WCVB reports that Madie Nicpon, a defender on the Tufts University women’s lacrosse team from Suffern, NY, passed away after choking during a off campus hot dog held Sunday in Somerville, MA. The competition was part of “Play for Pink”, a breast cancer fundraiser. She is the second female student at a New England college to after choking in a charity eating contest in the past 5 years. Caitlin Nelson passed away in 2017 after choking in a pancake eating contest held at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT (WCVB news video | Lohud article)

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Daily Mail has an article about Anne Nelson, whose father, Port Authority Police Officer James Nelson, died in the World Trace Center wreckage. Another shocking fatality would strike the family 16 years later.

Tragedy stalked Anne again in 2017 when her sister Caitlin (then a 20 year old college student) died in a freak accident when she choked in a charity pancake eating contest.

‘I think that loss is what really made me process my father’s death a little more. Even though I had gone to therapy before, the enormity of it all didn’t really hit me until that happened.’

Anne Nelson’s story is proof that people can live through not one but multiple traumas and still recover. Now 31, Anne tries to honor her sister and dad in everything she does.

She currently works as a special needs teacher at an elementary school, inspired by Caitlin’s studies in social work and her father’s life-long emphasis on education. ‘I take a little bit of both of them in what I’m doing and I try to carry them with me through that.’

Nathan’s Hot Dog qualifiers, restricted to NYC civil servants, were held on top of the original World Trade Center from 1998 to 2000. “Hungry” Charles Hardy won all 3 contests. Very little information about the competitions remains on the internet. Here is a screen capture from the 2002 documentary “Footlong”

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Joey Chestnut is currently the #3 Twitter Trending Topic for the United States. The social media activity was spurred by a recent study claiming that eating one hot dog will reduce a diner’s lifespan by 35 minutes.

According to the eatfeats database, Joey Chestnut has eaten 1364.5 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs in 22 public events (17 finals, 3 qualifiers and 2 exhibitions). If the study is accurate, this would truncate Joey Chestnut’s lifespan by 47,757.5 minutes, or slightly more than 33 days. A list of all of Joey Chestnut’s Nathan’s Famous hot dog results follows.

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