As you know, I’ve long been a fan of the full-page obits in The Economist — one per issue — because they were beautifully written, they almost always told me interesting things I didn’t know about my world, and they inspired in me a certain wistfulness for not having known about these people, or known more about them, when they were living.

Sometimes I run across such obits in other publications as well. Today, I learned of the sudden death of Mighty Joe Rollino, struck down in his prime at 104. Yep, that’s right:

People called him the Great Joe Rollino, the Mighty Joe Rollino and even the World’s Strongest Man, and what did it matter if at least one of those people was Mr. Rollino himself.

On Monday morning, Mr. Rollino went for a walk in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a daily routine. It was part of the Great Joe Rollino’s greatest feat, a display of physical dexterity and stamina so subtle that it revealed itself only if you happened to ask him his date of birth: March 19, 1905. He was 104 years old and counting.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., as Mr. Rollino was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at 13th Avenue, a 1999 Ford Windstar minivan struck him. The police said he suffered fractures to his pelvis, chest, ribs and face, as well as head trauma. Unconscious, he was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he later died…

Wow. The rest of the piece is worth reading as well — for what you learn about Mighty Joe’s life, that is, not his death. Not quite as elegantly written as those in The Economist, perhaps, but fascinating nonetheless.