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List of unusual deaths

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The death of Aeschylus, killed by a turtle dropped onto his head by a falcon, illustrated in the 15th-century Florentine Picture-Chronicle by Baccio Baldini[1]

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

Antiquity

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Sisera
1200 or 1235 BC According to Judges 4-5, the commander of the Canaanite army for King Jabin of Hazor was killed in his sleep when the Kenite woman Jael stabbed him in the temple with a tent peg.[2][3]
Abimelech Ben Gideon
1126 BC The king of Shechem and son of Gideon was killed in the city of Thebez by a woman who threw a millstone on his head which crushed his skull or mortally wounded him.[3][4]
Draco of Athens
c. 620 BC The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre in Aegina, Greece.[5][6][7]
Duke Jing of Jin 581 BC The Chinese ruler was warned by a shaman that he would not live to see the new wheat harvest, to which he responded by executing the shaman. However, when the duke was about to eat the wheat, he felt the need to visit the bathroom, where he fell through the hole and drowned.[6][8]
Arrhichion of Phigalia
564 BC The Greek pankratiast caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrhichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot/ankle injury that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time Arrhichion suffered a fatally broken neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrhichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously.[9][10]
Sisamnes
525 BC The corrupt Persian judge was killed and flayed alive by Cambyses II for accepting a bribe.[11][12]
Milo of Croton
6th century BC The Olympic champion wrestler's hands reportedly became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart; he was then devoured by wolves (or, in later versions, lions).[13][14][15]
Zeuxis
5th century BC The Greek painter died of laughter while painting an elderly woman.[7][16]
Anacreon
c. 485 BC The poet, known for works in celebration of wine, choked to death on a grape stone according to Pliny the Elder. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that "the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits".[13][16]: 104 [17][18]
Heraclitus of Ephesus
c. 475 BC According to one account given by Diogenes Laertius, the Greek philosopher was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy.[19][20]
Aeschylus
c. 455 BC According to Valerius Maximus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed that day "by the fall of a house".[13][16]: 104 [21][22][23][24][25]
Empedocles of Akragas
c. 430 BC According to Diogenes Laertius, the Pre-Socratic philosopher from Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declared himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal",[26] tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano.[27][28] The Roman poet Horace also alludes to this legend.[29]
Sogdianus 423 BC The ruler of the Achaemenid Empire was captured by his half-brother Ochus, who had him executed by being suffocated by ash.[6][30]
Polydamas of Skotoussa
5th century BC The Thessalian pankratiast, and victor in the 93rd Olympiad (408 BC), was in a cave with friends when the roof began to crumble. Believing his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, he tried to support the roof with his shoulders as the rocks crashed down around him, but was crushed to death.[13][31]
Sophocles
c. 406 BC A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of another of the three great Athenian tragedians are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape.[23] Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful.[13][23] A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation.[23]
Mithridates 401 BC The Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days.[32][33]
Anaxarchus
320 BC According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxarchus gained the enmity of the tyrannical ruler of Cyprus, Nicocreon, for an inappropriate joke he made about tyrants at a banquet in 331 BC. When Anaxarchus visited Cyprus, Nicocreon ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar. During the torture Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon, "Just pound the bag of Anaxarchus, you do not pound Anaxarchus." Nicocreon then threatened to cut his tongue out; Anaxarchus bit it off and spat it at the ruler's face.[34][35]
Antiphanes c. 310 BC According to the Suda, the renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy died after being struck by a pear.[7][36]
King Wu of Qin 307 BC The king and member of the Qin dynasty reportedly challenged his friend Meng Yue to a lifting contest. When Wu tried to lift a giant bronze pot believed to have been cast for Yu the Great, it crushed his leg, inflicting fatal injuries. Meng Yue and his family were sentenced to death.[6][8]
Agathocles of Syracuse
289 BC The Greek tyrant of Syracuse was murdered with a poisoned toothpick.[7][16]: 104 
Pyrrhus of Epirus
272 BC During the Battle of Argos, Pyrrhus was fighting a Macedonian soldier in the street when the elderly mother of the soldier dropped a roof tile onto Pyrrhus' head, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed. According to a soldier named Zopyrus, they then proceeded to decapitate the king.[37][38][39]
Zeno of Citium
c. 262 BC The Greek philosopher from Citium, Cyprus, tripped and fell as he was leaving the school, breaking his toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" He died on the spot through holding his breath.[40][41]
Qin Shi Huang
August 210 BC The first emperor of China, whose artifacts and treasures include the Terracotta Army, died after ingesting several pills of mercury, in the belief that it would grant him immortality.[25][42][43]
Chrysippus of Soli
c. 206 BC One ancient account of the death of the third-century BC Greek Stoic philosopher tells that he died laughing at his own joke[44] after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).[25][24][45][note 1]
Eleazar Avaran
c. 163 BC The brother of Judas Maccabeus; according to 1 Maccabees 6:46, during the Battle of Beth Zechariah, Eleazar spied an armored war elephant which he believed to be carrying the Seleucid emperor Antiochus V Eupator. After thrusting his spear in battle into its belly, it collapsed and fell on top of Eleazar, killing him instantly.[24][46][unreliable source?]
Quintus Lutatius Catulus 87 BC After his former comrade-in-arms Gaius Marius took control of Rome and had him prosecuted for a capital offence, the Roman Republic consul shut himself inside his house, which was heated to a high temperature and daubed with lime, thus suffocating himself.[13][47]
Cleopatra and two handmaidens
August 30 BC Although there exist several accounts of how the 39-year-old last queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom died, the most widespread one is that she killed herself with an asp (a viper), alongside two of her handmaidens.[6][48]
Tiberius Claudius Drusus
c. 20 AD According to Suetonius, the eldest son of the future Roman emperor Claudius died while playing with a pear. Having tossed the pear high in the air, he caught it in his mouth when it came back, but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.[49][50]
Saint Peter
64–68 AD When Nero ordered his execution, the apostle of Jesus requested to be crucified upside down, as he considered himself unworthy to die in the same way Jesus had.[51][52][53][unreliable source?]
Cassian of Imola
13 August 363 The pious schoolteacher was sentenced to death by Julian the Apostate and was handed over to his pupils to carry out the deed, which they did by binding him to a stake and stabbing him with their pens.[54][55]
Valentinian I
17 November 375 The Roman emperor suffered a stroke which was provoked by yelling at foreign envoys in anger.[6][56]
Attila
c. 453 Attila the Hun reportedly died on his wedding night by choking on his own blood, which flowed into his mouth from a nosebleed.[57][58]

Middle Ages

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Li Bai
762 According to popular legend, the Chinese poet got drunk while riding his boat along the Yangtze River and tried to hug the moon's reflection. He then fell off and drowned.[59][60]
Louis III of France
5 August 882 The king of West Francia died aged around 18 at Saint-Denis. Whilst mounting his horse to pursue a girl who was running to seek refuge in her father's house, he hit his head on the lintel of a low door and fell, fracturing his skull.[61][62]
Basil I
29 August 886 The Byzantine emperor's belt was entangled between antlers of a deer during a hunt and the animal subsequently dragged him for 16 miles (26 km) through the woods. Because of this accident, Basil contracted fever and he died shortly afterwards.[63][64]
Sigurd the Mighty
892 The second Earl of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe Máel Brigte to his horse's saddle. Brigte's teeth rubbed against Sigurd's leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection, according to the Old Norse Heimskringla and Orkneyinga sagas.[25][58][64]
Hatto II
18 January 970 The archbishop of Mainz is claimed in legend to have been punished for his cruelty to the poor by being eaten alive by rodents.[65][66]
Edmund Ironside
30 November 1016 According to Henry of Huntington, te English king was stabbed whilst on a toilet by an assassin hiding underneath.[67][68]
Béla I of Hungary
11 September 1063 After the Holy Roman Empire decided to launch a military expedition against Hungary to restore his nephew Solomon to the throne, the Hungarian king was seriously injured when "his throne broke beneath him" in his manor at Dömös, later succumbing at a creek near Nagykanizsa.[25][69]
Crown Prince
Philip of France
13 October 1131 The French prince who co-ruled with Louis VI died while riding through Paris when his horse tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap.[25][64][70]
Henry I of England
1 December 1135 According to Henry of Huntington, while visiting relatives, the English king ate too many lampreys against his physician's advice, causing a pain in his gut which led to his death.[25][68][71][72]
John II Komnenos
1 April 1143 The Byzantine Emperor cut himself with a poisoned arrow during a boar hunt, subsequently dying from sepsis.[73][74]
Pope Adrian IV
1 September 1159 The only Englishman to serve as Pope reportedly died after choking on a fly while drinking spring water.[58][64][75]
Victims of the Erfurt latrine disaster
26 July 1184 While Henry VI, the King of Germany, was holding an informal assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.[64][76]
Frederick Barbarossa
10 June 1190 While leading the German army on the Third Crusade, the Holy Roman Emperor unexpectedly drowned while bathing in the Saleph.[77][78][79][unreliable source?]
Al-Musta'sim
20 February 1258 The last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.[25][80]
Edward II of England
21 September 1327 The English king was rumoured to have been murdered after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body.[58][68][81][82][83] However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II's death, and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda.[83][84]
Charles II of Navarre
1 January 1387 The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that the king of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad", suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire, and he later died of his injuries.[85][86][87]
Martin of Aragon
31 May 1410 The Aragonese king died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to legend, Martin was suffering from indigestion, caused by eating an entire goose, when his favorite jester, Borra, entered the king's bedroom. When Martin asked Borra where he had been, the jester replied with: "Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs." This joke caused the king to die from laughter.[58][64][unreliable source?]

Renaissance

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
18 February 1478 The 1st Duke of Clarence was allegedly executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine, apparently his own choice once he accepted he was to be killed.[25][64][88]
Charles VIII of France
7 April 1498 The French king died as the result of striking his head on the lintel of a door while on his way to watch a game of real tennis.[16]: 105 
Victims of the 1518 dancing plague
July 1518 Several people died of either heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion during a dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (Holy Roman Empire).[25][89][90]
Robert Pakington 13 November 1536 The 47-year-old merchant was killed in London by a wheellock pistol, making his death the first political assassination performed by a firearm.[91]
Pietro Aretino
21 October 1556 The influential Italian author and libertine is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much at an obscene joke during a meal in Venice. Another version states that he fell from a chair from too much laughter, fracturing his skull.[92][93]
Henry II of France
10 July 1559 On 30 June 1559, a tournament was held near Place des Vosges to celebrate the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with the French king's longtime enemies, the Habsburgs of Austria, and to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Elisabeth of Valois to King Philip II of Spain. During a jousting match, Henry, wearing the colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers,[94] was wounded in the eye by a fragment of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery, captain of the King's Scottish Guard.[95] Despite the efforts of royal surgeons Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, the court doctors ultimately "advocated a wait-and-see strategy";[96] as a result, the king's untreated eye and brain damage led to his death by sepsis ten days later.[97] His death played a significant role in the decline of jousting as a sport, particularly in France.[98]
Amy Robsart
8 September 1560 The 28-year-old wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was found dead by a staircase with two wounds on her head and a broken neck. Theories suggest she threw herself down the stairs.[99][100]
Hans Staininger
1567 The burgomaster of Braunau (then Bavaria, now Austria), died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard.[101] The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch.[102]
Marco Antonio Bragadin
17 August 1571 The Venetian Captain-General of Famagusta in Cyprus, was gruesomely killed after the Ottomans took over the city. He was dragged around the walls with sacks of earth and stone on his back; next, he was tied to a chair and hoisted to the yardarm of the Turkish flagship, where he was exposed to the taunts of the sailors. Finally, he was taken to his place of execution in the main square, tied naked to a column, and flayed alive.[103] Bragadin's skin was stuffed with straw and sewn, reinvested with his military insignia, and exhibited riding an ox in a mocking procession along the streets of Famagusta. The macabre trophy was hoisted upon the masthead pennant of the personal galley of the Ottoman commander, Amir al-bahr Mustafa Pasha, to be taken to Constantinople as a gift for Sultan Selim II. Bragadin's skin was stolen in 1580 by a Venetian seaman and brought back to Venice, where it was received as a returning hero.[104]
Victims of the Black Assize of Oxford 1577
July 1577 In Oxford, England, at least 300 people, including Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Robert Bell and Serjeant Nicholas Barham, died in the aftermath of the trial of Rowland Jenkes, a Catholic bookseller convicted of distributing pamphlets defaming Queen Elizabeth I, at the assize at Oxford. The dead reportedly included no women or children.[105]
Mary, Queen of Scots
8 February 1587 The 44-year-old queen of Scotland was told that she was to be executed for plotting the assassination of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. However, when the executioner, only known as Bull, prepared to chop off her head with an axe, the first blow did not kill Mary. It only hit her head. The second blow severed her neck, but the tendon was still left. The executioner later pulled off Mary's head only to reveal that her hair was a wig.[58][106]
Andrew Perne
26 April 1589 The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and Dean of Ely was known for his frequent religious conversions to match the established faith of the time in England. He reportedly died due to having heard the jester of Queen Elizabeth I make a joke about his uncertain spiritual state, referring to him as "one that is neither heaven nor earth, but hangs betwixt both".[107]
Tycho Brahe
24 October 1601 The astronomer contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague and died eleven days later. According to Johannes Kepler's first-hand account, Brahe had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself, because it would have been a breach of etiquette.[72][108][109] After he had returned home, he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain.[72][110] Though initially ascribed to a kidney stone, and later still to potential mercury poisoning, modern analyses indicate Brahe's death resulted from a fatal case of uremia caused by an inflamed prostate.[111][112]

Early modern period

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Sir Francis Bacon
9 April 1626 The English philosopher and statesman died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken carcass with snow to learn whether it could preserve meat.[72][93]
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke
30 September 1628 A disgruntled servant stabbed the English poet, dramatist and statesman in the stomach after he used the toilet. Physicians treated the wounds with animal fat, which rotted, causing a fatal case of gangrene.[93]
Jörg Jenatsch
24 January 1639 The Swiss political leader was assassinated by a person who dressed in a bear costume so he could assassinate him with an axe. Other stories say that the axe was the same one that Jenatsch had used to kill a rival.[83]
unknown man 15 August 1640 A unknown man was swimming in St. Mary's river and was killed by a shark, this was the first shark fatality in North America.[113][114]
Safi of Persia
12 May 1642 The Safavid ruler of Iran allegedly died due to alcohol intoxication in a drinking contest against a Georgian nobleman, Scedan Chiladze, invited from Mingrelia.[115]
Thomas Granger
8 September 1642 Granger was executed for buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. Granger was one of the first people to be executed in the Plymouth Colony and the first Caucasian juvenile to be sentenced to death and executed in the territory of what is now the United States. The mare, the cow and the calves were also executed.[116]
Sir Arthur Aston
1649 During the Siege of Drogheda, Arthur Aston was beaten to death by Oliver Cromwell's army with his own wooden leg because they suspected gold coins were concealed inside.[117]
Thomas Urquhart
1660 The Scottish aristocrat, polymath, and first translator of François Rabelais's writings into English is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.[93][118][119]
James Betts 1667 Died from asphyxiation after being sealed in a cupboard by Elizabeth Spencer, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in an attempt to hide him from her father, John Spencer.[120][121]
François Vatel
24 April 1671 The majordomo of Prince Louis II de Bourbon-Condè was responsible for a banquet for 2,000 people hosted in honour of King Louis XIV at the Château de Chantilly, where he died. According to a letter by Madame de Sévigné, Vatel was so distraught about the lateness of the seafood delivery and about other mishaps, that he committed suicide with his sword, and his body was discovered when someone came to tell him of the arrival of the fish.[24][122]
Molière
17 February 1673[93][123] The French playwright suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the part of a hypochondriac in his own play Le malade imaginaire.[93][123][124] He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show,[123] which ends with his character dead in a chair. After the show, he was carried in the chair to his house, where he died.[123][124][125]
Thomas Otway
14 April 1685 The English dramatist fell on hard times and was suffering from poverty in his later years, and was driven by starvation to beg for food. A gentleman who recognized him gave him a guinea, with which he hastened to a baker's shop, purchased a roll, and choked to death on the first mouthful.[126]
Jean-Baptiste Lully
22 March 1687 The French composer died of a gangrenous abscess after accidentally 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. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.[127]
William III of England
8 March 1702 The king of England was riding his horse when it stumbled on a molehill. William fell and broke his collarbone, then contracted pneumonia and died several days later. After he died, Jacobites were said to have toasted in the mole's honour, calling it "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat".[68]
Hannah Twynnoy
October 1703 The 33-year-old barmaid of The White Lion was mauled to death by a tiger in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. She was the first person to be killed by a tiger in British history.[128]
Edward Teach
22 November 1718 The famous English pirate was shot five times and slashed ~20 times with swords by Robert Maynard and his men. He was still alive, but died a day later on the 22nd.[58]
Sarah Grosvenor 14 September 1742 The 19-year-old woman was getting an abortion from Dr. John Hallowell. However, on the 14th, she died from the complications of the surgery. Grosvenor was the first case of a surgical abortion.[129]
Frederick, Prince of Wales
31 March 1751 The son of George II of Great Britain and father of George III died of a pulmonary embolism, but was commonly claimed to have been killed by being struck by a cricket ball.[16]: 105 [130]
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann
6 August 1753 The Russian physicist was killed when a globe of ball lightning which he created in his laboratory struck him in the forehead.[131][132]
Henry Hall 8 December 1755 The 94-year-old British lighthouse keeper died several days after fighting a fire at Rudyerd's Tower, during which molten lead from the roof fell down his throat. His autopsy revealed that "the diaphragmatic upper mouth of the stomach greatly inflamed and ulcerated, and the tuncia in the lower part of the stomach burnt; and from the great cavity of it took out a great piece of lead ... which weighed exactly seven ounces, five drachms and eighteen grains". The piece of lead is currently in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland.[133][134]
John Day
22 June 1774 The English carpenter and wheelwright was the first human known to have died in an accident with a submarine. Day submerged himself in Plymouth Sound in a wooden diving chamber attached to a sloop named the Maria and never resurfaced.[135]
Unknown concubine of King Tetui of Mangaia 1777 In approximately 1777, a concubine of King Tetui was killed by a falling coconut on the island Mangaia in the Cook Islands.[136]
Col. Francis Barber
2 February 1783 The 32-year-old colonel was killed when a tree fell on top of him as he was riding his horse to dine with George Washington[137] in Newburgh, New York.[138]
James Otis Jr.
23 May 1783 The 58-year-old son of famed lawyer James Otis was killed by a lightning strike in Andover, Massachusetts.[139][140]
Frantisek Kotzwara
2 September 1791 While in London, the 31-year-old Czech violinist visited a prostitute named Susannah Hill and requested his neck be tied with a noose around a door knob. He died after the sexual intercourse of erotic asphyxiation.[141]
Samuel Spencer 20 March 1793 A former colonel from North Carolina was sleeping on a porch in Anson County while wearing a red cap. Spencer's bobbling head drew the attention of a turkey, which viewed Spencer as another turkey and fatally wounded the 59-year-old with its talons.[142][143]

19th century

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Thomas Millwood
3 January 1804 The 32-year-old plasterer was shot and killed by excise officer Francis Smith, who mistook him for the Hammersmith ghost due to his white uniform. Smith was later sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to one year's imprisonment with hard labor, and he received a full pardon later in the year.[24][144]
Victims of the London Beer Flood
17 October 1814 At Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vat of fermenting porter burst, causing chain reactions and destroying several large beer barrels. The beer subsequently flooded the nearby slum and killed eight people. Several people also subsequently died from alcohol poisoning as a result of vaporized liquor.[145][146][147]
William Henry Harrison
4 April 1841 The 9th President of the United States died a month after his inauguration from an illness (possibly pneumonia or enteric fever) that developed after he stood in the rain to deliver his 2-hour-long inaugural address, the longest by any U.S. President. Medical treatments Harrison received in the last week of his life included opium, castor oil and leeches. Harrison remains the U.S. President to have served the shortest term in office and was the first President to die in office.[72][148]
Zachary Taylor
9 July 1850 The 12th President of the United States died of diarrhea and dysentry 5 days after consuming raw cherries and iced milk at a 4th of July event at the site of the Washington Monument.[72][149][150] Persistent speculation that Taylor was poisoned would lead to the exhumation of some of his remains in 1991, but scientific testing found no evidence of poison.[149][150]
William Snyder 11 January 1854 The 13-year-old died in San Francisco, California, reportedly after a circus clown named Manuel Rays swung him around by his heels.[151][152]
Victims of the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning
1858 In Bradford, England, a batch of sweets accidentally poisoned with arsenic trioxide were sold by William Hardaker, colloquially referred to as "Humbug Billy". Around five boxes of sweets were delivered and sold. Around 20 people died and 200 people suffered from the effects of the poison.[153][154]
Jim Creighton
18 October 1862 The 21-year-old American baseball player from Manhattan died from abdominal pain, possibly caused by pitching or swinging at the ball, which likely gave him a ruptured bladder or a ruptured hernia.[155][156]
Julius Peter Garesché
31 December 1862 The Cuban-born professional soldier was killed on the first day of the Battle of Stones River when a cannon ball decapitated him.[157][158]
Archduchess Mathilda of Austria
6 June 1867 The daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen set her dress on fire while trying to hide a cigarette from her father, who had forbidden her to smoke.[159][160]
Mary Ward
31 August 1869 The 42-year-old Irish scientist, naturalist, microscopist, author, and artist was killed by a steam-powered car built by William Parsons' sons. While Ward was riding in the car, it hit a bend, causing Ward to fall out of the car. One of the car's wheels ran over her and broke her neck. She is the first person known to have been killed by a motor vehicle.[161][162]
Clement Vallandigham
17 June 1871 The American politician and lawyer, who was defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself while demonstrating how the victim might have done so. His client was acquitted.[25][163][164]
James "Jim" Cullen 6 November 1873 The 25-year-old Irish man became the only man ever lynched in Mapleton, Maine,[165] after he committed a robbery and beat two deputy sheriffs to death with an axe.[166][167][168]
Unknown man 1875 A factory worker in Manchester found a mouse on her table and screamed. A man rushed over to her and tried to shoo it away, but it tried to hide in his clothes, and when he gasped in surprise the mouse dove into his mouth and he swallowed it. The mouse tore and bit the man's throat and chest, and he later died "in horrible agony".[169][170]
Victims of the Dublin Whiskey Fire
18 June 1875 At The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), a fire broke out at Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored. The heat caused the barrels in the storehouse to explode, sending a stream of whiskey flowing through the doors and windows of the burning building. The burning whiskey then flowed along the streets where it quickly demolished a row of small houses. Despite the damage from the fire, all of the resulting 13 fatalities were caused by alcohol poisoning after drinking the undiluted flooded whiskey.[171][172]
James A. Moon
10 June 1876 The 37-year-old blacksmith, self-proclaimed inventor, and American Civil War veteran killed himself with a makeshift guillotine.[173][174][175]
Queen Sunanda Kumariratana
31 May 1880 The 19-year-old queen consort of King Rama V of Siam died when her boat flipped over. A large crowd formed but none of them could help because touching the queen was a capital offense.[72][176]
Hague and another female servant October 1881 A British servant of one Mr. Birchall was instructed by his master to retrieve a four-chambered pistol.[177] Hague did so, but while examining the gun he shot himself in the jaw which caused instant death. He was discovered by another servant who also shot herself.[178]
Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet 19 December 1881 The former British MP died after sustaining severe internal injuries when he fell on a turnip while hunting.[179][180]
Samuel Wardell 31 December 1885 The lamplighter in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, had attached a 10-pound (4.5 kg) rock to his alarm clock, which would crash to the floor and awaken him. On Christmas Eve, he rearranged his furniture for a party, but forgot to change his room back afterwards. When the alarm mechanism went off the next morning, the rock fell on his head and killed him.[169][181][182]
George Murichson 13 May 1886 The 8-year-old boy from Aroostook County, Maine, died from a hemorrhage after having a live snake pulled out of his mouth. The snake was speculated to have gone down his throat after he had "gone to sleep in some field".[183][184][185]
Unknown Iraqi male 22 August 1888 At around 8:30 pm, a shower of meteorites fell "like rain" on a village in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire). One man was paralyzed and another died. His death is considered the only credible case of death-by-meteorite.[186][187][188]
Isaack Rabbanovitch August 1891 A bear walked into the barkeep's inn in Vilna, Russia (now part of Lithuania) and picked up a keg of vodka. When he tried to take it back, he was hugged to death by the intoxicated bear along with his two sons and daughter. Villagers shot and killed the bear.[169][189]
Unknown sailor 1892 A sailor in Bermuda was arguing with other sailors, but the argument turned into a fight and the sailor was pushed into the water. A marine began undressing for a rescue attempt, but an officer ordered him to stop because there was a boat nearby that had ladies on it. As the sailor continued struggling in the water, five men volunteered to save him, but he had already drowned.[169][190]
Mary Agnes Lapish April 1893 The Australian woman stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, possibly while intoxicated, and was strangled by her fur collar.[191][192]
Jeremiah Haralson
1895 The former United States Congressman from Alabama disappears from the historical record after his 1895 imprisonment for pension fraud in Albany, New York. He was reportedly killed by an unknown animal while coal mining near Denver, Colorado, c. 1916, but there is little or no historical evidence for this.[193][194]
Bridget Driscoll
17 August 1896 The 44-year-old, the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in Great Britain,[195] was struck on the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, by a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company while giving demonstration rides.[196]
Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg
October 1897 The group of men died of exhaustion on the island Kvitøya after trying to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon.[197][198][199]
Empress Elisabeth of Austria
10 September 1898 Stabbed with a thin file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni while strolling through Geneva with her lady-in-waiting Irma Sztáray. The wound pierced her pericardium and a lung. Her extremely tight corset held the wound closed, so she did not realize what had happened (believing a passerby had struck her), and walked on for some time before collapsing.[200][201]

20th century

[edit]

1900–1959

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning
1900 In the English Midlands, North West England, and Manchester, doctors saw that avid drinkers had numbness in the hands or feet. However, around 41 people succumbed to peripheral neuritis, and people decided to investigate. They discovered the cause to be alcoholic neuropathy caused by non-purified sulphuric acid laced with arsenic. Over 6,000 people died from the poison and most of the victims were paralyzed from the effects.[202][203]
Jesse William Lazear
25 September 1900 The 34-year-old American physician was convinced that mosquitoes were carriers for yellow fever. He allowed himself to be bitten by multiple mosquitoes and died days later from the disease.[12][204]
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster
29 November 1900 During the 1900 The Big Game American football match between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal in San Francisco, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent to $37 in 2023) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof collapsed, spilling many spectators onto a furnace. Of the hundreds of people on the roof, at least 100 people fell four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of the furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). Fuel pipes were severed as a result of the roof collapse, spraying many victims with scalding hot oil. The fuel also ignited, setting many bodies on fire.[205] Twenty-three people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.[206]
James Doyle Jr. 30 January 1901 The lineworker in Smartsville, California, was killed by an electric shock through a telephone receiver after a broken power line came in contact with the telephone wire.[207]
Adelbert S. Hay
23 June 1901 The 24-year-old American consul and politician died after falling 60 feet (18 m) from a window in the New Haven House in New Haven, Connecticut. The San Francisco Call speculated that Hay had been sitting on the window for air and eventually fell asleep, causing him to fall to his death.[208]
Mary Franks 12 July 1902 The woman died from suffocation caused by "matter from her tongue" which went into her throat after a tooth extraction.[209]
Jessie Smith August 1902 The elderly woman in Te Aroha was found dead behind her house in a tank. She had come out of an asylum before her disappearance.[210]
R. Stanton Walker 25 October 1902 The 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio, with a friend on either side of him. One of the friends borrowed a knife from the other to sharpen his pencil as he was keeping score, and when he was finished passed the knife to Walker to pass to the other friend. As Walker was holding the knife, a foul ball struck him in the hand and drove the knife into his chest next to his heart. His friends asked if he was hurt and he said "not much", but the wound soon began to bleed heavily and he died within minutes.[211][212]
Unknown Hawaiian male May 1903 An unidentified person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu, Hawai'i.[213][failed verification] He was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna, who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons;[214][failed verification] the Kahuna was charged with manslaughter.[citation needed]
Romaine Romania and John Banks 26 May 1903 Romania, a 45-year-old native of Belgium, died in Norfolk, Virginia, after taking a large amount of calomel, eating several oranges, and drinking a considerable amount of beer. Romania's head swelled to twice normal size. That same day, barge worker John Banks was electrocuted when the rigging of his vessel came in contact with the wires crossing a bridge belonging to the Norfolk Railway and Light Company.[215]
Ed Delahanty
2 July 1903 The 35-year-old American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train while drunk, falling off International Bridge, and going over Niagara Falls. Delahanty reportedly downed five shots of whiskey, broke into a fire axe case, attempted to shove over a partition, and allegedly grabbed a woman's ankles and tried to pull her out of her berth. He may also have threatened other passengers with razor blades. The conductor removed him from the train and asked him to calm down because he was still in Canada, to which he allegedly shouted, "I don't care if I'm in Canada or dead!" He later encountered and may have scuffled with Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, after which he went into the river and over the Falls. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.[216]
Benjamin Taylor A Bell 1 March 1904 On 18 February 1904, while taking his habitual shortcut to the Canadian Mining Review offices through an adjacent store, the 42-year-old Canadian journalist walked through the wrong door in the store and fell 10 feet (3.0 m) down an elevator shaft. He died of his injuries 12 days later.[217]
John Mortensen 1 May 1904 The 19-year-old duck hunter from Wairoa, New Zealand, drowned in about 6 inches (15 cm) of water on the Whare-o-Maraenui reserve in Napier, New Zealand, apparently having fallen while having a seizure.[218]
Benjamin and Edwin Coshkey 24 June 1904 Two brothers picking cherries near Wabank, Lancaster Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, were electrocuted when they made contact with an exposed wire in the branches.[219]
John Ericsen 4 July 1904 The 11-year-old boy from Butte, Montana, went missing on 4 July and was found dead 4 days later under a pile of coal in a bin near the North Pacific roundhouse.[220]
Melissa M. Tiemann 7 July 1904 The 50-year-old resident of Los Angeles fell from a streetcar and struck the back of her head on the ground, driving the teeth of an aluminum comb she was wearing into her skull.[221]
Clarence Madison Dally
2 October 1904 The 39-year-old American glassblower died from radiation on his hands while using a handmade X-ray. Dally is the first person known to have died from X-ray exposure.[222]
Jane Stanford
28 February 1905 The 76-year-old founder of Stanford University died mysteriously from strychnine poisoning. The case of her death was rumored as poisoning, but later changed into "natural causes," according to David Starr Jordan. Who or what killed Stanford is still a mystery.[223]
Charles Persich March 1905 The baby from Sydney died from intussusception, meaning that his bowels had "telescoped".[224]
Thomas Melia 9 December 1905 An employee of a brewery in Brooklyn died when he was caught in "an avalanche of shifting malt and barley and was suffocated."[225]
Mary Ellen Rumble 19 December 1905 The daughter of a farmer in Watervale near Murrumburrah in New South Wales was killed when one of a group of horses attempting to escape from a paddock knocked her down, causing her neck to snap.[226]
L. R. Davis 1906 The 76-year-old inmate of the state insane asylum in Norfolk, Nebraska, was granted a parole. Upon seeing his grandson, who had come to take him home, "he was so filled with joy that he suddenly expired."[227]
Archibald Anderson 4 March 1907 The 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when he choked on a tooth plate.[228]
Jane Hewitt 1 September 1908 The woman residing in South Melbourne was found dead on the floor in her nighttime attire, having been unconscious for several days. She died from erysipelas and blood loss caused by a wound to her temple.[229]
Thomas Selfridge
17 September 1908 Thomas Selfridge and Orville Wright were presenting the 1908 Wright Military Flyer to the US Army Signal Corps Division at Fort Myer. The plane made 412 rounds around the Fort before running into problems and crashing. Selfridge fractured his skull and died three hours later.[230][231]
James Gough or Goff 18 October 1908 Gough was found with a rope tied around his neck in a hotel room in Plattsburg, New York, which led to the belief that he had committed suicide. However, it was also discovered that he had been robbed of all of his money.[232]
Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler
14 November 1908 The Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet suffered a heart attack and died aged 56 after giving a ballet performance to Kaiser Wilhelm Il and other members of a hunting party staying at Donaueschingen Palace. Shortly after ending his recital with a bow, he collapsed and was pronounced dead at the scene.[233][234] The circumstances of his death were covered up by military officials so as not to further inflame public outrage over the Eulenburg affair, a government scandal dealing with accusations of homosexual behavior against members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage.[235]
George Spencer Millet
A black-and-white photograph of George Millet.
15 February 1909 The American teenager who worked as an office boy at an insurance company at the Metropolitan Life Building in New York City, was fleeing six young women stenographers at his workplace intent on giving him kisses for his 15th birthday while carrying a metal ink eraser in his breast pocket. As the women moved in for their kisses, he fell forward, and the eraser's point pierced his heart, killing him.[236][237]
Peter A. Rees 17 February 1909 The former ice dealer in Philadelphia was found dead in his home. According to the newspaper, a woman was arrested and questioned, but later analysis of his body showed that he had died from "cirrhosis of the heart." Other accounts state that Rees was murdered.[238]
Unknown servant girl March 1909 A young servant girl in Altendorf, near Cologne, Germany, died while writing a love letter. She "was overtaken by a fit, and fell with her head so heavily on the table that death ensued." The last words she had written were, "I shall adore thee to my last hour."[239]
Doc Powers
26 April 1909 The 38-year-old American Major League Baseball player ran into a wall while chasing a foul ball during a Boston Red Sox-Philadelphia Athletics game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park, on April 12, 1909. He died from internal injuries and gangrene two weeks later.[240]
Benjamin S. Kradwell
14 April 1910 The 26-year-old drug store owner from Boscobel, Wisconsin (who lived in Racine at the time), died when he fell off a Chicago and North Western train heading for Mountain Home, Idaho, into a creek in Vail, Iowa, under mysterious circumstances.[241]
Ada Gregory 3 June 1910 The 52-year-old widow in Bentleigh, Victoria, who had been suffering from "fits of melancholia", began convulsing after rubbing powder on her teeth and asking her two children to take some medicine, which they did not do. She was believed to have taken strychnine.[242]
Florence Hill Jelbert 10 July 1910 The 30-year-old woman in Ballarat was found dead at the residence of Chinese herbalist Yee Lee, also known as Peter Long. He was arrested as he was believed to have killed Jelbert. Analysis of her organs indicated that "an illegal operation had been performed on the girl."[243][244]
Patrick Dolan 22 October 1910 In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the labor unionist fell asleep, waiting for a train. He woke up as it was starting to leave the station. However, when he attempted to board the train, he fell under its wheels and was killed.[245]
George Vedder 25 February 1911 The man from Yonkers, New York, killed himself after hallucinating that his dead wife told him to do so. It is said that Vedder broke an "solemn oath" that he would be faithful to his wife. The man was found dead in the Fort Field Reservoir.[246]
Morris Quinn and James Ferrera 19 December 1911 Two miners in Virginia City, Nevada, died when they were hit with a strong rush of wind from a cave-in 100 feet (30 m) away, which hurled the two men against shaft timbers.[247]
Franz Reichelt
4 February 1912 The 33-year-old tailor and inventor leaped from the Eiffel Tower and fell to his death wearing a parachute made from cloth, his own invention. He was asked by friends and authorities to use a dummy for the feat, but declined, saying "I intend to prove the worth of my invention". He was known as the Flying Tailor.[24][248]
Ramón Fermin Artagaveytia Gomez
15 April 1912 A wealthy Argentinean was a survivor of the sinking of the steamship America in 1871. It took him 41 years to get over his fear of the ocean before he boarded the Titanic, which sank.[12]
A Swiss couple
December 1912 A couple visited the Handegg Falls near Meiringen, Switzerland. While they were there the bridge they were standing on broke and they fell 240 feet (73 m) into a whirlpool.[249]
Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice
25 April 1913 A famed French goldsmith and his wife were killed when their house, in an aristocratic quarter of Paris, collapsed on them.[250]
Mrs. Jim Thomason 6 May 1913 According to the Washington Telegraph, the wife of Jim Thomason died shortly after being stung by a bee in Columbus, Arkansas. The woman was directing her husband on hiving a swarm of bees when she was suddenly stung and fled into the house, where she fell unconscious and died three days later.[251]
Peter T. Graham 13 May 1913 A farmer from Stanwood, Iowa, was killed while trying to fix a metal fence. A bolt of lightning struck the fence, electrocuting the man to death.[252]
Emily Davison
8 June 1913 On 4 June 1913, the 40-year-old suffragette from London was mortally injured at the Epsom Derby when she ran onto the racetrack wearing a suffragette flag and was run over by Anmer, George V's horse, which jockey Herbert Jones was riding.[253] She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 days later.[254]
Romain Moll July 1913 The California rancher fell head-first into a posthole 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 2 feet (0.61 m) wide. Unable to get out, he eventually suffocated.[255]
Julian Carlton
7 October 1914 The servant to American architect Frank Lloyd Wright committed a mass murder spree on 15 August 1914, at Wright's Taliesin studio, during which he killed seven people with a hatchet and set the studio ablaze. Carlton then attempted suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid. However, this failed to kill him. After nearly being lynched, Carlton was arrested and brought to a jail in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where, having severely damaged his esophagus, he starved to death 47 days later.[256][257]
Benjamin F. Steward 30 May 1915 The 45-year-old stock buyer attempted to throw part of a horse carcass over a railing into the Iowa River. Part of it caught on him, and he was pulled over as well.[258]
George William Edwards 30 June 1915 The fuelman in Junee, New South Wales, was killed by opening a truck door that struck him in the forehead. His body was found under a tub.[259]
George Feas 8 August 1915 The 15-year-old went to the Sand Island in the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to bathe and was struck by a bolt of lightning.[260]
Rose Talbot Bullard
22 December 1915 The 51-year-old physician and medical school professor from Birmingham, Iowa, unknowingly died from blood poisoning after complications from a failed dental infection cure.[261][262]
Martin Fisher 4 February 1916 Fisher, a farmer from Moran Township, Minnesota, was butchering a hog in a shed when the blade slipped and Fisher stabbed his leg, severing an artery. He died shortly thereafter.[263]
William or Martin McClelland 25 February 1916 The swagman from Queensland died from inflamed bowels brought on by eating wheat. His cause of death was later identified as a case of acute diarrhea.[264]
Grigori Rasputin
30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916 The 47-year-old Russian mystic died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation.[58][265] According to his murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grigori Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine which had been laced with cyanide but he did not appear to be affected by it. He was then shot once in the chest and believed to be dead but, after a while, he leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who freed himself and fled. Rasputin followed and made it into the courtyard before being shot again, and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped his body and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.[72][58][83][266]
William John Wallace 4 February 1917 The fisherman was talking to two men, leaning on a clothesline. The line split and Wallace fell on his back, dislocating his neck.[267]
Gustav Kobbé
27 July 1918 The 61-year-old author and music critic was sailing in Great South Bay, New York, when he noticed a low-flying seaplane heading toward him. Kobbé attempted to get into the water, but the plane crashed into the mast of Kobbé's boat, splitting his head open.[93][268]
Sewall Willis Rodgers 1 August 1918 The cadet from Brookline, Massachusetts, was riding his motorcycle at Chanute Field in Illinois and was killed when he was hit by an airplane flown by Lieut. Symnesttebedt.[269]
Rev. Walter Murray 1918 The YMCA worker in France was killed when two shells exploded simultaneously on either side of him. There were no wounds on his body.[270]
Pvt. Joseph Mantach 5 or 6 October 1918 The 28-year-old soldier from Kenosha, Wisconsin, drowned in Rock River by Camp Grant. He had been critically ill with Spanish flu and had escaped from the hospital in delirium.[271]
Arthur Thomas Hunter 12 December 1918 The soldier was found dead with his head stuck through a wooden fire escape and his neck dislocated.[272]
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood
15 January 1919 21 people were killed and 150 injured after a large tank of molasses burst in Boston's North End.[102][273][274][275]
Capt. P. H. Shaffer 3 October 1919 The Commander of The Salvation Army in Kearney, Nebraska, was killed by a Union Pacific Railroad train. He left his wife and another woman in his car to search for gasoline and was killed by a train. His wife, however, did not attempt to search for him due to her fear of African-American railroad workers.[276]
Ray Chapman
17 August 1920 On 16 August 1920, while he was up to bat, the 29-year-old Cleveland Indians baseball player was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by the New York Yankees' Carl Mays and died 12 hours later.[277]
Dan Andersson
16 September 1920 The 32-year-old Swedish poet died from hydrogen cyanide left in his Hotel Hellman room by a lice, flea, and bed bug extermination.[93]
Alexander of Greece
25 October 1920 The 27-year-old Greek king died of sepsis after being bitten by a palace steward's pet Barbary macaque in his garden, while trying to break up a fight between his German shepherd and another monkey.[58][278]
Thomas Lynn Bradford
5 February 1921 In an attempt to ascertain the existence of an afterlife, the 48-year-old spiritualist committed suicide by sealing his Detroit apartment, blowing out the pilot of his heater, and turning on the gas, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Bradford had intended to communicate his findings to fellow spiritualist Ruth Starkweather Doran, but three days after his death, The New York Times ran the article "Dead Spiritualist Silent".[279]
Michael F. Farley
8 October 1921 The 58-year-old U.S. Representative and Gore–McLemore resolution supporter died of anthrax he contracted from his shaving brush.[25]
John Gregory Tierney and Harold Connelly
20 December 1921 The two employees involved in the construction of the Hoover Dam were conducting a geological survey near the Colorado River, which they fell into and drowned, making them the first fatalities at the Hoover Dam area.[280][281]
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley 25 November 1922 The woman from Glen Innes, New South Wales, was found drowned in a cask of water. It was surmised that she was leaning over the cask when she suddenly fainted and fell into it.[282]
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon
5 April 1923 The 56-year-old financier of Howard Carter's search for Tutankhamun died after a mosquito bite, which he had cut while shaving, became infected. Some attributed his death to the so-called curse of the pharaohs.[283][284]
Frank Hayes
Portrait of Frank Hayes
4 June 1923 The 22-year-old jockey from Elmont, New York, died of a heart attack mid-race and collapsed on the horse, which nonetheless crossed the finish line first, still carrying his body.[25][285][286][287]
Martha Mansfield
30 November 1923 While the 24-year-old American film actress was on location in San Antonio, Texas filming the American Civil War drama The Warrens of Virginia, a lit match was carelessly tossed by a crew member, which ignited the hoop skirts and ruffles of her Civil War costume. Mansfield had just finished filming her scenes and retired to a car when her clothing burst into flames. Co-star Wilfred Lytell and a chauffeur were able to extinguish the flames, and Mansfield was rushed to a hospital, where she died the following day from her injuries.[288][289]
Calvin Coolidge Jr.
7 July 1924 The 16-year-old younger son of Calvin Coolidge played tennis with his elder brother at the White House tennis courts and neglected to wear socks. A blister on the third toe of his right foot quickly became infected, and he died just over one week later when sepsis set in.[290]
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn 13 July 1924 While attempting to turn around at Grand View in Yellowstone National Park, the Dunns somehow backed their car over a cliff, despite a tree barrier that would normally have made this impossible. The vehicle fell 800 feet (240 m) and then rolled another 200 feet (61 m).[291][292][293]
Thornton Jones August 1924 The lawyer from Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, woke up to find that he had his throat slit. Motioning for a paper and pencil, he wrote, "I dreamt that I had done it. I awoke to find it true", and died 80 minutes later. He had done it himself while unconscious.[294] An inquest at Bangor delivered a verdict of "Suicide while temporarily insane".[295]
Carl Albright 22 December 1924 The construction-company timekeeper was found burned to death with his neck broken between Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and Omaha, Nebraska, near his burned-out car, from which pieces including the tires, radiator and carburetor had been removed. His time of death was estimated to be 8:20 PM according to his watch. The police initially theorized that thieves had broken into his car and set it on fire to make it look like an accident, but a physician who examined the body believed that Albright had been refueling his car when an explosion set it and Albright on fire. Further investigation suggested that the stolen pieces of the car were removed after the fire.[296][self-published source?]
Cora Stallman
1 August 1925 The 45-year-old former schoolteacher, found partially submerged in a cistern on her sister's farm in Humboldt Township, Coles County, Illinois, died from "unknown causes", according to a jury in her court case. It is said she may have committed suicide, been killed by a strange man, or died of fright.[297]
Bobby Leach
26 April 1926 The American stunt performer died after a botched amputation of the infected leg which he had broken after slipping on an orange peel. He had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel 15 years earlier.[298]
Phillip McClean 1926 The 16-year-old and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland,[299] when it knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[300]
Harry Houdini
31 October 1926 The 52-year-old Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer reportedly died from a punch from college student J. Gordon Whitehead, which gave him "peritonitis, caused by a ruptured appendix."[72][301] However, other stories claim he was murdered. Who or what killed Houdini is still under speculation.[301]
Isadora Duncan
14 September 1927 The 50-year-old American dancer broke her neck in Nice, France, when her long scarf became entangled in the open-spoked wheel and rear axle of the Amilcar CGSS automobile in which she was riding.[302]
Alfred Loewenstein
4 July 1928 51-year-old Alfred Loewenstein, the 3rd-richest man in the world at the time, died whilst flying from England to Belgium on his private Fokker F.VII airplane. It is believed he fell out of the aircraft and into the water where he died.[303]
Gladys Brockwell
2 July 1929 The 34-year-old film actress died from peritonitis and internal injuries reportedly from an automobile accident in Calabasas, California. While Thomas Stanley Brennan, a friend of Brockwell, was driving the automobile, it went over a 75-foot (23 m) embankment where she was crushed beneath it. She underwent four blood transfusions until peritonitis set in.[304]
William Kogut
20 October 1930 The convicted murderer, a death row inmate at San Quentin in California, reportedly committed suicide using a pipe bomb he made with playing cards and a hollow steel leg from his cot.[305][306][note 2]
Arnold Bennett
27 March 1931 The 63-year-old British novelist was dining in Paris with his partner, Dorothy Cheston Bennett. He drank two glasses of tap water during the meal, scoffing at Dorothy's claims that the water in Paris was not properly treated to be safe to drink. Within two days, he contracted typhoid fever and died two months later.[307][308][309]
Alfred Green July 1931 The 17-year-old died of convulsions while being tickled "during a friendly wrestling match."[310]
James Leo McDermott 26 August 1931 After the 40-year-old Deputy Sheriff stepped out of his car at an oil station, the vehicle began to roll forwards, and McDermott attempted to hop onto the car's running board to stop it. It carried him forward and slammed him into a hook used to hold air and water hoses, which impaled him just below the heart.[311][312][313]
Eben Byers
31 March 1932 The 51-year-old American socialite and industrialist died after drinking excessive quantities of radium. He had developed persistent pain after a fall in 1927, for which he was prescribed Radithor, a patent medicine that contained 1 microcurie each of isotopes 226Ra and 228Ra. He drank a total of around 1400 doses, which concentrated in his bones, continually irradiating him. By 1931, his bones were reportedly disintegrating and his jaw had been removed; he died the next year.[314]
Peg Entwistle
16 September 1932 The 24-year-old film actress committed suicide by jumping off the letter "H" of the Hollywoodland Sign. The following day, a letter arrived for Entwistle offering her a role in a movie about a woman on the verge of suicide.[102]
Michael Malloy
22 February 1933 Five people, called the "Murder Trust," planned to kill Malloy for life insurance. Over the course of two months, they added antifreeze, turpentine, horse liniment, and finally rat poison in his alcohol, but Malloy drank it with no problems whatsoever. They then tried feeding him wood alcohol, expired oysters, and then a sandwich made of expired sardines and shrapnel, none of which had the desired effect. The group then tried to freeze him to death, and when that failed they ran him over twice with a taxi, from which Malloy recovered. Finally, they connected a hose to a coal gas jet and placed it in his mouth, which caused his death from carbon monoxide poisoning. Malloy was given nicknames such as "Mike the Durable", "Iron Mike", and "The Irish Rasputin".[315][316]
Rheta Gardner Wynekoop
21 November 1933 The 23-year-old was found in the basement surgery of her mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Wynekoop. She had been chloroformed, undressed, and shot in the back.[317]
Grace Weatherstone 15 December 1933 The wife of Mr. Roy Weatherstone from Mayfield Garden was found dead in the water wearing male attire. The cause of her death was found to be falling off some rocks which fractured her skull as she fell into the water.[318]
Marie Curie
4 July 1934 The 66-year-old physicist and chemist who discovered radium and polonium died from aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure.[72]
Susan Grace Kelly 16 January 1935 The 80-year-old woman in Armidale, New South Wales, was sitting with her daughter when she fell back dead after hearing a loud clap of thunder. Her last words were, "That was very close."[319]
Mary Emma Busch James
2 May 1936 The wife of the Los Angeles barber Robert James died from drowning in a fishing pond after being bound and thrust into a den of rattlesnakes. The Los Angeles Police Department later arrested a 38-year-old night manager of a nearby night club, who said that he was the one who bought the snakes from a Pasadena farm and took them to James's La Crescenta home.[320]
Catherine Steyer 20 January 1937 The 33-year-old hatcheck girl was accidentally electrocuted by the homemade booby trap that her fiance had installed after her apartment was broken into a few months prior. The trap consisted of dry cell batteries powering some wires, concealed within the drapes separating her living room and kitchen, while a switch supplied power to the contraption. Steyer forgot about the trap and, neglecting to turn off the switch, came into contact with the wires when she tried to use the drapes. Falling onto one wire, with another dangling above her arm, she completed the circuit each time the dangling wire touched her, and current circulated through her body; Steyer died slowly from the repeating doses of electricity.[321][322][323][324]
Fred Clapp 28 May 1937 A 77-year-old farmer from Clark County, South Dakota, died after being dragged by a bundle of horses while being tied to the harness.[325]
Benjamin Taslor June 1937 During a carbuncle removal operation, an electric cautery ignited gases from the patient's lungs. This caused an explosion which killed Taslor and injured two nurses.[326]
Vivian Hensley 10 July 1938 The 42-year-old dentist died after accidentally swallowing a razor blade for a "sleight-of-hand" trick.[327]
Nicholas Comper 17 June 1939 The 42-year-old aviator and aircraft designer was attempting to light a firework in Hythe, Kent, when a passerby enquired what he was doing; Comper replied that he was an IRA man planning to blow up the town hall. The passerby knocked down Comper, who hit his head on the curb.[328]
Italo Balbo
28 June 1940 44-year-old Italo Balbo was the Governor of Italian Libya. While Balbo was flying his personal Savoia-Marchetti SM.79, the Libyan airfield at Tobruk was attacked by a squad of British planes. Balbo was killed by friendly fire from Italian anti-aircraft batteries on the ground.[329][330]
Leon Trotsky
21 August 1940 The 60-year-old Russian socialist and revolutionary was murdered in his villa in Mexico by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader with an ice axe.[72][331]
Sherwood Anderson
8 March 1941 The 64-year-old American writer died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a toothpick.[72][93][332]
Jack Budlong 5 August 1941 The friend of Errol Flynn was working as an extra on the film They Died with Their Boots On, starring Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Budlong insisted on using a real saber rather than a prop one. While filming a cavalry charge, Budlong's horse was frightened by the sounds of simulated explosions and threw Budlong, causing him to impale himself with the sword.[24][333][334]
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar
12 April 1943 The 27-year-old member of the 64th Bombardment Squadron was taking off for a night mission in New Guinea when he struck something with his bomber, referred to in reports as a "brush kangaroo" or "baby kangaroo" and later found to be a wallaby. The bomber crashed on takeoff, which detonated its load of bombs, killing McCullar and the rest of the bomber's crew.[335][336] The wallaby also died.
Clarence Stagemyer
29 September 1943 The 32-year-old was watching a Cleveland Indians-Washington Senators doubleheader in Griffith Stadium when an errant throw by Senators' third baseman Sherry Robertson struck him in the forehead. Despite appearing uninjured afterwards, he heeded the Senators' team physician's entreaties to go to the hospital, where he died the next day of a fractured skull. Stagemyer was the first fan in Major League Baseball history killed by a ball leaving the field, and the only such fatality to date to have been struck by a thrown ball.[337]
Thomas Midgley Jr.
2 November 1944 In 1940, the 51-year-old contracted polio, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[338][339][340]
Mildred Roth 21 May 1945 The 23-year-old from North Braddock, Pennsylvania, died after locking herself inside a cedar chest while attempting to prank her sister. An autopsy later found that she died from suffocation.[341]
Louis Slotin
30 May 1946 The 35-year-old Canadian physicist and Manhattan Project scientist died as the result of an accident while performing an experiment called "tickling the dragon's tail" with a plutonium core which came to be known as the "demon core". Slotin's screwdriver slipped, exposing him to a fatal dose of radiation. Slotin died 9 days later; the other people in the room observing the experiment survived.[342][343]
Thomas Mantell
7 January 1948 The 25-year-old P-51 Mustang fighter pilot crashed while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object near Franklin, Kentucky, thus becoming the first person known to have died as a result of a UFO sighting. Officially, the object remains unidentified, though the most likely explanation is that it was a U.S. Navy Skyhook balloon.[344][345]
Mary Edith Sutton
30 October 1949 The 11-year-old girl from Indianapolis, Indiana, suffered burns to her legs and lower body after a jar of flaming gasoline was tossed from a stalled car in front of the girl while she was roller-skating back to her home. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she died from her injuries a few hours later.[346]
Mary Reeser
2 July 1951 The 67-year-old woman was found by the police in her St. Petersburg, Florida, home almost totally cremated where she sat, while her apartment was relatively damage-free. Some speculate that she spontaneously combusted.[347][348]
Margaret Wise Brown
13 November 1952 The 42-year-old author of Goodnight Moon was hospitalized for an ovarian cyst. To prove how healthy she was after treatment, she kicked her foot in the air, dislodging a blood clot in her leg. The blood clot quickly travelled to her brain, and she died in emergency surgery.[93][349][350]
Joseph L. Rauchut 30 November 1957 The 32-year-old Patrolman of the New York City Police Department died during a traffic stop on the Queens side of the Kosciuszko Bridge when a truck struck his parked patrol car, which struck and killed him.[351][352]
Gareth Jones
30 November 1958 The 33-year-old British actor died of a heart attack between scenes of a live television play, Underground on the ITV network. Other members of the cast improvised lines, such as, "I'm sure if So‑and‑so were here he would say...", to compensate for his absence. Coincidentally, his character was scripted to die of a heart attack in a later scene of the play.[353][354]

1960s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Alan Stacey
19 June 1960 The 26-year-old British racing driver died in a crash during the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix when a bird struck him in the face. 22-year-old British driver Chris Bristow was killed during the same race.[355][356][357]
Clarence Hudson 18 August 1960 The 66-year-old department store janitor was electrocuted by a homemade electric chair in his Wenatchee, Washington, apartment. Police reported that he had a wet towel at his feet and his head, and quarters at his temples that were connected by wire to a home-made transformer, which increased the voltage from a wall outlet to an estimated 1,000 volts.[358]
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
3 January 1961 During the testing of an experimental nuclear reactor design, in Arco, Idaho, two soldiers and a sailor were killed, but their deaths were not due to radiation poisoning. While trying to bring the reactor online, Byrnes, an army specialist, was supposed to pull a control rod part way out by hand, but he pulled the rod further than intended. The reactor instantly went prompt critical, which flash-boiled the water around the reactor. The force of the steam expanding lifted the entire reactor into the air about 2.77 metres (9 ft 1 in), in what has been described as a water hammer-like effect. Many components were thrown out of the top, one of which impaled Legg, a navy electrician's mate, lifted him from a catwalk, and penetrated the ceiling, leaving him dangling. While the reactor was airborne the radioactive steam escaped, spraying the room. The steam was so hot that Byrnes instantly died of severe thermal burns. McKinley suffered a head wound, from which he died later that day. The steam left the bodies of all three men radioactive, so they were buried in lead coffins. Officials feared that moving them would risk spreading contamination along public roadways, so a graveyard was established in the desert only 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) from the explosion. The graveyard is still monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency. The three remain the only human beings killed by a reactor explosion in the United States.[359][360][361][362][363]
Victor Prather
4 May 1961 The 34-year-old U.S. Navy flight surgeon drowned at the end of the record-setting Strato-Lab V balloon flight when he slipped from the rescue sling during recovery operations in the Gulf of Mexico and his pressure suit filled with water.[364][365]
Leonard Lamoureaux 24 October 1965 The 64-year-old Marine Posse Deputy of the Humboldt County, California, Sheriff's Department sustained fatal internal injuries when his patrol jeep, the parking brake of which had not been set properly, rolled forward and pinned him against a steel gate.[366]
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross
8 June 1966 Astronaut and NASA test pilot Walker, flying a Lockheed F-104N Starfighter, and North American Aviation test pilot Cross, co-piloting a North American XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, were killed in a mid-air collision during a publicity photo shoot of multiple aircraft with General Electric engines flying in formation near Edwards Air Force Base. With the Valkyrie in a spin, pilot Alvin S. White ejected and survived, but centrifugal force prevented Cross' ejection seat from retracting into the escape capsule.[367]
Nick Piantanida
29 August 1966 The 34-year-old skydiver died four months after an attempt to break the record for the highest parachute jump near Joe Foss Field, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; his suit had depressurized, causing brain damage from lack of oxygen.[368][369]
Jayne Mansfield
29 June 1967 The 34-year-old American actress and Playboy model died when the driver of her Buick crashed into a tractor which had abruptly stopped. Her lover and the driver also died, but her children, including Mariska Hargitay, who was 3 years old at the time, survived. Many people speculated that the accident was the result of a Satanic curse.[370][371]
Harold Holt
17 December 1967 The 59-year-old Prime Minister of Australia disappeared, presumed drowned, while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria.[372][373][374][375] He was "simply one of the number of ordinary Australians who drown each year through poor judgment or bad luck";[376] his drowning has been described as "not unusual",[377] and as "an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that still befalls dozens every summer."[373] Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories.[373]
Echol Cole and Robert Walker 1 February 1968 The two Memphis, Tennessee, garbage collectors were crushed to death after the trash compactor of their garbage truck malfunctioned while they were taking refuge inside the back of the truck during a rainstorm. They were not allowed to take shelter inside a building due to segregation laws. As a result of their deaths, sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. During the strike, Martin Luther King Jr., who had come to Memphis to support the striking workers, was assassinated.[378]
Albert Dekker
5 May 1968 The 62-year-old American actor and politician was found dead kneeling naked in his bathtub with a noose wrapped around his neck, a dirty hypodermic needle in each arm, a scarf over his eyes, a ball in his mouth secured to his head with wire, his wrists in handcuffs, and leather belts and thongs around his torso, one of them tied to a rope around Dekker's ankles. There were vulgar phrases and drawings in lipstick all over his body. His death was ruled an accidental case of erotic asphyxiation.[379][380]

1970s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Alan Fish 20 May 1970 The 14-year-old was struck in the head by a Manny Mota foul ball on 16 May while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium, and was knocked unconscious for a minute. He appeared to recover and the Dodger Stadium infirmary gave him an ice pack, two aspirin and released him to watch the rest of the game, during which he behaved normally. The Giants ended up winning the game 5–4. Afterwards, he began shaking and crying uncontrollably during the bus ride to his nearby home; when he arrived, his parents sought medical attention but had to go to three hospitals, despite his worsening condition, before they found one that would accept him early the next morning. His condition required neurosurgery, but continued to worsen, and after a seizure led to apparent brain death, he was taken off life support two days later; the autopsy showed that part of his fractured skull had become lodged in his brain, causing an intracerebral hemorrhage. He was the first fan in Major League Baseball history to die of injuries caused by a foul ball.[381]
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
29 June 1971 The Soviet cosmonauts died when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurized during preparations for re-entry. They are the only reported human deaths outside the Earth's atmosphere.[382]
Basil Brown February 1974 The 48-year-old health food advocate from Croydon, England, died from liver damage after he consumed 70 million units of Vitamin A and around 10 US gallons (38 litres) of carrot juice over ten days, turning his skin bright yellow.[383][384][385]
Kenyon M. Lassiter 19 April 1974 The 51-year-old Trooper of the Alabama Department of Public Safety was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver whose life Lassiter had saved months earlier after an automobile accident.[386]
Deborah Gail Stone 8 July 1974 The 18-year-old hostess for the America Sings attraction at Disneyland mysteriously died after being crushed between two walls around 11:00 p.m. It is speculated that she either fell backwards or tried to jump from one stage to another.[387][388][389]
Christine Chubbuck 15 July 1974 The 29-year-old American news anchor from Hudson, Ohio, killed herself on live television at the start of Suncoast Digest, a local newscast for WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, after reading some of the area's breaking news headlines. Chubbuck was the first person to commit suicide on live television.[390]
Peter Kelly 27 August 1974 The British commercial diver died of anoxia due to pure helium being fed through his breathing mask during a bell dive in the Norwegian Sector of the North Sea. The other diver in the bell pulled off his mask before losing consciousness and survived.[391][392]
Alex Mitchell 24 March 1975 After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, the resident of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, laughed continuously for 25 minutes and then fell dead on his sofa from heart failure due to what doctors discovered years later, via his granddaughter, was a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.[393][394][395][396]
Luciano Re Cecconi
18 January 1977 The 28-year-old professional footballer for S.S. Lazio and the Italy national football team, was shot while pretending to rob a jeweller as a practical joke.[397][398]
Tina Christopherson
18 February 1977 The 28-year-old woman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, died at the Coral Gables Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, after drinking 4 US gallons (15 litres) of water a day to combat stomach cancer.[399]
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren 5 March 1977 Pryce, a driver in the 1977 South African Grand Prix, struck and killed Van Vuuren at 170 miles per hour (270 km/h) as Van Vuuren ran across the Kyalami racetrack to extinguish a burning car. The fire extinguisher which Van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce's head and killed him.[400][401][402][403] Renzo Zorzi, the driver of the burning car, was uninjured.
George W. Redding 17 August 1977 The 43-year-old Officer of the California Highway Patrol was responding to a car accident when another car struck a downed telephone line, which wrapped around Redding's ankle and threw him into the air and back to the ground, killing him.[404]
Kurt Gödel
14 January 1978 The Austrian-American logician and mathematician developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food prepared by anyone but his wife.[405] When she became ill and was hospitalized, he starved to death. At the time of his death, he only weighed around 65 pounds (29 kg).[406]
Georgi Markov
7 September 1978 The Bulgarian dissident writer was poisoned on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by an assassin associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. At the time, this secret police force was affiliated with the KGB. Markov died four days later in hospital. No one was ever charged with the assassination.[83][407]
Robert Williams
25 January 1979 The Ford plant worker became the first person known to be killed by a robot[25][408] when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.[409]
John Bowen 13 December 1979 The 20-year-old resident of Nashua, New Hampshire, was fatally injured at a halftime show at Shea Stadium when a 40-pound (18 kg) model plane shaped like a lawnmower crashed into the stands. He died four days later.[410][411]

1980s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Monica Myers
20 March 1980 The mayor of Betterton, Maryland, was carrying out maintenance work around the sewage tanks at the town's largest municipal facility. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, she fell 4 feet (1.2 m) from the catwalks into a 15-foot (4.6 m) aeration tank, filled with human waste which a deputy in the town's police department described as having the consistency of "putty". Her body was found floating face down by the town engineer the next day.[412]
Lourdes Maria da Silva August 1980 The resident of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, was walking upstairs carrying a Pyrex glass when she tripped, broke it, and fell on the shards, cutting an artery in her neck. She died on her way to the hospital.[413][414]
Azaria Chamberlain 17 August 1980 The 9-week-old from Australia was dragged off and killed by a wild dingo during a family camping trip to Uluru in the Northern Territory. This was the first recorded instance of a dingo killing a human. Azaria's parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, received intense media speculation due to the perceived implausibility of a dingo attack; in a highly-publicized trial, Lindy was convicted of murder and Michael named as an accessory. Their convictions were later overturned after Azaria's matinee jacket was discovered in an area with many dingo lairs nearby.[415][416]
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole and Nick Mullon
19 March 1981, 1 April 1981 and 11 April 1995 At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, five workers suffered anoxia due to pure nitrogen atmosphere in the aft engine compartment of Space Shuttle Columbia during a countdown demonstration test for the STS-1 mission. 51-year-old John Bjornstad died at the scene; 50-year-old Forrest Cole went into a coma and died two weeks later, and Nick Mullon died 14 years later from complications of injuries sustained.[417][418][419][420]
Boris Sagal 22 May 1981 The Ukrainian-American film director died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III in Portland, Oregon, after he walked into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter and was partially decapitated.[421][422] He died five hours later at a hospital in Portland.[421]
David Alan Kirwan
21 July 1981 The 24-year-old tourist from La Cañada Flintridge, California, jumped into the alkaline (pH 9) and scalding (202 °F (94 °C)) Celestine Pool at Yellowstone National Park to save his friend's dog. The dog died within moments and its body dissolved in the hot spring. Kirwan, blinded and burned over his entire body, was airlifted to Salt Lake City and died the next day.[423][424][425][426][427]
David Grundman
4 February 1982 While shooting at cacti with his shotgun near Lake Pleasant Regional Park, Arizona, Grundman was crushed when a 4-foot (1.2 m) limb detached and fell on him.[422][428][429]
Michael Scaglione 15 April 1982 Scaglione died after smashing his golf club in anger against a golf cart at a golf course near New Orleans, Louisiana. When the club broke the head rebounded and impaled him in the throat, severing his jugular vein.[430]
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen
23 July 1982 During the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the 53-year-old Morrow, seven-year-old Le, and six-year-old Chen were performing a scene in which their characters are pursued by a helicopter. Heat from special-effects explosions[431] caused the helicopter to fall on them. Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.[432]
Tennessee Williams
25 February 1983 The 71-year-old American playwright died from an overdose of Seconal; however, his initial autopsy report stated that he suffocated due to inhaling the plastic cap from a bottle of eye drops.[72][93][433][434][435]
Dick Wertheim
15 September 1983 The 61-year-old tennis linesman died after a ball served by player Stefan Edberg at the US Open struck him in the groin and he fell out of his chair, striking his head on the hardcourt surface.[436][437][438]
Truls Hellevik
5 November 1983 The 34-year-old Norwegian diver was explosively dismembered in a diving bell accident on the North Sea Byford Dolphin drilling rig. Three other divers, 35-year-old Edwin Arthur Coward, 38-year-old Roy P. Lucas and 29-year-old Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, and 32-year-old dive tender William Crammond, were also killed. Crammond opened the clamp before Hellevik could close the chamber door. The nine-atmosphere air pressure explosively decompressed, instantly forcing Hellevik's body through a 60-centimetre-diameter (24 in) opening, fragmenting it into numerous pieces. The other tender, Martin Saunders, was severely injured.[439][440][441]
Jimmy Ferrozzo November 1983 The bouncer at the Condor Club in San Francisco died while engaging in sexual intercourse with his girlfriend, Theresa Hill, on a grand piano that was lowered from the ceiling by a hydraulic motor. He accidentally activated the lifting mechanism which pinned him against the ceiling leading to his suffocation. Hill survived the accident.[442]
Reginald Tucker 4 July 1984 The 29-year-old lawyer, who raced along a Chicago skyscraper corridor without wearing his glasses, crashed through a window and plunged 39 stories to his death, during an early Fourth of July party. Police said portions of the man's body were scattered around the street near the 41-story Prudential Building in the city's downtown area. Several horrified onlookers attending holiday celebrations heard the glass shatter and saw him fall to his death. One witness said it was "like an explosion" when he impacted a car.[443][444]
Jon-Erik Hexum
18 October 1984 The 26-year-old American actor died after playing a simulated Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum pistol loaded with blanks. They contained paper wadding and when he pulled the trigger against his temple, the wadding was propelled with a force that broke his skull, causing massive brain bleeding.[445]
Unknown male 1984 An unidentified 25-year-old man was using submersion as an erotic asphyxia method. Naked within a homemade plastic body suit, he tied himself to a boat and was using a homemade diving apparatus for air supply. He died from rebreathing, caused by the faulty apparatus.[446]
Jerome Moody 30 July 1985 The 31-year-old New Orleans man drowned in a swimming pool. He was attending a party held for lifeguards at a swimming pool inside the New Orleans Recreation Department building who were celebrating an entire summer season where no one drowned, his body being found at the bottom of the deep end after the party ended.[447]
Jason Findley February 1986 The 17-year-old, from Piscataway, New Jersey, was electrocuted during a thunderstorm when a lightning strike caused an electrical surge to shoot through the wire of a telephone the boy was holding and enter his left ear, causing his heart to stop beating.[448]
Victims of the Lake Nyos disaster
21 August 1986 At Lake Nyos, northwestern Cameroon, a limnic eruption of unknown cause released about 100,000–300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the lake's bed. The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph; 28 m/s) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake, resulting in the death of 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.[449][450][451]
Marc Aaronson
30 April 1987 The 36-year-old astronomer was crushed to death by a hatch and a revolving telescope dome at Kitt Peak National Observatory.[452][453][454]
Franco Brun 9 June 1987 The 22-year-old inmate at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre in Canada died trying to swallow a pocket-size Bible.[455][456]
Ivan Lester McGuire 2 April 1988 The 35-year-old veteran skydiver was filming a jump by an instructor and student from the Franklin County Sports Parachute Center when he jumped from a plane without a parachute. Focused on the filming process, he apparently forgot to put one on, and his camera equipment may have been mistaken for one. The tape was recovered.[457][458]
Cachy the Poodle, Marta Espina, Edith Solá, unidentified man 21 October 1988 A poodle named Cachy, in Caballito, Buenos Aires, fell 13 floors and hit 75-year-old Marta Espina, killing both instantly. In the course of events, 46-year-old Edith Solá came to see the incident and was fatally hit by a bus. An unidentified man who witnessed her death had a heart attack and also died on his way to the hospital.[459][460]
Michael Anderson Godwin Sloan 5 March 1989 The 28-year-old American criminal from Suffolk, Virginia, was initially given a death sentence by electrocution for the January 12, 1980, death of Molly Royem in West Columbia, South Carolina, before having his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Godwin died from electrocution when he bit into wires while attempting to fix a broken television set, at the same time sitting on a metal toilet in his prison cell at the Central Correctional Institute in neighboring Columbia, South Carolina.[461][462]

1990s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Daniel John O'Brien 14 January 1990 The 31-year-old committed suicide by jumping into one of the engines of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad.[463][464] He is said to have scaled an airport wall in the nude, attacked four security guards and stolen their four-wheel-drive vehicle, driven the vehicle into the jet, then clambered out of the wreckage, smeared grease on his bleeding shoulder and hurled himself into one of the plane's engines.[465]
Lori Mae Matthew 27 October 1991 A 485-pound (220 kg) umbrella, one of thousands installed in the Tejon Pass of southern California by environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was swept across a road by strong winds and crushed the 33-year-old against a boulder. The remaining umbrellas were all closed "out of respect".[466]
Greg Austin Gingrich 28 November 1992 While the 38-year-old was vacationing at the Grand Canyon in Coconino County, Arizona, with his teenaged daughter, he began to play-act losing his balance to frighten her. Gingrich leaped atop a guard wall and began wind-milling his arms in an exaggerated manner, then "comically" fell from the wall on the canyon side onto a short slope where he assumed he would land safely. His daughter, unimpressed with his antics, walked on. Gingrich, however, missed his footing and fell approximately 400 feet (120 m) into the canyon to his death.[467][468]
Brandon Lee 31 March 1993 The 28-year-old film actor, martial artist, and son of Bruce Lee was killed by a squib loaded prop gun while filming The Crow.[469][470][471]
Garry Hoy 9 July 1993 The 38-year-old lawyer from Toronto fell from the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre while demonstrating that its windows were "unbreakable". He threw himself against one, which, true to his assertion, did not break, but instead popped out of its frame.[472][473]
Gloria Ramirez
19 February 1994 The 31-year-old died from kidney failure related to her cervical cancer at the emergency room of Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California. While treating her, several of the hospital staff became ill, suffering from loss of consciousness, shortness of breath, and muscle spasms. Shortly before dying, she was allegedly covered with an oily sheen, which smelled of fruit and garlic. When drawing her blood with a syringe, nurses noticed it had a smell similar to ammonia and there were unusual particles floating in it.[474]
Jeremy Brenno 9 July 1994 The 16-year-old from Gloversville, New York, was playing golf when he hit a bench out of frustration with his club. This caused the club shaft to break, bounce back, and pierce his heart, killing him.[475][476]
Mark Gleeson 23 January 1996 The 26-year-old from Headley Down, Hampshire, attempted to cure his snoring by inserting tampons into his nostrils. He died from suffocation, with sleeping pills adding to his breathing difficulties.[477]
Karen Wetterhahn 8 June 1997 The chemistry professor at Dartmouth College died ten months after a few drops of dimethylmercury (an organomercury compound and one of the strongest-known neurotoxins) landed on her protective gloves. Although she had been following the required procedures, it permeated the gloves and her skin within seconds.[478][479][480]
Alberto Fargo 1998 The resident of Lisbon died from falling out of a 5-story window whilst performing a tango. According to witnesses, he was demonstrating to students how to keep their head high by looking at the ceiling, and failed to notice the open window beside him.[481]
Jonathan Capewell 1998 The 16-year-old from Oldham, England, died from a heart attack brought on by the buildup of butane and propane in his blood after excessive use of deodorant sprays. He was reported to have been obsessed with personal hygiene.[102][482]
John Lewis 12 April 1999 The 64-year-old businessman from Minsterworth, England, attempted to light a bonfire with gasoline, but inadvertently set his clothes on fire. He then ran to the River Severn, jumped in, and eventually drowned. Although the incident occurred on 12 April 1999, his body was not found until 30 April 1999.[483][484]
Valerie Olusanya
25 April 1999 At 2:30 am, the electronic musician, better known as Kemistry, was a front-seat passenger in a car travelling on the M3 motorway in Hampshire, behind a van which dislodged a cat's eye in the road. The metal body flew through the windscreen hitting Olusanya in the face, killing her instantly.[485][486][487]
Owen Hart
23 May 1999 The 34-year-old professional wrestler fell to his death during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event. He was supposed to be lowered into the ring from the rafters as part of his Blue Blazer persona's entrance, but the equipment lowering him into the ring malfunctioned, causing him to fall 78 feet (24 m) and land chest-first on the top rope. The impact severed his aorta, causing death within minutes.[488][489]
Jon Desborough 10 June 1999 The 41-year-old geography and physical education teacher died due to a chest infection a month after being impaled in the eye with the blunt end of a javelin during an athletics session at the Liverpool College in Mossley Hill, Liverpool. It is believed that he had lost his footing while retrieving the javelin. He remained in a coma until his death.[490][491]
Hisashi Ouchi 21 December 1999 On 30 September 1999, Ouchi and two other technicians, Masato Shinohara and Yutaka Yokokawa, were improperly preparing reactor fuel for the Jōyō reactor at the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant, leading to a criticality accident. The technicians' desire to quicken the process led to numerous safety protocols being bypassed, resulting in 16 kilograms (35 lb) of dissolved enriched uranium being contained in the precipitation tank, as opposed to the safe limit of 2.4 kilograms (5.3 lb). Ouchi, who was holding a funnel through which uranyl nitrate was being poured into the feeder tank, was dosed with approximately seventeen sieverts of radiation and received the highest dose of the three. After being transferred to the hospital, his condition rapidly deteriorated, though doctors were instructed to repeatedly revive him whenever his heart stopped in accordance with the wishes of his family. Attempts at treatment, including an early use of peripheral stem cell transplantation, were carried out over the course of almost 3 months, but they ultimately failed, and he died nearly three months later following a cardiac arrest.[492] Shinohara died of multiple organ failure complicated by infections following numerous attempts at treatment on 27 April 2000[493] while Yokokawa, who received the smallest dose, survived following three months of hospitalization.[494]

21st century

[edit]

2000s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Bernd Brandes 9 March 2001 The 43-year-old engineer was voluntarily slaughtered and eaten by Armin Meiwes following an appointment via internet. At Brandes' request, Meiwes first amputated Brandes' penis and they unsuccessfully tried to eat it. Meiwes taped the entire amputation, killing, conserving, and eating Brandes' meat. Meiwes was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison.[495][496][497]
Unknown male 27 April 2001 An unnamed Canadian man was visiting his mother's house in order to attend his father's funeral when, whilst cleaning the kitchen, he tripped over the open dishwasher door and was impaled on knives sticking up out of the cutlery tray, the wounds eventually proving fatal.[498][499]
Michael Colombini 29 July 2001 The six-year-old died during an MRI scan at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, after an oxygen tank was magnetically pulled into the machine and fractured his skull.[500][501][502]
Brittanie Cecil
18 March 2002 The 13-year-old died from her injuries at an NHL game after a deflected puck struck her in the left temple. She was the first and only fan fatality in the league's history.[503]
Roger Wallace 18 May 2002 The 60-year-old auto parts salesman was flying his 5-foot (1.5 m) wingspan remote-control plane in Tucson, Arizona, when he lost sight of it in the bright sun. It struck him in the chest, killing him.[504][505][better source needed]
Jane McDonald 27 May 2003 While visiting a friend, the 31-year-old slipped and fell onto an open dishwasher, landing on an upright knife. She was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries.[506][507]
Rebecca Longhoffer 16 August 2003 The 39-year-old tourist, a mother of four, was electrocuted while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard when she stepped on a cast iron plate that covered electrical wiring and was hidden by a deep rain puddle.[508][509]
Hitoshi Nikaidoh
16 August 2003 The 35-year-old surgical resident from Houston, Texas, was killed after his head was trapped in elevator doors at the hospital where he worked. He was partially decapitated as the elevator ascended, and he also sustained injuries to his ribs and spine.[510][511]
Brian Wells 28 August 2003 The 46-year-old pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed after a collar bomb around his neck exploded as part of a bank robbery scheme.[512]
Unknown female 2004 A 45-year-old woman in Taiwan bathed in 40.5% ethanol in an attempt to protect herself from SARS during the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. She laid down in the fluid at 11. p.m. and was found dead at 11 a.m. by her family the next day. Her BAC was 1.35% and she most likely absorbed the alcohol through the skin.[513][514]
Francis Daniel Brohm
2 September 2004 The 23-year-old was hanging out the passenger window of 21-year-old John Hutcherson's car when Hutcherson drove off the road and sideswiped a telephone pole support wire, decapitating him. Hutcherson continued the final 12 miles (19 km) to his Atlanta home, parked in the driveway, and went to bed. A neighbor found Brohm's headless body in the truck the next morning.[515][516]
Kenneth Pinyan 2 July 2005 The 45-year-old Boeing engineer from Seattle, nicknamed Mr. Hands, died from acute peritonitis after having his colon perforated while being anally penetrated by a horse.[517][518]
Chandler Hugh Jackson
6 July 2005 The 12-year-old was playing at the Dogwood Hill golf club in Cunningham, Kentucky, when he fell on his 9-iron club while retrieving an out of bounds ball. The club broke, with a piece of the shaft piercing his aorta through his chest.[519][520]
Steve Irwin
4 September 2006 The 44-year-old Australian wildlife expert and television personality was pierced in the chest by a short-tail stingray's barb while filming in shallow water in the Great Barrier Reef.[521][522]
Alexander Litvinenko
23 November 2006 The 44-year-old, a naturalised British citizen, former Russian FSB officer, and defector, was assassinated by poisoning with polonium-210, which caused acute and irreversible radiation sickness.[83][523][524] One of just a handful of recorded deaths attributed specifically to polonium exposure,[525] Litvinenko was the first-known fatality from malicious polonium poisoning,[526] and remains the only confirmed such case as of 2024.[525][527]
Jennifer Strange
12 January 2007 The 28-year-old mother was participating in a contest sponsored by Sacramento-based radio station KDND, called "Hold Your Wee For A Wii", in which contestants had to drink excessive amounts of water without going to the bathroom. She vomited during the contest and returned home with a headache, later dying of water intoxication.[528][529][530]
Humberto Hernandez 21 June 2007 The 24-year-old Oakland, California, resident was struck in the back of the head by an airborne fire hydrant when a passing car struck it, and the water pressure shot it at him with great force.[531][532][533]
Abigail Taylor March 2008 The 6-year-old girl from Edina, Minnesota, died from medical complications as a result of her 29 June 2007 evisceration caused by powerful suction from a pool drain at the Minneapolis Golf Club.[534][535]
Francis Pete Tovey 18 March 2008 The 81-year-old built a device that consisted of a jigsaw power tool attached to a .22 semi-automatic handgun containing four bullets. He then activated it, which fired multiple shots at his head, killing himself. Tovey built the device after downloading suicide plans on the Internet. Tovey, who originated from England and was living in Burleigh Heads, Australia at the time, left a note stating that he was struggling after pressure from relatives to move from his £450,000 home to a retirement home.[536][537][538]
Judy Kay Zagorski 20 March 2008 The 57-year-old from Pigeon, Michigan, died of blunt force craniocerebral trauma when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leaped out of the water and knocked her over off the coast of Marathon Key, Florida. The ray also died.[539][540]
Adelir Antônio de Carli
21 April 2008 The 41-year-old Brazilian Catholic priest and sky diver undertook a cluster balloon flight to raise funds for charity. During the flight, contact was lost and de Carli disappeared. The lower part of his body was found floating in the sea eleven weeks later on 4 July.[541][542]
Isaiah Otieno 13 May 2008 The student from Cranbrook, British Columbia, was struck and killed by a helicopter that plunged into a residential street he was walking in. The pilot and two other passengers of the helicopter were also instantly killed.[543][544]
David Phyall 5 July 2008 The 50-year-old last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, England, decapitated himself with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out of it.[545][546]
Unknown female 7 October 2008 A 43-year-old Irish woman died of an allergic reaction after having sex with a German Shepherd. Its owner, Seán McDonnell, and the woman met in an Internet chat room for bestiality. McDonnell was prosecuted and added to a sex offender list. The dog was later destroyed.[547][548]
Jeff Twaddle 27 March 2009 The 54-year-old charter boat deckhand from Huntington Beach, California, choked to death on a bait fish he had placed in his mouth to amuse a group of elementary school students on a fishing trip off Long Beach.[549][550]
Mark Fidrych
13 April 2009 The 54-year-old former Major League Baseball pitcher of the Detroit Tigers, died while working underneath his dump truck. His clothes became entangled with the power take-off drive shaft, suffocating him.[551][552]
Taylor Mitchell 28 October 2009 The 19-year-old Canadian folk singer was killed by a pair of coyotes while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in the only known fatal coyote attack on an adult.[553][554][555]
Vladimir Likhonos 2 December 2009 The 25-year-old student of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute from Konotop was killed when his chewing gum exploded. He had a habit of dipping his chewing gum in citric acid to increase the gum's sour taste. On his work table police found about 100 grams (3.5 oz) of unidentified explosive powder which he used for chemistry studies at home. It resembled citric acid, and it is thought that he confused the two, having accidentally coated his gum in the explosive powder before chewing it. The explosive was found to be four times stronger than TNT, and the explosion was possibly triggered either by reacting with Likhonos's saliva, or the pressure exerted by him chewing on the gum and explosive powder.[556][557][558]

2010s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe 3 March 2010 The 42-year-old was struck in the head by a piece of a metal pipe flung by a tractor-pulled lawnmower as she walked to work in Townsville, Australia.[559][560]
Gareth Williams 16 August 2010 The 31-year-old Welsh mathematician and GCHQ analyst was found dead and naked in a bag that had been padlocked from the outside, in the bath of his home in Central London.[561] The inquest found his death was likely criminal, although a Metropolitan Police investigation later found that it was likely an accident.[562]
The 20 passengers and crew of a plane crash
25 August 2010 20 passengers and crew of a Let L-410 Turbolet were killed in a crash resulting from an escaped crocodile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the sole survivor of the crash, the animal was smuggled aboard by a passenger but escaped mid-flight. Panicked passengers surged forward, unbalancing the plane and causing a loss of control.[563] The crocodile survived the crash, but was promptly killed by a blow from a machete.[564]
Mike Edwards 3 September 2010 The 62-year-old cellist and founding member of the band Electric Light Orchestra died when a large, round bale of hay rolled down a hill and collided with the van he was driving.[565][566][567]
Jimi Heselden 26 September 2010 The 62-year-old owner of Segway Inc. died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System off a cliff in Thorp Arch, England.[568][569][570] The coroner came to the conclusion that Heselden had likely fallen from the cliff with the Segway after "getting into difficulty" reversing to allow a man walking his dog to pass him.[571]
Jose Luis Ochoa 30 January 2011 The 35-year-old died after being stabbed in the leg at an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California, by a bird with a knife-like spur strapped to its leg.[572][573]
Xavier Tondo
23 May 2011 The 32-year-old Spanish road racing cyclist was crushed to death between a garage door and his car as he prepared to leave his home in the Province of Granada, Spain, for a training ride in preparation for the 2011 Tour de France.[574][575]
Unknown man and woman 6 June 2011 Two unnamed people were killed in an accident on a rural Quebec road when a "flying bear" collided with their SUV. The 200-kilogram (440 lb) black bear was sent airborne by a car in front of the SUV after it had stepped into the path of traffic on Highway 148. The bear passed through the windshield, hitting the driver and the passenger sitting behind her before passing through the rear window. The driver's boyfriend was in the front passenger seat and received injuries to his upper body which were described as "not life-threatening". The bear also died.[576][577]
Erica Marshall 10 February 2012 The 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber kicked the wall, releasing a spark from its horseshoe, causing a fire and explosion. The horse was also killed and another worker was seriously injured.[578][579]
Anthony Hensley 14 April 2012 The 37-year-old was killed by a swan while kayaking across a pond at a residential complex in Des Plaines, Illinois. After getting too close to the bird's nest, the swan attacked him, threw him out of the kayak and prevented him from surfacing; he ultimately drowned.[580][581]
Kendrick Johnson 10 January 2013 The 17-year-old was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium. Police originally concluded he had climbed in it to retrieve a shoe and became trapped, but the case was later reopened as a possible homicide.[582][583][584][585][586] The homicide case was dismissed, and Kendrick's parents were accused of fabricating evidence. In 2014, they were sentenced to pay more than US$292,000 in legal fees.[587] The case was again reopened in 2021, but closed again in January 2022, with the Lowndes County Sheriff finding his death to be an accident when re-reviewing some 17 boxes of evidence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's findings.[588][589]
James Campbell 14 January 2013 The 68-year-old man from Cantonment, Florida had left his 1995 Chevrolet Van to open a gate from his driveway when his dog stepped on the van's gas pedal and ran him over.[590][591]
Elisa Lam February 2013 The 21-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was missing for several weeks before being found dead in a large water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, after guests complained about low pressure and foul smell of the water.[592][593]
Unknown Belarusian man 2013 An unnamed 60-year-old Belarusian fisherman bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab in order to have his picture taken with it.[594][595]
João Maria de Souza 2013 The 45-year-old was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and his wife (who was in the bed next to him) were unharmed.[596][597]
Noah Barthe, Connor Barthe 5 August 2013 The brothers, aged 4 and 6 respectively, were killed by an African rock python during a sleepover at their friend's apartment in New Brunswick, Canada. The snake had escaped from its inadequate enclosure and moved through ducts that were easily accessible to the reptile, where the snake then fell through the ceiling where the boys slept 3 metres (9.8 ft) away. Though the snake suffocated them, it did not attempt to eat them. However, an African rock python would not constrict unless it planned on eating; therefore, it is likely that the owners of the python also failed to feed their pet. The python was euthanized.[598][599]
Roman Pirozek, Jr. 5 September 2013 The 19-year-old model airplane enthusiast was partially decapitated by the blade of his radio-controlled helicopter while performing aerobatic maneuvers in Calvert Vaux Park in Brooklyn, New York.[600][601]
Denver Lee St. Clair 21 December 2013 The 58-year-old was asphyxiated by an "atomic wedgie" administered by his stepson during a fight in Oklahoma. After he had been knocked unconscious, the elastic band from his torn underwear was pulled over his head and stretched around his neck, strangling him. The stepson was sentenced to 30 years in prison.[602][603]
J.R.N. 18 January 2014 A 52-year-old Brazilian man, identified only as J.R.N., attempted to commit bestiality with a sow in Tapurah, Mato Grosso, but was attacked by the animals and wounded in the genitals. He died from cardiac arrest. His arms and face were also mutilated by the animals. Initially police believed that the man had been murdered and disposed of at the farm, but this was disproven as numerous pieces of evidence showed that the man had drunk alcohol, used a condom and had been wearing only underwear. The man had worked at the farm for two years.[604][605][606]
Grant Adams 9 June 2014 The 17-year-old had just woken up when he tripped on a wire and fell into a free-standing tanning bed in his bedroom on the morning of June 8, 2014. One of the glass tubes of the bed broke, piercing Grant's neck in two places. He was airlifted from his house in South Shields to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, where he died the next day.[607][608]
Christophe de Margerie
20 October 2014 The French oil executive was killed when his corporate jet collided during take-off with an airport snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver in Moscow.[609][610]
Gary Anderson 3 November 2014 The 58-year-old from Somerdale, New Jersey, was delivering drywall to a construction site and leaned his head into the car of a co-worker while having a conversation. As he pulled his head out, a worker accidentally dropped a 1-pound (0.45 kg) tape measure which plummeted 50 stories, or approximately 500 feet (150 m), when it ricocheted off a piece of metal 10 feet (3.0 m) off the ground and smashed into Anderson's head. He was rushed to Jersey City Medical Center where he suffered cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 9:52 a.m. Hard hats were mandatory at the site, and it is unclear why Anderson was not wearing one when he was killed.[611][612]
Phillip Hughes
27 November 2014 The 25-year-old Australian Test and ODI cricketer was killed by a bouncer striking his neck during a cricket match, causing a vertebral artery dissection.[613][614]
Joshua Harrison-Jones 7 January 2015 The 16-year-old from Stretford, Greater Manchester, died when his neck became trapped between his exercise bench and a onesie he was using as a resistance band.[615][616][617]
Maxee 28 February 2015 The member of American R&B group Brownstone died after falling backward while holding a wine glass. During the fall, the glass shattered on the ground behind her head, and the shards pierced her neck, causing profuse bleeding.[618][619][620]
Stephen Woytack 30 March 2015 The 74-year-old was decorating his family's grave plot at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Throop, Pennsylvania, for Easter with his wife when the tombstone of his mother-in-law toppled over, pinning him underneath and crushing him to death. The stone had supposedly been dislodged when the previously frozen ground was thawed by the early spring temperatures. Woytack was buried in a plot directly in front of the tombstone that killed him.[621][622]
Randy Llanes 29 May 2015 The 47-year-old fisherman from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, was killed by a swordfish. He had harpooned the fish and jumped into the water to retrieve it, but the swordfish impaled him in the chest.[623][624]
Chelsea Ake-Salvacion 19 October 2015 The 24-year-old beauty salon employee in Henderson, Nevada, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.[625][626]
Ravi Subramanian 16 December 2015 The Air India technician was sucked into an aircraft's jet engine.[627][628]
V. Kamaraj 2016 The 40-year-old Indian bus driver was claimed by local newspapers to have been killed by a meteorite which left a two-foot (60 cm) crater, although officials from NASA oppose that view, saying that the most likely explanation was a land-based explosion. According to a preliminary report by the National College Instrumentation Facility (NCIF) in Trichy, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) study on the evidence of the samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore, from where the blast occurred, showed the "presence of carbonaceous chondrites".[629][630][631][632]
Irma Bule 4 April 2016 The 29-year-old Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.[633][634]
Lottie Michelle Belk 6 June 2016 The 55-year-old was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind in Virginia Beach, Virginia.[635] Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).[636]
Lane Graves 14 June 2016 The 2-year-old boy from Nebraska was on vacation and playing on the beach at Seven Seas Lagoon around 9 p.m. at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, just outside of Orlando, Florida. While he was playing, an alligator approached and dragged him under the water. Graves's body was found nearby the next day, intact and apparently drowned.[637][638][639]
Anton Yelchin
19 June 2016 The 27-year-old American actor, known for portraying Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movie series, was found pinned between his car and a brick wall. His driveway was on an incline and his car was found running and in neutral.[640][641] The manufacturer had recalled the car make in April 2016, for concerns about its gearshift design that could cause rollaway incidents, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin's death.[642]
John William Ashe
22 June 2016 The 61-year-old Antiguan diplomat and politician, a former President of the United Nations General Assembly who was awaiting trial on bribery charges, died when a barbell fell on his neck at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, causing traumatic asphyxia and laryngeal fractures.[643][644]
Kristopher Moules and Timothy Gilliam Jr. 18 July 2016 Moules, a 25-year-old correctional officer, and Gilliam, a 27-year-old out-of-county inmate being housed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, fell to their deaths after an altercation between them caused them to slam into the exterior of the fifth-floor elevator doors. Despite the elevator having its up-to-date working credentials, the door popped open on impact, causing the men to fall five flights down the shaft to their deaths. The county declared Moules' death a homicide and declared Gilliam's an accident.[645][646][647]
Unknown girl 26 July 2016 A 7-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo in Rabat, Morocco.[648][649]
Caleb Schwab
7 August 2016 The 10-year-old was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide at Schlitterbahn Kansas City.[650][651]
Julio Macías González 26 August 2016 The 17-year-old from Mexico City died from a cerebrovascular accident caused by embolus formed on a neck hickey.[652][653]
Ten people 21 November 2016 A powerful southerly change in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who died from respiratory failure.[654] This was due to a stark 60-kilometre-per-hour (37 mph) wind that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks small enough to enter people's lungs.[655]
Kyle Thomson 26 December 2016 The 22-year-old Iowa State University student was bench-pressing about 315 pounds (143 kg) at a gym in Ankeny, Iowa, when the barbell slipped from his hands, crushing his neck. Thomson had spotters for the lift.[656][657][658]
Akbar Salubiro March 2017 The 25-year-old was killed and swallowed by a reticulated python in West Sulawesi, Indonesia, in the first fully confirmed case of a snake swallowing an adult human.[659]
Charlie Holt 14 April 2017 The 5-year-old was killed at the Sun Dial, a rotating restaurant at the top of Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, when his head was caught in a small space between the rotating and non-rotating sections.[660][661][662]
Robert Dreyer 10 May 2017 The Florida resident drowned on his 89th birthday after he crashed his car into a fire hydrant and was then swallowed by the sinkhole created by the broken water line which had fed the hydrant.[663][664]
Debra Bedard 2 June 2017 The 58-year-old died after falling from a golf cart onto shards of wine glasses that had broken in her hands in Calaveras County, California.[665][666]
Rebecca Burger 18 June 2017 The 33-year-old French fitness blogger and model died after a whipped-cream charger exploded and struck her in the chest. The injury caused her to go into cardiac arrest as a result of commotio cordis.[667][668]
Karanbir Cheema 9 July 2017 The 13-year-old from London, England, died in the hospital days after having a severe allergic reaction to a piece of cheese thrown at him by a classmate. Cheema was severely allergic to wheat, gluten, all dairy products, eggs and all nuts.[669][670]
Elizabeth Isherwood September 2017 The 60-year-old from Wolverhampton, England, walked naked into an airing cupboard at the villa at Pennal she was renting and shut the door. When she tried to leave, part of the door handle broke off in her hand. She dug into the wall in an attempt to escape, but struck and burst a pipe, which sprayed water into the cupboard and caused her eventual death by hypothermia. She was found several days later.[671][672][673]
Raildo Matias Santos 22 October 2017 The 49-year-old drowned in a bucket of water in Jaguaquara, Brazil. Santos, who was intoxicated, attempted to fetch a 20-litre (4.4 imp gal; 5.3 US gal) bucket of water, tripped, and fell in a kneeling position. He was epileptic.[674][675]
Hidr Korkmaz 12 November 2017 The 42-year-old Turkish-Dutch drug dealer and informant died when he threw his fishhook into an electrical cable while fishing somewhere in Eastern Europe. Though he was a witness in the case against Dutch criminal Willem Holleeder, he was not considered a crucial asset by authorities, who treated his death as an accident.[676][677]
Rajesh Maru 28 January 2018 The 32-year-old died at Nair Hospital in Mumbai after carrying a metal oxygen tank into a room housing an MRI scanner. The magnetic field pulled him in with the tank which pinned his hand and released liquid oxygen. He died of pneumothorax from inhaling liquid oxygen.[678][679][680]
Ateef Rafiq 16 March 2018 The 24-year-old died from cardiac arrest in a movie theater in Birmingham, England, while looking for his dropped mobile phone. His head became wedged under the electronic footrest of a seat.[681][682]
Elaine Herzberg
18 March 2018 The 49-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, as she crossed the road, in what was reported to be the first death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving car on public roads. In response to the fatal accident, Uber suspended self-driving car tests in all U.S. cities.[683][684]
Kyle Plush
10 April 2018 The 16-year-old died from asphyxia after becoming trapped in his Honda Odyssey, which was in his school's parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio. Attempting to reach his tennis equipment, he leaned over the third row of seats into the trunk. When the seats "squashed his chest", he became pinned and later died. During the incident, he called 9-1-1 twice, by using his smartphone's voice assistant. Responding to the calls, the police were not able to find him; he was eventually discovered dead in the vehicle by his father about six hours later.[685][686]
Jennifer Riordan
17 April 2018 The 43-year-old bank executive and businesswoman aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 died after debris from an engine failure destroyed a window near her seat and she was partially blown out through it.[687][688]
Hildegard Whiting 27 July 2018 The 77-year-old died of asphyxiation from the carbon dioxide vapors produced by four dry ice coolers in a Dippin' Dots delivery car. The deliveryman's wife had borrowed the car to take Whiting home.[689][690]
Richard Russell
10 August 2018 The 29-year-old stole a Bombardier Q400 owned by Horizon Air and operating for Alaska Airlines from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. After an unauthorized takeoff, he flew the plane for just over an hour and performed aerial maneuvers including a barrel roll before intentionally crashing on Ketron Island, Washington, killing himself. No one else was injured.[691][692][693]
Linda Goldbloom 29 August 2018 The 79-year-old died four days after being hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium. Her death, the second such fatality in Major League Baseball history, was the first in nearly 50 years.[694]
Sam Ballard 2 November 2018 The 29-year-old from Sydney, Australia, died from angiostrongyliasis after eating a garden slug as a dare eight years earlier.[695][696]
Unknown man
January 2019 An unknown 54-year-old man from Massachusetts died after eating a bag and a half of black liquorice every day for a few weeks, which caused such low potassium levels in his body that his heart stopped.[697][698][699] Liquorice contains glycyrrhizinic acid, which along with its metabolite glycyrrhetinic acid interferes with the body's ability to retain potassium by mimicking the hormone aldosterone,[700] resulting in excessive excretion of the nutrient in cases of overconsumption, a condition referred to as pseudohyperaldosteronism.[701]
Salvatore Disi 10 January 2019 The 62-year-old was decapitated while using a power cart to jump start a helicopter in Hernando County, Florida. Its unexpected up-and-down motion caused the rotor blades to strike him.[702][703]
Margaret Maurer 5 March 2019 The 21-year-old Tulane University fourth-year student from Forest Lake, Minnesota, died at a highway rest stop in Mississippi when she was struck by a pair of tires that came loose from a passing tractor-trailer.[704][705][706]
Julian Nott 26 March 2019 The 74-year-old British-American balloonist was mortally injured after landing safely near Warner Springs, California, at the end of a test flight of an experimental high-altitude balloon. After Nott and his passenger reentered the balloon's gondola, it rolled down a steep ravine.[707][708]
Patrick McGuire April 2019 The 67-year-old American tourist died from positional asphyxia in Scotland when a 72-kilogram (159 lb) metal garden bench he was sitting on toppled backwards, pinning him against a wall which had knocked him unconscious. It was later found that such benches had a risk of sinking into the grass and there were no appropriate checks to provide a stable hard surface for the benches.[709][710]
Darren Hickey 5 April 2019 The 51-year-old wedding planner from Horwich, England, died after eating a scalding-hot fishcake at a wedding. The cake had burned his throat, restricting his ability to breathe. The pathologist who performed the autopsy called the case "extremely rare" and likened it to those of victims who have inhaled smoke during house fires.[711][712] Hickey previously received a set of false teeth following a previous event.[713]
Marvin Hajos
12 April 2019 The 75-year-old former car salesman and exotic animal collector living in Florida was attacked and killed by his recently purchased pet cassowary. The large bird repeatedly kicked the man, which punctured the man's skin and severed the brachial artery in his arm. Hajos was declared dead by the time paramedics arrived at the scene, and the cassowary was auctioned off to a different owner.[714][715][716]
Paul McDonald 17 April 2019 The 47-year-old was attacked and killed by a pet deer, said to be an elk, on his property in north-east Victoria, Australia.[717][718]
Joemar Jungco 22 June 2019 The 18-year-old worker at a meat processing facility in Iloilo City, Philippines, died after half his body from the head down to the waist was pulled into a meat grinder.[719][720]
Yulia Sharko 8 September 2019 The 21-year-old from Žabinka, Belarus, was celebrating her birthday with friends when she tried to pull her two-year-old daughter out through the window of her car. Her daughter activated the window control button, closing the window and strangling Sharko.[721][722]
Michael Kosanovich 7 December 2019 The 21-year-old was crushed by a 2002 Lexus IS300s, in South Jamaica, Queens, New York City, after its owner started it by remote control. It rolled forward, and he was pinned between two vehicles.[723] Bystanders tried to push them apart but as they did so, the car rolled forward and crushed him again. Kosanovich was taken to hospital with severe trauma to his torso and legs and died of his injuries on 7 December.[724]

2020s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Christian Bolok 26 October 2020 The 38-year-old lieutenant, who was the police chief of San Jose, Northern Samar, Philippines, died during a raid to shut down a cockfight, which the government had banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was trying to grab a cockfighting rooster when the razor-sharp metal blade attached to the rooster's leg to kill its opponent cut a gaping hole in his leg and sliced his femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death.[725][726]
Luke Ramone Harper 2 April 2021 The 8-year-old from Ringsend, Dublin, died after inhaling helium from a balloon that he placed over his head. The balloon had been bought for his birthday a week prior.[727][728]
Amy Carlson April 2021 The corpse of the 45-year-old leader of Love Has Won was discovered by police on 28 April 2021, with estimates placing her death c. 16 April 2021. Her remains were mummified and wrapped in a sleeping bag, decorated with Christmas lights; her eyes were missing, and her eye sockets had been decorated with glitter. An autopsy determined that she died of alcohol abuse, anorexia, and chronic colloidal silver ingestion.[729][730][731]
Unknown man
May 2021 The body of a 39-year-old man was found wedged inside the hind leg of a papier-mâché statue of a stegosaurus in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Catalonia, Spain. Initial police reports did not suspect foul play. A police representative hypothesised that the individual may have crawled inside headfirst to retrieve a lost mobile phone before his leg became stuck, trapping him inside. Firefighters had to cut the statue apart to extract the body; police observers believed that he may have been trapped in there for "a couple of days". Local media claimed that the family of the victim had reported him missing only hours prior to the discovery. The body was discovered when a man and his son noticed an unusual smell from the statue, and saw the body through a crack in the statue.[732][733]
Unknown man 30 October 2021 A 30-year-old man was fishing with two friends at a lake in Brasilândia de Minas, Brazil, when the group was attacked by bees. He and his friends jumped into the lake to escape the bees, but the man drowned and was partially eaten by piranhas; his friends survived.[734][735]
Teddy Balkind 6 January 2022 The 16-year-old high school student for St. Luke's School, Connecticut, died after suffering an injury to his neck during a junior varsity ice hockey game. He died after he fell during a game and was accidentally hit by another player, who was unable to stop in time. The other player's skate blade cut Balkind's neck, and he died following an emergency operation.[736][737][738]
Joseph Smith 21 January 2023 The 30-year-old man was shot and killed by his dog after the animal stepped on a loaded rifle in the back seat of his pickup truck, causing the gun to fire through the front passenger seat and hit him in the back. The driver of the truck, who was sitting next to Smith at the time of the accident, was unharmed.[739][740][741]
Barry Griffiths June 2023 The 57-year-old Welsh man, who had suffered a stroke that reduced the mobility of one of his arms, accidentally stabbed himself in the stomach while attempting to separate frozen burgers with a knife. Atherosclerosis was also a contributing factor in Griffiths' death. Police did not discover Griffiths' body in his apartment until over a week after he died.[742][743]
Mikala Jones 9 July 2023 The 44-year-old was killed in a surfing accident in North Sipora, Indonesia, after the fin of his surfboard severed his femoral artery.[744][745]
Justyn Vicky 17 July 2023 On July 15, 2023, the 33-year-old Indonesian bodybuilder and influencer was squatting over 180 kilograms (400 lb) at a Bali gym, assisted by a spotter, when the weight snapped his head forward, breaking his neck. Vicky died in the hospital 2 days later.[746][747][748]
Adam Johnson 28 October 2023 The 29-year-old member of the Nottingham Panthers professional ice hockey team in England died after his neck was cut by a skate during a game between the Panthers and the Sheffield Steelers.[749][750]
Sanjay Shah and Raju Datla 20 January 2024 The 55-year-old CEO of Vistex was celebrating his company's 25th anniversary at a movie studio stage in India. As part of the celebration, Shah and company president Raju Datla were being lowered from the ceiling to the stage in a cage or basket, when a cable broke and both men fell 20 feet (6.1 m), killing Shah and leaving Datla in critical condition.[751][752] Datla died of his injuries six months later.[753]

Animal deaths

[edit]

This section is for the deaths of animals, for whom there are several sources mentioning the deaths as unusual.

Name of animal Image Date of death Details
Jocko the monkey July 1880 Jocko, a performance monkey from Goldsboro, North Carolina, was found dead after he hanged himself with a makeshift noose made with clothesline. It is believed that Jocko did it as an experiment after watching public hangings with his owner Rockwell Syrock.[754][755][756]
Jumbo the elephant
15 September 1885 The celebrity elephant was hit by a train in St. Thomas, Ontario. He died shortly thereafter.[757][758]
Topsy the elephant
4 January 1903 The elephant was executed by poisoning, electrocution, and strangulation. A 74-second film of the electrocution was recorded and preserved, possibly the first death captured on film.[759][760]
Mary the elephant
13 September 1916 The day after the five-ton cow elephant killed a trainer for the Sparks World Famous Shows circus in Sullivan County, Tennessee, she was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane.[761][762]
Sparrow 3 July 1936 In what has been described as the most famous incident of its kind,[763] cricketer Jahangir Khan hit a sparrow with a ball while playing against Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's. The animal was taxidermied after the incident, and mounted with the ball that killed it before being placed on display at Lord's.[764]
Swallow 23 November 1969 During a Sheffield Shield cricket match between Western Australia and South Australia in the 1969–70 season, a ball bowled by South Australian Greg Chappell struck a swooping swallow. Batsman John Inverarity described the ball to "change direction mid-air" before hitting his wicket. Inverarity was given out and the next batsman was about to take the crease but the swallow was found dead behind the stumps. The umpire signalled the ball dead and Inverarity was called back to bat. He went on to make 89 runs in the innings. The bird is now stuffed and rests inside the Adelaide Oval Museum.[765][failed verification]
Seagull 4 August 1983 During a Major League Baseball Yankees-Blue Jays game at Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, Yankees right fielder Dave Winfield threw a warm-up ball which hit a seagull, killing it. After the game, Toronto police charged Winfield with causing "unnecessary suffering of an animal". The charges were dropped the following day.[766][767]
Cocaine Bear
1985 A 175-kilogram (386 lb) American black bear died in Georgia in 1985 after overdosing on cocaine. The cocaine had been dumped from an airplane piloted by Andrew C. Thornton II, a former narcotics officer turned convicted drug smuggler.[768] It inspired the 2023 film Cocaine Bear.[769]
Deer 14 August 1987 During practice for the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix, Stefan Johansson hit a roe deer with his McLaren MP4/3 after it wandered onto the circuit. It was struck by Johansson traveling at close to 140 mph (230 km/h), killing it instantly. Johansson survived.[770][771][unreliable source?]
Olympic doves 17 September 1988 During the opening ceremony of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, hundreds of live doves were released as a symbol of world peace. Many of the doves landed on the Olympic cauldron just prior to it being lit. When the cauldron was lit, over a dozen of the doves resting on the rim of the cauldron and flying directly above it were burned alive by the Olympic flame. The death of the birds marked the last time that live doves were used.[772][773]
Goose 27 March 1999 On the inaugural ride of the Apollo's Chariot rollercoaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, male model Fabio was struck in the face by a goose during the first drop. The goose was killed, while Fabio's nose was bloodied and required stitches.[774][775][776]
Dove 24 March 2001 During a Major League Baseball spring training game, pitcher Randy Johnson threw a fastball just as a bird flew through the pitch's path, killing it instantly.[777][unreliable source?][778][779]
Alan the dachshund 14 January 2013 Tatler magazine's "office dog" saw a man approaching the revolving doors of Vogue House, London, and walked after the man. As Alan tried to rush throug the revolving doors, his neck got caught in it, also getting the worker stuck in the door. Two fire engines rushed to the scene, where they freed the man, but could not free Alan, who died at the scene.[780][781]
Kabibe the gorilla 7 November 2014 The 15-month-old western lowland gorilla was accidentally crushed by a hydraulic door in her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo.[782][783]
Betty White the chicken 2 January 2024 Peter Smith, of Hunterview, New South Wales, threw a chicken into the alligator pen at the Oakvale Farm and Fauna World animal sanctuary in Salt Ash, New South Wales, because he thought the alligator looked hungry. Smith was charged with animal cruelty and his lawyer described the incident as "very unusual".[784][785]

See also

[edit]

Lists

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Valerius Maximus tells the same story about the death of the Athenian poet and playwright Philemon (d. c. 262 BC).[13]
  2. ^ Snopes rates this account of Kogut's death as a "Legend".[306]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Hoff, Ursula (1937). "Meditation in Solitude". Journal of the Warburg Institute. 1 (44): 292–294. doi:10.2307/749994. ISSN 0959-2024. JSTOR 749994. S2CID 192234608.
  2. ^ Halpern, Baruch (October 1983). "The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography". Harvard Theological Review. 76 (4): 379–401. doi:10.1017/S0017816000014115. JSTOR 1509543. The bizarre killing in 4:21 is actually (perhaps only) explicable on the supposition that the historian misunderstood 5:26 to refer to two different hands and two different instruments.
  3. ^ a b "The Ten: Most unusual biblical deaths". Adventist Record. 25 February 2020. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  4. ^ Irwin, Brian P. (2012). "Not Just Any King: Abimelech, the Northern Monarchy, and the Final Form of Judges". Journal of Biblical Literature. 131 (3): 443–454. doi:10.2307/23488248. hdl:1807/77554. JSTOR 23488248. An additional connection between the Abimelech narrative and the early northern monarchy may be present also in the story of Abimelech's unusual and violent death in Thebez.
  5. ^ Felton, Bruce; Fowler, Mark (1985). "Most Unusual Death". Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst, and Most Unusual. Random House. pp. 174–175. ISBN 978-0-517-46297-3 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Brigden, James. "8 strangest deaths of history's ancient rulers". Sky HISTORY. Hearst Networks UK. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
  7. ^ a b c d "Αυτοί είναι οι 11 πιο απίθανοι και άδοξοι θάνατοι στην ιστορία" [These are the 11 most unlikely and inglorious deaths in history]. In.gr (in Greek). 30 November 2022. Retrieved 26 September 2024.
  8. ^ a b Jiahui, Sun (1 December 2021). "The Strangest Deaths of Ancient Chinese Rulers". Ancient History. The World of Chinese. Retrieved 21 August 2024.
  9. ^ Gardiner, EN (1906). "The Journal of Hellenic Studies". Nature. 124 (3117): 121. Bibcode:1929Natur.124..121.. doi:10.1038/124121a0. S2CID 4090345. Fatal accidents did occur as in the case of Arrhichion, but they were very rare...
  10. ^ Matlock, Brett; Matlock, Jesse (2011). The Salt Lake Loonie. Illustrated by Dwight Allott. University of Regina Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-88977-239-7. In one bizarre Olympic competition, a dead athlete named Arrhichion was actually declared the winner.
  11. ^ Maximus, Valerius (1678) [c. 30 AD]. "Book VI, Chapter III; Of Severity". Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX. Translated by Speed, Samuel. London. Retrieved 26 September 2024 – via Attalus.org. But the severity of Cambyses was more extraordinary, who caused the skin of a certain corrupt judge to be flayed from his body, and nailed upon the seat, where he commanded the man's son to take his place. However by this savage and unusual punishment of a judge, he - a king and a barbarian - ensured that no judge in future could be corrupted.
  12. ^ a b c "Gruesome, bizarre, and some unsolved: 44 of the most unusual deaths from history". Weird. mru.ink. 30 September 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Maximus, Valerius (1678) [c. 30 AD]. "Book IX, Chapter XII; Of Unusual Deaths". Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX. Translated by Speed, Samuel. London. Retrieved 5 September 2024 – via Attalus.org. But not to digress any further, let us mention those who have perished by unusual deaths.
  14. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 7". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 111. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Milo, the Crotonian, being upon his journey, beheld an oak in a field, which somebody had attempted to cleave with wedges; conscious to himself of his great strength, he came to it, and seizing it with both hands, endeavoured to wrest it asunder; but the tree (the wedges being fallen out) returning to itself, caught him by the hands in the cleft of it, and there detained him to be devoured with wild beasts, after his many and so famous exploits.
  15. ^ Copeland, Cody (10 February 2021). "The Bizarre Death Of Milo Of Croton". Grunge.com. Retrieved 3 January 2022. Milo of Croton's death was bizarre, but fitting
  16. ^ a b c d e f Marvin, Frederic Rowland (1900). The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women. Troy, New York: C. A. Brewster & Co. Retrieved 5 January 2022 – via Google Books. To some of the most distinguished of our race death has come in the strangest possible way, and so grotesquely as to subtract greatly from the dignity of the sorrow it must certainly have occasioned.
  17. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 30". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 114. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Anacreon, an ancient lyric poet, having outlived the usual standard of life, and yet endeavouring to prolong it by drinking the juice of raisins, was choaked with a stone of one that happened to fall into the liquor in straining it.
  18. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Anacreon". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 906–907.
  19. ^ "Heraclitus of Ephesus". Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World. 2008. Retrieved 27 September 2024. This unusual way of dying was perhaps thought up to reflect Heraclitus' peculiar personality.
  20. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 6". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 111. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Heracl[t]ius, the Ephesian, fell into a dropsy, and was thereupon advised by the physicians to anoint himself all over with cow‑dung, and so to sit in the warm sun; his servant had left him alone, and the dogs, supposing him to be a wild beast, fell upon him, and killed him.
  21. ^ Pliny the Elder. "chapter 3". Naturalis Historiæ. Vol. Book X.
  22. ^ La tortue d'Eschyle et autres morts stupides de l'Histoire [Aeschylus' tortoise and other stupid deaths in history] (in French). Editions Les Arènes. 2012. ISBN 978-2352042211.
  23. ^ a b c d McKeown, J. C. (2013). A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Cradle of Western Civilization. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-0-19-998210-3 – via Google Books.
  24. ^ a b c d e f g Elhassan, Khalid (4 July 2018). "10 Historical Deaths Weirder Than the Movies". History Collection. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  25. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Steve (7 August 2019). "20 Unusual Deaths from the History Books". History Collection. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  26. ^ Gregory, Andrew (2013). The Presocratics and the Supernatural: Magic, Philosophy and Science in Early Greece. New York City, New York and London, England: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-4725-0416-6 – via Google Books.
  27. ^ Grau, Sergei (January 2010). "How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosophers' Deaths in Relation to their Way of Living" (PDF). Ancient Philosophy. 30 (2): 347–381. doi:10.5840/ancientphil201030233. As I have suggested in the previous section, according to some versions, Empedocles commits suicide, by throwing himself into the crater of Etna with the aim of being considered immortal (DL viii 69) ... Up to this point, then, I have analysed a series of suicides that could be considered to be special, in so far as they respond to very peculiar motives.
  28. ^ Meyer, T. H. (2016). Barefoot Through Burning Lava: On Sicily, the Island of Cain – An Esoteric Travelogue. Temple Lodge Publishing. ISBN 978-1906999940. Retrieved 11 September 2017 – via Google Books.
  29. ^ Horace. Ars Poetica. pp. 465–466 – via Perseus Digital Library.
  30. ^ Almagor, Eran (1 August 2018), "Ctesias (b)", Plutarch and the Persica, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 73–133, doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645558.003.0003, ISBN 978-0-7486-4555-8, retrieved 3 August 2024
  31. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 8". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 111. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Polydamus, the famous wrestler, was forced by a tempest into a cave, which being ready to fall into ruins by the violent and sudden incursion of the waters, though others fled at the signs of the danger's approach, yet he alone would remain, as one that could bear up the whole heap and weight of the falling earth with his shoulders; but he found it above all human strength, and so was crushed in pieces by it.
  32. ^ Frater, Jamie (2010). "10 truly bizarre deaths". Listverse.Com's Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists. Ulysses Press. pp. 12–14. ISBN 978-1-56975-817-5 – via Internet Archive.
  33. ^ McKeown, J. C. (2013). A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Cradle of Western Civilization. Oxford University Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-19-998212-7 – via Google Books. Ctesias, the Greek physician to Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, gives an appallingly detailed description of the execution inflicted on a soldier named Mithridates, who was misguided enough to claim the credit for killing the king's brother, Cyrus...
  34. ^ "Preface", Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, pp. ix–xii, 9 May 2013, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511843440.001, ISBN 978-0-521-88681-9, retrieved 6 July 2024
  35. ^ Fearn, Nicholas (12 July 2008). "The Book of Dead Philosophers, By Simon Critchley". The Independent. Retrieved 27 September 2024. Nevertheless, great thinkers seem to have suffered inordinately from bizarre or ironic deaths ... The tyrant Nicocreon of Cyprus sentenced Anaxarchus to death by means of a giant pestle and mortar, to which the philosopher replied "Pound, pound the pouch containing Anaxarchus, but you do not pound Anaxarchus." Nicocreon ordered his victim's tongue be cut out, so the philosopher bit it off himself and spat it at his tormentor.
  36. ^ Baldi, Dino (2010). Morti favolose degli antichi [Fabulous deaths of the ancients] (in Italian). Macerata: Quodlibet. p. 50. ISBN 978-8874623372.
  37. ^ Cartwright, Mark (15 March 2016). "Pyrrhus". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 27 September 2024. So, in 272 BCE, Pyrrhus instead turned north to Argos where he hoped to meet Antigonas in the field. Before this could happen though, Pyrrhus was killed in a bizarre incident in the city of Argos when, in the heat of battle, an old lady on a rooftop threw down a tile at his head. Dazed, the great commander was then ruthlessly slain by the enemy.
  38. ^ Chrystal, Paul (2019). Reportage from Ancient Greece and Rome. Stroud: Fonthill Media. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-78155-718-1. Retrieved 27 September 2024 – via Google Books. Plutarch reports on the unusual, almost comic, death of Pyrrhus in 272 BCE after he was wounded by an Argive—not a hero of any kind, simply the son of a poor old woman who was viewing the action in a teichoscopy.
  39. ^ Levene, D.S., ed. (2024). Livy: the Fragments and Periochae. Vol. II. Oxford University Press. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-19-287123-7. Retrieved 27 September 2024 – via Google Books. It is not implausible in itself—when an enemy army was inside a city or close to the walls, it was not uncommon for women to participate in the city's defense by hurling down roof tiles or other missiles—but this is an unique instance of its bringing down an enemy commander.
  40. ^ Grau, Sergei (January 2010). "How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosophers' Deaths in Relation to their Way of Living" (PDF). Ancient Philosophy. 30 (2): 347–381. doi:10.5840/ancientphil201030233. It is not clear whether Zeno died as a result of holding his breath, meaning he committed suicide, or whether he simply died when he ran out of breath, in which case his death would have been a result of his fall, and not desired by the philosopher. In any case, it is a rather ridiculous death...
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  42. ^ Wright, David Curtis (2001). The History of China. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-313-30940-3 – via Internet Archive.
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  47. ^ Diodorus Siculus. "Book 37". Bibliotheca historica. Retrieved 5 September 2024 – via Attalus.org. He killed himself in a strange and unusual way; for he shut himself up in a newly plastered house, and caused a fire to be kindled, by the smoke of which, and the moist vapours from the lime, he was there stifled to death.
  48. ^ Tronson, Adrian (1998). "Vergil, the Augustans, and the Invention of Cleopatra's Suicide—One Asp or Two?". Vergilius. 44: 31–50. JSTOR 41587181. For other testimony to the bizarre practice of seeking death by snake-bite, see the sources cited in note 17 above.
  49. ^ Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
  50. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 13". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 112. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Drusus Pompeius, the son of Claudius Cæsar, by Herculanilla, to whom the daughter of Sejanus had a few days before been betrothed, being a boy, and playing, he cast up a pear on high, to receive it again in to his mouth; but it fell so full, and descended so far into his throat, that he was choked by it, before any help could be had.
  51. ^ Elliott, J.K., ed. (1996). The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-19-826384-5. Retrieved 27 September 2024 – via Internet Archive. In Peter's case his crucifixion is said to have been upside down to avoid mimicking Jesus' death. The inverse crucifixion is an unusual feature, but the preceding speech by the apostle is typical.
  52. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2006). Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-19-530013-0. Retrieved 27 September 2024 – via Internet Archive. This became the firm tradition of later times, that Peter, along with his companion apostle Paul, had been martyred during the persecution by the emperor Nero. According to this tradition Peter's death came by crucifixion, and in a rather bizarre manner: he had been crucified upside down, with his head to the ground.
  53. ^ Cossetta, Erin (12 April 2021). "Here's What An Upside Down Cross Really Means". Thought Catalog. Retrieved 15 August 2021.
  54. ^ van Braght, Thieleman J. (1886) [Dutch original published in 1660]. The Bloody Theatre, or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. Translated by Sohm, Joseph F. Elkhart: Mennonite Publishing Company – via Project Gutenberg. [Cassian] was also examined concerning his faith, and as he would not abandon it, or sacrifice to the gods, the Judges sentenced him to a very unusual death...
  55. ^ Tompkins, Ian (3 July 1994). "Review of: Roberts, Prudentius' Peristephanon". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved 28 September 2024. The most common methods of execution in the Peristephanon are with the sword or by burning, although a number, such as Quirinus who is drowned and Cassian who is stabbed by his pupils' pens, undergo more unusual fates.
  56. ^ Lenski, Noel (2014). Failure of Empire. University of California Press. p. 142.
  57. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 9". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. pp. 111–112. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Attila, King of the Huns, having married a wife in Hungary, and upon his wedding night surcharged himself with meat and drink; as he slept, his nose fell a bleeding, and through his mouth found the way into his throat, by which he was choked before any person was apprehensive of the danger.
  58. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "10 Historical Figures Who Died Unusual Deaths". Medieval. History Hit. 14 July 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  59. ^ Simon, Ed (25 April 2017). "There's Nothing in the World Smaller Than the Universe". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 29 September 2024. Because the likelihood of Li Bai dying from simple infirmity in 762 isn't as strange and beautiful as the traditional story of his demise—that he drowned in the Yangtze River while drunkenly trying to embrace the moon's reflection—the apocryphal tale is to be preferred.
  60. ^ Ha, Jin (23 January 2019). "The Poet with Many Names—and Many Deaths". The Paris Review. Retrieved 28 September 2024. But the third version of his death is far more fantastic: in this version, he drowns while drunkenly chasing the moon's reflection on a river, jumping from a boat to catch the ever-shifting orb.
  61. ^ Maclean, Simon (2003). Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-139-44029-5. Retrieved 29 September 2024. Note also the Germundus in D CIII 142, perhaps the same man whose daughter had been involved in the bizarre death of Louis III...
  62. ^ Edward Dutton, Paul (2004). Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. p. 516. ISBN 978-1-55111-492-7. Louis the Stammerer died in 879 and his son Louis III, under unusual circumstances, in 882.
  63. ^ Treadgold, Warren (1997). A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 461. ISBN 0-8047-2630-2. According to the official story, he was injured by a giant stag while hunting with Leo's friend Zaützes and some other dignitaries. Yet the details given were highly improbable, and the dying emperor claimed an attempt had been made on his life.
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  65. ^ Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 22". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries - Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 113. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2024 – via Internet Archive. Anno Dom. 968, Hatto, the second duke of Franconia, surnamed Bonosus, Abbot of Fulden, was chosen Archbishop of Mainz. In his time was a grievious [sic] dearth; and the poor being ready to starve for want of food, he caused great companies of them to be gathered, and put into barns, as if there they should receive corn, and other relief: but he caused the barns to be set on fire, and the poor to be consumed therein; saying withal, that they were the rats that did eat up the fruits of the land. But not long after, an army of rats gathered themselves together (no man can tell from whence) and set upon him so furiously, that into what place soever he retired, they would come and fall upon him; if he climbed on high into chambers, they would ascend the wall, and enter at the windows, and other small chinks and crevices: the more men attempted to do them away, the more furious they seemed, and the more they encreased in their number. The wretched Prelate, seeing he could find no place by land safe for him, resolved to seek some refuge by the waters, and got into a boat, to convey himself to a tower, in the midst of the Rhine, near a little city called Bingen: but the rats threw themselves by infinite heaps into the Rhine, and swam to the foot of the tower; and clambering up the wall, entered therein, and fell upon the Archbishop, gnawing and biting, and throtling [sic] and tearing, and tugging him most miserably, till he died. This tower is yet to be seen, and at this day is called Rats the Tower. It is also remarkable, that while [the] Archbishop was yet alive, and in perfect health, the rats gnawed and razed out his name, written and painted upon many walls.
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  152. ^ Henley, Nicole (11 March 2020). "This Might Be the Strangest Death in All of History". Retrieved 13 September 2024. However it transpired, it goes without saying that this death has arguably gone down as one of, if not the most, unusual reported manners in which someone rode the pale horse.
  153. ^ Johnson, Ben (8 December 2014). "Dying for a Humbug, the Bradford Sweets Poisoning 1858". Historic UK. Retrieved 12 August 2024.
  154. ^ Baldwin, Cassidy; Rushton, William. "Halloween Sadism: A Review of Poisoned Halloween Candy". Alabama American College of Emergency Physicians. Retrieved 12 August 2024. Yet, the historical literature reports only few isolated cases over the last 150 years...
  155. ^ Jaffe, Chris (14 October 2012). "150th anniversary: Jim Creighton's fatal swing". The Hardball Times. Retrieved 22 September 2024. But no single event is stranger to us or better demonstrated how very different the game was in its early years than what happened 150 years ago today. ... Wait, a guy died as the result of a home run swing? Umm ... the hell?
  156. ^ Schweber, Nate (18 October 2012). "Recalling a New Pitch and a Strange Death". Local History. The New York Times. Retrieved 22 September 2024. Despite the pitch that Creighton introduced, he is best known for his mysterious death.
  157. ^ Stritch, Thomas (1987). The Catholic Church in Tennessee: The Sesquicentennial Story. Nashville: Catholic Center. p. 145. ISBN 9780961826000. Retrieved 5 September 2024 – via Google Books. Julius was killed in a bizarre mischance when his head was blown off by a stray cannon ball as he rode with General Rosecrans near Murfreesboro.
  158. ^ Pittard, Homer. "The Strange Death of Julius Peter Garesché". latinamericanstudies.org. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  159. ^ Palmer, Alan (1997). Twilight of the Habsburgs. The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph. London: Phoenix Giant. p. 158. ISBN 978-1857998696.
  160. ^ "Brandunfall der Erzherzogin Mathilde von Österreich" [The Fire Death of Archduchess Mathilda of Austria] (PDF). HessenArchiv aktuelle 9/2020 (in German). Hessisches Landesarchiv. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 October 2021. Retrieved 24 October 2021.
  161. ^ "Mary Ward 1827-1869". Famous Offaly People. Offaly Historical & Archaeological Society. 2 September 2007. Archived from the original on 16 January 2014. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
  162. ^ Ramsey, Jonathon (November–December 2009). "The Bizarre History of Car Accidents" (PDF). Torch. Vol. 16, no. 6. Air Education and Training Command. p. 10. Retrieved 8 September 2024. In addition to the first traffic fatality, that might make Mary Ward the first bizarre car death on record.
  163. ^ "Fatal Accident to Mr. Vallandigham". Western Reserve Chronicle. 21 June 1871. p. 2. Archived from the original on 3 November 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2022 – via The American Civil War @ 150. Here is a newspaper account of the unusual death of Clement Vallandigham, a leader of the Copperhead Democrats during the Civil War.
  164. ^ "Death of Clement Vallandigham". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015.
  165. ^ York, Dena Lynn Winslow (1 June 2001). "They Lynched Jim Cullen": Story and Myth on the Northern Maine Frontier. Maine History Journal.
  166. ^ Dan_nehs (20 November 2020). "A Lynching in Maine: What Happened to James Cullen". Crime and Scandal. New England Historical Society. Retrieved 9 August 2024. A lynching in Maine is an unusual thing. Throughout New England, lynching was extremely rare.
  167. ^ "Deputy Sheriff Granville A. Hayden, Aroostook County Sheriff's Office, Maine". The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
  168. ^ "Deputy Sheriff William Hubbard, Aroostook County Sheriff's Office, Maine". The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
  169. ^ a b c d Clay, Jeremy (25 December 2013). "10 truly bizarre Victorian deaths". BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 19 May 2018. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  170. ^ O'Neal, Eamonn (31 December 2013). "Man dies after swallowing a mouse". Greater Manchester News. Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 18 August 2024. In 1875, we reported on a very unusual death.
  171. ^ Ruxton, Dean (3 August 2016). "The night a river of whiskey ran through the streets of Dublin". The Irish Times. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
  172. ^ Hyland, Adam (18 June 2020). "The Great Whiskey Fire". Firecall official magazine of Dublin Fire, Ambulance, and Emergency Services. There were 13 deaths, but not one of them was caused by fire itself," Las says. "They were all to do with the madness that took hold. Some of the stories were very sad, but some of them were also bizarre. My favourite is the house where there was a wake going on. The people there put themselves at risk to save the corpse, but they only save him enough to make sure he doesn't burn, before they all run back to get themselves some free whiskey. I like that because it is just so human.
  173. ^ "A Strange Suicide". Crawfordsville Star. 15 June 1876. Page 1, column 3. Retrieved 24 September 2024 – via Google Newspapers.
  174. ^ "The Guillotine". The Knoxville Journal. 22 June 1876. Page 3, column 3. Retrieved 24 September 2024 – via Chronicling America. The situation, as they found it, was bad enough, but the appliances which had been used to produce death were most wonderful, and will stand in the history of suicides without a parallel.
  175. ^ Kriebel, Bob (25 November 2016) [Reprint of columns printed 1989-10-22, 1989-10-29, and 1989-11-05]. "The unusual, tragic death of James Moon". Journal & Courier. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  176. ^ The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat: Law and Kingship in Siam. Cornell University Press. 1 June 2016. ISBN 978-1-5017-2596-8 – via Google Books.
  177. ^ Pinheiro, Maria (9 December 2016). "9 of the Strangest Victorian Deaths Reported in the Newspapers". Bizarre. The Lineup. Retrieved 18 August 2024. While a neighbor rushed to the scene with the police, a servant picked up the gun with the intention of demonstrating what had happened during Hague's self-shooting. Then, in an absurd case of irony, the servant managed to duplicate Hague's fate.
  178. ^ "The Yorkshire Herald and the York Herald from York, North Yorkshire, England". 15 October 1881. Retrieved 3 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
  179. ^ "Death of Sir William Gallway". Northern Echo. 20 December 1881. Retrieved 28 October 2018. Sir William, so late as Thursday, was out shooting in the parish of Bagby, and in crossing a turnip field fell with his body on to a turnip, sustaining severe internal injuries. All that medical aid could do was done, but with Sir William's failing health he gradually sank, and died, as stated above, about ten o'clock yesterday morning.
  180. ^ "Andy McSmith's Diary: The enemy within Chequers at Sam Cam's delayed 40th". The Independent. 18 December 2014. Retrieved 28 October 2018. It was 133 years ago, on 19 December 1881, that the Tory MP Sir William Payne-Gallwey was out shooting in Bagby, North Yorkshire, when he fell over and landed on a turnip. The impact killed the poor man.
  181. ^ "A Singular Death". The Representative. Fox Lake, Wisconsin. 13 January 1886. Page 2, column 3. Retrieved 3 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
  182. ^ "Strange and Unusual Deaths in the 19th Century". C.A. Asbrey. 4 June 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2024. Sam Wardell was a lamplighter who attached a ten pound rock to his alarm clock. When the alarm clock went off, the rock would fall onto the floor. Why a lamplighter had to be up so early is a mystery to me as they lit the gas lamps in the evenings, however, one night he moved his furniture for a party. He failed to move the furniture back. The alarm clock went off, and the rock fell right on his head.
  183. ^ "That Hissing Snake That was Pulled Out of a Boy's Mouth—The Original Story Confirmed—Further Particulars—A Horrible Fate". Sun-Journal. Lewiston, Maine. 11 May 1886. Page 3, column 3. Retrieved 27 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. A strange case which has recently come under the notice of the physicians, is the unhappy fate of the little boy who lived a few miles below Grand Falls... The above case is an actual fact, and so far as we can learn, it is unparalleled.
  184. ^ "The Aroostook Snake Story". Portland Daily Press. Portland, Maine. 13 May 1886. Page 1, column 9. Retrieved 10 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. A short time ago the strange story of a snake being pulled out of the mouth of a boy who lived near Grand Falls, in Aroostook county, was telegraphed the papers. Since then the case, which is believed to be unparalleled, has attracted the attention of physicans, and the story is fully confirmed.
  185. ^ "A Live Snake in a Boy's Stomach. He Died of Hemorrhage Soon After it Had Been Pulled From His Mouth". The Times and Democrat. Orangeburg, South Carolina. 20 May 1886. Page 5, column 3. Retrieved 10 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. The almost incredible story recently printed about the death of a boy near Grand Falls from hemorrhage caused by pulling from his mouth a live snake which had grown to his flesh proves to be literally true.
  186. ^ Stubley, Peter (25 April 2020). "First credible evidence emerges of person being killed by meteor". Science. The Independent. Retrieved 1 October 2024. The odds of being struck and killed by a meteorite are said to be as low as one in 250,000.
  187. ^ Atkinson, Nancy (29 April 2020). "Terrible Luck. The Only Person Ever Killed by a Meteorite – Back in 1888". Universe Today. Retrieved 1 October 2024. What are your chances of getting smacked – and killed — by a meteorite? One astronomer put the odds of death by space rock at 1 in 700,000 in a lifetime, while others say it's more like 1 in 1,600,000. Computing the probability for such an untimely death is difficult because this type of event is so rare.
  188. ^ Betz, Eric (18 May 2023) [Originally published 12 May 2020]. "A meteorite killed a man in Iraq in 1888, historic records suggest". Astronomy. Retrieved 1 October 2024. If they can find related meteorites in the area, the victim will be the only confirmed human in history killed by a meteorite.
  189. ^ "Killed by a Drunken Bear". The Nottingham Evening Post. 27 August 1891. p. 4. Retrieved 24 September 2024 – via British Newspaper Archive. A strange and terrible accident has just occurred in the neighbourhood of Vilna, in Russia.
  190. ^ "Delicacy and Drowning". Western Daily Press. 9 June 1892. p. 7. Retrieved 25 September 2024 – via British Newspaper Archive. The Hampshire Telegraph, in its 'Naval Section', relates the following curious story from Bermuda.
  191. ^ "THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH AT WEST MELBOURNE. THE BODY IDENTIFIED". The Argus. Melbourne. 18 April 1893. Page 6, column 1. Retrieved 17 August 2024 – via Trove.
  192. ^ Pinheiro, Maria (9 December 2016). "9 of the Strangest Victorian Deaths Reported in the Newspapers". Bizarre. The Lineup. Retrieved 18 August 2024.
  193. ^ Lyman, Brian (26 February 2020). "Killed by wild beasts: The strange story of Jeremiah Haralson's 'death'". Montgomery Advertiser. Retrieved 14 August 2024.
  194. ^ Lyman, Brian (26 February 2020). "The lost congressman: Sources for Jeremiah Haralson's remarkable life". Montgomery Advertiser. Retrieved 14 August 2024. The manner of death was bizarre, and it seemed unlikely a man who had worked as a farmer and a civil servant had the money to open a mine, or - at age 70 - had the physical stamina to become a coal miner.
  195. ^ "Fatal crash with self-driving car was a first – like Bridget Driscoll's was 121 years ago with one of the first cars". The Washington Post. 22 March 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2023. But Driscoll's death was so unusual that the matter landed in Coroners Court for a full-blown inquest.
  196. ^ McFarlane, Andrew (17 August 2010). "How the UK's first fatal car accident unfolded". BBC News. Retrieved 27 August 2013. Melvyn Harrison, of historical group the Crystal Palace Foundation, says people would have been simply bemused at the sight of these "horseless carriages". "It was such a rare animal to be on the roads and, for her to be killed, people would have thought the story was made up," he says.
  197. ^ Cross, Wilbur; Hellbom, Thorleif (August 1962). "Last Balloon to Nowhere". True Magazine. There was no reason at all why the explorers should have perished when and where they did..., cited in "Solomon August Andrée - Sweden: The First Attempt of a Flight to the North Pole". The Aviation History On-Line Museum. 2007. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  198. ^ Vojir, Vladimir (1999–2000). "The Flight of Andrée's Balloon Eagle 5". Mysteries of the Arctic. www.vova.cz. Translated by Kriz, Pavel. Retrieved 22 September 2024. Here they perished one by one after an almost three month long exhausting march under strange and never clarified circumstances - lunacy, the voluntary death of the last survivor, Fraenkel, before the polar night had come.[self-published source]
  199. ^ Quamme, Margaret (5 February 2012). "Ill-fated balloon trip among more unusual attempts to reach North Pole". Books. The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved 22 September 2024. One of the more unusual attacks on the pole was made by Salomon August Andree, a Swedish engineer who in 1897 tried to fly over it in a hydrogen-filled balloon. ... They died of unknown causes — though most likely of a combination of exhaustion and parasites picked up from their diet of polar bear — on an island in the Arctic Sea. ... Aside from the unusual means of transportation, the results of the trip were not much different from other attempts by ship and dog sled.
  200. ^ De Burgh, Edward Morgan Alborough (1899). Elizabeth, empress of Austria: a memoir. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. p. 310.
  201. ^ Matray, Maria; Krüger, Answald (1998). L'attentato. La morte dell'Imperatrice Elisabetta e il delitto dell'anarchico Lucheni [The attack. The death of Empress Elisabeth and the crime of the anarchist Lucheni] (in Italian). Trieste: Mgs Press. ISBN 978-8886424561.
  202. ^ Reynolds, MD, Ernest Septimus (8 January 1901). "AN ACCOUNT of the EPIDEMIC OUTBREAK OF ARSENICAL POISONING occurring in BEER DRINKERS IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND AND THE MIDLAND COUNTINES IN 1900". Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. 84: 409–452. PMC 2036791. PMID 20896969. [...]if there was any known drug acting as a poison in the beer it was almost certainly arsenic. Improbable as this hypothesis at first seemed, yet it was a valid hypothesis, for it was not known to be untrue, it explained all the facts, and it was easily capable of proof or disproof.
  203. ^ Crawford, Raymond (1 May 1901). "The Arsenical Beer-Poisoning Epidemic in England". The Sanitarian. 46 (378). New York: 408. Retrieved 13 August 2024 – via ProQuest.
  204. ^ del Regato, Juan A. (February 2000). Lazear, Jesse William (1866-1900), physician. American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1200521. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  205. ^ Finacom, Steve (19 November 2015). "Big Game horror in 1900 was quickly forgotten". College Sports. The Mercury News. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  206. ^ Scott, Sam (1 November 2015). "The Big Game Disaster of 1900". Features. Stanford Magazine. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2024. And this time the carnage would stagger belief... Jim Rutter, '86, Stanford's volunteer sports archivist... heard of the 1900 disaster only a few years ago, doubting at first something so incredible could be true.
  207. ^ "SHOCKED TO DEATH". Stockton Record. Vol. XII, no. 97. 31 January 1901. Page 5, column 4. Retrieved 27 August 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. By a peculiar accident James Doyle Jr., a lineman, was killed at Smartsville yesterday.
  208. ^ "Adelbert S. Hay's Death Casts Gloom Over Yale – Secretary of State Collapses When He Reaches the Side of His Dead Son". The San Francisco Call. Vol. 87, no. 24. 23 June 1901. Page 2, columns 3-4. Retrieved 16 July 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. Here the mystery becomes intangible.
  209. ^ "A WOMAN'S STRANGE DEATH". The Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle. Victoria, Australia. 15 July 1902. Page 2, column 6. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove. An inquest was held to-day touching the death of Mary Franks, a married woman who died suddenly at a private hospital on Saturday after having a tooth extracted.
  210. ^ "A STRANGE DEATH". The Northern Advocate. Press Association. 1 September 1902. p. 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Papers Past.
  211. ^ "Batted Ball Drove the Knife". The Tucson Citizen. Vol. XXXVIII, no. 13. 1 November 1902. Retrieved 4 September 2024 – via Chronicling America. Probably in the Whole History of the National Game Nothing of This Kind Occurred on a Ball Field
  212. ^ Weeks & Gorman 2015, p. 155.
  213. ^ "Tué a Coups de Bible" [Killed With a Bible.]. Le Petit Parisien. 28 May 1903. Archived from the original on 24 May 2016. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  214. ^ "Bible to Drive Out Devils. Hawaiian Sorcerer Beat Patient Over the Head With It and Victim Died". The Sun. 14 May 1903. Page 12, column 1. Retrieved 13 January 2019 – via Chronicling America.
  215. ^ "CALOMEL KILLED ROMANIA Negro Electrocuted On Norfolk Bridge—A Girl Suicide". The Baltimore Sun. 27 May 1903. Page 8, column 6. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. Romaine Romania, died today at St. Vincent's Hospital under peculiar circumstances.
  216. ^ Sowell, Mike (1992). July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty. But there were more questions about Delahanty's bizarre and gruesome fate than there were answers.
  217. ^ Gilbert, Angus D. (1994). "BELL, BENJAMIN TAYLOR A.". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 13. University of Toronto/Université Laval. Retrieved 20 September 2024. The circumstances of his death were somewhat bizarre.
  218. ^ "Drowned While in a Fit". Colonist. Vol. XLVI, no. 11015. 2 May 1904. p. 4. Retrieved 24 March 2022 – via Papers Past. A fatality of a very peculiar nature occurred early this morning.
  219. ^ "BROTHERS ELECTROCUTED Strange Death of Two Men While Picking Cherries". Los Angeles Herald. Vol. XXXI, no. 271. 26 June 1904. Page 3, column 1. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  220. ^ "Crushed Under Tons of Coal". The Minneapolis Journal. Minneapolis, Minnesota. 8 July 1904. Page 5, column 6. Retrieved 7 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. John Ericsen, the 11-year-old son of a sectionman in the employ of the Northern Pacific, who has been missing since the Fourth of July, met with a tragic and unusual death, his crushed and mangled body being found today beneath a mass of coal in a bin near the Northern Pacific roundhouse.
  221. ^ "Aged Los Angeles Woman Killed in Strange Way – Falls From Street Car and Teeth of Heavy Comb Are Driven Into Skull". San Francisco Call. Vol. XCVI, no. 38. 8 July 1904. Page 7, column 5. Retrieved 23 January 2023 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  222. ^ Sansare, K.; Khanna, V.; Karjodkar, F. (2011). "Early victims of X-rays: a tribute and current perception". Dento Maxillo Facial Radiology. 40 (2): 123–125. doi:10.1259/dmfr/73488299. PMC 3520298. PMID 21239576.
  223. ^ White, Richard. "Who Killed Jane Stanford?". Stanford Historical Society. Stanford University. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  224. ^ "Strange Death of a Baby". Stockton Evening and Sunday Record. Stockton, California. 11 March 1905. Page 1, column 6. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. That affliction is somewhat unusual.
  225. ^ "Killed by Avalanche of Malt". The Bennington Evening Banner. Bennington, Vermont. 9 December 1905. Page 6, column 3. Retrieved 30 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. Thomas Melia, employed in a Brooklyn brewery, met an unusual death when he was caught beneath an avalanche of shifting malt and barley and was suffocated.
  226. ^ "GIRL'S STRANGE DEATH". The Argus. Melbourne. 20 December 1905. Page 8, column 4. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove. SYDNEY, Tuesday.—Mary Ellen Rumble, the daughter of a farmer at Watervale, in the Murrumburrah district, was killed in a peculiar manner to-day.
  227. ^ "Dies of Joy When Released". The Commoner. Lincoln, Nebraska. 9 March 1906. Page 12, column 4. Retrieved 2 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. A most remarkable and unusual death took place at the state insane asylum in Norfolk.
  228. ^ "BATHER'S STRANGE DEATH". The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times. Tasmania. 5 March 1907. Page 3, column 4. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove.
  229. ^ "WOMAN'S STRANGE DEATH. UNCONSCIOUS FOR SEVERAL DAYS". The Age. Melbourne. 8 September 1908. Page 6, column 4. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Trove. The death of a woman named Jane Hewitt, who resided at 130 Park-street, South Melbourne, in remarkable circumstances, has been reported to the Coroner.
  230. ^ "Fatal Fall of Wright Airship; Lieut. Selfridge Killed and Orville Wright Hurt by Breaking of Propeller. Machine a Total Wreck. Increased Length of New Blade and Added Weight of a Passenger Probable Causes. Cavalry Ride Down Crowd Rumor That the Machine Had Been Tampered with Denied by Army Officers—Not Well Guarded" (PDF). The New York Times. 18 September 1908. Retrieved 22 August 2024. Falling from a height of 75 feet, Orville Wright and Lieut. Thomas E. Selfridge of the Signal Corps were buried in the wreckage of Wright's aeroplane shortly after 5 o'clock this afternoon. The young army officer died at 8:10 o'clock to-night. Wright is badly hurt, although he probably will recover.
  231. ^ "1908 -- First Fatality in a Powered Aircraft". Air Force Historical Support Division. Retrieved 22 August 2024.
  232. ^ "A STRANGE DEATH. James Gough Was Either Murdered or Committed Suicide". The Coconino Sun. Vol. XXV, no. 48. Flagstaff, Arizona. 20 November 1908. Page 1, column 4. ISSN 2158-2637. Retrieved 1 September 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  233. ^ Manchester, William (1969). The Arms of Krupp. Michael Joseph. p. 265.
  234. ^ James, Harold (1989). A German Identity: 1770–1990. New York: Routledge. p. 82.
  235. ^ Steakley, James D. (1990). "Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the Eulenburg Affair in Wilhelmin Germany". In Duberman; et al. (eds.). Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past. New York: Meridian, New American Library. p. 20. ISBN 0-452-01067-5. Retrieved 14 June 2023. Like the bizarre death of Hülsen-Häseler, the entire Eulenburg Affair has been discreetly hushed up in all but the most recent historiography.
  236. ^ Barbier, Laetitia (18 February 2013). "Morbid Monday: Kissed to Death". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 3 April 2022. His gravestone, erected in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, is a monument to bizarre death, with a story so unusual that it needed to be carved in stone for posterity.
  237. ^ Morton, Ella (3 October 2014). "George Spencer Millet: The Boy Who Was Kissed to Death". Atlas Obscura. Slate Magazine. Retrieved 3 April 2022.
  238. ^ "AFTER WOMAN IN REES DEATH Girl Said to Have Visited Former Ice Dealer at His Hotel JEWELRY AND MONEY ARE NOT TO BE FOUND". Courier-Post. Camden, New Jersey. 18 February 1909. Page 7, columns 1-2. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. The arrest of a woman is expected to-day in connection with the death of Peter A. Rees yesterday at Guy's Hotel, Seventh street above Chestnut, Philadelphia, under circumstances which the police declare to be unusual.
  239. ^ "DIED WHILE WRITING". Evening Express and Evening Mail (Sixth ed.). 17 March 1909. Page 3, column 2. Retrieved 30 August 2024 – via Welsh Newspapers. A young servant girl of Altendorf, near Cologne, found a tragic and unusual death.
  240. ^ Merron, Jeff (22 June 2002). "Major leaguers who died in-season". Baseball. ESPN.com. Retrieved 16 July 2024.
  241. ^ "Met Unusual Death – B. S. Kradwell Falls From Train Near Vail, Iowa, and Meets Death in Creek – Mystery Shrouds Accident – Deceased Was One of the Owners of the Store of the Kradwell Drug Company and He Had Started West for a Long Vacation". The Telegraph-Courier. Kenosha, Wisconsin. 21 April 1910. Page 4, column 4. Retrieved 3 August 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  242. ^ "A WIDOW'S STRANGE DEATH". The Advertiser. Adelaide, South Australia. 6 June 1910. Page 9, column 9. Retrieved 31 August 2024 – via Trove.
  243. ^ "WOMAN'S STRANGE DEATH. TRACING HER MOVEMENTS". The Argus. Melbourne, Australia. 13 July 1910. Page 8, column 1. Retrieved 21 September 2024 – via Trove.
  244. ^ "YOUNG WOMAN'S DEATH". Kalgoorlie Miner. Western Australia. 20 July 1910. Page 6, column 6. Retrieved 21 September 2024 – via Trove. A sensational development has occurred at Ballarat in connection with the death of Florence Hill Jelbert, whereby Yee Lee, otherwise known as "Peter Long," a Chinese herbalist, was arrested on a charge that he did, at Ballarat, on July 10, wilfully, maliciously and with malice aforethought, kill and slay Florence Hill Jelbert.
  245. ^ "Patrick Dolan is killed". Aberdeen Daily News. 25 October 1910.
  246. ^ "Ghost of First Wife Drove Him to Kill Himself - George Vedder Had Broken Oath of Loyalty Made at Her Deathbed. Took Another Bride. It Was Only a Short Distance From Saloon to Reservoir After Haunting Began". The Evening World (Final ed.). New York City, New York. 28 February 1911. Page 1, columns 3-4. Retrieved 13 August 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  247. ^ "MEET STRANGE DEATH. Miners 100 Feet from Cave-in Are Killed By Resulting Rush of Air". Bisbee Daily Review. Bisbee, Arizona. 20 December 1911. Page 8, column 7. ISSN 2157-3255. Retrieved 1 September 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  248. ^ "L'inventeur Reichelt s'est tué hier" [The inventor Reichelt killed himself yesterday]. Le Petit Journal (in French). 5 February 1912. p. 1.
  249. ^ "Unusual Death". The Daytona Daily News. Daytona, Florida. 23 December 1912. Page 2, column 4. Retrieved 2 August 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  250. ^ "HOUSE IN PARIS FALLS, KILLING MAN AND WIFE Emile Froment-Meurice, Goldsmith, Descendant of Rubens, Meets Strange Death". New-York Tribune. New York City. 26 April 1913. Page 5, column 6. Retrieved 21 August 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  251. ^ "Unusual Death of Columbus Woman Mrs. Jim Thomason Dies From Sting of a Bee – Became Unconscious, Remaining So to Time of Her Death, Which Occurred Tuesday". Washington Telegraph. Washington, Arkansas. 9 May 1913. Page 1, column 1. Retrieved 21 July 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  252. ^ "Farmer Meets Strange Death - Property Assessed Too Low in Marshall County. Veterans to Be Provided For - Series of Accidents Occur Near Melrose—Missing Man Found Demented at Decorah—Pres. Erb on Tour of Inspection". The Oskaloosa Herald. Vol. 57, no. 43. Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa. 15 May 1913. Page 1, column 7. Retrieved 31 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. While repairing a wire fence near here, Peter Graham a farmer met a strange death.
  253. ^ Pitogo, Heziel (28 June 2014). "The Little Things that Changed the Course of History (From Wars to the Sinking of the Titanic)". War Articles. War History Online. Retrieved 4 September 2024. However, a return train ticket to London later found in her purse gave the idea that her plight might have been just a freak accident.
  254. ^ Purvis, June (3 June 2024) [Originally published June 2013]. "Emily Davison: the suffragette who stepped in front of the king's horse". Edwardian. History Extra. Retrieved 4 September 2024. She had sustained a fractured skull, severe concussion and internal injuries. She was taken to Epsom Cottage Hospital, where surgeons attempted to relieve pressure on her brain. She never recovered and died four days later... Following the shocking events of Derby day, the WSPU leadership was quick to hail Davison as a martyr for the women's cause.
  255. ^ "RANCHMAN DIES IN POSTHOLE Californian Falls Into Excavation and Is Suffocated, Being Unable to Extricate Himself". The Lakeland Evening Telegram. Lakeland, Florida. 14 July 1913. Page 6, column 4. Retrieved 22 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. Romain Moll, a wealthy rancher of this county, met an unusual and tragic death.
  256. ^ "Mystery of the murders at Taliesin". BBC News. 14 January 2001. Archived from the original on 19 August 2018. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
  257. ^ McCrea, Ron (2012). Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright's Home of Love and Loss. Madison, Wisconsin: Wisconsin Historical Society Press. pp. 188–195. ISBN 978-0-87020-606-1.
  258. ^ Green, Harry (2 June 1915). "Lost Life in Peculiar Manner". Decorah Public Opinion. Page 6, column 1. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  259. ^ "YOUTH'S STRANGE DEATH". The Daily Telegraph. Sydney, New South Wales. 1 July 1915. Page 11, column 8. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove.
  260. ^ "LIGHTNING KILLS ONE, SETS FIRE TO TEN BUILDINGS Bather Struck Dead in Water at Phillipsburg—Three Boys Partially Paralyzed". Newark Evening Star and Newark Advertiser (Home ed.). Newark, New Jersey. 9 August 1915. Page 8, column 1. Retrieved 13 September 2024 – via Chronicling America. A very unusual death occurred here yesterday afternoon, when a fifteen-year-old bather in the Delaware river was struck by lightning and killed during the storm which struck here.
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  262. ^ "Dr. Rose Bullard dead, victim of blood poisoning". Los Angeles Examiner. 23 December 1915. Retrieved 23 July 2024. Her demise was altogether unexpected, so much so that her family and close friends were so upset by the news last night that it was several hours before they could discuss the case at all.
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