h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What vices are fatal, apart from drink and the like?

Sometimes an ancestor can be celebrated for being on he winning side of a famous battle like the Battle of Hastings. I had an ancestor who got perks for that.

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What vices are fatal? It might have been a sexually transmitted disease.

Another ancestor of mine was an illiterate alcoholic. One story is that he died from drinking a bottle of "bay rum", a crude alcoholic liquid used as a hair treatment, because he read "rum" on the label.

Another is that his wife filled his rum bottle with something nastier to get rid of him.

Great stories!

Of course, some of my (Scots Irish, of course) ancestors were early domestic terrorists - they burnt down a courthouse in North Carolina, thus interfering with genealogical research, the rats.

That looks like selective illiteracy, if he could read 'Rum' but not 'Bay'.

Sounds reasonable to me for functional illiteracy.

When my sister was five, the first word she learned to read was 'Exit'. We were doing a lot of travelling that year.

The second word she could read was 'Restaurant'... (My dad didn't like to stop.)

Illiterate alcoholics might not have long enough lifespans to produce descendants .

Illiterate alcoholics are the most likely to produce dependants.

That's sad.