Studs Terkel leaves with one last great line...

Curiosity never killed this cat.

Studs Terkel's proposed epitaph


which inspired a skim through some other great epitaphs...
here in no order.. are some i came across....



To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
The Unknown Soldier, written by W. H. Auden

My Jesus Mercy
Alphonse Capone

She failed her breathalizer test
now she lays with the best
Jeanine Custis
Rosehill Cemetery
Newburg, Indiana

Jefferson Davis
At Rest
An American Soldier
And Defender of the Constitution
(1808-1889)
Jefferson Davis
Hollywood Cemetery,
Richmond, Virginia

Bill Blake

Was hanged by mistake.

Colorado

Here lies a man named Zeke.

Second fastest draw in Cripple Creek.

Silver City, Nevada


Goembel

John E.

1867-1946

"The defense rests"


Here lies the body

of John Round.

Lost at sea

and never found.

Belturbet, Ireland


Here lies

Elizabeth,

my wife for 47 years,

and this is the first damn thing

she ever done to oblige me.

Streatham Churchyard, England


Here lies

Ezekiel Aikle

Age 102

The Good

Die Young.

East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia


I was somebody.

Who, is no business

of yours.

Stowe, Vermont


Cold is my bed, but oh, I love it,

For colder are my friends above it.

Calvary Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois


Ellen Shannon

age 26 years

Who was fatally burned

March 21, 1870

by the explosion of a lamp

filled with "R. E. Danforth's

Non-Explosive

Burning Fluid."

Girard, Pennsylvania


Arthur C. Homan's epitaph:

Once I wasn't

Then I was

Now I ain't again.

Cleveland, Ohio


Thomas Stagg's epitaph:

That is all

St. Giles Churchyard, London, England


Jesse James
Kearney, Missouri

Died April 3, 1882
Aged 34 years, 6 months, 28 days
Murdered by a traitor and a coward
whose name is not worthy
to appear here.


Val Nolan
Death Valley National Park, California
Died Aug 1931

Buried Nov 6 1931

A Victim of the Elements

Oscar Wilde
Pere Lachais,
Paris, France
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.


The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its
contents worn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for
worms. Yet the work itself shall not lost, for it will, as he
believed, appear once more In a new and more beautiful
edition, corrected and amended by its Author


Rodney Dangerfield - 1921-2004

"There goes the neighborhood."


"Hic depositum est, quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni,"

which is translatable as

"here is deposited what was mortal of Isaac Newton"