List of unusual deaths

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This is a list of unusual deaths. This list contains unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history. This list also includes less rare, though still unusual, deaths of prominent people.

Antiquity

Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal.

• c. 620 BC: Draco, Athenian law-maker, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.

• 6th Century BC: Legend says Greek wrestler Milo of Croton came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. Testing his strength, he tried to rend it with his bare hands. The wedges fell, trapping his hands in the tree and making him unable to defend himself from attacking wolves, which devoured him.

• 564 BC: Arrichion of Phigalia, Greek pankratiast, caused his own death in order to win the olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrichion's trainer shouted "What a fine funeral if you do not submit at Olympia!". Arrichion then kicked his opponent with his right foot while casting his body to the left, causing his opponent so much pain that he made the sign of defeat to the umpires, while at the same time breaking Arrichion's own neck as the other fighter was still strangleholding him. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrichion was proclaimed victor posthumously.

• 401 BC: Mithridates, a soldier condemned for the murder of Cyrus the Younger, was executed by scaphism, surviving the insect torture for 17 days.

• 270 BC: Philitas of Cos, Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death. Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.

• 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after giving his donkey wine then seeing it attempt to eat figs.

• 162 BC: Eleazar Maccabeus was crushed to death at the Battle of Beth-zechariah by a war elephant that he believed to be carrying Seleucid King Antiochus V. Charging into battle, Eleazar rushed underneath the elephant and thrust a spear into its belly, whereupon it fell dead on top of him.

• 4 BC: Herod the Great reportedly suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally died.

• 64 – 67: Saint Peter was executed by the Romans. According to tradition, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. According to Origen of Alexandria, he said he was not worthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus.

• c. 98: Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum, was roasted to death in a brazen bull during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. Saint Eustace, his wife and children supposedly suffered a similar fate under Hadrian.

• c. 1st or 2nd Century: Rabbi Akiva, a Tanna, a founder of Rabbinic Judaism, and a supporter of Bar Kokhba, was put to death by the Romans by having his skin flayed with iron combs.

• 212: Lucius Fabius Cilo, a Roman senator of the 2nd century, "...choked...by a single hair in a draught of milk".

• 258: According to tradition, Saint Lawrence of Rome was roasted alive on a giant grill, during the persecution of Valerian.

• 336: Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, is said to have died of sudden diarrhea followed by copious hemorrhaging and anal expulsion of the intestines while he walked across the imperial forum in Constantinople. He may have been poisoned.

• 415: Hypatia of Alexandria, Greek mathematician, philosopher and last librarian of the Library of Alexandria, was murdered by a Christian mob that ripped off her skin with sharp sea-shells. Various types of shells have been named, including clams, oysters and abalones. Other sources claim tiles or pottery shards were used.

Middle Ages

• 762: Li Po (Li Bai), Chinese poet and courtier, supposedly tried to kiss the reflection of the Moon beside the boat in which he was travelling, fell overboard and drowned.

• 9th Century: The legendary Prince Popiel, leader of the proto-Polish Goplans and Polans, and his wife, were allegedly eaten alive by mice in a tower in Kruszwica. This curse arose as a result of not obeying burial traditions. A similar tale is the Mouse Tower of Archbishop Hatto II of Mainz.

• 892: Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe, Máel Brigte, to his horse's saddle. The teeth of the head grazed against his leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection.

• 1063: Béla I of Hungary died when his wooden throne collapsed upon him.

• 1159: Adrian IV died from reputedly choking on a fly in his wine.

• 1219: Inalchuk, the Muslim governor of the city of Otrar in Central Asia, was ordered to be executed by Genghis Khan by pouring molten silver in his eyes and ears in vengeance for his execution of Mongol traders the year before.

• 1258: Al-Musta'sim, ruler of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.

• 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumoured to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.

• 1387: Charles II of Navarre, after having been wrapped in bandages soaked in brandy in an attempt to cure an illness, was burned alive when a servant accidentally set the bandages on fire.

• 1410: Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.

• 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine at his own request.

Renaissance

• 1514: György Dózsa, Székely man-at-arms and peasants' revolt leader in Hungary, was condemned to sit on a red-hot iron throne with a red-hot iron crown on his head and a red-hot sceptre in his hand (mocking his ambition to be king), by Hungarian landed nobility in Transylvania. While Dózsa was still alive, he was set upon and his partially roasted body was eaten by six of his fellow rebels, who had been starved for a week beforehand.

• 1601: Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. As it was considered extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler, suicide, and mercury poisoning among others) have come to the fore.

• 1649: Sir Arthur Aston, Royalist commander of the garrison during the Siege of Drogheda, was beaten to death with his own wooden leg, which the Parliamentarian soldiers thought concealed golden coins.

• 1658: On July 22, a Madrid stable boy in the service of the Marquis of Tavara was killed by the first coachman's wife when she discovered that he was having premarital sex. She "grabbed him from the lesser parts, and first she let go, he fell dead on the ground, making blood gush out of his mouth, ears and noses, exiting with the testicles on the hand".

• 1660: Thomas Urquhart, Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

• 1667: James Betts died from asphyxiation after being accidentally sealed in a cupboard by Elizabeth Spencer, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in an attempt to hide him from her father, John Spencer.

• 1673: Molière, the French actor and playwright, died after being seized by a violent coughing fit, while playing the title role in his play Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac).

• 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, the French composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum. It was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor.

18th century

• 1751: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, a major materialist and sensualist philosopher and author of L'Homme machine, died of overeating at a feast given in his honor.

• 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, became the first recorded person to be killed while performing electrical experiments when he was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning that hit him on his head.

• 1755: Henry Hall died from injuries he sustained after molten lead fell into his throat while looking up at a burning lighthouse.

• 1762: Crown Prince Sado, then heir to King Yeongjo of Joseon, was ordered to be sealed alive in a rice chest after his father decided he was unfit to succeed him. He survived inside for 8 days.

• 1771: Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, died of digestion problems on 12 February 1771 after having consumed a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: hetvägg served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."

• 1783: James Otis, Jr., the American revolutionary, "often mentioned to friends and relatives that ... he hoped his death would come from a bolt of lightning." His hope was fulfilled on May 23, 1783 when lightning struck the chimney of a friend's house in whose doorway he was standing.

• 1794: John Kendrick, an American sea captain and explorer, was killed in the Hawaiian Islands when a British ship mistakenly used a loaded cannon to fire a salute to Kendrick's vessel.

19th century

• 1814: London Beer Flood, seven people were killed (some drowned, some died from injuries, and one succumbed to alcohol poisoning) when 323,000 imperial gallons (388,000 US gal; 1,468,000 L) of beer in the Meux and Company Brewery burst out of its vats and gushed into the streets.

• 1816: Gouverneur Morris, an American statesman, died after sticking a piece of whale bone through his urinary tract to relieve a blockage.

• 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by a locomotive (Stephenson's Rocket), at the public opening of the world's first mechanically powered passenger railway.

• 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed.

• 1862: Jim Creighton, a very early baseball player, died when he swung a bat too hard and injured himself, possibly by rupturing his bladder.

• 1870: Alain de Monéys, French aristocrat, was cooked and eaten alive by the villagers of Hautefaye, Dordogne, during a reported case of mass hysteria.

• 1871: Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician, was demonstrating how a victim may possibly have shot himself while drawing a weapon from a kneeling position when he shot himself in the process. Though the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was ultimately cleared, Vallandigham died from his wound.

• 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, spy, and founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, allegedly died when he contracted gangrene after slipping and biting his tongue; however, conflicting reports indicate that he died of a stroke instead.

20th century

1900s

• 1903: Ed Delahanty, the Hall of Fame outfielder, died under mysterious circumstances when he was swept over Niagara Falls. He was apparently kicked off a train by the train's conductor for being drunk and disorderly. After getting kicked off the train, Delahanty started his way across the International Bridge and fell off the bridge.

1910s

• 1911: Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel, a famous American distiller, died from blood poisoning as a result of an infection in one of his toes. The toe became infected after he damaged it while kicking his safe in anger because he could not remember the combination.

• 1912: Franz Reichelt, tailor, fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the overcoat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute.

• 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was reportedly poisoned, shot in the head, shot three more times, bludgeoned, and then thrown into a frozen river after being castrated. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be hypothermia; however, some now doubt the credibility of this account. Another account said that he was poisoned, shot, and stabbed, at which time he got up and ran off – and was later found to have drowned in a frozen river.

• 1918: Gustav Kobbé, writer and musicologist, was killed when the sailboat he was on was struck by a landing seaplane off Long Island, New York.

• 1919: In the Boston Molasses Disaster, 21 people were killed and 150 were injured when a tank containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) of molasses exploded, sending a wave travelling at approximately 35 mph (56 km/h) through part of Boston, Massachusetts, United States.

1920s

• 1920: Ray "Chappie" Chapman, shortstop for the Cleveland Indians baseball team, was killed when a submarine ball thrown by Carl Mays hit him in the temple. Chapman collapsed at the plate, and died about 12 hours later. He remains the only baseball player killed by a pitched ball.

• 1920: Dan Andersson, a Swedish author, died of cyanide poisoning while staying at Hotel Hellman in Stockholm. The hotel staff had failed to clear the room after using hydrogen cyanide against bed bugs.

• 1920: Alexander I, King of the Hellenes, was taking a walk in the Royal Gardens, when his dog was attacked by a monkey. The King attempted to defend his dog, receiving bites from both the monkey and its mate. The diseased animals' bites caused sepsis and Alexander died three weeks later.

• 1923: Frank Hayes, a jockey at Belmont Park, New York, died of a heart attack during his first race. His mount finished first with his body still attached to the saddle, and he was only discovered to be dead when the horse's owner went to congratulate him.

• 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, died allegedly because of the so-called King Tut's Curse after a mosquito bite on his face, which he cut while shaving, became seriously infected with erysipelas, leading to blood poisoning and eventually pneumonia.

• 1923: Martha Mansfield, an American film actress, died after sustaining severe burns on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia after a smoker's match, tossed by a cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and ruffles.

• 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero, died after demonstrating he could drive a spike through five one-inch (2.54 cm) thick oak boards using only his bare hands. He accidentally pierced his knee and the rusted spike caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning.

• 1926: Phillip McClean, 16, from Queensland, Australia became the only person documented to have been killed by a cassowary. After encountering the bird on their family property near Mossman in April, McClean and his brother decided to kill it with clubs. When McClean struck the bird it knocked him down, then kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm long cut in one of his main blood vessels. Though the boy managed to get back on his feet and run away, he collapsed a short while later and died from the haemorrhage.

• 1926: Harry Houdini, the famous American escape artist, was punched in the stomach by an amateur boxer. Though this had been done with Houdini's permission, complications from this injury may have caused him to die days later, on October 31, 1926. It was later determined that Houdini died of a ruptured appendix, though it is contested as to whether or not the punches actually caused the appendicitis.

• 1927: J. G. Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated when his car's drive chain snapped and whipped into the cockpit.

• 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of a broken neck when her long scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.

• 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of L. I. Koldomasov, a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, was given to him in a transfusion.

1930s

• 1930: William Kogut, an inmate on death row at San Quentin, committed suicide with a pipe bomb created from several packs of playing cards and the hollow leg from his cot. At the time, the red ink in playing cards contained flammable nitrocellulose, which when wet can create an explosive mixture. Kogut used the heater in his cell to activate the bomb.

• 1932: Eben Byers, an American industrialist and socialite, died of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of Radithor, a popular patent medicine containing radium and thorium.

• 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased. After surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure, and being struck by a car, Malloy succumbed to gassing.

• 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.

• 1939: Finnish actress Sirkka Sari died when she fell down a chimney into a heating boiler. She had mistaken the chimney for a balcony.

1940s

• 1940: Marcus Garvey died as a result of two strokes after reading a negative premature obituary of himself.

• 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, died of peritonitis after swallowing a toothpick at a party.

• 1942: 32 men died when the British cruiser HMS Trinidad accidentally torpedoed itself.

• 1944: 74 men died when the US Submarine Tang (SS-306) accidentally torpedoed itself during a combat patrol off the coast of Taiwan.

• 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.

• 1945: Scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a brick of tungsten carbide onto a sphere of plutonium (known as the Demon core) while working on the Manhattan Project. This caused the plutonium to come to criticality; Daghlian died of radiation poisoning, becoming the first person to die in a criticality accident.

• 1946: Louis Slotin, chemist and physicist, died of radiation poisoning after being exposed to lethal amounts of ionizing radiation from the same core that killed Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. The core went critical after a screwdriver he was using to separate the halves of the spherical beryllium reflector slipped.

• 1947: The Collyer Brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, was crushed to death when he accidentally triggered one of his own booby traps that had consisted of a large pile of objects, books, and newspapers. His blind and paralyzed brother Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later.

1950s

• 1951: Professor Malcolm H. Soule, scientist, killed himself with an injection of snake venom and morphine after being fired from heading the department of bacteriology at the University of Michigan.

• 1955: Margo Jones, theater director, was killed by exposure to carbon tetrachloride fumes from her newly cleaned carpet.

• 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones' absence.

• 1959: In the Dyatlov Pass incident, nine ski hikers in the Ural Mountains abandoned their camp in the middle of the night, some clad only in their underwear despite sub-zero weather. Six died of hypothermia and three by unexplained injuries. The corpses showed no signs of struggle, but one had a fatal skull fracture, two had major chest fractures, and one was missing her tongue. Soviet investigators determined only that "a compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths.

1960s

• 1960: In the Nedelin catastrophe, more than 100 Soviet rocket technicians and officials died when a switch was accidentally turned on, causing the second stage engines of a rocket to ignite, directly above the fully fueled first stage. The casualties included Red Army Marshal Nedelin, who was sitting just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations.

• 1960: Inejiro Asanuma, 61, the head of the Japanese Socialist Party, was stabbed to death with a wakizashi sword by extreme rightist Otoya Yamaguchi during a televised political rally.

• 1960: Alan Stacey, Formula One race driver, died in a crash during the Belgian Grand Prix when a bird flew into his face, causing him to lose control.

• 1961: U.S. Army Specialists John A. Byrnes and Richard Leroy McKinley, and Navy Electrician's Mate Richard C. Legg were killed by a water hammer explosion during maintenance on the SL-1 nuclear reactor in Idaho.

• 1961: Valentin Bondarenko, a Soviet cosmonaut trainee, died after suffering third-degree burns from a flash fire in the pure oxygen environment of a training simulator.

• 1963: Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs Margaret Chandler were discovered on a river bank in Sydney having died from unknown causes. A recent hypothesis is that their deaths were caused by a sudden release of hydrogen sulfide gas from the polluted river bed.

• 1963: Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, sat down in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, covered himself in gasoline, and lit himself on fire, burning himself to death.

• 1966: Worth Bingham, son of Barry Bingham, Sr., died when a surfboard, lying atop the back of his convertible, hit a parked car, swung around, and broke his neck.

• 1966: Skydiver Nick Piantanida died from the effects of uncontrolled decompression four months after an attempt to break the world record for the highest parachute jump. During his third attempt, his face mask came loose (or he possibly opened it by mistake), causing loss of air pressure and irreversible brain damage.

• 1967: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee, NASA astronauts, died when a flash fire began in their pure oxygen environment during a training exercise inside the Apollo 1 spacecraft. The spacecraft's escape hatch could not be opened because it was designed to seal shut under pressure.

• 1967: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.

• 1969; Jan Palach, a Czech student, committed suicide by self-immolation, in Wenceslas Square, Prague, as a political protest against the "demoralization" of Czechoslovakian citizens caused by the occupation by the Soviet Union. Palach was the first of a group of students to set himself on fire.

1970s

• 1971: Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev, Soviet cosmonauts, died when their Soyuz-11 spacecraft depressurized during preparations for reentry. These are the only human deaths outside the Earth's atmosphere.

• 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows, was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.

• 1974: Basil Brown, a 48-year-old health food advocate from Croydon, drank himself to death with carrot juice.

• 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. Eight minutes into her talk show on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she shot herself in the head with a revolver.

• 1974: Deborah Gail Stone, 18, an employee at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, was crushed to death between a moving wall and a stationary wall inside the revolving America Sings attraction.

• 1975: Bandō Mitsugorō VIII, a Japanese kabuki actor, died of severe poisoning when he ate four fugu (puffer-fish) livers. Mitsugorō claimed to be immune to the poison and the fugu chef felt he could not refuse him.

• 1975: Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old from Norfolk, England, died laughing while watching The Goodies. A particular scene had caused Mitchell to laugh nonstop for twenty-five minutes before dying of heart failure.

• 1975: Pit Dernitz, a tourist in Namibia, was killed by lions in front of his wife and children during a filming excursion. On an impulse, Dernitz had left his vehicle to film a feeding lion and within seconds he was tackled by a large lioness. Footage of his death has been featured in many films, including Savage Man Savage Beast and Traces of Death.

• 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar. He was electrocuted by an improperly grounded amplifier.

• 1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver at the 1977 South African Grand Prix, was killed when he was struck in the face by a track marshal's fire extinguisher. The marshal, Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, was running across the track to attend to Pryce's team-mate's burning car when he was struck and killed by Pryce's car. Van Vuuren himself was literally torn in half as the car ploughed into him at speeds exceeding 270 km/h (170 mph).

• 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated in London with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin into his calf.

• 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory where Parker worked accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. Parker is the last known smallpox fatality.

• 1978: Kurt Gödel, the Austrian/American logician and mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else.

• 1979: Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known human to be killed by a robot, after the arm of a one-ton factory robot hit him in the head.

• 1979: John Bowen, a 20-year-old of Nashua, New Hampshire, was attending a halftime show at a New York Jets football game at Shea Stadium on December 9, 1979. During an event featuring custom-made remote control flying machines, a 40-pound model plane shaped like a lawnmower accidentally dived into the stands, striking Bowen and another spectator, causing severe head injuries. Bowen died in the hospital four days later.

• 1979: Nitaro Ito, a candidate for Japan's House of Representatives, died in an attempt to gain sympathy during his election campaign. Having persuaded one of his employees to punch him in the face, Ito then stabbed himself in the leg. Unfortunately, he hit an artery and bled to death before any aid could be given.

1980s

• 1981: David Allen Kirwan, a 24-year-old, died from third-degree burns after attempting to rescue a friend's dog from the 200°F (93°C) water in Celestine Pool, a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park on July 20, 1981.

• 1981: Boris Sagal, a film director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.

• 1981: Kenji Urada, a Japanese factory worker, was killed by a malfunctioning robot he was working on at a Kawasaki plant in Japan. The robot's arm pushed him into a grinding machine, killing him.

• 1981: Paul Gauci, a 41-year-old Maltese man, died after welding a butterfly bomb to a metal pipe and using it as a mallet, thinking it was a harmless can.

• 1982: Actor Vic Morrow and child-actor Myca Dinh Le (age 7) were decapitated, and child-actress Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) was crushed, by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

• 1982: David Grundman was killed near Lake Pleasant, Arizona while shooting at cacti with his shotgun. After he fired several shots at a 26 ft (8 m) tall Saguaro Cactus from extremely close range, a 4 ft (1.2 m) limb of the cactus detached and fell on him, crushing him.

• 1982: Navy Lieutenant George M. Prior, 30, died in Arlington, Virginia from a severe allergic reaction to Daconil, a fungicide used on a golf course he attended. He had unwittingly ingested the substance through his habit of carrying the tee in his mouth when playing.

• 1983: Four divers and a tender were killed on the Byford Dolphin semi-submersible, when a decompression chamber explosively decompressed from 9 atm to 1 atm in a fraction of a second. The diver nearest the chamber opening literally exploded just before his remains were ejected through a 24 inch (60 cm) opening. The other divers' remains showed signs of boiled blood, unusually strong rigor mortis, large amounts of gas in the blood vessels, and scattered hemorrhages in the soft tissues.

• 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died as a result of a diving accident during the 1983 Summer Universiade in Edmonton, Alberta. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position from the ten meter platform, he struck his head on the platform and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.

• 1983: American author Tennessee Williams died when he choked on an eyedrop bottle-cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye.

• 1983: Jimmy Lee Gray, during his execution in a Mississippi gas chamber, died bashing his head against a metal pole behind the chair he was strapped into. The poisonous gas had failed to kill him but left him in agony and gasping for eight minutes.

• 1983: Dick Wertheim was an American tennis linesman who died from blunt cranial trauma at a match at the 1983 US Open. Stefan Edberg sent an errant serve directly into his groin, causing him to fall and hit his head on the pavement.

• 1984: Tommy Cooper, British comedian, died of a heart attack while performing during a live TV broadcast at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. Initially the audience, thinking it was part of the act, continued to laugh as he lay collapsed on the stage. He was then pulled from sight as attempts were made to revive him off stage.

• 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun loaded with a single blank cartridge. Hexum was playing Russian Roulette during a break in filming.

• 1986: More than 1,700 were killed after a limnic eruption from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, released approximately 100 million cubic metres of carbon dioxide that quickly descended on the lake and killed oxygen-dependent life within a 25 kilometre (15 mile) radius, including three villages. The same phenomenon is also blamed for the deaths of 37 near Lake Monoun in 1984.

• 1987: Budd Dwyer, the State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, committed suicide during a televised press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the head with a .357 Magnum revolver.

• 1987: Franco Brun, a 22-year-old prisoner at Toronto East Detention Centre, in Toronto, Ontario, choked to death after attempting to swallow a Gideon's Bible.

• 1988: Clarabelle Lansing, an Aloha Airlines Flight 243 flight attendant, was sucked out of a Boeing 737 when a large section of its fuselage tore off in mid flight.

1990s

• 1990: Bo Diaz, a 37-year-old former baseball player, was killed at his home in Caracas on September 23. A satellite dish that he was adjusting on the roof of his home fell on him and crushed his neck and head against the base of the dish.

• 1991: Maximo Rene Menendez, a 25-year-old man from Miami, fell into a coma and eventually died after drinking a Colombian soft drink that had been laced with cocaine in an apparent smuggling scheme.

• 1991: Edward Juchniewicz, a 76-year-old man from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, was killed when the unattended ambulance stretcher he was strapped to rolled down a grade and overturned.

• 1991: Carl Hulsey, 77, of Cherokee County, Georgia, was butted to death by a pet goat he had been training to act as a "guard dog".

• 1993: Actor Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by a prop gun during the making of the movie The Crow. The accident happened after a mistake in prop handling procedures: In a prior scene a revolver was fired using a cartridge with only a primer and a bullet, but the primer provided enough force to push the round out of the cartridge into the barrel of the revolver, where it stuck. The gun was then reused to shoot the death scene of Lee's character. This time it was reloaded with a blank cartridge that contained propellant and a primer. When actor Michael Massee fired the gun, the bullet was propelled into Lee.

• 1993: Garry Hoy, a 38-year-old lawyer in Toronto, Ontario, fell to his death on July 9, 1993, after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visitors that the glass was "unbreakable." The glass did not break, but popped out of the window frame.

• 1993: Michael A. Shingledecker Jr. was killed when he and a friend were struck by a pickup truck while lying flat on the yellow dividing line of a two-lane highway in Polk, Pennsylvania. They were copying a daredevil stunt from the movie The Program. Marco Birkhimer died of a similar accident while performing the same stunt in Route 206 of Bordentown, New Jersey.

• 1994: Gloria Ramirez was admitted to Riverside General Hospital, in Riverside, California, for complications of advanced cervical cancer. Before she died, her caregivers claimed that Ramirez's body mysteriously emitted toxic fumes that made several emergency room workers very ill.

• 1994: Jeremy Brenno, a 16-year-old golfer from Gloversville, New York, was killed when he threw his club against a bench in a fit of rage, breaking the shaft. Part of the shaft bounced back and pierced his heart.

• 1995: A 39-year-old man committed suicide in Canberra, Australia by shooting himself three times with a pump action shotgun. The first shot passed through his chest, but missed all of the vital organs. He reloaded and shot away his throat and part of his jaw. Breathing through the throat wound, he again reloaded, held the gun against his chest with his hands and operated the trigger with his toes. This shot entered the thoracic cavity and demolished the heart, killing him.

• 1996: Sharon Lopatka, from Maryland, was killed by Robert Glass who claimed that she had solicited him to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification.

• 1997: Karen Wetterhahn, a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, died of mercury poisoning ten months after a few drops of dimethylmercury landed on her protective gloves. Although Wetterhahn had been following the required procedures for handling the chemical, it still permeated her gloves and skin within seconds. As a result of her death, regulations were altered.

• 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were presumed dead after being stranded after scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them after an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their bodies were never recovered.

• 1998 October: The entire association football team of Bena Tshadi playing against Basanga was killed by lightning during a match in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone on Basanga, the home team, survived.

• 1999: Dominguez Garcia was killed February 25, 1999, by an airborne cow in Vacaville, California. The animal had strayed onto the highway and was struck by another vehicle, launching it into his lane where it crashed through his windshield.

• 1999: Owen Hart, a Canadian-born professional wrestler for WWE, died while performing a stunt where he was to be lowered into the ring from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness. The safety latch was accidentally released early and Owen dropped 78 feet (24 m) and landed chest-first on the top rope, severing his aorta.

• 1999: Betty Stobbs, a 67-year-old woman from Durham, England, was killed when a flock of sheep attacked her power bike and pushed her over a 100-foot cliff. She survived the fall, only to be crushed by the falling bike.

• 1999: Jon Desborough, a physical education teacher at Liverpool College died when he slipped and fell onto the blunt end of a javelin he was retrieving. The javelin passed through his eye socket and into his brain, causing severe brain damage and putting him into a coma. He died a month later.

• 1999: Professional golfer Payne Stewart and five others died when the airplane they were on lost cabin pressure in-flight, causing fatal hypoxia. The aircraft continued on auto-pilot for several hours before running out of fuel and crashing in South Dakota.

21st century

2000s

• 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes, from Germany, was voluntarily stabbed repeatedly and then partly eaten by Armin Meiwes (who was later called the Cannibal of Rotenburg). Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten.

• 2001: Gregory Biggs, a homeless American man in Fort Worth, Texas, was struck by a car being driven by drunk driver, Chante Jawan Mallard and became lodged in her windshield with severe but not immediately fatal injuries. Mallard drove home and left the car in her garage with Biggs still lodged in her car's windshield. Biggs died of his injuries several hours later.

• 2001: Michael Colombini, a 6-year-old American boy from Croton-on-Hudson, New York, was struck and killed, at Westchester Regional Medical Centre, by an oxygen tank when it was pulled into the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine while he underwent a test. He had begun to experience breathing difficulties while in the MRI and when an anaesthesiologist brought a portable oxygen canister into the magnetic field, it was pulled from his hands and struck the boy in the head.

• 2002: Brittanie Cecil, a 13-year-old American, was struck in the head by a hockey puck shot by Espen Knutsen and deflected into the crowd at an NHL hockey game in Columbus, Ohio. She died two days later in the hospital.

• 2002: Richard Sumner, a British artist suffering from schizophrenia, went into a remote section of Clocaenog Forest in Denbighshire, Wales, handcuffed himself to a tree and threw the keys out of his reach. His skeleton was discovered three years later. There were signs that he may have later changed his mind.

• 2003: Brian Douglas Wells, an American pizza delivery man in Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed when a time bomb fastened around his neck exploded. At the time of his death he had been apprehended by the police for robbing a bank. Wells told police that three people had locked the bomb around his neck and would not release it had he refused to commit the robbery.

• 2003: Dr. Hitoshi Christopher Nikaidoh, a surgeon, was decapitated as he stepped onto an elevator at Christus St. Joseph Hospital in Houston, Texas, USA on August 16, 2003. Improper maintenance caused the safeties to fail, and the doors closed on Nikaidoh's head. The car then ascended with him still trapped by the doors.

• 2004: Phillip Quinn, a 24-year-old from Kent, Washington, was killed while heating up a lava lamp on his kitchen stove. The lamp exploded and a shard pierced his heart.

• 2004: Ronald McClagish, from Murrow, Cambridgeshire in England, was trapped inside a cupboard when a wardrobe outside fell over and made it impossible for him to get out. McClagish survived for a week before succumbing to bronchitis, which he had contracted when he removed a waterpipe in an attempt to free himself and the cupboard was partially flooded.

• 2004: An unidentified Taiwanese woman died of alcohol intoxication after immersion for twelve hours in a bathtub filled with 40% ethanol. Her blood alcohol content was 1.35%. It was believed that she had immersed herself as a response to the SARS epidemic.

• 2004: Tracy J. Kraling, 31, was killed at Regions Hospital in Minnesota after entering a walk-in autoclave. The door closed while she was inside, and the machine automatically started, scalding her with 180°F(82°C) water.

• 2004: Francis "Franky" Brohm, 23, of Marietta, Georgia was leaning out of a car window and decapitated by a telephone pole support wire. The car's intoxicated driver, John Hutcherson, 21, drove nearly 12 miles to his home with the headless body in the passenger seat, parked the car in his driveway, then went to bed. A neighbour saw the bloody corpse still in the car and notified police. Brohm's head was later discovered at the accident scene.

• 2005: Kenneth Pinyan from Seattle, Washington, died of acute peritonitis after receiving anal intercourse from a stallion. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington state.

• 2005: Lee Seung Seop, a 28-year-old from South Korea, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing the videogame StarCraft online for almost 50 consecutive hours.

• 2005: Francisco Portillo, a 34-year-old El Salvadoran, was strangled after the hood of his sweatshirt became entangled in the teeth of a escalator at Porter Square Station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was alledgely drunk at the time.

• 2006: Erika Tomanu, a seven-year-old girl in Saitama, Japan, died when she was sucked 10 metres down the intake pipe of a current pool at a water park.

• 2006: Steve Irwin, an Australian television personality and naturalist known as the Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

• 2006: Mariesa Weber, a petite 38-year-old woman, asphyxiated when she became wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in her bedroom while trying to adjust a plug on her television set. Her family, believing she had been abducted, searched for eleven days before finally finding the body.

• 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian State security service and later a dissident and writer, died from acute radiation syndrome after being poisoned with polonium-210.

• 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, California, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Nintendo Wii console in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.

• 2007: Humberto Hernandez, a 24-year-old Oakland, California resident, was killed after being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant and the water pressure shot the hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.

• 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old British man, committed suicide by hanging himself live in front of a webcam during an Internet chat session.

• 2007: Mike Coolbaugh, a 35-year-old former Major League Baseball player, was killed when he was struck in the head by a line drive while standing in the first base coach's box during a minor league game between the Tulsa Drillers and the Arkansas Travelers.

• 2007: Surinder Singh Bajwa, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India, died after falling from his building's terrace while trying to fight off attacking Rhesus Macaque monkeys.

• 2008: Abigail Taylor, a 6-year-old from Edina, Minnesota, died nine months after several of her internal organs were partially sucked out of her lower body while she sat on an excessively powerful swimming pool drain. Surgeons had replaced her intestines and pancreas with donor organs, but she later succumbed to a rare transplant-related cancer.

• 2008: An unidentified intoxicated man from St. Petersburg, Russia, was accidentally killed by the folding couch on which he laid following a dispute with his wife. The irate wife kicked a handle that released a folding mechanism for the couch, left the room, and did not return for three hours. The couch had folded away into the wall, trapping the husband within and killing him.

• 2008: Gerald Mellin, a U.K. businessman, committed suicide by tying one end of a rope around his neck and the other to a tree. He then got into his Aston Martin DB7 and drove down a main road in Swansea until the rope decapitated him.

• 2008: David Phyall, 50, the last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, Hampshire, England, cut off his own head with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out.

• 2008: James Mason, 73, of Middlefield, Ohio, died of heart failure after his wife exercised him to death in a public swimming pool. Christine Newton-John, 41, pulled Mason around the pool and prevented him from getting out of the water 43 times.

• 2008: Isaiah Otieno, 23, a Kenyan student living in Cranbrook, British Columbia, was killed when a Bell 206 helicopter crashed on top of him as he walked along a residential street.

• 2008: Nordin Montong, 32, a janitor at the Singapore Zoo, committed suicide by entering an enclosure containing white tigers and provoking them with brooms and a pail until they mauled him to death.

• 2009: Jonathan Campos, an American sailor charged with murder, killed himself in his Camp Pendleton, San Diego, California, cell by stuffing toilet paper into his mouth until he asphyxiated.

• 2009: Sergey Tuganov, a 28-year-old Russian, bet two women that he could continuously have sex with them both for twelve hours. Several minutes after winning the $4,300 bet, he suffered a fatal heart attack, apparently due to having ingested an entire bottle of Viagra just after accepting the bet.

• 2009: Taylor Mitchell, a Canadian folk singer, was attacked and killed by two coyotes, the only recorded adult person to have been killed by this species.

• 2009: Vladimir Likhonos, a Ukrainian student, died after accidentally dipping a piece of homemade chewing gum into explosives he was using on another project. He mistook the jar of explosive for citric acid, which was also on his desk. The gum exploded, blowing off his jaw and most of the lower part of his face.

2010s

2010

• A 40-year-old wheelchair-bound South Korean man identified as Mr. Lee died after falling down an elevator shaft in Daejon. Lee had failed to enter an elevator in time and, in a rage, rammed the doors with his mobility scooter, breaking them open and falling to his death.

• Amy Rose Coxall, a 15-year-old British schoolgirl studying in Hong Kong, died of strangulation shortly after her scarf got caught in the wheel of a go-kart she was driving on a karting course.

• Jacquelyn Kotorac, 49, a physician from Bakersfield, California, died of asphyxiation when she became trapped in the chimney of her boyfriend's home while attempting to break in.

• Jenny Mitchell, a 19-year-old English hairdresser, was killed when her car exploded after fumes, caused by chemicals mixing with hydrogen peroxide leaking from a bottle of hair bleach, ignited as she lit a cigarette.

• Jimi Heselden, British owner of the Segway motorized scooter company, was killed when he accidentally drove off a cliff on a Segway at his estate at Thorp Arch near Boston Spa.

• Mike Edwards, 62, an English musician, best known as a former cellist of rock group Electric Light Orchestra during the early '70s, was killed when a 600 kg (1,300 lb) bale of hay rolled down a hill and landed on his passing van in Devon.

• Robert Boardman, 63, was gored to death by a mountain goat at Olympic National Park, U.S.

• Robert Gary Jones, 38, was killed while jogging on a beach in Hilton Head Island, U.S. when he was hit from behind by a small plane making an emergency landing.

• Vladimir Ladyzhensky, a competitor from Russia, died in the World Sauna Championships in Finland, after he had spent six minutes in a sauna that had been heated up to 230°F(110°C).

2011

• A 25-year-old woman from Ottawa, Ontario and Steven Leon, 40, of Gatineau, Quebec, died after an airborne American black bear smashed through the windshield of their SUV near Luskville, Quebec. The bear had been hit by another vehicle, launching it into the oncoming lane where it landed on the SUV.

• Acton Beale, 20, died after falling from a balcony in Brisbane, Australia, the only person known to have died while participating in a fad known as 'planking'.

• Arthur Sexton, 80, drowned after falling off a step ladder and landing upside down in a water butt containing only a couple of feet of water, in the garden of his home at Fleet in Lincolnshire.

• Brian Depledge, 38, died from asphyxiation at his home in Bradford, England, after tripping and falling into a plastic clothes-airer and trapping his neck in the rungs.

• Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, died after being stabbed in the leg at a cockfight in Tulare County, California U.S., by one of the birds that had a knife attached to its limb.

• Rory Schmand, 47, of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, died approximately four months after a tree branch fell and crashed through her car windshield, impaling her between the eyes.

• Sheila Decoster, 62, died from asphyxiation after falling head first into a recycling bin at her home in Toledo, Ohio, U.S.

2012

• Savannah Hardin, 9, from Montgomery, Alabama died of seizure-related complications after running non-stop for several hours. She was reportedly forced to run by her stepmother and grandmother as punishment for lying about eating a candy bar.

• Anthony Hensley, 37, from Des Plaines, Illinois drowned after his kayak was capsized by a swan, which then blocked him from escaping to shore.

• An unnamed Chinese man, 42, from Haikou died during an altercation with a 41-year-old woman over a parking space. The woman reportedly grabbed his testicles and squeezed them until he was rendered unconscious. The man was later pronounced dead at the hospital from the injuries.

• Erica Marshall, a 28-year-old veterinarian in Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a nearby high-oxygen chamber kicked the wall, releasing a spark from its horseshoes and triggering an explosion.

• Uroko Onoja, a Nigerian polygamist businessman, died after being forced by five of his six wives to have sex with each of them. Onoja was caught having sex with his youngest wife by the remaining five, who were jealous of him paying her more attention. The remaining wives demanded that he also have sex with each of them, threatening him with knives and sticks. He had intercourse with four of them in succession, but stopped breathing before having sex with the fifth.

• An unnamed Canadian woman, 30, drowned after being swept away in the Ouareau River while wearing her wedding dress for a photography session. Ordinarily, standing near the shore in 15-30 cm (6-12 in) of water for a healthy adult would not be inherently dangerous. However, her water-soaked dress became too heavy, and she was pulled deeper into the river and succumbed to drowning. She had been married on June 9.

See also

• 1000 Ways to Die
• Darwin Awards
• Death from laughter
• List of entertainers who died during a performance
• List of association footballers who died while playing
• List of inventors killed by their own inventions
• List of professional cyclists who died during a race
• Multiple gunshot suicide
• Spontaneous human combustion
• Stunts that have gone wrong
• Toilet-related injuries and deaths
• Final Destination (series)