So how did the Spanish master painter Francisco de Goya die? Modern analysis suggests that he literally painted himself to death.
Claim to Fame: Art historians consider Goya a master painter—one of the greatest who ever lived. He became a “court” painter for Spanish royalty in 1786. But after an illness in 1792 he abandoned his conventional portrait-painting style and his work became cynical and dark; it is this later work that made him famous and inspired later painters like Edouard Manet and Pablo Picasso.
How He Died: He was killed by his own paints.
Postmortem: In 1792 Goya, 46, was struck by a sudden mysterious illness that manifested itself in symptoms including convulsions, paralysis of the right side of his body, poor balance, alternating giddiness and chronic depression, ringing in his ears, hallucinations, mental confusion, blindness (temporary), deafness (permanent), and impaired speech.
He almost died. In fact, he was so incapacitated that he had to give up painting for a time. Then, after a period of convalescence, the symptoms disappeared just as mysteriously as they had appeared, and he was able to resume his work.
Thus began a pattern that plagued Goya for the rest of his life: He would paint until he became too ill to work; then he’d rest and the symptoms would disappear. He’d start painting again, and the symptoms would return. The cycle continued for more than 30 years until 1828, when his illness is believed to have triggered the stroke that finally killed him.
For generations, historians assumed that Goya was felled by syphilis or some similar illness, but with syphilis the symptoms don’t usually go away. In the early 1970s, a physician, Dr. William Niederland, concluded that Goya most likely died from exposure to the lead and mercury in his paints.
Wide load: If a walrus eats enough food, it can grow wider than its own length.
But why did he die from poisoning when so many of his contemporary artists did not? One reason is that Goya’s luminous, mother-of-pearl painting style required huge amounts of white paint, which contained lead. He also used it to prime his canvases. Not only that, Goya had to mix all of his paints himself. In those days, artists couldn’t buy their paint ready made, so Goya ground lead white and a mercury compound called cinnabar into his paints.
And because Goya was one of the fastest of the great portrait painters, he used a lot of paint, thus inhaling as much as triple the amount of mercury and lead as his contemporaries, Niederland speculates. His contemporaries didn’t inhale enough to even become ill, but Goya inhaled enough to kill himself.
Final Irony: The poisonous paint that killed him may also have been what turned Goya into one of the greatest painters in history. The 1792 attack was so severe that Goya never painted the same again—and it was this later painting style that made him famous. “In terms of artistic greatness,” Charles Panati writes in The Browser’s Book of Endings, “ had the painter’s career ended prior to his major 1792 ailment, it would have survived with only passing mention, the work of a gifted artist, popular in his day, who missed greatness by a wide margin.”
1. Never give yourself a haircut after three margaritas.
2. You need only two tools. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn’t, use the tape.
3. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
4. If he or she says that you are too good for him or her—believe them.
5. Never pass up an opportunity to pee.
6. Be really nice to your friends. You never know when you are going to need them to empty your bedpan.
How about you? The average American makes 3.4 trips to the grocery store each week.