List of unusual deaths

Antiquity

Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal (uncertain authenticity)

* 845 BC: Ancient records were discovered in North Africa describing the death of a ruler named Vondracek Beeir who was sacrificed by cutting an inch off his body starting at the bottom of his feet and working up.
* 720 BC: Bakenranef, the last king of the Twenty-fourth dynasty of Egypt was executed in an extreme form. He was captured and taken prisoner by the Nubian king Shabaka, conquerer of Lower Egypt, who burned him alive.
* 458 BC: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone. The tortoise survived.
* 454 BC: The rebel pharaoh Inarus, leader of the rebellion in Egypt against Persian rule, was taken captive to Susa after being defeated by the satrap Megabyzus. There, after five years, he was impaled on three stakes and flayed alive.
* 270 BC: The poet and grammarian Philitas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.[1]
* 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunk donkey attempt to eat figs.[2]
* 53 BC: Following his defeat at Carrhae at the hands of the Parthians under Spahbod Surena, Marcus Licinius Crassus was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat. Some accounts claim that his head was then cut off and used as a stage prop in a play performed for the Parthian king Orodes II.
* 48 BC: The Roman general Pompey, fleeing to Egypt after being defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus by his rival Julius Caesar, was stabbed, killed, and decapitated: his head was then preserved in a jar by the young king Ptolemy XIII and presented to Caesar, with whom he intended to ingratiate himself. Caesar was not pleased.
* 43 BC: Cicero, the great Roman statesman, was labelled an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate. Like all those proscribed by the Triumvirate, he was hunted down and killed; his severed hands and head were then displayed on the Rostra in the Forum for several days, during which time Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, is supposed to have stabbed his once-skilled tongue several times with a hairpin.
* 42 BC: Porcia Catonis, wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, killed herself by supposedly swallowing hot coals after hearing of her husband's death; however, modern historians claim that it is more likely that she poisoned herself with carbon monoxide, by burning coals in an unventilated room.
* 4 BC: Herod the Great suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally gave up. [3] Similar symptoms-- abdominal pains and worms-- accompanied the death of his grandson Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, after he had imprisoned St Peter. At various times, each of these deaths has been considered divine retribution.
* 64 - 67: St Peter was executed by the Romans. According to many sources, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. This is the only recorded instance of this type of crucifixion.
* 69: The short-time Roman emperor Galba was killed after becoming extremely unpopular with both the Roman people and the Praetorian guard-- however, 120 different people claimed credit for having killed him. All of these names were recorded in a list and they all were later themselves executed by the emperor Vitellius.
* C. 98 Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum, was roasted to death in a brazen bull during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. Saint Eustace, as well as his wife and children supposedly suffered a similar fate under Hadrian. The creator of the brazen bull, Perillos of Athens, was according to legend the first victim of the brazen bull when he presented his invention to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum.
* 258: St Lawrence was martyred by being burned or 'grilled' on a large metal gridiron at Rome. Images of him often show him holding the instrument of his martyrdom. Legend says that he was so strong-willed that instead of giving in to the Romans and releasing information about the Church, at the point of death he exclaimed "I am done on this side! Turn me over and eat."
* 260: According to an ancient account, Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by the King Shapur I. After a long period of punishment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had the unfortunate emperor skinned alive and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy. Only after the Sassanid dynasty's defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial.[4] (A recent report from Iran mentions the restoration of a bridge supposed to have been built by Valerian and his soldiers for Shapur in return for their freedom).[5]
* 336: Arius, the heretical priest who precipitated the Council of Nicea, passed wind and evacuated his internal organs.
* 415: The Greek mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp sea-shells and what remained of her was burned. (Various types of shells have been named: clams, oysters, abalones. Other sources claim tiles or pottery-shards were used.)

[edit] Dark Ages

* 869: Al-Jahiz, an Arab scholar from Basra and author of works on literature, history, biology, zoology, Mu'tazili philosophy and theology, and politico-religious polemics is reputed to have been killed by his own library when shelves fell over on him.

[edit] Middle Ages

* 1016: Edmund II of England was rumored to have been stabbed in the gut or bowels while he was performing his ablutions.[6]
* 1135: Henry I of England died after gorging on lampreys, his favourite food.
* 1258: Al-Musta'sim was killed during the Mongol invasion of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu, not wanting to spill royal blood, had the Caliph wrapped in a rug and trampled to death by horses.
* 1277: Pope John XXI was killed in the collapse of his scientific laboratory.[7]
* 1322: Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was fatally speared through the anus by a pikeman hidden under the bridge during the Battle of Boroughbridge.[8]
* 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.[9]
* 1410 Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.
* 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine[10] at his own request.

[edit] Renaissance

* 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.
* 1599: The Burmese king Nandabayin repotedly "laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that Venice was a free state without a king."[11]
* 1601: Tycho 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, suicide, and lead poisoning among others) have come to the fore.[12]
* 1626: Francis Bacon died of pneumonia while filling a chicken with ice in order to prove that freezing preserves food
* 1655: Pope Innocent X died and was hidden in a corner for three days by his sister-in-law and probable mistress Olimpia Maidalchini while she searched and robbed the papal palace of various treasures. Only when she had completed her search was the body allowed to be found.
* 1660: The Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, Thomas Urquhart, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.[13][14]
* 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. The authenticity of this story is questionable.[15]
* 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum, as it was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. The performance was to celebrate the king's recovery from an illness.[16]

[edit] Age of Reason

* 1751: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the author of Man a Machine, a major materialist and sensualist philosopher died of over eating at a feast given in his honor. His philosophical adversaries suggested that by doing so, he had contradicted his theoretical doctrine with the effect of his practical actions.
* 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning while observing a storm.[17]
* 1771: King of Sweden, Adolf Frederick, died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk.[citation needed] He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."[citation needed]

[edit] Modern Age

[edit] 19th century

* 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by the world's first mechanically powered passenger train (Stephenson's Rocket), at its public opening.
* 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed.[18]
* 1868: Matthew Vassar, brewer and founder of Vassar College, died in mid-speech while delivering his farewell address to the College Board of Trustees.
* 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.[19]
* 1899: French president Félix Faure died of a stroke while receiving oral sex in his office.

[edit] 20th century

* A number of performers have died of natural causes during public performances, including:
o 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.[20]
o 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.
o 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. According to legend, the last line he sang was "Morir? Tremenda cosa." ("To die? A tremendous thing.") However, witnesses say he was just past that aria and his actual last line was "Gioia, o gioia!" (Joy, oh joy!)
o 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. According to urban legend, when he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?"[21], which Cavett has recently stated in a May 2007 New York Times article was incorrect - the initial reaction to Rodale was fellow guest Pete Hamill noticing something was wrong, and saying in a low voice to Cavett, "This looks bad."[22] The show was never broadcast.
o 1984: English comedian Tommy Cooper collapsed from a massive heart attack live in front of the audience midway through his act at Her Majesty's theatre. At first the audience assumed he was joking, and started applauding.
o 1987: Dick Shawn, a comedian who starred in the 1968 movie The Producers, died of a heart attack while portraying a politician. Just before he died, he announced, "if elected, I will not lay down on the job,".

* A number of performers have died from unnatural causes during a practice or public performance, including:
o 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero, died as a result of a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands. He accidentally pierced his knee. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.
o 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.
o 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar—he was electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded.[23]
o 1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWE died during a Pay-Per-View event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet, bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood. The PPV continued even after he was pronounced dead.

* 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.[24]
* 1912: Tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he'd told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.
* 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was poisoned while dining with a political enemy, and supposedly he was given enough poison to kill three men his size. When he did not die, one assassin sneaked up behind him and shot him in the head, and while checking Grigori's pulse the mystic grabbed him by the neck and strangled him. He proceeded to run away, while the other assassins chased. They caught up to him after he was finally felled by three shots during the chase. The pursuers bludgeoned him, then threw him into a frozen river. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be drowning. There is now some doubt about the credibility of this account, though.
* 1920: Baseball player Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch.
* 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon became the first to die from the alleged King Tut's Curse after a mosquito bite on his face became seriously infected.
* 1923: 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.
* 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. 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.[25]
* 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when one of the long scarves she was known for caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.[26]
* 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.[27]
* 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.[28]
* 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.[29]
* 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.
* 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
* 1945: Scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a brick of tungsten carbide onto a sphere of plutonium while working on the Manhattan Project. This caused the plutonium to come to criticality; Daghlian died of radiation poisoning, becoming the first person to die in a criticality accident.
* 1945: Anton Webern, the Austrian composer, was accidentally shot dead by an American Army soldier on 15 Sept. 1945, during the Allied occupation of Austria. Despite the curfew in effect, he stepped outside the house to enjoy a cigar without disturbing his sleeping grandchildren.
* 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.
* 1950: Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire suffered a heart attack and died in Eastbourne, UK in the presence of his doctor, John Bodkin Adams, the suspected serial killer. 13 days earlier, Mrs Edith Alice Morrell — another patient of Adams — had also died. Adams was controversially acquitted of her murder in 1957 but pathologist Francis Camps linked Adams to 163 suspicious deaths in total, which would make him the second most prolific killer in British history after Harold Shipman.
* 1956: Artist Nina Hamnett died from complications after falling out her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below.
* 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.
* 1961: On March 23, Soviet cosmonaut trainee Valentin Bondarenko died from shock after suffering third-degree burns over much of his body, due to a flash fire in the pure oxygen environment of a training simulator. This incident was not revealed outside of the Soviet Union until the 1980s.
* 1967: In a similar incident, a flash fire began in the pure oxygen environment during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The door to the capsule was unable to be opened during the fire because of its particular design. Had the Soviet Union revealed the earlier death of Valentin Bondarenko, this incident could likely have been avoided.
* 1963: On June 11th Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, sat down in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, covered himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire burning himself to death. Đức was protesting President Ngô Đình Diệm's administration for oppressing the Buddhist religion.
* 1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.
* 1967: On Dec. 17 Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, went for a swim at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria, Australia. He was never seen again. Rumors and theories include suicide, kidnapping by submarine, and shark attack; the true cause remains unknown.
* 1973: Péter Vályi, finance minister of Hungary fell into a blast furnace (some sources say a pit of molten iron) on a visit to a steelworks factory at Miskolc.[30][31][32]
* 1973: Bruce Lee, a martial arts actor, is thought to have died by a severe allergic reaction to Equagesic. His brain had swollen about 13%. His autopsy was written as "death by misadventure."
* 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.
* 1974: Austrian Formula One driver Helmut Koinigg died in a crash in the 1974 United States Grand Prix at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Race Course in Watkins Glen, New York. On approaching a corner, a suspension failure sent Koinigg's car crashing head-on into the outer Armco barrier. The bottom rail gave way but the top rail did not. Helmut Koinigg was decapitated and died instantly, in what was only his second Formula One race.
* 1975: On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn literally died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing while watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Lancashire martial art of Ecky-thump. After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure.
* 1975: The legendary Japanese kabuki actor Bandō Mitsugorō VIII died of severe poisoning when he ate four fugu livers (also known as pufferfish). The liver is considered one of the most (if not most) poisonous part of the fish, but Mitsugorō claimed to be immune to the poison. The fugu chef felt he could not refuse Mitsugorō and lost his license as a result.
* 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 struck in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.[33]
* 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: 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.
* 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: Carl McCunn, in March 1981, paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska to photograph wildlife, but had not arranged for the pilot to pick him up again in August. Rather than starve, McCunn shot himself in the head. His body was found in February 1982.
* 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 decapitated.
* 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 (decapitated) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (crushed).
* 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, penetrated his mask, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.
* 1983: A diver on the Byford Dolphin oil exploration rig was violently dismembered and pulled through a narrowly opened hatch when the decompression chamber was accidentally opened, causing explosive decompression.
* 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.
* 1983: Author Tennessee Williams died at the age of 71 after he choked on a eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. His brother Dakin and some friends believed he was murdered. The police report, however, suggested his use of drugs and alcohol contributed to his death. Many prescription drugs were found in the room. Williams' lack of gag response may have been due to drugs and alcohol effects.
* 1984: An unidentified man died of presumed natural causes in the unfinished Tokyo apartment building in which he had been squatting for 11 years. His decomposed remains were discovered 20 years later, on June 1, 2004[34], with a newspaper dated February 20, 1984 by his side.[35]
* 1984: Jim Fixx, who wrote "The Complete Book of Running" and lectured about how running and a healthy diet would promote longevity, dropped dead from a heart attack while running. An autopsy revealed he had 3 massively blocked heart arteries.
* 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. Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired at point-blank range.
* 1986: While on the air giving a traffic report, the helicopter that Jane Dornacker was riding in stalled and crashed into the Hudson River, killing her. This was the second helicopter crash she had been in that year.
* 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.[36]
* 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players gave him a Gatorade Shower following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football). Some argue this resulted in pneumonia.
* 1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene Brandon was in; this caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. However, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge's explosion out of the barrel and into Lee's body. Although the bullet was traveling much slower than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet's large size and the nearly point-blank firing distance made it powerful enough to severely wound Lee. It was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting. Interestingly, the incident was almost an exact replica of a scene in his father Bruce Lee's last film Game of Death, during the filming of which Bruce Lee also died. Even more bizarrely yet; the plot of Game of Death revolved around Bruce Lee's character, a kung-fu actor, faking his own death - by pretending to have been hit by an accidentally fired real bullet while filming a scene where hundreds of blanks were fired at him.
* 1993: Garry Hoy, a Toronto lawyer, fell to his death after he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was "unbreakable."
* 1994: Stephen Milligan, a British polician who was at the time the Member for Eastleigh in the House of Commons, died in an apparent case of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Milligan was also believed to have been engaging in acts of self-bondage and cross-dressing at the time of his death.
* 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
* 1998: Daniel V. Jones was a former hotel maintenance worker in Long Beach, California who shot himself through the chin on the Los Angeles expressway on live television. His suicide was apparently caused by his resentment against his HMO for inadequately treating him when he was diagnosed with cancer and HIV.
* 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 depicted in the film Open Water.
* 1999: Popular British TV entertainer Rod Hull died following a fall from the roof of his home at Winchelsea, near Rye. He was attempting to adjust the TV aerial in order to get a better picture of the Inter Milan v Manchester United Champions League Quarter Final, 2nd Leg.

[edit] 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. This is referred to in the songs "Eaten" by Swedish Death Metal band Bloodbath and "Mein Teil" ("My Part") by German NDH band Rammstein.[37]
* 2002: Brittanie Cecil, an American 13-year-old hockey fan, died two days after being struck in the head by a hockey puck at a game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Calgary Flames at Nationwide Arena.
* 2003: Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man in Erie, PA, 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 later exploded, killing him. In 2007, police alleged Wells was involved in the robbery plot along with two other conspirators.[38]
* 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 a bear, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man.[39]
* 2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Seattle died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion. 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.[40] His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film Zoo.
* 2005: 28-year-old South Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing Starcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.[41]
* 2005: Gerry Marshall, a british Saloon Car racing driver, died of a heart attack at the wheel of an IROC Chevrolet Camero at Silverstone racing circuit. Marshall managed to bring the car to a halt before expiring, and stopped close to the BRDC suite he frequented in his earlier career. Marshall is notable for holding the record for most race wins in a career, 623.
* 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 a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef. The stingray was not the creature being filmed.[42]
* 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB operative and Russian expatriate who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was intentionally poisoned with polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid.[43]
* 2006: Cheryl Sarate, a 16 year old student in the Philippines, died of severe burns suffered when her costume caught fire during a college beauty pageant.
* 2006: Megan Meier, a 13 year-old girl from Missouri committed suicide after being rejected by a boy she made friends with over Myspace, which turned out to be a fake profile made by the mother of a friend of Meier's.
* 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating. She placed second in the contest. [44] [45]
* 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an internet chat session.[46]
* 2007: Surinder Singh Bajwa, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India, was kicked by a Rhesus Macaque monkey at his home and fell from a first floor balcony, suffering serious head injuries. He later died from his injuries. [47]

[edit] References

1. ^ Donaldson, John William and Müller, Karl Otfried. A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, p. 262. London: John W. Parker and Son, 1858.
2. ^ ibid., p. 27.
3. ^ Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 17, Chapter 6
4. ^ Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, v; Wickert, L., "Licinius (Egnatius) 84" in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie 13.1 (1926), 488-495; Parker, H., A History of the Roman World A.D. 138 to 337 (London, 1958), 170. From [1].
5. ^ "Iran to restore ancient bridge built by captive Roman emperor" Press TV, 02 Mar 2007
6. ^ Henry of Huntingdon (tr. Thomas Forester). The Penis of Henry of Huntingdon, p. 196. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853.
7. ^ Joseph Epiphane Darras and White, Charles Ignatius. A General History of the Catholic Church: From the Life of the Christian Era to the Twentieth Century, pp. 406-7. New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1898.
8. ^ Mortimer, Ian (2006). The Greatest Traitor. Unknown: Thomas Dunne Books. p. 124
9. ^ Schama, Simon (2000). A History of Great Britain: 3000BC-AD1603. London: BBC Worldwide. p.220
10. ^ Thompson, C. J. S. Mysteries of History with Accounts of Some Remarkable Characters and Charlatans, pp. 31 ff. Kila, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
11. ^ Schott, Ben (2003). Schott's Original Miscellany. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 0-7475-6320-9.
12. ^ [2]
13. ^ Brown, Huntington (1968). Rabelais in English Literature. Routledge, p. 126. ISBN 0-714-620-513.
14. ^ (1861) The History of Scotish Poetry. Edmonston & Douglas, p. 539.
15. ^ Bartelby, but it states the authenticity is doubtful.
16. ^ Biography at Vanderbilt University
17. ^ [3]
18. ^ University of Maryland: The source is uncertain if the bull fell in before or after him.
19. ^ Scotsman.com
20. ^ BBC
21. ^ http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/onstage.htm
22. ^ http://donkeyod.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/when-that-guy-died-on-my-show/ Reprint of NYT article by Cavett
23. ^ http://www.elvispelvis.com/electrocuted.htm
24. ^ Haig, Matt. Brand Royalty: how the world's top 100 brands thrive and survive, p. 197. London: Kogan Page, 2004.
25. ^ Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: her life and soul, p. 162. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
26. ^ UCLA newsroom
27. ^ Bogdanov, Alexander (tr. & ed. Douglas W. Huestis). The Struggle for Viability: Collectivism Through Blood Exchange, p. 7. Tinicum, PA: Xlibris Corporation, 2002.
28. ^ Read, Simon (2005). The Bizarre Killing of Michael Malloy. Penguin Book Group.
29. ^ Virginia Tech article
30. ^ http://www.cherwell.org/features/how_would_you_like_to_die
31. ^ http://www.brewlab.co.uk/pdf/back%20to%20school.pdf
32. ^ http://www.rev.hu/html/en/films/industrial.htm
33. ^ Tremayne, David [August 2006]. "Chapter 19 - A Moment Of Desperate Sadness", The Lost Generation (in English). Haynes Publishing. ISBN 1-84425-205-1.
34. ^ Tokyo Times
35. ^ Goofball News
36. ^ Snopes.com, on a list of those who "died on stage."
37. ^ "German cannibal guilty of murder", BBC News, May 9, 2006
38. ^ [4] www.komotv.com. Feb 16th 2007. Retrieved August 9th, 2007.
39. ^ Medred, Craig.Wildlife author killed, eaten by bears he loved. Anchorage Daily News. October 8, 2003. Retrieved September 4, 2006.
40. ^ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002569751_horsesex19m.html
41. ^ "Korean drops dead after 50-hour gaming marathon", Times Online, August 10, 2005
42. ^ http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20355064-30417,00.html
43. ^ Russian ex-spy dies in hospital
44. ^ "Woman dies after being in water-drinking contest", The Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2007
45. ^ "Woman's Death After Water-Drinking Contest Investigated" KNBC.com, January 16, 2007
46. ^ Bale, Joanna (2007-03-24). Get on with it, said net audience as man hanged himself on webcam. Times Online. Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved on 2007-05-27.
47. ^ [5]