Famous Last Words

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by Ransom Riggs
Whether they be witty, poetic, heart-wrenching or just "Aaagh!," you only get one shot at making a last impression. Can you match the historical figure to his famous last words?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand (d. 1914)

Oscar Wilde (d. 1900)

Dylan Thomas (d. 1953)

Henrik Ibsen (d. 1906)

Francois Rabelais (d. 1553)

Thomas Baker (d. 1864)

President William McKinley (d. 1901)

John Sedgwick (d. 1864)

Saint Lawrence (d. 258)

Henry Ward Beecher (d. 1887)

Put to death by being slow-roasted over hot coals on a gridiron, his last words were "Turn me over, I am done on this side."

Upon hearing his nurse remark that he appeared to be feeling better, this long-suffering Norwegian dramatist snapped "On the contrary!" before lapsing into unconsciousness, never to wake again.

"I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record." Minutes later, this famous Welsh poet, playwright and booze-hound dropped dead.

As he lay dying, his wife pleaded hysterically with him, crying "Don't go, don't go!" Gathering his last bit of strength, he said "We are all going."

A prominant but controversial clergyman who embraced Darwinism and rejected the divinity of Jesus, his last words were "Now comes the mystery." Hint: his sister wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'

Shot by an assassin, this leader's dying words -- "It is nothing, it is nothing ..." -- turned out to be one of history's greatest understatments, considering that his death precipitated the first World War.

"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." Uttered by a famously witty dramatist as he lay languishing in a drab Parisian hotel room.

Often credited with being one of the fathers of the modern novel, his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." (His one-sentence will is nearly as quotable: "I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.")

"Fijans are not lovers of human flesh." An unfortunate Australian missionary said this the very same day that he, and several of his compatriots, became some of the only white victims of cannibalism in Fiji's history. According to one witness, they "ate everything but his boots."

This general was the highest ranking Union casualty in the Civil War. Just before being struck below the left eye with a bullet, he said "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!"

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