4. Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey may not be a very well known name at this point but his efforts in the civil rights movement of America in the first half of the twentieth century laid the foundation for titanic figures like Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr to bring equality to those who sorely needed and deserved it. It is something of a shame then, that the circumstances of his death were so unfortunate. Garvey suffered a stroke in January of 1940, which lead some newspapers to report his death and publish his obituary. The Chicago Defender published a scathing obituary and described him as 'broke, alone and unpopular'. As a result of reading this obituary, Garvey suffered a second stress-induced stroke and passed away. So far, he is the only known case of a person dying due to their own epitaph.