Kurt dying was the worst thing that happened.
Rolling Stone magazine made him out to be some "Martyr" and hailed him as some musical genius, when in reality, he basically helped kill metal. Hair metal was on it's way out as far as mainstream music goes, and thrash was ready for it's run. Then 3 chord talentless Nirvana comes along and produces shit music, labels catch on and now we have "Post grunge" that most of you kids like to listen to as a result.
Had Kurt not been a coward that couldn't deal with success (even though he claimed he "stood against" corporatism, the same corporatism that shot his albums to #1 and gave him million$) and killed himself, he may not have been hailed as a genius and would be pumping gas somewhere.
Because of Kurt Cobain's lazy, talentless ass, we have bands like Shinedown, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Nickelback, 10 Years, Breaking Benjamin and so on.