Gone Too Soon Trivia Quiz

Answer: P.T. Barnum

In his real (and extensive) obituary published by "The New York Times" in April 1891, Phineas Taylor Barnum was lauded as "The Great American Showman" who had worked at entertaining the public for more than forty years and served as a Connecticut politician. Barnum was in failing health on March 24, 1891, when the "Evening Sun" published his pre-obituary on its front page with the headline "Great and Only Barnum.

He Wanted to Read His Obituary; Here It Is." Apparently, Barnum had lamented that nice things were only written about people after they died, so the paper editor decided that "Mr. Barnum has had almost everything in this life... and there is no reason why he should not have the last pleasure which he asks for. So here is the great showman's life, briefly and simply told, as it would have appeared in the "Evening Sun" had fate taken our Great and Only from us". Barnum died two weeks later on April 7, 1891, at the age of 80.

Answer: Bob Hope

Living to the ripe old age of 100, poor Bob Hope seemingly had the newspapers poised to publish his obituary. The report of Hope's death first appeared in 1998, when the false claim was made on the "Associated Press" web site. In 2003, "CNN" mistakenly published an obituary that had used that of the Queen Mother (who had died the previous year) as a template.

This meant that Hope was described as "the UK's favorite grandmother" and "Queen consort". Hope would die a few months later in July of the same year. "CNN" published several other premature obituaries the same day, with Dick Cheney also vying for the title of the "UK's favorite grandmother".

Answer: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Marquez had been diagnosed with cancer in 1999 which resulted in rumors about his failing health. In May 2000, the Peruvian newspaper "La Republica" printed a poem called "La Marioneta" which Marquez supposedly had written and sent to his friends with news of his grave condition.

The paper reported that Marquez was on his deathbed, and the news quickly spread around the world. However, not only was the news false, but the poem hadn't been written by Marquez at all. It actually had been written by a Mexican ventriloquist for his puppet and was somehow printed as a hoax.

Then in 2012, Marquez's death was reported on the Internet site "Twitter", reportedly starting with a post from Italian author Umberto Eco, and this too quickly spread around the world.

The "Twitter" account turned out to be a fake, and once again, Marquez had been the subject of a death hoax. On April 17, 2014, Marquez did finally die in Mexico City at the age of 87. He was remembered for his many works including "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" and for popularizing the literary style of magic realism.

Answer: Abe Vigoda

Although his role as Salvatore Tessio in "The Godfather" was so convincing that people thought he was Italian, Vigoda was actually of Russian Jewish heritage. He started acting in the 1940s, but it wasn't until the 1970s that his career took off. Following his appearance in "The Godfather" (1972), he was cast as Detective Phil Fish in the police sit-com "Barney Miller" (1974-1981), a role that led to a brief spin-off, "Fish", in 1977-1978. "People" magazine started the death hoax in 1982 when they referred to him as the "late Abe Vigoda".

He proved that he wasn't dead by appearing in a photo that featured him sitting a coffin holding a copy of "People". Vigoda said in 1988 that his "wife keeps getting condolence cards from people who believe I died", and he suspected that he might have lost some roles because producers thought he was dead.

But he was a good sport about it and appeared on several shows, such as "Late Night with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", in which he mocked his premature demise.

He continued to work into his 90s, including a memorable 2010 Super Bowl commercial for the candy bar "Snickers" before finally dying of natural causes at the age of 94.

Answer: Steve Jobs

News organizations often prepare obituaries in advance for public figures who are in poor health, and as Jobs had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and hadn't been looking too well, it wasn't surprising that "Bloomberg" had prepared an obituary for him.

The obituary, which had the header "Hold for release - Do Not Use", included a quote from Bill Gates, commending Jobs' ability as an inspirational leader, and had blank spaces left for inserting his age and cause of death. The release of the obituary was discovered and retracted almost immediately, but "Bloomberg" had to release a statement regarding the article: "An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today.

The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted." Jobs died in 2011 of respiratory arrest related to the cancer.

Answer: Cher

Margaret Thatcher was (and remains) a controversial figure in British society, and her death saw "Twitter" explode with tweets praising her and condemning her. Controversially, the song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" entered the UK charts at number two following her death.

More devastatingly for some, the hashtag #nowthatcherisdead was read as "now that Cher is dead", and people began posting memorial tweets to the "Believe" singer.

Answer: Karl Marx

The September 6, 1871, obituary didn't list a cause of death but mentioned that his death had been announced by "our cable dispatches". No retraction was printed, but an article in the paper the following year indicated that Marx would be giving a speech at the Hague, so the newspaper staff must have figured out that Marx was still alive.

When he actually died on March 4, 1883, the "New York Times" mentioned the "reported death of Karl Marx" and further stated that "although this has not been confirmed, a call has been issued by representatives of the various trades, labor, social and other organizations for a meeting in his memory".

The following day, the paper issued a full obituary. Marx lived from 1818 to 1883 and was famous for developing the political and economic theory known as Marxism.

Answer: Gerald Ford

In the 1996 television skit, Tom Brokaw (Carvey), the anchor for "NBC Nightly News", was told to record a news headline for Gerald Ford's death. Brokaw pointed out that Ford was in good health, but his producer told him that they were "just covering our bases, Tom - you never know". Brokaw was initially tasked with stating "Gerald Ford dead today at the age of 83" and then "Gerald Ford dead today at the age of 84".

But then the producer threw in some curve balls, having Brokaw record various causes of death including being shot, jumping out of a building, overdosing on crack cocaine, being sliced to bits by a plane propeller, being mauled by a circus lion, and being attacked by Richard Nixon's corpse.

The producer even had him record Ford's death from being eaten by wolves, but Brokaw would only do it after being told that President Taft had died a similar death (he hadn't; Taft died of poor health in 1930). Ford, the 38th President of the United States, became president following the resignation of Richard Nixon.

He served as president from 1974-1977 but hadn't been elected to either that position or the vice-presidency; he had been appointed vice president following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Although Ford didn't succumb to any of the causes of death proposed by "Saturday Night Live", he was the target of two assassination attempts during his presidency. He died of heart disease in 2006 at the age of 93, the longest-lived U.S. President at the time of his death.

Answer: Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was an early 20th century African-American civil rights leader. He was an advocate of empowering people of African descent, and vocally opposed the marginalization of black people in America. He was sometimes viewed as more aggressive and less politically nuanced than another great civil rights leader of the time, Booker T. Washington.

He inspired several later leaders, such as Stokely Carmichael, who embraced the idea of "Black Power", which Carmichael saw as the way to address de facto social inequalities of black people even after many of the legal rights that had been granted in previous years through the efforts of people such as Martin Luther King Jr. Reportedly, Garvey was recovering from a stroke when he read his premature and rather negative obituary, which caused him to suffer another stroke that led to his death in June, 1940.

Answer: George Soros

As if saying that he had died was not enough, Reuters criticized Soros in the premature article, calling him "predatory" and claiming that his money was made from "free-wheeling capitalism". Soros did much to garner an unfavorable reputation, including his short-selling of pound sterling during the 1992 economic crisis in the UK, often known as "Black Wednesday" in homage to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which is popularly known as "Black Thursday".