Large Percentage of Americans Now Claiming to Have Read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Obituary

The great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died at the age of 87.

Marquez was beloved around the world as the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera and other books. In America, he was mostly someone whose novels people told other people they'd read when they actually hadn't.

Now, a survey by Quinnipiac University has found that 68% of Americans are claiming to have read Marquez's obituary when they actually only scanned the headline.

The same survey shows that 14% of Americans, spurred on by the author's passing, will now put a Marquez book on their Amazon wishlist or reserve it at the library, then never get around actually picking it up.

Photo by Isabel Steva Hernandez

Mickey Rooney Will Never Again Get a Barn and Put on a Show

Mickey Rooney, an actor whose popularity predates 90% of everyone alive on earth, died this week at age 93.

Rooney, whose sensitive portrayal of an Japanese-American landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's somehow failed to win him a Spirit of Asian America award, was, according to a Quinnipiac poll, already thought dead by the vast majority of Americans. A spokesman for Google says that "When+did+Mickey+Rooney+die" was the 57th most frequent search in 2013, right behind "What+are+signs+of+chlamydia."

Today, Rooney is remembered mostly for being referenced in old Warner Brothers cartoons that 40-year-olds watched constantly during childhood. And also because he apparently was married a lot or something.

Mr. Rooney died at home with his family. He was preceded in death by his fanbase.

Photo: Public domain studio still.