9. The Creator Of Modern Erotic Fiction Died From Laughter
Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) was an Italian writer, satirist, poet, playwright, and blackmailer. He also created modern literary pornography – erotic literature, with graphic sexual details, intended to arouse. Nowadays, as it has been for centuries, erotic fiction is a steady (if often downplayed) moneymaker for publishers. Seeing as how Aretino’s whole life seems to have been one long and seedy adventure, it was somehow fitting that he died laughing at a dirty joke.
It came about as a party was winding down on October 21st, 1556, and his sister shared a risque joke. Pietro Aretino laughed so hard that he fell off his chair, and kicked the bucket right then and there. Another version has it that died from a fit of apoplectic laughter after hearing the joke, while yet another variant has it that his death was caused by suffocation from laughing so hard. Whichever version it was, all accounts agree that it was laughter that killed him. Unfortunately, the deadly joke has not survived.