If you’re like me, you grew up watching cartoons like Tom and Jerry and The Pink Panther, where characters were hurt in some of the most ridiculous ways: stepping on a gardening rake, a car crash, and getting crushed by safes, anvils, or a piano. The piano falling was always so random that it was the pinnacle of cartoonish deaths.
But generally, what made a piano crushing someone so funny was that it is also one of the most unrealistic ways to get hurt. I mean, come on, in what situation could you possibly find yourself in the vicinity of a piano falling from the sky? It’s just impossible, which is what made it a staple of absurdist ways to die in media.
Well, an almost impossible way to die. Believe it or not, one of the only documented deaths from a piano falling on one’s head happened here in Grand Rapids.
George Snyder: The Grand Rapids Piano Tragedy
It takes an incredibly unique circumstance for you to find yourself underneath a suspended piano, but back in 1887, Grand Rapids man George Snyder found himself in that very situation…