Death
On 22 January 1959, only months into his retirement, Hawthorn died in a car accident on the A3 Guildford bypass while driving his highly tuned Jaguar 3.4-litre sedan (now known as the 3.4 Mk 1). The cause of the accident is unknown, suggestions including driver error, mechanical failure, or a blackout. There is evidence that Hawthorn had recently suffered blackouts, perhaps because of kidney failure. By 1955, Hawthorn had already lost one kidney to infection, and had begun suffering problems with the other; he was expected at the time to live only three more years.
Read more about this topic: Mike Hawthorn
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“For God was as large as a sunlamp and laughed his heat at us and therefore we did not cringe at the death hole.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)