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How to Have an Accident in the Home

1956 film by Charles August Nichols

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ3141506 ↗
Source-derived summary

How to Have an Accident in the Home is a 1956 animated short film featuring Donald Duck. It was released by Walt Disney Productions.

Plot

J.J. Fate (a physical personification of destiny) lectures on how accidents are not caused by "fate"; they seem to be caused by people's carelessness. Donald Duck, being extremely accident-prone, is used as an example. He highlights a series of mishaps that are caused, not by "fate", but by Donald's own carelessness.

Voice cast

Clarence Nash as Donald Duck

Bill Thompson as J.J. Fate

Home media

The short was released on November 11, 2008 on Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald, Volume Four: 1951-1961.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “How to Have an Accident in the Home” is 1956 film by Charles August Nichols. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Have, Accident and Home, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 2008, 1951, 1961—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1956-01-01. For this dossier, Have, Accident and Home is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1956 film by Charles August Nichols” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3141506. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2008, 1951 and 1961.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “How to Have an Accident in the Home”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow How to Have an Accident in the Home primary sources, How to Have an Accident in the Home archive and Have research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “How to Have an Accident in the Home”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “How to Have an Accident in the Home” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.