Though it sounds like an urban legend, Alex Mitchell literally died of laughter in 1975 while watching his favorite show, “The Goodies.”
The British bricklayer laughed non-stop for 25 minutes at a sketch about Scottish martial arts, but his heart couldn’t take the strain, and he suffered a cardiac arrest right on his sofa.
Most curiously, his widow wrote to the comedians to thank them for making her husband’s final minutes so happy.
However, decades later, science gave the story a twist: after a similar incident involving his granddaughter, doctors discovered the family suffered from a genetic condition that caused their hearts to fail under strong emotions. In the end, the laughter wasn’t the cause, but the trigger for a hidden problem. 🤯