Freddie Mercury was neither the first nor the last music icon to succumb to AIDS-related causes during the disease’s devastating spread in the 1980s and ’90s. But his shocking death on Nov. 24, 1991 — just a day after he publicly revealed he had contracted the virus — galvanized the global music community in a way virtually nothing else could have. Rumors about Mercury’s health had circulated for years during the late 1980s, and they only grew more prevalent after Queen’s appearance at the BRIT Awards in 1990, during which the usually irrepressible frontman seemed noticeably thinner and more…
