Death Cured?
Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.
My great-grandmother was exceptional from first to last. She was the first baby born in the state in 1851. She was almost the first centenarian in the family, but she died in 1950, one day before her 100th birthday.
The cause of her death was not unusual; thousands of people died of the same cause that year and also in previous years. Her death was exceptional because she was the last person ever to die from that cause in the United States.
What was the cause of death?
HintHer age isn't important, but the date is. If she had lived just one more day, she wouldn't have died from that cause. No major disease was cured in 1951, but it would have been illegal to die from that cause.
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Answer
Old age.
No American has died of old age since 1951. Old age was "cured" at a Public Health Conference on Records and Statistics. All state and federal agencies were ordered to adopt a standard list of 130 contributing and underlying causes of death. In 1951, the list deleted "old age" as a cause of death.
There is still some debate over whether old age is an appropriate cause of death. If someone dies peacefully in their sleep at age 95, one or several organs may have shut down, but isn't the underlying cause old age?
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Comments
kayleeskitties   
Oct 31, 2006
| Working around the elderly daily, I find this 'cure' simply comical. Thanks for teaching me something new. I have something to tell my pts now  |
zigthepig 
Oct 31, 2006
| Interesting... |
Chakoteya
Oct 31, 2006
| Crazy bureaucracy.... |
Pizzazz2u 
Oct 31, 2006
| A very wisely-stated teaser, yet people around the nation may not know your fact. The year set it off for me!  Keep up the common sense trivia teasers. I enjoyed it, immensely. |
MalcolmReynolds
Oct 31, 2006
| Hint made no sense... if she'd died at 2, she wouldn't have died from old age.. |
shdwhawk 
Oct 31, 2006
|  If you're dead, you're dead. They can't arrest you for dying of old age. Americans... really... |
scallio
Nov 01, 2006
| I have always thought this was silly. I believe people do die from old age. Our society has become one which would like to have someone or something to blame for everything, including death. One cannot simply fall down and call it an accident. Someone or something must be blamed for causing it.
Fun trivia.  |
CountdownCrispy
Nov 01, 2006
| That's a really interesting fact - great stuff! |
(user deleted)
Nov 03, 2006
| i want too see that one on a episode on CSI:STOOPID |
sammybaby55
Nov 04, 2006
| wowwwers. That was pretty kewl. I had like to try to figure out what cause it lol for the answer
thank I learned somethin new  |
joefish
Nov 04, 2006
| I know the Question was "what did she die from?", but I was wondering what state she was born in. you say she was the first to be born in the state in 1851. I google "statehood dates" and Californa entered statehood Sept. 9, 1850. so Cali. seem like a good anwser. |
SPUTNIK2
Nov 06, 2006
| I thought this teaser was interesting and good  |
stil
Nov 13, 2006
| Which states were inclined to track first birth of year in 1851? My great, great-grandparents were lucky to have baptismal records. |
lifeisgood812
Nov 13, 2006
| That's a nice piece of trivia!
|
NicoletheElf
Nov 14, 2006
| That was very intersesting. I didn't know that they cured old age! |
fedex337
Nov 15, 2006
| great teaser! but i think it should go under trivia... |
fedex337
Nov 15, 2006
| great teaser! but i think it should go under trivia... |
peeve30
Dec 21, 2006
| I liked it! Thanks for a good teaser! |
hoyty
Dec 21, 2006
| I agree, trivia may have been a better category.
I was also wondering what state could have possibly tracked the first birth in that year. |
hoyty
Dec 21, 2006
| oops....i guess it was under trivia, my mistake. |
maddiesmom10140
Dec 21, 2006
| No, i don't think the cause of death would be old age. Eventually we will all die. If we make it to old age, something will still kill us. In this case, sounds like multisystem failure. As a result of old age??? Probably. But the cause of death, in my opinion, would be multisystem failure. But hey, I'm no doctor. |
Smudge
Dec 21, 2006
| What you state in the answer about the underlying cause being "old age". It's the same as saying that the Jews murdered in the holocaust were killed by their faith, because the underlying reason their died was because they were Jewish, but it's not the "cause" of death. The cause was whatever method was used for the genocide.
In the same way...yes, old age was related to the death, but this particular lady would've died as a result of a stopped heart, or something else.
She was born on January 1st 1851...what a horrible birthdate. |
coachpisco
Dec 21, 2006
| Interesting factoid. Thanks. |
puttumup
Dec 21, 2006
|  hmmm.i dont think that was a teaser.it was more of a fun fackt..you get an a for effort |
gaylewolf
Dec 21, 2006
| Interesting fact - and I hope *I* die of old age, too - a LONG TIME FROM NOW!  |
bradon182001
Dec 21, 2006
| Interesting bit of information, but I have to agree with the folks who say this should be in the trivia catagory. You either knew it or you didn't. |
MarcM1098
Dec 21, 2006
| It IS in the TRIVIA category, that's where I put it when I wrote it, and that's where it is now! |
feste
Dec 21, 2006
| The "old age" metaphor seems to have been displaced by "natural causes." |
tpkarth
Dec 21, 2006
| Interesting fact... |
kman613
Dec 21, 2006
| I never would have gotten this one w/o looking at the answer - so although hard (perhaps too much so), it was extremely interesting and fun... |
lmurray
Dec 21, 2006
| XIEXIE NI! THANKS!
WHAT WAS HER BIRTH STATE?
|
locutus13ds
Dec 21, 2006
| Sorry for your loss..  |
craniac
Dec 21, 2006
| It all depends on what you mean by "cause." There are primary causes, secondary causes, contributing causes, etc. What the government was after, apparently, as to have doctors list the primary or immediate cause of death on death certificates, not a more general or secondary cause. |
Jawn_Knee
Dec 21, 2006
| She was born in the state of Infancy and died
in the state of Trivia. |
Amber08071
Dec 21, 2006
| YAY.....I got that one! |
wordmama
Dec 21, 2006
| 'Illegal' doesn't make any sense in the hint. |
schmedley9
Dec 21, 2006
| i didn't like that one very much |
lukeschett
Dec 21, 2006
| Is the part about his grandma dieing true?
|
zaya
Dec 21, 2006
| While an interesting factoid Cliff, how is this a teaser ?!?  |
bagogirl
Dec 21, 2006
| people still die at old age |
OhEmGee
Dec 21, 2006
| to easy im only in 7th grade and i got it right away |
I_Write_Books
Dec 21, 2006
| Very nice teaser! Definitely an interesting and informing one! Thanks! |
LaMoV
Dec 22, 2006
| i think that the clue was misleading.. it wouldnt be illegal to die of old age... it would just be considered incorrect. |
vlerma
Jan 17, 2007
| Good teaser. Death from old age still occurs tho - as the different organs shut down. Good info on this submission. More, please?
|
vikingboy
Jan 23, 2007
| I agree with a few others...it is not illegal to die from old age, it is just that the medical field is held accountable for being more precise.
People die from old age, and I'll bet my lunch money that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who died after that date that have old age listed as the cause. Gotta believe that the doctor in some small towns took a while to adopt the new policy. |
crocodile
Nov 07, 2009
| MalcolmReynolds and shdwhawk do have a point. Great teaser! |
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