kilt with bagpipes doing battle with a master of Lancastrian martial art armed with a black pudding. After twenty minutes of unstoppable laughter Mitchell slumped on the couch, his heart failing him.

Then there was Danish audiologist Ole Bentsen who died laughing watching A Fish Called Wanda in 1989. Again, the uncontrolled laughter caused cardiac arrest.

In 2003, a fifty-two-year-old Thai ice cream salesman named Damnoen Saenum was reported to have died while laughing in his sleep. His wife tried unsuccessfully to wake him, and death came after only two minutes. Either heart failure or asphyxiation is blamed for his demise.

As an idiom, the first reference to the phrase known is from 1897 in a fiction article published in the Hawke’s Bay Herald in New Zealand by American author, Jeanette Scott Benton about the Old West called A Pair of Old Maids:

“I was so full of laugh I thought I would die.”

Versions of the cliché have been used in American literature since at least the early 19th century. One example is in A Girl Named Mary by Juliette Wilbor Tompkins published in Indianapolis in 1918.

“Laugh? I thought I’d die!”

If you have a phrase you would like to see featured here, please text Stan at 931-212-3303 or email him at stan@stclair.net