5 Myths About Celebrity Deaths Everyone Believes

5 Charles Darwin Didn't Recant on His Deathbed

The Myth

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has many detractors, but as millions of evangelical Christians can tell you, perhaps the most notorious was ... Charles Darwin himself. As the story goes, when Darwin grew ill, he turned to religion and began studying the Bible. On his deathbed, he met up with a British evangelist and confided to her that he regretted his past work, saying, "I was a young man with unformed ideas." It's a powerful story about how even the most intellectual skeptic can change his beliefs when confronted with death.

But Actually ...

Not only has Darwin's family denied the story, but there's no reason to believe it's true.

Keep in mind that Darwin started out religious and turned less so as he got older, eventually becoming an agnostic, as he was at the time of his death. His last words were "I am not the least afraid to die." Also remember that Darwin's wife, Emma, was religious herself and would have delighted in her husband's conversion, yet she never mentioned anything of the sort. So where did the rumor come from? Well, let's put it this way: It wasn't exactly an unbiased source.

The story came from an evangelist named Lady Hope, who claimed that Darwin recanted his beliefs while she was visiting him. First, even among evangelists, Hope, whose real name was Elizabeth Cotton, wasn't well-trusted. Second, while she published more than 30 books filled with evangelistic themes and personal anecdotes, she never mentioned the Darwin story until 1915, 33 years after the man's death. According to her own telling, Darwin urged her to spread the word of Jesus among his tenants, servants, and neighbors ... yet not a single person confirmed that she was even there.

Oh, and there's also the fact that Darwin wasn't even bedridden on the date she claimed to have visited him, six months before his death.

It's easy to see why the story got traction in religious circles. The guy who came up with evolution didn't even believe in it? That ought to end any message board debate on the subject right there! And to be fair, the most respected creationist organizations agree that Hope was full of shit. Maybe she thought she was serving a higher purpose by making up stuff, but claiming that the man disavowed his life's work, and that only she was there to hear it? That's a dick move, lady.

4 Walt Disney's Head Is Not Frozen

The Myth

This is one you've probably heard in the form of a joke, if nothing else. The fact that Walt Disney had his head (or entire body) cryogenically frozen turned up in episodes of The Simpsons and 30 Rock ("Go to Disneyland? Lemon, I've held Walt Disney's frozen head in my hands!"). The Weekly World News even once claimed that Walt's frozen head had been stolen.

It's strangely plausible. Walt Disney was as eccentric as he was rich -- if anyone could defeat death via some kind of forward-thinking brain-freezing technology, it was him. And in fact, some biographies of Disney claim that when Disney learned he had lung cancer, he decided to have his remains preserved in a cryogenic chamber in the hopes that one day in the future, technology would be able to bring him back to life (with robot parts, if necessary). And he's still there, they say, frozen in some secret location to be resurrected in 2040 to wreak vengeance on us all.

But Actually ...

If Disney is frozen in some chamber, then who the hell is buried here?

There are a number of silly myths surrounding Walt Disney, like that he was anti-Semitic, or a pervert, or the actual creator of Mickey Mouse. The whole "frozen corpse" thing is just another one of them, unfortunately. There isn't a single piece of evidence to support it. In fact, the exact opposite thing happened: We have Walt Disney's death certificate saying that he was cremated.

It's true that Disney had no funeral, but only because he'd previously stated that he didn't want one (as published in interviews 10 years before his death). It's also true that a couple of his biographies mention this story as fact, but they also happen to be the most bullshit-filled Disney biographies ever published. One of them sources the story to Disney's "closest colleagues," who ended up being employees that never spoke to the man about the subject and were just repeating the old myth.

Nobody is sure where the rumor started, but it probably has to do with the fact that news of the first for-real frozen dead guy came out a month after Disney's death, and also the fact that he was rich and crazy. It sounded like something he would do, and it made for a fitting ending for such a larger-than-life personality. Who knows, maybe if Disney had lived a month longer, he would have read about that guy in the paper and liked the idea, but in reality, he probably never even knew cryogenics was a thing.

3 Mozart Was Not Buried in a Pauper's Grave

The Myth

Everyone knows the name "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" now, but he was never appreciated in his own era. After all, isn't that the way it goes with most real geniuses? Mozart's operas failed, and he was hated in Vienna because his music was too ahead of its time. Consequently, he died a poor man and was buried as such -- in a ditch. In the film Amadeus, we see how they literally dump his corpse into an unmarked mass grave with other poverty-stricken nobodies.

But Actually ...

While it's more romantic to think of Mozart as some misunderstood genius, the truth is that he was by no means a starving artist. He got himself into quite a bit of debt, sure, but his income was around 10,000 florins a year, which put him in the top 5 percent of the population. Mozart's concerts and piano lessons gave him a steady source of wealth, and his last opera, The Magic Flute, was a huge success.

As for his burial, several sources state that he was buried in a "communal grave," but this is apparently a mistranslation: He was actually buried in a common grave, which is to say, "not a fancy one." In 18th century Vienna, it was the custom for middle-class people to be buried in plots they didn't own, from which they were eventually dug up to make space for others, which is why his body's current whereabouts are unknown. Some biographer probably read about that, thought, "Holy shit, that's fucked up," and exaggerated it just a tiny bit ... so we ended up with "they threw him in a ditch."

In Amadeus, we see Mozart begging for money and unable to impress his father. In reality, Mozart's dad was bragging in letters about how much money his son was making. So he wasn't exactly an unappreciated artist who suffered all his life -- he was more like the Michael Bolton of the 1700s: a popular artist who had some huge hits, but wasn't a huge deal either.

2 Oscar Wilde Did Not Die of Syphilis

The Myth

Oscar Wilde was more promiscuous than a whole army of former Disney Channel stars combined. In 1895, he was charged with butthole indecency and sentenced to two years of hard labor, and not even the fun kind.

Wilde took it easy in his later years, but his promiscuous past caught up with him, and, according to several biographies (respectable ones, this time), he died of meningitis as a direct result of syphilis. His sexual debauchery cost him his life. A cautionary tale for sure, kids!

But Actually ...

True, saying that Oscar Wilde was killed by syphilis wasn't a huge stretch -- an estimated 25 percent of Victorian men had it at the time. Also, he was Oscar Wilde. He probably gave it to that 25 percent in the first place. However, Wilde's actual symptoms didn't match up with syphilis, or any seedy STD, for that matter. Today, medical experts agree that he most likely died of an ear infection.

When Wilde died, there was not much medical information on what caused his meningitis. Wilde's early biographers assumed that he got it from syphilis because, well, it made sense. "It made sense" was also the whole reason the syphilis story was included in Richard Ellman's "definitive" Oscar Wilde biography in 1987 -- Ellman wrote the entire book on the theory that Wilde had contracted the disease as a young man and that it somehow influenced his writing.

However, the truth is that there's no evidence that Wilde ever had syphilis in his life. His friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas sued the writer of Wilde's first biography for libel, and as a result, the writer removed the syphilis claim from later editions (despite winning the lawsuit). But it was too late: The syphilis explanation became an accepted part of Wilde's persona and turned him into a cautionary tale against hard living. Wash your ears, kids!

1 Edgar Allan Poe Did Not Die of Alcoholism

The Myth

In October of 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore in a drunken stupor and taken to a hospital, where he died. Everyone who knew him probably saw it coming: It's well-known that Poe was addicted to booze and opium, and according to his obituary, he was a tormented madman who was frequently seen wandering the streets in delirium, muttering to himself. His death was like a moment straight out of the darkest of his poems, minus the rhyming and talking birds.

As with Oscar Wilde, it fits the narrative. Writers are drunks, and people who write weird horror stories are surely on drugs. It was only a matter of time until it all caught up with the guy.

But Actually ...

Poe did pass away after being found delirious under bizarre circumstances, but there's no evidence that his state had anything to do with alcohol, or any drug -- his symptoms actually point toward a bad rabies infection.

Poe definitely had problems with drinking at different moments in his life, but by the end of it he avoided alcohol, because it made him violently sick. He was also a member of the temperance movement at the time. As for other drugs, he never even touched them.

Poe's stories were full of mentions of opium, but the only evidence that he ever actually used it was one letter to a lady friend where he claimed he tried to commit suicide using laudanum, and he was probably just making shit up to look interesting.

So how did he go from an occasional drunk to a raving lunatic in the eyes of the public? That was all the work of his nemesis, editor Rufus Griswold, who anonymously wrote Poe's infamous "everyone hated him" obituary and later expanded it into a book. Griswold despised Poe and went as far as to forge his letters to discredit him. His work was referenced by Poe's early biographers, despite being the literary equivalent of smearing shit on someone's grave (which he probably did, too).

But as with all of the entries on this list, the story is still repeated today because it's just seen as a more fitting ending to his "character." We need Mozart to end his life as an unappreciated genius, and Walt Disney to go out clinging to a whimsical fantasy. And it's more appealing to think of Poe as a tragic, dark, self-destructive figure (much like his own characters) than some schmuck who was probably bitten by a Chihuahua or something.

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