‘Bought the Farm’ — pilot killed.

Apparently, this originated from a time when governments would reimburse farmers for destroyed crops as a result of an aviation accident occurring on their land. They would routinely inflate the value of the crops, so the government would have effectively paid off the mortgage, or “bought the farm,” in recompense. Hopefully, none of our readers will have any experience with this!

Thanks, Adrian for submitting this interesting etymology.