The reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated

When Bloomberg inadvertently pushed out Steve Jobs' obituary, he became the latest in the line of famous people whose obituaries have been published prematurely. While Bloomber has retracted the story, you can still read it on gawker.com

Mark Twain is perhaps the most famous of these, especially for the message he sent in a telegram to refute these claims: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".

Another famous story goes that Rudyard Kipling read the account of his death in a magazine, and wrote to them saying "I've just read that I am dead. Please remove me from your subscription list."

It's common practice for news agencies to keep stock obituaries for most leaders and celebrities. In 2003, technical glitches on cnn.com allowed the public to access their premature obituaries without a password. It turned out that several obituaries were written using fragments from others' templates - e.g., Dick Cheney became "UK's favorite grandmother" while Fidel Castro became a "lifeguard, athlete and movie star" (after Ronald Reagan).

The number of such incidents in fairly large and Wikipedia maintains a pretty comprehensive list of premature obituaries. Perhaps some of these premature obituaries turn out to be for the good; it is speculated (though not confirmed) that Alfred Nobel instituted the Nobel Prize after reading a rather unflattering premature obituary describing him as the merchant of death.

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