music · 06 September 2006 · 18 years ago
A man named Paul van Valkenburgh from Florida died of lung cancer. An obituary published in a local paper was picked up by the Associated Press, which ran a short obituary of the dead man but giving him the wrong name. The real Paul Vance, who was alive and well and living in Coral Springs, Florida, contacted local media after viewing a report of his death on local TV. He announced that he was still alive and was able to prove this with a stack of royalty cheques from ASCAP from his biggest hit Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini. He told a reporter for the New York Times that his relatives and friends, shocked by the AP report, had called to check on him after the media reports.
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