Dying in Threes

With what may have been the single act of kindness in a life of spewing disease-ridden piss from his every pore, former Senator Jesse Helms graciously confirmed that celebrities always die in threes when he keeled over on July 3. We had predicted Clarence Thomas, but Helms is good enough, and not that different if you consider their civil rights work. Helms, a strong contender for Worst Living American, has received touching eulogies from Hendrik Hertzberg and Ken Layne of Wonkette. Now he has to compete for Worst American of All Time, where he is just another anonymous terrible person, somewhere between your average KKK Grand Wizard and John Wilkes Booth.

All in all, this was a pretty boring Celebrity Death Threesome, consisting only of soon-to-be-forgotten telejournalist Tim Russert, mediocre comedian George Carlin, and Helms. So I got to thinking, what is the best Celebrity Death Threesome of all time?

Two strong contenders deserve special mention, but are disqualified for involving too many celebrities:
Between Spetmeber 3 and October 4 of 1970, we lost Vince Lombardi, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Marie Remarque, John Dos Passos, and Janis Joplin.
Three years later, also in September, there went John Ford, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gram Parsons, Pablo Neruda, and W.H. Auden.

So those were bad months for humanity. Anyway, here are five strong contenders for Best Celebrity Death Threesome:

1826: Carl Maria von Weber (composer), John Adams, Thomas Jefferson

1827: Alessandro Volta (guy "volts" are named after), Beethoven, William Blake

1955: Charlie Parker, Albert Einstein, Alexander Fleming (guy who discovered penicillin)

1961: Carl Jung, Ernest Hemingway, Ty Cobb

April 1994: Kurt Cobain, Ralph Ellison, Richard Nixon

Those are all pretty strong, and it's tempting to give it to the Parker/Einstein/Fleming trio, but consider this:

In 1963, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day.

That's definitely worth bonus points. Also, on February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper all died at the exact same instant, but they lose points because who the hell is the Big Bopper?

Even with that tremendous 1963 effort, however, mankind still has not managed to match that April 23 in 1616, when Shakespeare, Cervantes, and renowned Inca historian (the best Inca historian? We say yes) Garcilaso de la Vega all collapsed and died.

Do we even have celebrities good enough to equal that today? Probably not. Maybe if Gabriel García Márquez, Bob Dylan, and Barack Obama all died in the same minute. Anyway, 1616 takes the gold.