Chessplayer's head explodes!

An oldie but a goodie from the Weekly World News:

How To Tell If Your Head's About To Blow Up

From the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS, May 24, 1994

MOSCOW -- Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a chess player whose head literally exploded in the middle of a championship game!

No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but four players and three officials at the Moscow Candidate Masters' Chess Championships were sprayed with blood and brain matter when Nikolai Titov's head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis or HCE.

"He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the board," says Titov's opponent, Vladimir Dobrynin. "All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Everyone looked up from their games, startled by the noise. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, his head popped like a firecracker." 

Unfortunately, I can't find the story on the WWN website (the tabloid ceased paper publication many years ago before returning in digital format), so you'll have to read the rest at this archive on an MIT (!!) website. The article is well worth reading, as it does include a list of questions to help you identify if you have HCE. I highly recommend reading the whole article - it can save your life! It has certainly saved mine, as it helped me identify as a young man that I too suffered from HCE, and my head hasn't (literally) exploded in the 22 years since I was diagnosed. People, modern medicine WORKS.