People 'More Likely To Die on Their Birthday'

Morrissey once wished someone an 'Unhappy Birthday' but it seems that, statistically, you're likely to have a very unhappy one at some point.

Research has shown that you are more likely to die on your birthday than any other day of the year.

The Telegraph reports that two million people were studied over 40 years and it was found that there was a significant rise in deaths from strokes, falls, suicides and heart attacks on the subjects' birthdays - more than 18 per cent in all cases, and an astonishing 44 per cent rise in deaths from falls.

Your birthday is also more lethal as you get older: on average, people over the age of 60 were 14 per cent more likely to meet their maker on the same day that their maker put them on this earth.

Leading theories for the phenomenon are that birthdays lead people to over-indulge, leading to strain on the heart, or perhaps that terminally-ill people may keep themselves going for their big day, then decide they've had enough. Perhaps the thought of bothering to organise a party is just too much for some people.

There are, strangely, very few celebrities who kicked the bucket on their big day - William Shakespeare and Laurence Oates (of 'I may be some time' fame) being the most well-known - and even then Oates may have died the day before. Perhaps famous people just get better presents than the rest of us.

[via The Telegraph]

Images: Rex