List of unusual deaths

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This article provides a list of unusual deaths – unique, or extremely rare circumstances recorded throughout history. The list also includes less rare, but 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 making him unable to defend himself from attacking wolves, which devoured him.

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

• 272 BC: According to Plutarch, Pyrrhus of Epirus, conqueror and the source of the term pyrrhic victory, died while fighting an urban battle in Argos when an old woman threw a roof tile at him, stunning him and allowing an Argive soldier to kill him.

• 270 BC: Philitas of Cos, Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus of Naucratis 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 watching his drunken donkey 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.

• 53 BC: The Roman general and consul Marcus Licinius Crassus was reported as having been put to death by the Parthians after losing the battle of Carrhae, by being forced to drink a goblet of molten gold, symbolic of his great wealth. A much more likely scenario is that in which, following his death, the Parthian executioner(s) poured said 'molten gold' into his mouth as a message/symbol representing the perils of his 'great thirst for wealth.'

• 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 expired. However, gruesome deaths have often been attributed by various authors to disliked rulers, including several Roman emperors (for example, Galerius).

• 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 was.

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

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

• 336: Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, is said to have died of a sudden diarrhea turned into deadly hemorrhage while walking through Constantine's forum in Constantinople. He might have been poisoned.

• 415: Hypatia of Alexandria, Greek mathematician and pagan philosopher, was murdered by a Christian mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp sea-shells; what remained of her was burned. (Various types of shells have been named: clams, oysters, abalones, etc. Other sources claim tiles or pottery-shards were used.)

Middle Ages

• 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. A similar tale is the Mouse Tower of Archbishop Hatto II of Mainz. This curse was a consequence of his lack of hospitability or obeying traditions.

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

• 1063: Béla I of Hungary died when his throne's canopy collapsed upon him.

• 1219: According to legend, Inalchuk, the Muslim governor of the Central Asian town of Otrar, was captured and killed by the invading Mongols, who poured molten silver in his eyes, ears, and throat.

• 1258: Al-Musta'sim was killed during the Mongol invasion of the Abbasid Caliphate when Hulagu Khan, not wanting to spill royal blood, wrapped him in a rug and had him trampled to death by his horses.

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

• 1410: Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal 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 at 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.

• 1556: Humayun, a Mughal emperor, was descending from the roof of his library when he heard the adhan, or call to prayer. Humayun's practice was to bow his knee when he heard the azaan, and when he did his foot caught the folds of his garment, causing him to fall down several flights. He died three days later of the injuries.

• 1601: Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so 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.

• 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 reported asphyxiation after being accidentally sealed in a cupboard by Elizabeth Spencer in an attempt to hide him from her father, John Spencer.

• 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he could not stand the shame of a postponed meal. The authenticity of this story is questionable.

• 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, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum, as 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.

• 1769: Gouverneur Morris, an American statesman, died after sticking a piece of whale bone through his urinary tract to relieve a blockage.

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

• 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.

Modern Age

19th century

• 1814: London Beer Flood, 9 people were killed when 323,000 imperial gallons (1,468,000L) of beer in the Meux and Company Brewery burst out of their vats and gushed into the streets.

• 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, baseball player, died when he swung a bat too hard and ruptured his bladder.

• 1868: Matthew Vassar, brewer and founder of Vassar College, died in mid-speech while delivering his farewell address to the college board of trustees.

• 1871: Clement Vallandigham, U.S. Congressman and political opponent of Abraham Lincoln, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound suffered in court while representing the defendant in a murder case. Demonstrating how the murder victim could have inadvertently shot himself, the gun, which Vallandigham believed to be unloaded, discharged and mortally wounded him.

20th century

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

• 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was reportedly poisoned while dining with a political enemy, 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, there is now some doubt about 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.

• 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. He took two steps after being given a walk, collapsed, and died the next day.

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

• 1920, 25 October: 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 animals were diseased, inducing infection which led to sepsis. He died three weeks later.

• 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.

• 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, became the first to die from the alleged 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.

• 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero, died as a result of a demonstration in which he drove 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 from Queensland, Australia became the only documented person to have been killed by a cassowary. After encountering the bird in their family ranch, the 16-year-old and his 13-year-old brother decided to kill it with clubs. However, the cassowary kicked first the younger boy, who run away. Then the older boy struck the bird. The cassowary hit back, knocking McClean down, and while on the ground he was kicked a second time 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 not so much after and died from the hemorrhage.

• 1926: Harry Houdini, a famous American escape artist, was punched in the stomach by an amateur boxer who had heard that Houdini could withstand any blow to his body above his waist, excluding his head. Though this had been done with Houdini's permission, complications from this injury caused him to die days later, on October 31, 1926. It was later determined that Houdini died of a ruptured appendix.

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

• 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of a broken neck when one of the long scarves she was known for wearing 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 a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.

• 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, which he heated with a kerosene heater. At the time, the ink in red playing cards contained nitrocellulose, which is flammable and when wet can create an explosive mixture.

• 1932: Eben Byers died of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of a popular patent medicine containing radium.

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

• 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. She mistook a chimney for a balcony and fell into a heating boiler, dying instantly.

• 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.

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

• 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.

• 1944: 74 men died when the US Submarine USS Tang accidentally torpedoed itself whilst on 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 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.. He allowed the core to become fully shielded by a spherical beryllium reflector when the screwdriver he was using to separate the two halves of the shield slipped, causing the core to go critical.

• 1947: The Collyer Brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind and paralyzed brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later.

• 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 while in make-up 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. Tests showed that all of the hikers had been exposed to large amounts of radiation. Soviet investigators determined only that "a compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths, barring entry to the area for years.

• 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet rocket technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket. The dead included Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair 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. Yamaguchi was immediately arrested and later committed suicide.

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

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

• 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 unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft. The spacecraft's escape hatch could not be opened during the fire 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.

• 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. The show was never broadcast.

• 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. At 9:38 am, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.

• 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 of the revolving America Sings attraction.

• 1975: Bandō Mitsugorō VIII, a Japanese kabuki actor, died of severe poisoning when he ate four fugu livers (also known as pufferfish). The liver is considered one of the most poisonous parts of the fish, but Mitsugorō claimed to be immune to the poison. The fugu chef felt he could not refuse Mitsugorō and lost his license as a result.

• 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar. He was electrocuted because the amplifier was not properly grounded.

• 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 instantly, by Pryce's car.

• 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 Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.

• 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. He was 65 pounds (approx. 30 kg) when he died. His death certificate reported that he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978.

• 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 which featured 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 and causing severe head injuries. While the other spectator survived, Bowen died in hospital four days later.

• 1980: James Frederick Polley, a 23-year-old from Raytown, Missouri, died while riding the Fire In The Hole ride in Branson, Missouri, at Silver Dollar City theme park. The train of cars he was riding in was mistakenly switched to enter the maintenance and storage area of the ride. The door to the maintenance area had a low-hanging bay door and his head got caught between the door and the train.

• 1981: David Allen Kirwan a 24-year-old, died 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. Kirwan suffered third-degree burns over 100% of his body and died the next morning at a Salt Lake City hospital. Kirwan is the only known case of someone dying after deliberately jumping into one of the park's hot springs.

• 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: Jeff Dailey, a 19-year-old gamer, became the first known person to die while playing video games. After achieving a score of 16,660 in the arcade game Berzerk, he succumbed to a massive heart attack. A year later, an 18-year-old gamer died after achieving high scores in the same game.

• 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: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (who was decapitated) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (who was crushed), also died.

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

• 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 in (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 after a diving accident during the 1983 Summer Universiade in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position from the ten meter platform, he smashed 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, a man executed in Mississippi's gas chamber, died bashing his head against a metal pole behind the chair that he was strapped into. The poisonous gas had failed to kill him but left him in agony and gasping for eight minutes.

• 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 during a break in filming, playing Russian Roulette using a revolver loaded with a single blank cartridge.

• 1986: Hrand Arakelian, a Brink's armored truck guard, was crushed by several 25-pound boxes of quarters when the driver braked suddenly to avoid a car in Los Angeles, California.

• 1986: Over 1,700 were killed after a limnic eruption from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, released approximately 100 million cubic meters of carbon dioxide that quickly descended the lake and killed oxygen dependent life within 15-mile (25 kilometer) radius, including three villages. The same phenomenon is also blamed on 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 mouth with a revolver.

• 1987: Franco Brun, a 22-year-old prisoner at Toronto East Detention Centre, in Toronto, Ontario, died after attempting to swallow and choking on a 6.35 cm. (2.5 inches) by 10 cm. (4 inches) by 1.27 centimetres (half an inch) Gideon's Bible.

• 1988: C.B. Lansing an Aloha Airlines Flight 243 flight attendant, was sucked out of an airliner when the bulkhead tore off in mid flight.

• 1991: Maximo Rene Menendez, a 25-year-old man who emigrated from communist Cuba to Miami only months earlier, slipped into a coma after drinking the Colombian soft drink Pony Malta de Bavaria. The bottle had been laced with cocaine in an apparent smuggling scheme. He was declared brain dead and died after doctors disconnected his life-support equipment.

• 1991: Edward Juchniewicz, a 76-year-old man, was killed when the ambulance stretcher he was strapped to rolled down a grade and overturned. The ambulance attendants, while speaking to a doctor's staff, had left the stretcher unattended. Juchniewicz suffered a head injury and died a short time later.

• 1991: Carl Hulsey, 77, of Cherokee County, Georgia, was butted to death by his goat. Hulsey regularly hit the goat with a stick in an apparent attempt to make it more aggressive so it could act as a "guard dog" for Hulsey's home.

• 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. As the malfunction, called a squib load, went unnoticed by the crew, the gun was then reused to shoot the movie death scene of Brandon Lee. This time it was reloaded with a blank cartridge that contained propellant and a primer. When actor Michael Massee used the gun, the squib load was fired into Lee.

• 1993: Garry Hoy, a 38-year-old lawyer and a senior partner at the Holden Day Wilson Law firm in Toronto, Canada, 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 visiting law students that the glass was "unbreakable." The glass didn't break, but popped out of the window frame, and he fell over 300 feet to his death.

• 1993: Michael A. Shingledecker Jr. was killed almost instantly 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. She was dubbed the "toxic lady" by the media.

• 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 and went out the other side. He reloaded and shot away his throat and part of his jaw. Breathing through the wound in his throat, 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, an Internet entrepreneur from Maryland, allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.

• 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while 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: An entire visiting association football team playing against Basanga was killed instantly when the field was struck by a fork of lightning during a match in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone on Basanga, the home team, survived.

• 1999: Owen Hart, a Canadian-born professional wrestler for WWF, died during a pay-per-view event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet (24 m), bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.

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

• 2000: Airline passenger Jonathan Burton stormed the cockpit door of a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. The 19-year-old was knocked over and pinned by eight other passengers with such force that he died of asphyxiation.

21st century

• 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. This inspired the Rammstein Song "Mein Teil" ("My (private) part"), the title of the Marilyn Manson album Eat Me, Drink Me, and the IT Crowd episode "Moss and the German" and also the 2006 German movie "Cannibal".

• 2001: Gregory Biggs, a homeless American man in Fort Worth, Texas, was struck by a car being driven by Chante Jawan Mallard, who had been drinking and taking drugs that night. Biggs' torso became lodged in Mallard's 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 Center, by a 6.5-pound metal oxygen tank when it was pulled into the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine while he underwent a test. He began to experience breathing difficulties while in the MRI and when an anesthesiologist 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, was the first person to be killed while watching an NHL ice hockey game. The 13-year-old American fan was struck in the head by a hockey puck shot by Espen Knutsen at a game in Columbus, Ohio, and she died two days later in hospital.

• 2002: Kenneth Farr, a 37-year-old man from Penarth, Wales, was partially decapitated when an unsecured safety barrier in a supermarket carpark was blown through the windshield of his car by a sudden gust of wind.

• 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.

• 2003: Brian Douglas Wells, an American pizza delivery man in Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed by a time bomb that was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him.

• 2003: Dr. Hitoshi Christopher Nikaidoh, a surgeon, was decapitated as he stepped on to an elevator at Christus St. Joseph Hospital in Houston, Texas, USA on August 16, 2003.

• 2004: Phillip Quinn, a 24-year-old American from Kent, Washington was killed during an attempt to heat up a lava lamp bulb on his kitchen stove while observing it from a few feet away. The heat built up pressure in the bulb until it exploded, spraying shards of glass. One pierced his heart, killing him.

• 2004: Ronald McClagish, from England, died after being trapped inside a cupboard for a week. A wardrobe in the bedroom outside had fallen over, trapping him inside. In an effort to free himself, McClagish accidentally wrenched a water pipe from the wall and the water gushing from the pipe eventually caused his death from bronchitis.

• 2004: An unidentified Taiwanese woman died of alcohol intoxication after immersion for 12 hours in a bathtub filled with 40% ethanol. Her blood alcohol content was 1.35%. It was believed that she immersed herself as a response to the ongoing SARS epidemic.

• 2005: Linda Williams, 37, of San Diego, California died after being trapped in her condominium that was enclosed in a fumigation tent while undergoing fumigation for termites.

• 2005: Kenneth "Mr. Hands" Pinyan of Gig Harbor, Washington, U.S. 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 South Korean, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing the videogame StarCraft online for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.

• 2005 Joshua Woods, 6, was killed after a Boeing 737's landing gear snapped off, causing it to overshot the runway and strike the car he was in at Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois.

• 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. The grille that was meant to cover the inlet came off, yet lifeguards at the pool at the time deemed it safe after issuing a verbal warning to swimmers.

• 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 entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

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

• 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old American woman from Sacramento, 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 from being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking on a sidewalk; a passing car blew a tire and swerved onto the sidewalk, striking the fire hydrant. The force of the water pressure shot the 200-pound hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.

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

• 2007: Surinder Singh Bajwa, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India, was warding off several Rhesus Macaque monkeys at his home and fell from a first-floor balcony, suffering serious head injuries. He later died from his injuries.

• 2008: Abigail Taylor, a 6-year-old American girl, 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. After several months, surgeons replaced her intestines and pancreas with donor organs, but she later succumbed to a rare transplant-related cancer.

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

• 2008: James Mason, 73, of Chardon, Ohio, died of heart failure after his wife exercised him to death in a public swimming pool. Christine Newton-John, 41, was seen on video tape pulling Mason around the pool and preventing him from getting out of the water 43 times.

• 2008: Isaiah Otieno, 23, a Kenyan student living in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, 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 in his mouth until he asphyxiated.

• 2009: Diana Durre, of Chambers, Nebraska, died after a 75-foot (23 m) tall Taco Bell sign fell on top of the truck cab she was in. Strong winds caused the pole to break at a welded joint about 15 feet (4.5 m) above the ground.

• 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 heart attack and died, 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, only the second recorded human fatality from a coyote attack.

• 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.

• 2010: 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.

• 2010: Vladimir Ladyzhensky, a competitor from Russia, died in The World Sauna Championships in Finland, after he had spent 6 minutes in a sauna that had been heated up to 110C (230F). Because of this incident, no further World Sauna Championships will be held.

• 2010: Jacquelyn Kotarac, 49, a physician (internist) from Bakersfield, California, was found dead in her boyfriend's chimney. She had been trying to break in through the chimney and died of asphyxiation. The body was found after a house sitter noticed an odor and fluids coming from the chimney.

• 2010: Mike Edwards, 62, a musician, and a founding member of rock group Electric Light Orchestra was killed instantly when a 600 kg (1,300 lb) bale of hay rolled down a hill and landed on his passing van in Devon, southwest England.

• 2010: Jimi Heselden, owner of the Segway motorized scooter company, was killed when he accidentally drove off a cliff on a Segway at his estate and drowned in the River Wharfe.

• 2010: Robert Boardman, 63, was gored to death by a mountain goat while he was eating lunch at Olympic National Park.

• 2010: Robert Gary Jones, 38, was jogging and listening to his iPod when he was hit from behind and killed by a small plane making an emergency landing on a beach in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

• 2010: Delvonte Tisdale, 16, a North Carolina Air Force JROTC cadet was found inexplicably mutilated lying on the front lawn of a home in Milton, Massachusetts. It was later determined that the teen had hidden in the wheel well of a commercial airliner which took off from Charlotte, North Carolina and fell over 2000 feet as it lowered its wheels for landing in Boston at Logan Airport.

• 2011: Daniel Gocus, 10, a Shoreline, WA boy suffocated in box of foam packing peanuts while playing hide and seek.

• 2011: Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, died after being stabbed in the leg at a cock-fight by one of the birds that had a knife attached to its limb.

See also

• 1000 Ways to Die
• Darwin Awards
• Death from laughter
• List of deaths by motorcycle accidents
• List of entertainers who died during a performance
• List of fatal accidents in motorboat racing
• List of footballers who died while playing
• List of ice hockey players who died during their playing career
• List of inventors killed by their own inventions
• List of professional cyclists who died during a race
• List of skiing deaths
• List of sports people who died during their career
• Multiple gunshot suicide
• Spontaneous human combustion
• Stunts that have gone wrong
• Toilet-related injury