List of unusual deaths

This is a list of unusual deaths – unique causes or extremely rare circumstances – recorded throughout history. The list also includes less rare, but still unusual, deaths of prominent persons.

To be included on this list, an unusual death has to receive mention in the Wikipedia article of a person, or the death itself has to be the focus of a Wikipedia article.

Antiquity

Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal

• 270 BC: The poet and grammarian Philetas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.
• 212 BC: Archimedes, a Greek mathematician, was said to have have been doing a math problem in the sand of his town,Syracuse, Sicily, when an army invaded. A solider interrupted Archimedes who just replied, "Do not disturb my circles". The solider then killed him.
• 207 BC: Chrysippus, Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.
• 260: Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by their king Shapur I. After a long period of treatment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had molten gold poured down Valerian's throat. He then had the unfortunate emperor skinned and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple. Only after Persia's defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial.

Middle Ages

• 1016: Edmund II of England was rumoured to have been stabbed in the gut or bowels whilst he was performing his ablutions.
• 1277: Pope John XXI was killed in the collapse of his scientific laboratory.
• 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.
• 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine.

Early Modern Times

• 1514: György Dózsa, leader of a peasants' revolt in the Kingdom of Hungary, was roasted alive on a white hot iron chair. His captured companions were forced to eat his flesh.
• 1559: King Henry II of France was killed during a stunt knight's jousting match, when his helmet's soft golden grille gave way to a broken lancetip which pierced his eye and entered his brain.
• 1573: Matija Gubec, leader of a peasant's revolt in the Kingdom of Croatia, was crowned with a white hot iron crown as "peasant king"
• 1601: Tyco Brahe, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler or perhaps suicide) have come to the fore.
• 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn't stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish.
• 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum. The performance was to celebrate the king's recovery from an illness.
• 1716: Banda Bahadur, a Sikh military leader, was tortured and executed by gouging his eyes out, followed by slashing his limbs off. The executioner went on to tear his flesh off with red-hot pincers.
• 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning while observing a storm.
• 1799: Constantine Hangerli, Prince of Wallachia, was arrested by a kapucu and a Moor, and immediately executed by being strangled, shot, stabbed, and decapitated in quick succession.

Modern Age

19th century

• 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was mauled and possibly crushed.
• 1861: Noble Leslie Devotie, founder of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, died as he was about to board a steamer at Fort Morgan, Alabama, he made a misstep and fell into the water. Three days later his body was washed ashore. He was the first man to lose his life in the Civil War.
• 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.
• 1899: French president Félix Faure died of a stroke while being fellated in his office.

20th century

• 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination code.
• 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, died of drowning while trapped under ice. Although the details of his murder are disputed, he was allegedly placed in the water through a hole in the winter ice after having been poisoned, bludgeoned, castrated, and shot multiple times in the head, lung, and liver.
• 1920: Baseball player Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch. He remains the only Major League Baseball player to date to have been killed in a game.
• 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero died during a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands when his knee was accidentally pierced. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.
• 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under duress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.
• 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when her scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
• 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.
• 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure, and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they'd purchased.
• 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.
• 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.
• 1943: Lady be Good, a USAAF B-24 bomber lost its way and crash landed in the Libyan Desert. Mummified remains of its crew, who struggled for a week without water, were not found until 1960.
• 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during a discussion on Adolf Hitler.
• 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
• 1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
• 1953: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, Sweet Kiss, went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.
• 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones's absence.
• 1960: Baritone Leonard Warren collapsed on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera of a major stroke during a performance of La forza del destino. The last line he sang was "Morir? Tremenda cosa." ("To die? A tremendous thing.")
• 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet rocket technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket. Red Army Marshal Nedelin was seated just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations.
• 1967: A flash fire began in the pure oxygen atmosphere inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing its crew during a training exercise.
• 1967 Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy.
• 1967: Harold Holt, the serving Prime Minister of Australia, vanished while swimming on a beach near Melbourne. His body was never found.
• 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. When he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?". The show was never broadcast.
• 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.
• 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.
• 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for british rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar, electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded .
• 1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver, and a 19-year-old track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce's car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was hit in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.
• 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated by poisoning in London by an unknown assailant who jabbed him in the calf with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin poison.
• 1978: Claude François, a French pop singer, was accidentally electrocuted when he tried to fix a broken light bulb while standing in a filled bathtub.
• 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.
• 1979: Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States, died from a heart attack while banging Megan Marshack on the desk in his office.
• 1981: Knud Ejler Løgstrup, a Danish philosopher and theologian, died from a heart attack after chasing a mouse in his kitchen.
• 1981: A 25-year-old Dutch woman studying in Paris, Renée Hartevelt, was killed and eaten by a classmate, Issei Sagawa, when he invited her to dinner for a literary conversation. The killer was declared unfit to stand trial and extradited back to Japan, where he was released from custody within fifteen months.
• 1981: Boris Sagal, a motion picture-director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail-rotor blade of a helicopter and was mortally injured.
• 1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, along with two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.
• 1982: Roberto Calvi, Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, was found by a postman hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London. His pockets were stuffed with stones and cash.
• 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.
• 1983: Tennessee Williams, American playwright, died choking on a bottle cap. He was in a hotel but was too drunk to leave his room or make sufficient noise to attract attention.
• 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during World University Games. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position, he smashed his head on the board and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.
• 1984: Tommy Cooper, British television magician, died on stage of a heart attack at Her Majesty's Theatre during a live television routine. Most of the audience and viewers believed it was part of his act.
• 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. Whether he committed suicide or was simply unaware of the potentially deadly effects of the blank round was not determined.
• 1985: Karel Soucek, daredevil, was fatally wounded attempting to recreate his successful 1984 plunge over Niagara Falls. Soucek staged a fundraising stunt in the Houston Astrodome, the crux of which was having him, in his capsule, dropped 180 ft. into a tank of water. The falling capsule hit the rim of the tank, causing injuries from which he would die the next day.
• 1987: Dick Shawn, aged 63, an actor and comedian, died onstage on April 17, during a monologue about the Holocaust in San Diego, California. Due to the nature of his act, audience members were at first unaware that he had suffered a massive heart attack.
• 1987: R. Budd Dwyer, a Republican politician, committed suicide during a televised press conference. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.
• 1990: Joseph W. Burrus, aged 32, an aspiring magician, decided to perform the "buried alive" illusion in a plastic box covered with cement. The cement crushed the box and he died of asphyxia.
• 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players dumped a Gatorade bucket on him following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football), resulting in pneumonia.
• 1993: Brandon Lee was shot and killed by a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. The scene involved the firing of a full-powder blank (full charge of gunpowder, but no bullet) at Brandon's character. Unknown to the film crew/firearms technician, a bullet was already lodged in the barrel.
• 1993: Wong Ka Kui, leader of the popular Hong Kong prog rock band Beyond, died following a coma, one week after falling 7 feet from the raised stage of a game show when a panel gave way.
• 1994: Stephen Milligan, UK journalist and conservative politician, died due to autoerotic asphyxiation.
• 1994: Ayrton Senna, a former three time Formula One world champion, died at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix after crashing at the Tamburello corner while leading, hitting the wall head-on at 218 km/h (135 mph). Senna's injuries were caused by the front right tire with attached suspension piece, which became loose on impact, hit Senna on the head and pierced his visor, and caused a fatal cranial trauma.
• 1996: "The Engineer" Yahya Ayyash, chief Palestinian bombmaker for Hamas, was assassinated by way of a Shin Bet (Shabak) rigged mobile phone, which detonated when he answered a call.
• 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. The couple was left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident is described in the film Open Water.
• 1998: American film director Alan J. Pakula died in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway in New York when a driver in front of him struck a metal pipe, which subsequently flew through Pakula's windshield and struck him in the head, causing him to swerve off the road and into a fence, killing him instantly.
• 1999: Owen Hart, a World Wrestling Federation wrestler, died before a match when he fell 78 feet onto a metal turnbuckle after accidentally triggering an early release from a cable that was lowering him from the stadium rafters into the ring. He had been scheduled to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship that night.

21st century

• 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten.
• 2001: Ahmed Shah Massoud was killed by a video camera containing an explosive. He was apparently about to conduct an interview with two men posing as journalists.
• 2003: Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb then exploded, killing him.
• 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.
• 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by bears, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in the documentary film Grizzly Man.
• 2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Seattle died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion in the town of Enumclaw, Washington. Pinyan had done this before, and he delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance for official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington.
• 2005: 28-year-old Korean video game addict Lee Seung Seop collapsed in an Internet cafe after playing Starcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours.
• 2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming in Queensland's Batt Reef.
• 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was poisoned by polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid.
• 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Nintendo Wii in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.

2007: anna nicole smith dies of being a total drigged up hoe

See also

• Toilet-related injury
• List of inventors killed by their own inventions
• Darwin Awards