Or you could type "black bar" and find the answer?

I had no idea seeing this black bar meant a death. I thought it meant a rendering error and gave a half second to reload the page, say hunh it's still there, and go on to something else. I came away with the impression somebody got design-y and changed things up for no real reason.

Edit: and for all the talk on this page about the bar, very little is being said about the man. Here's his Wikipedia page for anybody interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P._Thacker