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Lists of unusual deaths

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This is a list of unusual deaths. This list includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources. Some of the deaths are mythological or are considered to be unsubstantiated by contemporary researchers. Oxford Dictionaries defines the word "unusual" as "not habitually or commonly occurring or done" and "remarkable or interesting because different from or better than others."[1]

Some other articles also cover deaths that might be considered unusual or ironic, including List of entertainers who died during a performance, List of inventors killed by their own inventions, List of association footballers who died while playing, List of professional cyclists who died during a race and the List of political self-immolations.

Antiquity

The death of Aeschylus illustrated in the 15th century Florentine Picture Chronicle by Maso Finiguerra.[2]
  • c. 620 BC: Draco, Athenian law-maker, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.[3][4]
  • 564 BC: Arrhichion of Phigalia, Greek pankratiast, caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrichion's trainer shouted "What a fine funeral if you do not submit at Olympia!" Arrichion then kicked his opponent with his right foot while casting his body to the left, causing his opponent so much pain that he made the sign of defeat to the umpires, while at the same time breaking Arrichion's own neck as the other fighter was still strangleholding him. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrichion was proclaimed victor posthumously.[5][6]
  • 455 BC: Aeschylus, the great Athenian author of tragedies. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.[7][8][9]
  • 401 BC: Mithridates, a soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger, was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that he survived the insect torture for 17 days.[10][11]
  • 270 BC: Philitas of Cos, Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death.[12] British classicist Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.[13]
  • 210 BC: Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, died after ingesting several pills of mercury in the belief that it would grant him eternal life. His eunuch courtiers concealed the death while they plotted the succession and used carts of fish to disguise the smell of the corpse. He was then buried in a fantastic tomb which is still being excavated. His artifacts and treasures include the famous Terracotta Army which was created for him to rule from his grave.[14][15][16]
  • 206 BC: One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, the 3rd century BC Greek Stoic philosopher, tells that he died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink to wash them down with, and then, '...having laughed too much, he died' (Diogenes Laertius 7.185).[17][18]
  • 258 AD: The Christian clergyman Saint Lawrence was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian.[19][20] Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over — I'm done on this side".[21] He is now the patron saint of cooks and firefighters.[22]

Middle Ages

  • 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumoured to have been murdered 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.[23][24] 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.[25]

Renaissance

Tycho Brahe survived a duel, losing only his nose, but later died from the effects of too much drink.

18th century

  • 1771: Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, died of digestion problems on 12 February 1771 after having consumed a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: hetvägg served in a bowl of hot milk.[40] He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."[41]

19th century

  • 1871, Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician defending a man on a charge of murder, accidentally shot himself demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself while in the process of drawing a weapon when standing from a kneeling position. Though the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was ultimately cleared, Vallandigham died from his wound.[44][45]


20th century

1920s

Isadora Duncan, ballerina, died when her long scarf, caught on the wheel of a car, broke her neck.


  • 1926: Phillip McClean, 16, from Queensland, Australia, became the only person documented to have been killed by a cassowary. After encountering the bird on their family property near Mossman in April,[48] McClean and his brother decided to kill it with clubs. When McClean struck the bird it knocked him down, then kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm (0.5 in) long cut in one of his main blood vessels. Though the boy managed to get back on his feet and run away, he collapsed a short while later and died from the haemorrhage.[49]
  • 1926: Harry Houdini, the famous American escape artist, was punched in the stomach by an amateur boxer. Though this had been done with Houdini's permission, complications from this injury may have caused him to die days later, on 31 October 1926. It was later determined that Houdini died of a ruptured appendix,[50] though it is contested as to whether or not the punches actually caused the appendicitis.[51][52]
  • 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of a broken neck when her long scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.[53]


1950s

1960s

  • 1961: U.S. Army Specialists John A. Byrnes and Richard Leroy McKinley and Navy Electrician's Mate Richard C. Legg were killed by a water hammer explosion during maintenance on the SL-1 nuclear reactor in Idaho.[56][57][58][59]

McFadden, Robert D. (4 April 2006). "Barry Bingham Jr., Louisville Publisher, Is Dead at 72". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 May 2010.</ref>

USSR postage stamp honoring Vladimir Komarov, the first person to die during a space mission
  • 1966: Skydiver Nick Piantanida died from the effects of uncontrolled decompression four months after an attempt to break the world record for the highest parachute jump. During his third attempt, his face mask came loose (or he possibly opened it by mistake), causing loss of air pressure and irreversible brain damage.[60][61]
  • 1967: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed after re-entry on April 24, 1967 due to a parachute failure

1970s

  • 1974: Basil Brown, a 48-year-old health food advocate from Croydon, drank himself to death by consuming 10 gallons of carrot juice in ten days, causing him to overdose on vitamin A and suffer severe liver damage.[62][63]
Kurt Gödel who, due to his extreme paranoia, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized
  • 1978: Kurt Gödel, the Austrian/American logician and mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else.[64]
  • 1979: Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known human to be killed by a robot,[65] after the arm of a one-ton factory robot hit him in the head.[66]
  • 1979: John Bowen, a 20-year-old from Nashua, New Hampshire, was attending a New York Jets football game at Shea Stadium on 9 December. During a half-time show event featuring custom-made remote control flying machines, a 40-pound model plane shaped like a lawnmower accidentally dove into the stands, striking Bowen and another spectator, causing severe head injuries. Bowen died in the hospital four days later.[67][68]

1980s

  • 1980: 70 year old mayor Monica Meyers of Betterton, Maryland died when she was checking the sewage tanks, she slipped on a catwalk and fell into the 25 foot tank and drowned.[69][70]
  • 1981: David Allen Kirwan, a 24-year-old, died from third-degree burns after attempting to rescue a friend's dog from the 200°F (93°C) water in Celestine Pool, a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park on 20 July 1981.[71][72]
  • 1981: Boris Sagal, a film director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter and was nearly decapitated.[73][74]
  • 1982: Vic Morrow In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, Morrow and two children, Myca Dinh Le (age 7), and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6), were filming on location in Ventura County, California, between Santa Clarita and Piru. They were performing in a scene for the Vietnam sequence in which their characters attempt to escape from a pursuing U.S. Army helicopter out of a deserted Vietnamese village. The helicopter was hovering at about 24 feet above them when pyrotechnic explosions damaged it and caused it to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Dinh were decapitated by the helicopter rotor. Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut.
  • 1982: David Grundman was killed near Lake Pleasant, Arizona, while shooting at cacti with his shotgun. After he fired several shots at a 26 ft (8 m) tall Saguaro Cactus from extremely close range, a 4 ft (1.2 m) limb of the cactus detached and fell on him, crushing him.[74][75][76]

1990s

  • 1991: Edward Juchniewicz, a 76-year-old man from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, was killed when the unattended ambulance stretcher he was strapped to rolled down a grade and overturned.[77][78]
  • 1993: Garry Hoy, a 38-year-old lawyer in Toronto, fell to his death on 9 July 1993, after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visitors that the glass was "unbreakable," a demonstration he had done many times before. The glass did not break, but popped out of the window frame.[79][80]
  • 1997: Karen Wetterhahn, a professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, died of mercury poisoning ten months after a few drops of dimethylmercury landed on her protective gloves. Although Wetterhahn had been following the required procedures for handling the chemical, it still permeated her gloves and skin within seconds. As a result of her death, regulations were altered.[81][82]
  • 1999: Jon Desborough, a physical education teacher at Liverpool College, died when he slipped and fell onto the blunt end of a javelin he was retrieving. The javelin passed through his eye socket and into his brain, causing severe brain damage and putting him into a coma. He died a month later.[83][84]

21st century

2000s

2010s

  • 2010: Mike Edwards, British founding member and cellist for the band ELO, died when a large round bale of hay rolled down the hill and smashed his car while he was out driving.[52][96][97]
  • 2011: Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, died after being stabbed in the leg at an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California U.S., by one of the birds that had a knife attached to its limb.[98][99]
  • 2012: Erica Marshall, a 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric chamber kicked the wall, released a spark from its horseshoes and triggered an explosion.[100][101][102]
  • 2012: Edward Archbold, 32, a man of West Palm Beach, Florida, died after winning a cockroach eating contest. The cause of death was determined to be accidental choking due to "arthropod body parts."[103][104]
  • 2013: An unnamed Belarusian fisherman, 60, was killed by a beaver while attempting to take a picture with the animal. The beaver bit the man, severing a large artery in his leg.[105][106]

See also

References

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  5. ^ Brett Matlock, Jesse Matlock (2011). "The Salt Lake Loonie". University of Regina Press: 81Template:Inconsistent citations {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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  7. ^ J. C. McKeown (2013), A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Cradle of Western Civilization, Oxford University Press, p. 136, ISBN 9780199982103, The unusual nature of Aeschylus's death...
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  11. ^ J. C. McKeown (2013). A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Cradle of Western Civilization. Oxford University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780199982127. 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...
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  48. ^ Christensen, Liana (2011). Deadly Beautiful: Vanishing Killers of the Animal Kingdom. Wollombi, NSW: Exisle Publishing. p. 272. ISBN 9781921497223.
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Further reading