Elvis, Hendrix and Mama Cass

As should be clear by now, I work in an office.  This is the single worst possible occupation for me because I am the world's most easily distracted person.  Yesterday, for instance, I got into work, got my morning cup of coffee, got my papers all organized and sat down at my computer ready to bang out some work that had to be completed by the end of the day.  Within 15 minutes, I was on Wikipedia trying to find out if Mama Cass actually did choke to death on a ham sandwich.

It turns out she did not.  She died of a heart attack in her London hotel room, but the London police investigating her death noted the presence of a half-eaten ham sandwich in her room, thereby unwittingly giving birth to one of the most persistent urban legends in the history of pop culture and turning Mama Cass' tragic and untimely death into a story that never fails to get a chuckle.

This got me thinking about other untimely, pop star deaths.  (My work was, by this point, a distant memory.)  I was wrong about Mama Cass, but (according to Wikipedia, at least) I was correct on the  next two I looked up.  Elvis Presley was found dead on his bathroom floor, having apparently died while sitting on the shitter, just as I had heard.  I did not know, however, that Elvis was found in the floor in a pool of his own vomit.  Nor, to be perfectly honest, did I really need to know that.  Jimi Hendrix died by asphyxiating on his own vomit after a big night of partying, also as I had heard.

Which leads me to my question of the day.  Why, when describing someone's messy demise involving vomit, do we feel it necessary to clarify that it was his own vomit that was the culprit.  Are there any recorded cases of someone choking to death on someone else's vomit?  If someone told me nothing more than that Jimi Hendrix had choked to death on vomit after a big night of partying, I would go ahead and assume that it was his own vomit, unless told otherwise.  It's not like I would respond in frustration: "Who's vomit?!?  For God's sake, be specific!"

Something distracted me before I got the chance to read up on Jim Morrison's death.  I'll have to look that one up this weekend when I am in work to finish that project that was due yesterday.