Christine Chubbuck should be just as famous as Buddy Dwyer for the same reasons, but isn’t.
I would think in a few years Cobain will be scarcely remembered for anything.
Sid Vicious is not remembered very well now (looking at previous responses) yet was probably as well known as Cobain in his time.
Oops. That’s the last time I buy a discount calendar with the extra month of Julaugust in it.
It’s the first one I thought of.
Tony Curtis kissed both of the two most famous suicides of the 20th century. He famously compared them: “Necking with Marilyn Monroe is like kissing Hitler”
Curtis now claims that he liked Monroe and that at one time they were lovers. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,127466,00.html Apparently she was very demanding about retakes on set.
The death of Primo Levi (author and Auschwitz survivor) was ruled a suicide, but there appears to be some dispute about that.
Seconded.
Sid Vicious didn’t commit suicide. He died of a drug overdose.
Things I did not know before reading this thread
Kurt Gödel starved himself to death in 1978
I thought that had been ruled accidental.
Spalding Gray might not be a candidate for 21st century, because the proof of the suicide was a sad conclusion to a long vigil beforehand.
Ooh, what about Peg Entwhistle?
Lead singer of post-punk band Joy Division. A better musician and more influential than Cobain could dream of being. Still missed greatly.
^^^ the rest of the band went on to form New Order, if that helps anyone who hasn’t heard of him
Holy shit! :eek:
Dude hanged himself while in a mental hospital on a 72-hour! That’s hardcore.
See post #8 on why Reeves death was a suicide. (Seriously. I don’t think we’ll ever have a better expert on the subject posting here than is in that thread.)
No, that’s a failure of the healthcare system.
Some accounts have Tom Mix committing suicide, but Wiki thinks it was an accidental death.
I’ve read a lot on Marilyn Monroe, and all indications are it was a self inflicted death. No one killed her, but her.
Now whether she INTENDED to die is another story. If you read about her you quickly learn she had many, many attempts of crying wolf. She would get time release pills to calm her down and then crush them to get all the drugs in her system fast.
She would drink and pop pills, now unless someone wanted her dead and set out to increase the dosage in her pills or somehow other make her self destructive behaviour more lethal, Marilyn did herself in.
Now from what I read, I don’t believe it was intentional. I believe she expected someone to come along before she died and bail her out like happened before.
So if you’re saying suicide as in intending to kill yourself it’s a bit different from suicide as accidently taking too many pills or playing with a gun you didn’t know was loaded. Like that guy in Hollywood who didn’t realize a gun with blanks could kill him.
Well, that too. I did a 72-hour once (long, drunken story) and they physically checked on me every fifteen minutes, on the dot, for those three days. Plus the closets didn’t have doors. His actions would have been impossible in the hospital where I stayed.
My vote goes for Hitler as well. The circumstances surrounding his suicide are just as incredible as everything that came before it. Who in 1941 could have imagined that in four years he would end up dead in a trench, covered in gasoline, and on fire?
I’d vote Cobain second. That happened when I was in middle school and made half my classmates COMPLETELY lose their shit, as teenagers often do after something like this.
Jack Kevorkian. This is a little outside of the box, but, although he is still among the living, he *does *lead the league in assists. I think when our grandchildren Google search the terms “20th Century” and “Suicide” his name will bubble up to the top.
I seem to be a little odd. The first person I thought of was Freddy Prince. I watched Chico and the Manevery week and I was only 10 when he committed suicide so was he surely my first exposure to suicide.
I guess he is a far cry from the most famous. I think Hitler is probably the answer to the OP.
President of Chile. Early accounts (and the joke) have him committing suicide by shooting himself in the back, pausing only once to reload. Or; the coup plotters did it; or the CIA did it.
Current evidence and witness depositions seem to indicate suicide according to various links off the internet and Wiki.
For the last decade of the 20th century, Vince Foster is up there on the list. (Not that I think he should be, but some people have an unnatural fixation on him)