Short answers, pulled from the story.
Christian martyr Saint Lawrence became the patron saint of comedians because he made a dark joke during his own execution. He was sentenced to death via being burned alive on a rotisserie, during which he is said to have quipped, Turn me over. I'm done on this side.
The term black humor from the French humour noir was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. Breton coined the term for his 1940 book Anthology of Black Humor, in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humor and gallows humor.
The concept of black humor first came to nationwide attention after the publication of a 1965 mass-market paperback titled Black Humor, edited by Bruce Jay Friedman. The paperback was one of the first American anthologies devoted to the concept of black humor as a literary genre and labeled authors such as J. P. Donleavy, Edward Albee, and Joseph Heller as black humorists.
Black comedy has the social effect of strengthening the morale of the oppressed and undermines the morale of the oppressors. A 2017 study published in the journal Cognitive Processing concludes that people who appreciate dark humor may have higher IQs, show lower aggression, and resist negative feelings more effectively than people who turn up their noses at it.
Dark humor differs from blue comedy, which focuses more on topics such as nudity, sex, and body fluids, and from obscenity. Additionally, whereas the term dark humor is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, gallows humor tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying.