List of unusual deaths

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

The death of Aeschylus illustrated in the 15th-century Florentine Picture Chronicle by Maso Finiguerra[1]

Antiquity

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Draco of Athens c. 620 BC Draco, an Athenian lawmaker, was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.[2][3]
Charondas
Late 7th to early 5th century BC Charondas was a Greek lawgiver from Sicily.[4][5] According to Diodorus Siculus, he issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death.[4][5][6] One day, he arrived at the Assembly seeking help to defeat some brigands in the countryside but with a knife still attached to his belt.[4][5] In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide.[4][5][6]
Arrhichion of Phigalia
564 BC Arrichion of Phigalia, a Greek pankratiast, caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time broke Arrichion's neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously.[7][8]
Sisamnes
c. 525 BC According to Herodotus, Sisamnes was a corrupt judge under Cambyses II of Persia. He accepted a bribe and delivered an unjust verdict. As a result, the king had him arrested and flayed alive. His skin was then used to cover the seat in which his son would sit in judgment.[9][10]
Pythagoras of Samos
c. 495 BC Ancient sources disagree on how the Greek philosopher Pythagoras died,[11][12] but one late and probably apocryphal legend reported by both Diogenes Laërtius, a third-century AD biographer of famous philosophers, and Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist philosopher, states that Pythagoras was murdered by his political enemies.[12] Supposedly, he almost managed to outrun them,[12] but he came to a bean field and refused to run through it because he had prohibited beans as ritually unclean.[13][12] Since cutting through the field would violate his own teachings, Pythagoras simply stopped running and was killed.[12] This story may have been fabricated by Neanthes of Cyzicus, on whom both Diogenes and Iamblichus rely as a source.[12]
Heraclitus of Ephesus
c. 475 BC According to one account given by Diogenes Laërtius, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy.[14][15]
Themistocles
c. 459 BC Themistocles, the Athenian general who won the Battle of Salamis, actually died of natural causes in exile,[16][17] but was widely rumored to have committed suicide by drinking bull's blood.[16][17][18][19] Since bull's blood is not actually poisonous,[17] Themistocles cannot have died in this way,[17] but the legend is widely retold in classical sources.[17] The early twentieth-century English classicist Percy Gardner proposed that the story about him drinking bull's blood may have been based on an ignorant misunderstanding of a statue showing Themistocles in a heroic pose, holding a cup as an offering to the gods.[17] The comedic playwright Aristophanes references Themistocles drinking bull's blood in his comedy The Knights (performed in 324 BC) as the most heroic way for a man to die.[17][20]
Aeschylus
c. 455 BC According to Valerius Maximus, Aeschylus, 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, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.[21][22][23]
Empedocles of Akragas
c. 430 BC Empedocles of Acragas was a Pre-Socratic philosopher from the island of Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declares himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal".[24] According to Diogenes Laërtius, he tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano.[25][26] This legend is also alluded to by the Roman poet Horace.[27]
Sophocles
c. 406 BC A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of Sophocles, another of the three great Athenian tragedians, are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles.[21] According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape.[21] Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been victorious.[21] 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 commas or punctuation.[21]
Mithridates 401 BC Mithridates, a 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.[28][29]
Democritus of Abdera
c. 370 BC According to Diogenes Laërtius, the Greek Atomist philosopher Democritus of Abdera died at the age of 109;[30][31] as he was on his deathbed, his sister was greatly worried because she needed to fulfill her religious obligations to the goddess Artemis in the approaching three-day Thesmophoria festival.[30][31] Democritus told her to place a loaf of warm bread under his nose[30][31] and was able to survive for the three days of the festival by sniffing it.[30][31] He died immediately after the festival was over.[30][31]
Antiphanes c. 310 BC Antiphanes was a renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy. The Suda claims he died after being struck by a pear.[32][33]
Agathocles of Syracuse
289 BC Agathocles, a Greek tyrant of Syracuse, was murdered with a poisoned toothpick.[34]
Philitas of Cos
c. 270 BC Philitas of Cos, a Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death.[35] British classicist Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.[36]
Qin Shi Huang
10 September 210 BC Qin Shi Huang, 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 eternal life.[37][38][39]
Chrysippus of Soli
c. 206 BC One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, a third-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 Laërtius 7.185).[40]
Eleazar Avaran
c. 163 BC Eleazar Avaran was the brother of Judas Maccabeus. According to 1 Maccabees 6:46, in battle, he thrust his spear into the belly of a king's war elephant, which collapsed and fell on top of Eleazar, killing him instantly.[41]
Porcia Catonis
June 43 to October 42 BC The daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis and second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, according to ancient historians such as Cassius Dio and Appian killed herself by swallowing hot coals.[42] Modern historians find this tale implausible.[43]
Claudius Drusus c. 20 AD According to Suetonius, Claudius Drusus, the eldest son of the future Roman emperor Claudius, died while playing. Having tossed a pear high in the air, when it came back, he caught it in his mouth but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.[44]
Tiberius
16 March 37 AD The Roman emperor Tiberius died in Misenum at the age of seventy-eight. According to Tacitus, the emperor appeared to have died and Caligula, who was at Tiberius' villa, was being congratulated on his succession to the empire, when news arrived that the emperor had revived and was recovering his faculties. Those who had moments before recognized Caligula as Augustus fled in fear of the emperor's wrath, while Macro, a prefect of the Praetorian Guard, took advantage of the chaos to have Tiberius smothered with his own bedclothes, definitively killing him.[45]
Simon the Zealot
1st century AD According to an ancient tradition, Simon, an apostle of Jesus, was sawn in half in Persia.[46]
Saint Lawrence
258 AD The deacon Saint Lawrence was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian.[47][48] Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over—I'm done on this side".[49] He is now the patron saint of cooks, chefs and comedians.[50]

Middle Ages

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Ragnar Lodbrok
c. 865 Ragnar Lodbrok, a semi-legendary Viking leader whose exploits are narrated in the Ragnars saga loðbrókar, a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga, is said to have been captured by Ælla of Northumbria, who had him executed by throwing him into a pit of snakes.[51]
Louis III of France
5 August 882 Louis III, 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.[52]
Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney 892 Sigurd the Mighty, 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.[53]
Edmund Ironside
30 November 1016 Edmund Ironside, King of England in 1016, was allegedly stabbed whilst on a toilet, by an assassin hiding underneath.
Béla I of Hungary
11 September 1063 Béla I of Hungary, when the Holy Roman Empire decided to launch a military expedition against Hungary to restore young Solomon to the throne, was seriously injured when "his throne broke beneath him" in his manor at Dömös.[54] The King—who was "half-dead", according to the Illuminated Chronicle—was taken to the western borders of his kingdom, where he died at the creek Kanizsa on 11 September 1063.[55][56]
Crown Prince Philip of France
13 October 1131 Crown Prince Philip of France died while riding through Paris, when his horse tripped over a black pig running out of a dung heap.[57]
Henry I of England
1 December 1135 While visiting relatives, Henry supposedly ate too many lampreys against his physician's advice, causing a pain in his gut and ultimately his death.[58]
Al-Musta'sim
20 February 1258 Al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.[59]
Edward II of England
21 September 1327 Edward II of England 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.[60][61] 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.[62]
John of Bohemia
26 August 1346 John of Bohemia, after being blind for 10 years, died in the Battle of Crecy when—at his command—his companions tied their horses' reins to his own and charged. He was slaughtered in the ensuing fight.[63][64]
Charles II of Navarre
1 January 1387 Charles II of Navarre known as "Charles the Bad". The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that the king, 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 Charles later died of his injuries. Froissart considered the horrific death to be God's judgment upon the king.[65][66][67]
Martin of Aragon
31 May 1410 Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to tradition, Martin was suffering from indigestion on account of 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.[68][69]

Renaissance

Name of person Image Date of death Details
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
18 February 1478 George Plantagenet, 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.[70]
Victims of the 1518 dancing plague
July 1518 In July 1518, several people died of either heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion during a dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (Holy Roman Empire).[71][72]
Cosimo Gheri 24 September 1537 According to the Florentine historian Benedetto Varchi, Cosimo Gheri, the 24-year-old Bishop of Fano (Papal States), died of pain due to the shock of having been raped by Pier Luigi Farnese, son of Pope Paul III (see Rape of Fano).[73][74][75] But the event is far from certain.[76]
Pietro Aretino
21 October 1556 The influential Italian author and libertine Pietro Aretino 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.[77]
Hans Staininger
1567 Hans Staininger, the burgomaster of Braunau (then Bavaria, now Austria), died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard.[78] The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch.[79]
Marco Antonio Bragadin
17 August 1571 Marco Antonio Bragadin, Venetian Captain-General of Famagusta in Cyprus, was gruesomely killed in August 1571 after the Ottomans took the city. He was dragged round 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.[80] 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 brought 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.[81]
Tycho Brahe
24 October 1601 Tycho Brahe contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague, and died eleven days later. According to Kepler's first-hand account, Brahe had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette.[82][83] After he had returned home he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain.[84]

Early modern period

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Thomas Urquhart
1660 Thomas Urquhart, a 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.[85][86]
James Betts 1667 James Betts 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.[87][88]
François Vatel
24 April 1671 Vatel, 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.[89]
Molière
17 February 1673[90] The French playwright Molière suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the character Argan, a severe hypochondriac, in his own play Le malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid).[90][91] He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show,[90] which included a scene in which the character he was playing faked his own death to find out how his wife really felt about him.[90][92] After the show, Molière's actual wife, who played the daughter of his character, realized that he really was ill[90] and carried him across the street to their house in the same chair he had pretended to die in as part of the performance.[90] He began coughing up blood and she sent for a priest to hear him renounce his acting career so he could be buried on sacred ground,[90] but Molière died before a sympathetic priest could be found.[90][91]
Bhai Mati Das

Bhai Sati Das

Bhai Dayala

1675 Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayala are revered as early Sikh martyrs. By order of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, Bhai Mati Das was executed by being bound between two pillars and sawn in half,[93] while his younger brother Bhai Sati Das wrapped in cotton wool soaked in oil and set on fire[94] and Bhai Dayala was boiled in a cauldron full of water and roasted over a block of charcoal.[95]
Jean-Baptiste Lully
22 March 1687 Jean-Baptiste Lully, 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.[96] He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.[97]
Stanisław Leszczyński
23 February 1766 The former King Stanisław I of Poland, father-in-law of Louis XV of France, died in 1766, at the age of 88, as a result of serious burns: his silk attire caught fire from a spark while the King was snoozing near the fireplace in his palace in Lunéville on 5 February. Leszczyński was badly burned when the servants rescued him after a while, but he died after many days of agony.[98]
Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden
12 February 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: semla served in a bowl of hot milk, called "hetvägg".[99] He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."[100]

19th century

Name of person Image Date of death Details
William Snyder 11 January 1854 William Snyder, a 13-year-old, died in San Francisco, California, when a circus clown swung him around by his heels.[101][102]
Mathilda of Austria
6 June 1867 Archduchess Mathilda of Austria, daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, died at the age of 18 in Schloss Hetzendorf. She had put on a gauze dress to go to the theatre. Before leaving for the theatre, she wanted to smoke a cigarette but shortly thereafter her father, who had forbidden smoking, approached her, and she hid the cigarette behind her dress, immediately setting light to its very flammable material and giving her second and third-degree burns.[103]
Clement Vallandigham
17 June 1871 Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself and died while demonstrating how the victim might have accidentally shot himself. His client was cleared.[104][105]
Henry Taylor November 1872 Henry Taylor, a pall bearer at Kensal Green Cemetery in London, tripped over a stone and stumbled as he was carrying a coffin.[106] The other pall bearers let go of the coffin[106] and it fell on top of Taylor, crushing him to death in front of all the mourners.[106] The widow of the man in the coffin reportedly "nearly went into hysterics".[106]
Sunanda Kumariratana
31 May 1880 The Queen of Siam, Sunanda Kumariratana, and her unborn daughter drowned when her royal boat capsized on the way to the Bang Pa-In Royal Palace. The many witnesses to the accident did not dare to touch the queen, a capital offense—not even to save her life.[107]
Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet 19 December 1881 Sir William Payne-Gallwey, a former British MP, sustained "severe internal injuries" when he fell over and landed on a turnip while out hunting. He died a few days later.[108][109]
Allan Pinkerton
1 July 1884 Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, was in Chicago, Illinois when he tripped on the pavement and severely bit on his tongue.[110] His tongue became infected with gangrene, ultimately leading to his death.[110]
Unknown 22 August 1888 At around 8.30pm, a shower of meteorite pieces fell “like rain” on a village in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire). One man died from the impact of one of the pieces, while another was also hit but was left paralysed. Corroborated by several official sources, the man's death is considered the first (and, as of 2020, only) credible evidence of a person being killed by a meteorite.[111]
Bridget Driscoll
17 August 1896 Bridget Driscoll was the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car.[112][113] As 44-year-old Driscoll, with her teenage daughter May and her friend Elizabeth Murphy, crossed Dolphin Terrace in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, Driscoll was struck by a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company that was being used to give demonstration rides.[113]
Empress Elisabeth of Austria
10 September 1898 During a trip in Geneva, Empress Elisabeth of Austria was stabbed to death, with a thin file, by the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni. The weapon pierced the victim's pericardium, and a lung. Because of the sharpness and thinness of the file the wound was very narrow and, due to pressure from Elisabeth's extremely tight corseting, which was usually sewn onto her, she did not notice what had happened (in fact she believed a simple passerby had hit her) and continued to walk for a while before collapsing.[114][115]

20th century

1901–1960

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Unknown Early 1903 An unnamed person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu.[116] The victim was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons;[117] the Kahuna was brought up on a charge of manslaughter.[118]
Grigori Rasputin
30 December

[O.S. 17 December] 1916

According to the Russian mystic's murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine which had been laced with cyanide but he did not appear to be affected by the poison. 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 Rasputin's body and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.[119]
Twenty-one people
15 January 1919 A large storage tank burst in Boston's North End, releasing a wave of molasses which killed 21 people and injured 150. This event was later dubbed the Great Molasses Flood.[120][121]
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon
5 April 1923 George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who financed 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.[122][123]
Frank Hayes 4 June 1924 Frank Hayes, a 35-year-old jockey of Elmont, New York won his first and only race when he was dead. Riding a horse, Sweet Kiss, Frank suffered a fatal heart attack mid-race and collapsed on the horse. Sweet Kiss managed to still win with Frank Hayes' body on it, meaning he technically won.[124][125]
Thornton Jones 1924 Jones, a lawyer in Bangor, Wales, woke up to find that he had his throat slit. Motioning for a paper and a pencil, he wrote: "I dreamt that I had done it. I awoke to find it true," and died 80 minutes later. He had slit his throat himself while unconscious.[126] An inquest at Bangor delivered a verdict of "suicide while temporarily insane."[127]
Bobby Leach
1926 Bobby Leach, an American stunt performer, died after a botched amputation of the infected leg which he had broken after slipping on an orange peel.[128]
Phillip McClean 1926 Phillip McClean, aged 16, and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland,[129] when the bird knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[130]
Isadora Duncan
14 September 1927 Isadora Duncan, a dancer, broke her neck when her long scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.[131]
Nicholas Comper 17 June 1939 Aviator and aircraft designer Nicholas Comper was stopped from lighting a firework in a pub in Hythe, Kent. Outside, he attempted again to light it and a passer-by enquired what he was doing. His reply, that he was an IRA man and was going to blow up the town hall, prompted the passer-by to knock him down. Comper hit his head on the kerb, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died later in hospital.[132]
Sherwood Anderson
8 March 1941 Sherwood Anderson, an American writer, died after an accidentally swallowed toothpick had damaged his gastrointestinal tract, causing an infection which led to peritonitis.[133]
Mary Reeser 2 July 1951 Mary Reeser's body was found almost totally cremated by police. While the body was cremated where Reeser sat the apartment was relatively damage free. Some speculate Reeser spontaneously combusted.[134]
Gareth Jones 1958 Gareth Jones, an actor, died of a heart attack between scenes of a live television play, Underground. Other members of the cast improvised lines, such as "I'm sure if So‑and‑so were here he would say..." to compensate for Jones's absence. Coincidentally, Jones's character was supposed to die of a heart attack in a later scene of the play.[135][136]

1960s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
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.[137][138][139][140][141]
Nick Piantanida 1966 Nick Piantanida, a skydiver, died four months after an attempt to break the record for the highest parachute jump; his suit had depressurized causing brain damage.[142][143]

1970s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
1971 Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, Soviet cosmonauts, died when their Soyuz-11 spacecraft depressurized during preparations for re-entry. These are the only known human deaths outside the Earth's atmosphere.[144]
Basil Brown 1974 Basil Brown, a 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.[145][146][147]
Alex Mitchell 1975 After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, Alex Mitchell 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, of a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.[148][149][150][151][152]
Tina Christopherson 1977 Tina Christopherson died when she fanatically drank 4 US gallons (15 litres) of water a day to combat stomach cancer.[153]
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren 1977 Tom Pryce, a driver in the 1977 South African Grand Prix, was killed alongside fire marshal Frederick Jansen Van Vuuren after being struck on the head by a fire extinguisher when his car, travelling at 170 miles per hour (270 km/h), hit Jansen Van Vuuren as he was running across the Kyalami race track to extinguish a burning car.[154][155][156][157]
Kurt Gödel
1978 Kurt Gödel, an Austrian-American logician and mathematician, died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Gödel refused to eat food prepared by anyone else[158] as he was suffering from an obsessive fear of being poisoned.
Georgi Markov 7 September 1978 Georgi Markov was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. It has been speculated that they asked the KGB for help.[159]
Robert Williams 1979 Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, became the first person known to be killed by a robot[160] when the arm of a factory robot struck him in the head.[161]
John Bowen 1979 John Bowen, a 20-year-old from Nashua, New Hampshire, was killed at a half-time show at Shea Stadium when a 40-pound (18 kg) model plane shaped like a lawnmower crashed into the stands.[162][163]

1980s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Lourdes Maria da Silva August 1980 Lourdes Maria da Silva was going up stairs carrying a Pyrex glass in Caxias do Sul, Brazil when she tripped, broke the glass and fell on the shards, cutting her neck artery. She died on her way to hospital.[164][165]
Boris Sagal 1981 Boris Sagal, a Ukrainian-American film director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III in Portland, Oregon, after he walked into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter and was partially decapitated.[166][167] He died five hours later at a hospital in Portland.[166]
David Grundman 4 February 1982 David Grundman, shooting at cacti with his shotgun near Lake Pleasant, Arizona, was crushed when a 4-foot (1.2 m) limb of the cactus detached and fell on him.[167][168][169]
Michael Scaglione 15 April 1982 Scaglione died after smashing his golf club against a golf cart. The head broke off and impaled him in the throat, severing his jugular vein.[170]
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen
23 July 1982 In the early morning hours of 23 July 1982, Morrow and two child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming Twilight Zone: The Movie in California. They were performing in a scene for the Vietnam sequence, in which their characters attempt to escape from a deserted Vietnamese village while pursued by a U.S. Army helicopter. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet (7.3 m) above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions reportedly delaminated the rotor blades[171] and caused the helicopter to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Le were decapitated and mutilated by the helicopter rotor blades, while Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut.[172]
Tennessee Williams
1983 Tennessee Williams, an American playwright, died after accidentally choking on a plastic bottle cap which he was using to ingest barbiturates.[173] Reports at the time of his death indicated he had died applying eye drops while holding the cap between his teeth, but this was corrected in the official medical examiner's report six months later.[174]
Truls Hellevik 1983 Truls Hellevik, a Norwegian diver, was explosively dismembered in a diving bell accident at the North Sea. Hellevik was exposed to an eight-atmosphere change in air pressure which instantaneously forced his body through a 60-centimetre-diameter (24 in) opening.[175][176] Three other divers were also killed in the accident.
Dick Wertheim 1983 Dick Wertheim, a tennis linesman, died after a ball struck him in the groin and he fell out of his chair.[177][178][179]
Jimmy Ferrozzo 1983 Jimmy Ferrozzo, a 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. Ferrozzo accidentally activated the lifting mechanism which pinned him against the ceiling leading to his suffocation.[180] Hill survived the accident.[180]
Jon-Erik Hexum
1984 Jon-Erik Hexum, an American actor, died after playing a simulated Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum pistol loaded with blanks. The blanks contained paper wadding and when Hexum pulled the trigger against his temple, the wadding was propelled with a force that broke Hexum's skull, causing a massive brain bleeding.[181]
Unknown 1984 An unidentified 25-year-old man was using submersion as an erotic asphyxia method. With a home-made plastic body suit, he tied himself to a boat and was using a home-made diving apparatus for air supply. He died from rebreathing, caused by the faulty air supply device.[182]
Franco Brun 1987 Brun, 22, an inmate at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre in Canada, died trying to swallow a pocket-size bible.[183][184]
Cachy the Poodle, Marta Espina, Edith Solá, unidentified man 1988 A poodle named Cachy, in Caballito, Buenos Aires, fell from 13 floors and fatally hit 75-year-old Marta Espina, killing both instantly. In the course of the events, 46-year-old Edith Sola, who came to see the incident, was fatally hit by a bus. An unidentified man, who witnessed Edith's death, had an heart attack and also died, on his way to the hospital.[185][186]
Ivan Lester McGuire 1988 On Saturday, 2 April, veteran sky diver Ivan Lester McGuire 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, McGuire apparently forgot to put on a parachute, and his camera equipment may have been mistaken for a chute. The tape was recovered.[187][188]

1990s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Daniel John O'Brien 14 January 1990 Daniel John O'Brien, 31, committed suicide by jumping into the engines of a British Airways 747 Jumbo.[189][190] O'Brien was naked and scaled two fences with barbed wire on top, fought off four security guards and commandeered a four-wheel-drive vehicle, which he drove into the jet sitting on the runway with its engines running.[191]
Brandon Lee 1993 Brandon Lee, 28-year-old film actor, martial artist, and son of Bruce Lee, was accidentally shot to death by co-star Michael Massee while filming a scene for The Crow, as the result of an improperly-loaded prop gun.[192][193][194]
Garry Hoy 1993 Garry Hoy, a lawyer in Toronto fell to his death from the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre while demonstrating to a group of visitors that the building's windows were "unbreakable". Hoy threw himself against the window, which did not break but popped out of its frame.[195][196]
Gloria Ramirez 1994 Gloria Ramirez, 31, died from kidney failure related to her cervical cancer. While treating her, several of the hospital staff became ill, suffering from loss of consciousness, shortness of breath and muscle spasms. Shortly before dying, Ramirez 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.[197]
Quimby Ghilotti 2 June 1997 Quimby Ghilotti, 18, a senior at Napa High School, died when a water slide collapsed after students tried to uphold a long standing tradition of "clogging," or fitting as many students in the water slide as possible. 32 other students were injured in the collapse. The annual senior prank had been carried out without incident for many years, although the previous water slide was built into a hillside. The water slide that collapsed was at a different water park and was held up by support beams which failed under the weight of all the students.[198]
Karen Wetterhahn 1997 Karen Wetterhahn, a professor of chemistry 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 Wetterhahn had been following the required procedures, the material permeated the gloves and her skin within seconds.[199][200][201]
Bena Tshadi (football team) October 1998 An entire football team of 11 in Eastern Kasai, Democratic Republic of the Congo, were fatally struck by lightning while playing. The other team left the scene unharmed.[202]
Jonathan Capewell 1998 Jonathan Capewell, 16, died from a heart attack brought on by the buildup of butane and propane in the blood after excessive use of deodorant sprays.[203] Capewell was reported to have an obsession with personal hygiene.[203] An autopsy showed that Capewell had 0.37 mg of butane per litre in his blood, and the same amount of propane, whereas 0.1 mg per litre can be fatal.[203]
John Lewis 12 April 1999 64-year-old Lewis, a businessman from Minsterworth, England, attempted to light a bonfire with petrol, but inadvertently lit his clothes on fire. He then ran to a river where he jumped in and eventually drowned. Although the incident occurred on 12 April 1999, his body was not found until 30 April 1999.[204][205]

21st century

2000s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Bliss Scott 2000 Bliss Scott, 7, died after picking up an African snail, from which she contracted meningo-encephalitis caused by Angiostrongylus cantonensis.[206]
Bernd Brandes 9 March 2001 Bernd Brandes, a German engineer from Berlin, was willingly slaughtered so that he could be butchered and eaten by cannibal Armin Meiwes. Brandes had responded to an internet advertisement which Meiwes had placed for this purpose. In prison, Meiwes became a vegetarian.[207][208][209]
Michael Colombini 2001 Michael Colombini, 6, died during a MRI scan at a New York-area hospital, after an oxygen tank was magnetically pulled into the machine and fractured his skull.[210]
Brittanie Cecil 18 March 2002 Brittanie Cecil, 13, died from her injuries at a NHL hockey game after a deflected puck struck her in the left temple. Cecil was the first and only fan fatality in the NHL's history.
Brian Douglas Wells 28 August 2003 Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed by an explosive collar around his neck, as part of a bank-robbery scheme.[211]
Hitoshi Nikaidoh 2003 Hitoshi Nikaidoh, a doctor in Houston, Texas, was decapitated after his head was trapped in the doors of an elevator at his workplace.[212]
Phillip Quinn 2004 Phillip Quinn, 24, from Kent, Washington, was killed when a lava lamp he was heating on a stove exploded and a shard pierced his heart.[213]
Francis Daniel Brohm 2 September 2004 John Hutcherson drove home drunk with his friend Francis Brohm hanging out the passenger window. Hutcherson ran off the road and sideswiped a telephone-pole support wire, decapitating Brohm. Hutcherson continued the final 12 miles to his Atlanta, GA home, parked in the driveway and then went to bed. A neighbor found the headless body in the truck the next morning.[214][215]
Kenneth Pinyan 2005 Kenneth Pinyan died from injuries caused by anal sex with a stallion.[216]
Mildred Bowman and Alice Wardle 2005 Mildred Bowman, 62, and Alice Wardle, 68, were two sisters killed in Benidorm, Spain after becoming trapped for four days when their fold-up bed collapsed.[217]
Steve Irwin
4 September 2006 Steve Irwin was a world-renowned Australian wildlife expert and television personality best known for his wildlife documentary show The Crocodile Hunter, and was well known for often handling and interacting with dangerous, often predatory animals such as crocodiles and venomous snakes. Irwin died from blood loss after being pierced in the heart by a startled short-tail stingray's barb while filming in shallow water in the Great Barrier Reef for his daughter's television program during a lull in filming for Ocean's Deadliest, another wildlife documentary series Irwin was taking part in. Unlike many of the animals Irwin gained fame and notoriety for interacting with, stingrays were not often viewed as particularly dangerous animals by many prior to this incident. The incident was captured on film, and it was considered the only known video recording of a fatality by a stingray. The footage was never released, and all recordings of the incident were destroyed at the behest of Irwin's family.[218][219]
Humberto Hernandez 2007 Humberto Hernandez, a 24-year-old Oakland, California resident, was killed after being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant and the water pressure shot the hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.[220][221][222]
Adelir Antônio de Carli 21 April 2008 Adelir Antônio de Carli, a Brazilian Catholic priest and skydiver undertook a Cluster balloon flight on 20 April 2008. The intention was to break the endurance records for this type of flight and raise funds for charity. However, contact was lost part-way through. The lower part of his body was found floating in the sea eleven weeks later on the 4th of July. [223][224][225]
Carlos Alhinho 31 May 2008 Carlos Alhinho, 59-year-old Portuguese professional football central defender and manager, died in Benguela, Angola after he opened the doors of a elevator and stepped in, only to find the carriage was not there but on the ground floor. He fell five floors onto the top of the cabin, and, though receiving immediate medical attention, died shortly afterwards.[226]
David Phyall 5 July 2008 David Phyall, 50, the 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.[227][228]
Judy Kay Zagorski 2008 Judy Kay Zagorski died of blunt force craniocerebral trauma when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leapt out of the water and knocked her over. The ray also died.[229][230][231]
Unknown 2008 A 43-year-old Irish mother of four died of an allergic reaction after having sex with a German Shepherd dog.[232] The owner of the dog, Sean McDonnell, and the woman met in an Internet chat room for bestiality. McDonnell was prosecuted and added to a sex offender list.[233]
Mark Fidrych
13 April 2009 Mark Fidrych, a 54-year-old former Major League Baseball pitcher of the Detroit Tigers, died while working underneath his dump truck when his clothes became entangled with the power takeoff drive shaft, suffocating him.[234]
Taylor Mitchell 28 October 2009 Taylor Mitchell, a 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.[235][236][237]
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada 28 November 2009 (discovered in January 2019; identified in July 2019) Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, a 25-year-old supermarket employee from Council Bluffs, Iowa, is believed to have fallen into the 18-inch gap between a cooler and a wall and become trapped. His body was not discovered for almost ten years, when the cooler was finally moved.[238]
Unknown 3 March 2009 A 14-year-old boy from Jiaozhou, Shandong, China was killed when the pneumatic cylinder in his office chair exploded.[239][240]

2010s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe 2010 Muraka Jenny Vearncombe, 42, was decapitated by a piece of a metal pipe flung by a tractor-pulled lawnmower as she walked to work in Townsville, Australia.[241]
Mike Edwards 3 September 2010 Mike Edwards, 62, cellist and a 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.[242][243][244]
Jimi Heselden 26 September 2010 Jimi Heselden, 62, owner of Segway Inc., died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System off a cliff.[245]
Jose Luis Ochoa 2011 Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, 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.[246][247]
Edward Archbold 2012 Edward Archbold, 32, of West Palm Beach, Florida, choked on "arthropod body parts" during a cockroach-eating contest.[248][249]
Erica Marshall 2012 Erica Marshall, a 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber kicked the wall, released a spark from its horseshoes and triggered an explosion.[250][251][252]
Ilda Vitor Maciel 28 September 2012 88-year-old Ilda Vitor Maciel died in a Brazilian hospital in Barra Mansa (south of state of Rio de Janeiro), allegedly as a result of nursing technicians injecting soup through her IV drip instead of her feeding tube.[253]
Elisa Lam February 2013 Elisa Lam, from Vancouver, British Columbia, 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 the taste of the water.[254]
Takuya Nagaya 2013 Takuya Nagaya, 23, from Japan, started to slither on the floor and claimed he had become a snake. Takuya died after his father spent the next two days head-butting and biting him "to drive [out] the snake that had possessed him."[255]
Roger Mirro 2013 Roger Mirro was crushed by a trash compactor while looking through a dumpster for his phone.[256]
Unknown 2013 An unnamed Belarusian fisherman, 60, bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab in order to have his picture taken with it.[257][258]
João Maria de Souza 2013 João Maria de Souza, 45, was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Minas Gerais in Southeast Brazil. The cow had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and de Souza's wife (who had been in bed next to him) were unharmed.[259]
Denver Lee St. Clair 2013 Denver Lee St. Clair was asphyxiated by an "atomic wedgie" administered by his stepson during a fight. After St. Clair had been knocked unconscious, the elastic band from his torn underwear was pulled over his head and stretched around his neck, strangling him.[260][261]
Kendrick Johnson 10 January 2013 Kendrick Johnson, 17, was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium. Police originally concluded he had climbed in to retrieve a shoe and became trapped, but the case was later reopened as a possible homicide.[262][263][264][265][266]
James Campbell January 2013 68-year-old James Campbell, of Cantonment, Florida, left his 1995 Chevy van to open metal gates that blocked his driveway and released his dog, a Boxer, who jumped into the driver side of the car and activated the acceleration pedal, causing the van to run over Campbell. His wife, Iris Fortner attempted to stop the van from backing up after the dog leapt into the car, but was unsuccessful. Campbell became trapped under the car and was pronunced dead at the scene.[267][268]
Miguel Martinez 2013 Miguel Martinez, 14, from Lubbock, Texas, was impaled through the chest by the horn of a bull statue while playing hide-and-seek at night in front of the National Ranching Heritage Center.[269]
Noah Barthe, Connor Barthe 2013 The two young brothers, aged 4 and 6, were killed by an African rock python during a sleepover at their friend's home in New Brunswick, Canada. The large snake had escaped its enclosure in the apartment and slithered through ducts until it fell through the ceiling of the bedroom where they slept. Though it suffocated the children it did not attempt to eat them.[270][271]
Hayato Tsuruta 2013 Hayato Tsuruta, 28, from Japan, with intellectual disabilities, ran away from his residential facility and went to a supermarket. There he consumed so many doughnuts displayed that he choked to death.[272][273]
Heval Yıldırım 2014 Heval Yıldırım, 13, of Turkey was killed when a sacrificial goat bought for Eid al-Adha jumped off the roof over a protective fence and fell onto him. Yıldırım's father placed the goat on the roof of the building where he lived because he could not find another suitable place to keep it.[274]
Christophe de Margerie
20 October 2014 Christophe de Margerie, an oil executive, was killed when his corporate jet collided with a snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver.[275][276]
Peng Fan 2014 Peng Fan, a chef in Foshan, China, was bitten by a cobra's severed head, which he had cut off 20 minutes earlier while preparing a soup.[277][278]
Peter Biaksangzuala 2014 Peter Biaksangzuala, an Indian association football player from Mizoram state, died after sustaining spinal cord injuries while awkwardly landing a somersault celebrating a goal.[279]
Jalyn Rippy 2 July 2015 Jalyn, 5, was killed by a leaping sturgeon while she was boating with her family near Fanning Springs, Florida. Her mother, Tanya Faye, 31, and her brother, Trevor, 9, were also injured and needed facial reconstruction surgery. [280]
Charmayne Maxwell 2015 Charmayne Maxwell, a member of American R&B group Brownstone, died after falling backward while holding a wine glass. During the fall the wine glass shattered on the ground behind Maxwell's head, and the shards pierced her neck, causing profuse bleeding.[281]
Chelsea Ake-Salvacion 2015 Chelsea Ake-Salvacion, 24, an employee of a Henderson, Nevada salon, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.[282][283]
Lee Jane 2015 Lee Jane, 57, an English lorry driver, was run over by his own skip lorry as it careened towards a hospital building, after failing to engage the handbrake.[284][285]
Ravi Subramanian 2015 Ravi Subramanian, an Air India technician, was sucked into an aircraft's jet engines.[286][287]
Stephen Whinfrey 2015 Stephen Whinfrey, 50, became trapped and asphyxiated when rabbiting near Doncaster, England, after his head became stuck down a rabbit hole.[288]
V. Kamaraj 2016 V. Kamaraj, a 40-year-old Indian bus driver, was claimed by local Indian newspapers to have been killed by a meteorite which left a two-foot (61 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".[289][290][291][292]
Lottie Michelle Belk 2016 Lottie Michelle Belk, 55, was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind.[293] Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).[294][295]
Caleb Schwab 2016 Caleb Schwab, 10, was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide.[296]
Irma Bule 2016 Irma Bule, 29, an Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes, died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.[297][298]
Anton Yelchin
2016 Anton Yelchin, 27, an 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.[299][300]
Unknown 2016 A seven-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo at Rabat, Morocco.[301][302]
Kristopher Moules and Timothy Gilliam Jr. 2016 Kristopher Moules, 25, a Corrections Officer and Timothy Gilliam Jr., 27, an out of county inmate being housed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, fell to their deaths after an altercation between the two caused them to slam into the exterior of the fifth floor elevator doors. Despite the elevator having its up-to-date working credentials, upon impact of the men into the elevator doors, the doors popped open, causing the two men to fall five flights down the elevator shaft to their deaths. The county declared CO Moules' death a homicide and declared Gilliam's death an accident.[303]
Ten people 2016 On 21 November 2016, a powerful southerly change in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who succumbed to respiratory failure.[304] This was due to a stark wind (60 km/hour) that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks, small enough particles to enter people's lungs.[305]
Charlie Holt 2017 Charlie Holt, 5, was killed at the Sun Dial Restaurant, a rotating restaurant at the top of Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia; his head was caught in a small space between the rotating and non-rotating sections.[306]
Akbar Salubiro 2017 Akbar Salubiro, a 25-year-old man, was killed and swallowed by a reticulated python in Indonesia, in the first fully confirmed case of a snake swallowing an adult human.[307] A second case in Indonesia happened the following year, when another reticulated snake killed and swallowed an adult woman in her garden.[308]
Robert Dreyer 2017 Robert Dreyer, 89, drowned on his birthday after crashing his car into a fire hydrant. Dreyer successfully stepped out of his car, but was swallowed by a sinkhole likely created as a result of the destruction of the fire hydrant and subsequent water pressure.[309]
Debra Bedard 2017 Debra Bedard, 58, died after falling from a golf cart onto shards of wine glasses that had broken in her hands in Calaveras County, California.[310]
Rebecca Burger 2017 Rebecca Burger, 33, a fitness blogger and model, died after a pressurized canister of whipped cream exploded and struck her in the chest. The injury caused Burger to go into cardiac arrest.[311]
Hidr Korkmaz 2017 Hidr Korkmaz, 42, a Turkish-Dutch drug dealer and informant, died while fishing when he threw his fish hook into an electric wire. Though he was a witness in the case against Dutch criminal Willem Holleeder, he was not important to the case and authorities treated it as an accident.[312]
Elizabeth Isherwood 2017 Elizabeth Isherwood, 60, walked naked into an airing cupboard at the villa 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. Why she had shut herself in the cupboard in the first place remained a mystery.[313]
Raildo Matias Santos October 22, 2017 49-year-old Raildo Matias Santos, drowned on a bucket of water in Jaguaquara, Brazil. Santos, who was drunk, attempted to fetch a 20-liter gallon of water and tripped and fell in a kneeling position. Santos was epileptic.[314][315]
Rajesh Maru 2018 Rajesh Maru, 32, died at Nair Hospital in Mumbai after carrying a metal oxygen tank into a room housing an MRI scanner; the machine's magnetic field pulled Maru in, pinning his hand and breaching the tank, releasing liquid oxygen.[316] A hospital employee had asked Maru to transport the tank, as Maru's hospitalized relative would need it during her scan.[316][317] An autopsy showed that Maru died instantly from pneumothorax brought on by exposure to very high levels of leaked oxygen.[316] Conflicting reports state two or three hospital employees were arrested for negligence.[318][316] The Maharashtra state government compensated Maru's family 500,000 rupees.[318]
Elaine Herzberg 2018 Elaine Herzberg, a 49-year-old woman in 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.[319][320]
Ateef Rafiq 2018 Ateef Rafiq, 24, died from cardiac arrest in a cinema in Birmingham, England whilst looking for his dropped mobile phone. His head became wedged under the electronic footrest of a seat.[321]
Kyle Plush 10 April 2018 On 10 April 2018, 16-year-old high-school student Kyle Plush died after becoming trapped in his Honda Odyssey, which was in his school's parking lot in Cincinnati, Ohio. Attempting to reach his tennis equipment, Plush leaned over the third row of seats into the trunk. When the row of seats "squashed his chest", Plush became pinned and later died. During the incident, the teen called 9-1-1 twice, by using Apple iPhone's Siri voice-activation. Responding to the 9-1-1 calls, police were not able to find Plush; he was eventually discovered in the vehicle by his father about six hours later.[322]
Jennifer Riordan 2018 Jennifer Riordan, 43, a passenger aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, died after debris from an engine failure struck and destroyed the window she was sitting next to. She was partially blown out through the window, but was pulled back into the aircraft and was given CPR until an emergency landing was made. She died upon arrival at hospital with her cause of death determined to be blunt trauma to the head, neck and torso.[323][324]
Hildegard Whiting 2018 Hildegard Whiting, 77, died of suffocation from the carbon dioxide vapors produced by four dry ice coolers in a Dippin' Dots delivery car.[325][326] The car was borrowed by the deliveryman's wife to take Whiting home.[325][326]
John A. Korody 2018 John A. Korody, 61, died after falling into a vat of cooking oil and grease while standing on a grate in Orange County, Florida, near Orlando. Co-workers were unable to rescue him due to the strong fumes.[327]
Sam Ballard 2018 Sam Ballard, 29, died from angiostrongyliasis after eating a garden slug as a dare eight years earlier.[328]
Linda Goldbloom 2018 Linda Goldbloom, 79, died after being hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium. Goldbloom's death was the first in nearly 50 years directly attributed to a foul ball.[329]
Salvator Disi 2019 Salvator Disi, 62, was decapitated while using a power cart to jump start a helicopter in Hernando County, Florida. The unexpected up-and-down motion of the helicopter caused the rotor blades to strike Disi.[330]
Darren Hickey 5 April 2019 On 5 April 2019, Darren Hickey, a 51-year-old wedding planner from Horwich, England, died after eating a scalding-hot fishcake at a wedding. The cause of death was ruled to be asphyxiation. The pathologist who performed Hickey's autopsy called the case "extremely rare" and likened Hickey's symptoms to those of victims who have inhaled smoke during house fires.[331]
Paul McDonald 17 April 2019 Paul McDonald, 47, was attacked and killed by a pet deer on his property in north-east Victoria, Australia.[332][333]
Elena Struthers-Gardner July 2019 Elena "Lena" Struthers-Gardner, 60, was carrying a mason-jar style drinking glass with a screw-top lid in her kitchen when she collapsed. The 10-inch stainless steel straw entered her left eye socket and pierced her brain.[334][335]
Yulia Sharkom 8 September 2019 Yulia Sharkom, 21, was trying to grab her 2-year-old daughter from her car through the half-open front seat window in Belarus when her neck was jammed by the window after her daughter pressed the automatic switch. She died eight days later, having suffered asphyxia leading to brain damage due to the accidental window garroting.[336]
Michael Kosanovich 6 December 2019 Michael Kosanovich, 21, was crushed to death by a 2002 Lexus IS300s automobile after its owner started it by remote control. The car rolled forward, and he was pinned between two vehicles.[337][338]

2020s

Name of person Image Date of death Details
Sergio Millán 14 January 2020 Sergio Millán, 59, was alone in his apartment in Torreforta, Tarragona, Spain when an explosion in a petrochemical plant 3 kilometers away launched a one-ton iron plate into the apartment above him, which caused the ceiling to collapse, killing him.[339]
Hoong Leong 18 February 2020 Hoong Leong, 37, was struck in the shoulder by a falling gas cylinder whilst walking home during stormy conditions near The Rocks in Sydney, Australia. Leong survived the initial impact but went into cardiac arrest and died upon arrival at hospital.[340][341]
Valentin Didenko, Yury Alferov, Natalia Monakova 29 February 2020 Three people died of carbon dioxide suffocation and drowning when 25 kg of dry ice was thrown into an indoors swimming pool at a sauna party in Moscow to create a layer of thick white fog over water surface, which, inadvertently, displaced oxygen.[342][343][344]
Stanislav Bogdanovich and Alexandra Vernigora
5 March 2020 Bogdanovich was found dead on 5 March 2020 in his Moscow apartment, alongside nitrous oxide-filled balloons and the body of his girlfriend, Alexandra Vernigora, also a chess player. Police do not suspect foul play.[345][346]
Paulynho Paixão 3 April 2020 Paulynho Paixão (Real Name: Francisco de Paula Moura), 43 was one of the most famous singers in Northeast Brazil. However, on 3 April he was the victim of a fatal accident with strange circumstances: he died after suffering two accidents in an interval of three hours. Paulynho Paixão hours earlier, on Thursday (2 April) he had survived the first accident (a car accident), near the city of Passagem Franca do Piauí, Piaui, Brazil leaving without injuries. However, three hours later (dawn on Friday, 3 April) Paulynho Paixão went to the place of the first accident to try to recover the crashed car, but ended up suffering a second accident (a motorcycle accident, the fatal one) that ended up killing him on the spot (at the same location as the car accident three hours before). Due to the mysterious circumstances of the motorcycle accident that killed him, investigations are ongoing.[347][348][349][350]

Animal deaths

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
Three cows, three sheep, two sows 1662 Cotton Mather writes how one William Potter was hanged for bestiality, as were the animals involved.[351][352]
Topsy the elephant
4 January 1903 Topsy was executed by poisoning, electrocution, and strangulation. A 74-second film of the electrocution was recorded and preserved. It may have been the first time death was ever captured in a motion picture film.[353]
Mary the elephant
13 September 1916 The day after Mary, a 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.[354][355]
Unnamed cow January 1932 In January 1932, the Townsville Daily Bulletin, an Australian newspaper, reported an incident where a dairy cow was partially blown up and killed on a farm at Kennedy Creek (near Cardwell, North Queensland). The cow had reputedly picked up a detonator in her mouth while grazing in a paddock. This was only triggered later, when the cow began to chew her cud, at a time when she was in the process of being milked. The cow had its head blown off by the resulting explosion, and the farmer milking the cow was knocked unconscious.[356]
Unnamed deer August 1987 Stefan Johansson hit a deer with his McLaren MP4/3 after it wandered onto the circuit during Friday practice. The terrified deer was crossing the track to seek refuge from the noise of the cars when it was struck by Johansson traveling at close to 140 mph (225 km/h), killing it instantly.[357]
Royal the dog September 1993 Philip Rinn's dog, Royal, tried to bite Rinn's wife and had chewed part of Rinn's car. Rinn tied a chain around its neck and dragged it around with his Chrysler, but the dog did not die. Rinn then ran over the dog a few times before it died.[358]
Unnamed bird 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. The bird was killed instantly.[359][360]
Unnamed feral pigeon 29 May 2009 During a Twenty20 cricket match at Headingley Cricket Ground, Leeds, England between Yorkshire and Lancashire, Jacques Rudolph of Yorkshire fielded a ball close to the midwicket boundary and threw it to the wicket keeper. The return throw struck and killed a pigeon in flight across the ground.[361][362]
Alan the dachshund January 2013 Alan, Tatler magazine's "office dog", saw a man approaching the Vogue House, London revolving doors and walked after the man. As Alan tried to rush through the revolving doors his neck got caught in it, also getting the male 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.[363][364]
Unnamed squirrel 13 November 2016 Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. was riding a bicycle in the suburban Cal-Sag Trail when a squirrel jumped into the bicycle's wheel and got stuck in the spokes. The squirrel died in the accident, and Brookins suffered a fractured skull, a broken nose and lost multiple teeth, which needed surgery.[365]

See also

Lists

References

  1. Ursula Hoff (1938). "Meditation in Solitude". Journal of the Warburg Institute. 1 (44): 292–294. doi:10.2307/749994. JSTOR 749994.
  2. Suidas. "Δράκων Archived 3 November 2015 at the Wayback Machine", Suda On Line, Adler number delta, 1495.
  3. Bruce Felton; Mark Fowler (1985). "Most Unusual Death". Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst, and Most Unusual. Random House. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-517-46297-3.
  4. Murray, Alexander (2007). Suicide in the Middle Ages: Volume 2: The Curse on Self-Murder. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-19-820731-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  5. McGlew, James F. (1993). Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, New York and London, England: Cornell University Press. pp. 108–109. ISBN 978-0-8014-8387-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  6. Groebner, Valentin (2002) [2000]. Carras, Ruth Mazo; Peters, Edward (eds.). Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages Series. Translated by Selwyn, Pamela E. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-8122-3650-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  7. Brett Matlock; Jesse Matlock (2011). "The Salt Lake Loonie". University of Regina Press: 81. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. EN Gardiner (1906). "The Journal of Hellenic Studies". Nature. 124 (3117): 121. Bibcode:1929Natur.124..121.. doi:10.1038/124121a0. Fatal accidents did occur as in the case of Arrhichion, but they were very rare...
  9. "Perseus Under Philologic: Hdt. 5.25.1". perseus.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  10. Baldi, Dino (2010). Morti favolose degli antichi. Macerata: Quodlibet. p. 213. ISBN 9788874623372.
  11. Burkert, Walter (1972). Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-674-53918-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  12. Simoons, Frederick J. (1998). Plants of Life, Plants of Death. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 225–228. ISBN 978-0-299-15904-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  13. Zhmud, Leonid (2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Translated by Windle, Kevin; Ireland, Rosh. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 137, 200. ISBN 978-0-19-928931-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  14. Fair weather, Janet (1973). "Death of Heraclitus". p. 2. Archived from the original on 6 November 2017.
  15. Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths §6". Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. 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. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 111. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. 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.
  16. Thucydides I, 138 Archived 5 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  17. Marr, John (October 1995). "The Death of Themistocles". Greece & Rome. 42 (2): 159–167. doi:10.1017/S0017383500025614. JSTOR 643228.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  18. Plutarch Themistocles, 31 Archived 3 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  19. Diodorus XI, 58 Archived 24 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  20. Aristophanes 84–85 Archived 11 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  21. 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.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  22. La tortue d'Eschyle et autres morts stupides de l'Histoire, Editions Les Arènes, 2012, ISBN 9782352042211
  23. Pliny the Elder, "chapter 3", Naturalis Historiæ, Book X
  24. 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.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  25. Diogenes Laërtius, viii. 69 Archived 5 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  26. Meyer, T. H. (2016). Barefoot Through Burning Lava: On Sicily, the Island of Cain – An Esoteric Travelogue. Temple Lodge Publishing. ISBN 9781906999940. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
  27. Horace, Ars Poetica, 465–466
  28. Jamie Frater (2010). "10 truly bizarre deaths". Listverse.Com's Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists. Ulysses Press. pp. 12–14. ISBN 978-1-56975-817-5.
  29. 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 978-0-19-998212-7. 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...
  30. 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. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-19-998210-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  31. Diogenes Laërtius, ix.43 Archived 5 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  32. Suda α 2735.
  33. Baldi, Dino (2010). Morti favolose degli antichi (in Italian). Macerata: Quodlibet. p. 50. ISBN 9788874623372.
  34. "Let Us Now Praise the Romantic, Artful, Versatile Toothpick". Smithsonian.
  35. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 9.401e.
  36. Alan Cameron (1991). "How thin was Philitas?". The Classical Quarterly. 41 (2): 534–538. doi:10.1017/S0009838800004717.
  37. Wright, David Curtis (2001). The History of China. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-313-30940-3.
  38. The First Emperor. Oxford University Press. 2007. pp. 82, 150. ISBN 978-0-19-152763-0.
  39. Nate Hopper (4 February 2013). "Royalty and their Strange Deaths". Esquire. Archived from the original on 19 November 2013.
  40. Laertius, Diogenes (1965). Lives, Teachings and Sayings of the Eminent Philosophers, with an English translation by R.D. Hicks. Cambridge, Mass/London: Harvard UP/W. Heinemann Ltd.
  41. "The Funniest And Weirdest Ways People Have Actually Died –". visual.ly. Archived from the original on 30 April 2017.
  42. Cassius Dio, xlvii 49. Appian, Bellum Civile iv 136.
  43. Church, Alfred J. (1883). Roman Life in the Days of Cicero. London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday.
  44. Tranquillus, Gaius Suetonius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
  45. "LacusCurtius • Tacitus, Annals – Book VI Chapters 28–51". penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  46. Il Grande Dizionario dei Santi e dei Beati (in Italian). 4. Rome: Finegil Editoriale/Federico Motta Editore. 2006. pp. 217–218.
  47. Catholic Online. "St. Lawrence – Martyr". Archived from the original on 4 January 2018.
  48. "Saint Lawrence of Rome". CatholicSaints.Info. 26 October 2008. Archived from the original on 14 February 2015.
  49. Nigel Jonathan Spivey (2001), Enduring Creation: Art, Pain, and Fortitude, University of California Press, p. 42, ISBN 978-0-520-23022-4
  50. The Encyclopedia Americana, 17, 1981, p. 85, ISBN 978-0-7172-0112-9
  51. Walter, James K. (2011). "Ragnars saga loðbrókar". In Gentry, Francis G.; McConnell, Winder; Müller, Ulrich; Wunderlich, Werner (eds.). The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8153-1785-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  52. Le Bas, Philippe (1843). L'Univers, histoire et description de tous les peuples – Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la France. 10. p. 339.
  53. Translations of the Orkneyinga saga (chapters 4 and 5), which relates the story, can be read online at Sacred texts Archived 29 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine and Northvegr Archived 16 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  54. Turner, Tracey; Kindberg, Sally (2011). Dreadful Fates: What a Shocking Way to Go!. Kids Can Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-55453-644-3.
  55. Kosztolnyik, Z. J. (1981).Five Eleventh Century Hungarian Kings: Their Policies and their Relations with Rome. Columbia University Press. pp. 80–81.
  56. The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle (ch. 68.96), p. 117.
  57. Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy, v. 4, p. 129
  58. Hollister 2003, pp. 467–468, 473
  59. Frater, Jamie (2010). Listverse.Com's Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists. Canada: Ulysses Press. p. 400. ISBN 9781569758175.
  60. Schama, Simon (2000). A History of Great Britain: 3000BC–AD1603. London: BBC Worldwide. p. 220.
  61. "A red-hot poker? It was just a red herring", Archived 20 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine Times Higher Education
  62. Phillips, Seymour, Edward II, Yale University Press, 2010. pp. 560–565.
  63. "Historical Honey". 19 February 2014. Archived from the original on 27 January 2018.
  64. ER. "Blind to His Fate – The Heroic Life and Death of John of Bohemia". Naked History. History Naked. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
  65. Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths §29". Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. 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. 1 (A new ed.). London. p. 114. ASIN B001F3H1XA. LCCN 07003035. OCLC 847968918. OL 7188480M. Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Charles II. King of Navarre, by a vicious life in his youth, fell into a paralytic distemper in his old age, that took away the use of his limbs. His physicians directed him to be sewed up in a sheet that had for a considerable time been steeped in strong distilled spirits, to recover the natural heat of his benumbed joints. The surgeon having sewed him up very close, and wanting a knife to cut off the thread, made use of a candle that was at hand to burn it off; but the flame from the thread reaching the sheet, the spirits wherewith it was wet immediately taking fire, burnt so vehemently, that no endeavours could extinguish the flame. Thus the miserable King lost his life in using the means to recover his health.
  66. Collection (1805). A collection of modern and contemporary voyages & travels. p. 27.
  67. Froissart, Jean (1805). Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries: from the latter part of the reign of Edward II. to the coronation of Henry IV. Translated by Smith, W. W. Smith, 1839 History – Europe – France. p. 313.
  68. John Doran, The History of Court Fools (Boston: Francis A. Niccolls & Co., 1858), 377–378.
  69. Norris, Paul N. "Patronage and Piety" (PDF). Mirator Lokakuu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 18 May 2011.
  70. Thompson, C. J. S. Mysteries of History with Accounts of Some Remarkable Characters and Charlatans, pp. 31 ff. Kila, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
  71. Waller, John C. (September 2008). "In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518". Endeavour. 32 (3): 117–121. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.05.001. PMID 18602695.
  72. Clementz, Élisabeth (2016). "Waller (John), Les danseurs fous de Strasbourg. Une épidémie de transe collective en 1518". Revue d'Alsace – Fédération des Sociétés d'Histoire et d'Archéologie d'Alsace. 142: 451–453.
  73. Varchi, Benedetto (1858). Storia fiorentina (in Italian). 2. Florence: Le Monnier. pp. 268–270.
  74. Affò, Ireneo (1821). Vita di Pierluigi Farnese (in Italian). Milan: Giusti. pp. 22–27.
  75. Parks, George B. (Autumn 1962). "The Pier Luigi Farnese Scandal: An English Report". Renaissance News. 15 (3): 193–200. doi:10.2307/2857878. JSTOR 2857878.
  76. Massignan, Raffaello (1905). "Pier Luigi Farnese e il vescovo di Fano". Atti e Memoria della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie delle Marche (in Italian). 2: 249–304.
  77. Caroli, Flavio; Zuffi, Stefano (1990). Tiziano. Milan: Rusconi. pp. 199–200. ISBN 9788818230277.
  78. Hall, Charles Winslow (April 1910). "The Nobility of the Trades: Barbers and Hairdressers". National Magazine. 32 (1): 472.
  79. "HowStuffWorks – 10 Bizarre Ways to Die". 9 March 2009. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014.
  80. Norwich, John Julius (1982). A History of Venice. New York: Vintage Books. p. 479. ISBN 0679721975.
  81. Madden, Thomas F. (2012). Venice : A New History. New York: Viking. p. 334. ISBN 9780670025428.
  82. John Tierney (29 November 2010). "Murder! Intrigue! Astronomers?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2010. At the time of Tycho's death, in 1601, the blame fell on his failure to relieve himself while drinking profusely at the banquet, supposedly injuring his bladder and making him unable to urinate.
  83. Thoren (1990, p.468–69)
  84. (Dreyer, Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century., p.309).
  85. Brown, Huntington (1968). Rabelais in English Literature. Routledge. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-7146-2051-0.
  86. The History of Scottish Poetry. Edmonston & Douglas. 1861. p. 539.
  87. Rackham, Oliver (2002). Treasures of Silver at Corpus Christi College. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81880-3.
  88. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (2000). The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits (2nd ed.). Checkmark books. ISBN 978-0-8160-4086-5.
  89. "Aux origines du suicide de Vatel : les difficultés de l'approvisionnement en marée au temps de Louis XIV".
  90. Burke, David (2008). "The Literary Right Bank". Writers In Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light. Berkeley, California: Counterpoint. p. 171. ISBN 978-1-59376-157-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  91. Walsh, Kieran (2016). "38: The Characters (in Silhouette) from Molière's Play Le malade imaginaire". Medical Education: A History in 100 Images. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. pp. 83–84. ISBN 978-1-4987-5197-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  92. Scott, Virginia (2000). Molière: A Theatrical Life. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 242–243. ISBN 978-0-521-78281-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  93. Gupta, Hari Ram (1978). History of the Sikhs: The Sikh Gurus, 1469–1708. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. p. 376.
  94. Singh, H. S. (2005). The Encyclopedia of Sikhism. New Delhi: Hemkunt Press. p. 180. ISBN 8170103010.
  95. Siṅgha, Guraprīta (2003). Soul of Sikhism. New Delhi: Fusion Books. p. 100. ISBN 9788128800856.
  96. Anthony, James R.; Hitchcock, H. Wiley; Sadler, Graham (1986). The New Grove French Baroque Masters: Lully, Charpentier, Lalande, Couperin, Rameau. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 16. ISBN 978-0393022865.
  97. Anthony, James R.; Hitchcock, H. Wiley; Sadler, Graham (1986). The New Grove French Baroque Masters: Lully, Charpentier, Lalande, Couperin, Rameau. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 16. ISBN 0393022862.
  98. Antoine, Michel (1989). Louis XV (in French). Paris: Fayard. p. 844. ISBN 9782213022772.
  99. The lowdown on Sweden's best buns Archived 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine The Local, February 2007
  100. Semlor are Swedish treat for Lent Archived 8 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine Sandy Mickelson, The Messenger, 27 February 2008
  101. Rachael Bletchly (2 November 2012). "Weirdest deaths: The 13-year-old killed by a circus clown and other truly epic exits". Mirror Online.
  102. Tonin, Sarah (12 January 2018). "Teen killed by 'being swung by his heels by a circus clown'". Retrieved 13 February 2019.
  103. Palmer, Alan (1997). Twilight of the Habsburgs. The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph. London: Phoenix Giant. p. 158. ISBN 9781857998696.
  104. "Death of Clement Vallandigham". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015.
  105. "Fatal Accident to Mr. Vallandigham". The Western Reserve Chronicle: 2. 21 June 1871. Archived from the original on 3 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
  106. Clay, Jeremy (25 December 2013). "10 truly bizarre Victorian deaths". BBC News. British Broadcasting Company. Archived from the original on 19 May 2018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  107. Andrew Marshall, The Queen and I, Weekend Australian, 12–13 March 2005, p. 5
  108. "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." "Death of Sir William Gallway". Northern Echo. 20 December 1881. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  109. "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." "Andy McSmith's Diary: The enemy within Chequers at Sam Cam's delayed 40th". The Independent. 18 December 2014. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  110. Lanis, Edward Stanley (1949). Allan Pinkerton and the private detective institution. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin, Madison. p. 170.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  111. "First credible evidence emerges of person being killed by meteor". The Independent. 25 April 2020.
  112. "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 22 March 2018.
  113. Andrew McFarlane (17 August 2010). "How the UK's first fatal car accident unfolded". BBC News. Retrieved 27 August 2013.
  114. De Burgh, Edward Morgan Alborough (1899). Elizabeth, empress of Austria: a memoir. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott & Co. p. 310.
  115. Matray, Maria; Krüger, Answald (1998). L'attentato. La morte dell'Imperatrice Elisabetta e il delitto dell'anarchico Lucheni. Trieste: Mgs Press. ISBN 9788886424561.
  116. "Tué à coups de Bible". Le Petit Parisien. 28 May 1903. Archived from the original on 24 May 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016.
  117. "Bible to Drive Out Devils". The Sun. 14 May 1903. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  118. Humanities, National Endowment for the (1 May 1903). "Hilo tribune. (Hilo, Hawaii) 1895–1917, May 01, 1903, Image 5". Retrieved 13 February 2019 via chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.
  119. Smith, Douglas (2016). Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 590–592. ISBN 9780374711238.
  120. Park, Edwards (November 1983). "Without Warning, Molasses in January Surged Over Boston". Smithsonian. 14 (8): 213–230. Retrieved 24 March 2013. Reprinted at Eric Postpischil's Domain, "Eric Postpischil's Molasses Disaster Pages, Smithsonian Article", 14 June 2009.
  121. Puleo, Stephen (2004). Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-5021-7. The substance itself gives the entire event an unusual, whimsical quality.
  122. "The Life of Lord Carnarvon". Touregypt.net. Archived from the original on 8 December 2010. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
  123. "Carnarvon Is Dead Of An Insect's Bite At Pharaoh's Tomb. Blood Poisoning and Ensuing Pneumonia Conquer Tut-ankh-Amen Discoverer in Egypt". The New York Times. 5 April 1923. Archived from the original on 2 February 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2008. The Earl of Carnarvon died peacefully at 2 o'clock this morning. He was conscious almost to the end.
  124. "Jockey Dies as He Wins His First Race; Hayes Collapses Passing the Winning Post". The New York Times. 5 June 1923. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  125. Alberswerth, Matt (2 November 2012). "Unusual Death #9: A Stellar Finish". Diabolique Magazine.
  126. Wallechinsky, David (2009). The Book Of Lists. Canongate Books. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-84767-667-2.
  127. "Sleeping Man A Suicide". Evening Star. Washington, D.C. 14 August 1924. p. 34.
  128. "Bobby Leach". Niagara Falls Museums. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  129. Christensen, Liana (2011). Deadly Beautiful: Vanishing Killers of the Animal Kingdom. Wollombi, NSW: Exisle Publishing. p. 272. ISBN 978-1-921497-22-3.
  130. Kofron, Christopher P., Chapman, Angela. (2006) "Causes of mortality to the endangered Southern Cassowary Casuarius casuariusjohnsonii in Queensland, Australia." Pacific Conservation Biology vol. 12: 175–179
  131. Brown, Ismene (6 March 2009). "Isadora Duncan, Sublime or Ridiculous?". The Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 7 October 2014. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  132. Riding, Richard (2003). "Database [article]: Comper Swift". Aeroplane monthly. - Vol.31, no.3 (Mar.), p.73-90. "Comper Swift / between 1924 and his bizarre death in 1939, Nicholas Comper designed and built a series of light aircraft for the private flying market, the most successful of which was the Swift. Richard Riding profiles Comper's life and traces the Swift's continuing career."
  133. "10 Notably Weird Deaths of the 20th Century". Listverse. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  134. Jerry Blizin "No New Clues In Reeser Death; Debris Sent To Lab", St. Petersburg Times, 5 July 1951, p. 14
  135. Cited by Gareth Rubin "Live TV drama is resurrected as Sky shrugs off lessons of history", Archived 10 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine The Guardian, 31 May 2009
  136. Murray, John (20 July 2003). "Do Not Adjust Your Set By Kate Dunn: Live television drama may have gone, but, says Matthew Sweet, this entertaining history ensures it won't be forgotten". The Independent. London. ISSN 0951-9467. Archived from the original on 10 August 2003. An incident on the set of a 1958 edition of Armchair Theatre illustrates the perverse extremes of professionalism that television actors were expected to exhibit. The ... cast included ... a young Welsh actor named Gareth Jones. 'During transmission', recalls [Peter] Bowles, 'a little group of us was talking on camera while awaiting the arrival of Gareth Jones's character [...] We could see him coming up towards us, and he was going to arrive on cue, but we saw him drop, we saw him fall. We had no idea what had happened, but he certainly wasn't coming our way. The actors, including me, started making up lines: "I'm sure if So‑and‑so were here he would say..."' Jones had suffered a fatal heart attack—but rather than informing the actors of their colleague's death and ceasing transmission of the play, the producers decided to let them stumble on to the end.
  137. SL-1 The Accident: Phases I and II U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Idaho Operations Office video (Youtube 1 Archived 19 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine) (Youtube 2 Archived 4 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine)
  138. Chapter 15 "The SL-1 Reactor" (p. 142) Archived 7 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  139. Tucker, Todd (2009). Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4165-4433-3. See summary: "Sample text for Library of Congress control number 2008013842". Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 20 March 2012.
  140. McKeown, William (2003). Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident. Toronto: ECW Press. ISBN 978-1-55022-562-4.
  141. McFadden, Robert D. (4 April 2006). "Barry Bingham Jr., Louisville Publisher, Is Dead at 72". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  142. Ryan, Craig (2003). Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Space. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Press. ISBN 978-1-58834-141-9. OCLC 51059086.
  143. Dive Hard Archived 20 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Globe and Mail, 25 May 2008
  144. "Space disasters and near misses". Channel 4. Archived from the original Archived 25 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 29 June 2011.
  145. "Unusual death". Star-News. Wilmington, North Carolina. 20 February 1974. p. 28. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
  146. Staub, Jack E. (2005). "74. Yellowstone Carrot: Daucus carota savicus". Alluring Lettuces: And Other Seductive Vegetables for Your Garden. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. p. 230. ISBN 978-1-4236-0829-5. OCLC 435711200.
  147. "Carrot-Juice Addiction Cited in Briton's Death". The New York Times. 17 February 1974. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  148. Ross, Robert (2000). The Complete Goodies. London: B T Batsford.
  149. "Man Dies Laughing at The Goodies". Daily Mail. London. 29 March 1975.
  150. "A Goodies Way to Go – Laughing". Eastern Daily Press. Norwich. 29 March 1975.
  151. Staveacre, Tony (1987). Slapstick! The Illustrated Story of Knockabout Comedy. Angus & Robinson.
  152. Singh, Anita (21 June 2012). "Man who died laughing at Goodies had Long QT syndrome". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2 April 2015.
  153. "The Naples Daily News from Naples, Florida". Newspapers.com. p. 2. Archived from the original on 24 June 2018.
  154. Cynthia Ceilán (2007), Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed, Globe Pequot, p. 185, ISBN 978-1-59921-691-1
  155. James Roberts (4 March 2012), "The tragedy of Tom Pryce, Wales' Formula One hero", BBC Wales, one of the most bizarre, tragic accidents in the sport's history
  156. John Dunning (1995), Strange Deaths, ISBN 978-0-09-941660-9
  157. Stevenson, Val (2000), Strange Deaths: More Than 375 Freakish Fatalities, ISBN 978-0-7607-1947-3
  158. Toates, Frederick; Olga Coschug Toates (2002). Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Practical Tried-and-Tested Strategies to Overcome OCD. Class Publishing, 221. ISBN 978-1-85959-069-0.
  159. Rózsa, L.; Nixdorff, K. (2006). "Biological Weapons in Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact Countries". In Wheelis, M.; Rózsa, L.; Dando, M. (eds.). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 157–168. ISBN 0-674-01699-8.
  160. Robot firm liable in death, Tim Kiska, The Oregonian, 11 August 1983.
  161. Kiska, Tim (11 August 1983). "Death on the job: Jury awards $10 million to heirs of man killed by robot at auto plant". The Philadelphia Inquirer. pp. A10. Retrieved 11 September 2007.
  162. "Flying Lawnmower Death – Grim Reaper (contains additional references)". Snopes.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  163. Gergen, Joe (26 September 2008). "It was a grand stage for excitement". Newsday. Long Island, New York. ISSN 0278-5587. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016.
  164. Mulher cai sobre caco de prato e morre, O Pioneiro "A mulher Lourdes Maria da Silva, residente na Rua Tronca 1148, residência de um seu irmão, morreu de forma inacreditável no fim de semana." (August 6, 1980)
  165. Parentes da senhora morta retificam notícia divulgada, O Pioneiro (August 9, 1980)
  166. Kennedy, Shawn G. (24 May 1981). "Boris Sagal, 58, Movie Director, Dies After A Helicopter Accident". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  167. "10 Strange Celebrity Deaths – J. Robert Godbout". Open Salon. 8 July 2009. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
  168. "Cactus Courageous – Death by Saguaro". Snopes.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  169. "When Cactus and Civilization collide – Trifling with Saguaros can be Hazardous to one's Health". Phoenixnewtimes.com. 3 March 1993. Archived from the original on 10 August 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  170. Wallechinsky, David (2009). The Book Of Lists. Canongate Books. p. 334. ISBN 978-1-84767-667-2.
  171. "NTSB Accident Report" (PDF). Washington, D.C.: National Transportation Safety Board. 23 July 1982. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 May 2012.
  172. 'O Corvo' transforma morte de ator em clipe, Folha de S.Paulo (3 May 1995) "Em Hollywood, apenas John Landis teve experiência semelhante -com Vic Morrow, morto num acidente bizarro no cenário de ``No Limite da Realidade" (1983).
  173. "Drugs Linked to Death of Tennessee Williams". The New York Times. 14 August 1983. Archived from the original on 26 February 2017.
  174. Suzanne Daley (27 February 1983). "Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 November 2017. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
  175. Giertsen JC, Sandstad E, Morild I, Bang G, Bjersand AJ, Eidsvik S (June 1988). "An explosive decompression accident". American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. 9 (2): 94–101. doi:10.1097/00000433-198806000-00002. PMID 3381801.
  176. "Report to AAD regarding the Byford Dolphin accident". Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. 27 August 2002. Archived from the original on 12 February 2007. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
  177. Wertheim, Jon (19 October 2005). "Czech yourself (pt. 3)". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on 30 January 2008. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  178. "Odd mishap fells tennis official". Evening Independent. St. Petersburg, Fla. 12 September 1983. p. 3–C. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  179. "Tennis serve kills official". The Afro American. 24 September 1983. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  180. Pellissier, Hank (14 August 2010). "Condor Club | North Beach, San Francisco". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  181. Jerry Roberts (2012). The Hollywood Scandal Almanac: Twelve Months of Sinister, Salacious and Senseless History!. Arcadia Publishing. p. 149. ISBN 978-1614237860.
  182. Sauvageau, Anny; Racette, Stéphanie (January 2006). "Aqua-eroticum: an unusual autoerotic fatality in a lake involving a home-made diving apparatus". Journal of Forensic Sciences. 51 (1): 137–139. doi:10.1111/j.1556-4029.2005.00031.x. ISSN 0022-1198. PMID 16423240.
  183. Nexter.org (21 March 2018). "When People DIED In Freak Accidents: Head Stuck Under Cinema Seat in Birmingham, Eating a Pocket-Size Bible + 2 More". nexter.org. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  184. "Aint No Way to Go: Food for Thought". www.aintnowaytogo.com. Retrieved 12 December 2019. "A prisoner who died when he choked on a Bible shoved down his throat baffled a medical specialist who at first suspected murder because he couldn't believe someone could do that to themselves."
  185. "Un perro cayó del piso 13 y hubo 3 muertos: a 30 años de un accidente insólito" [A poodle fell from a 13th floor and three people died: 30 years after the unusual accident that moved Caballito]. lanacion.com.ar (in Spanish). 22 October 2018.
  186. "Créase o no: hace 30 años un perrito mató a tres personas al caer desde el piso 13". Diario de Cuya (in Spanish). 23 October 2018. Hace tres décadas atrás, un insólito y trágico suceso tuvo lugar en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires
  187. International, United Press. "Police Say Excited Sky Diver Forgot to Put on His Parachute". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  188. "Parachutist Dies When He Jumps Without a Chute". Los Angeles Times. 5 April 1988. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  189. Bizarre death at Piarco, Trinidad Guardian (16 January 1990)
  190. American Killed When He Jumps Into Jet’s Engine, Los Angeles Times (17 January 1990) "Airports Authority chief Winston Suite said the bizarre death Sunday night was an apparent suicide."
  191. Nichols, Mike (18 January 1990). "Man Killed by a Jet Engine Lacked Medicine, Friend Says". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
  192. Weinraub, Bernard (15 April 1993). "Bruce Lee's Brief Life Being Brought to Screen". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016. Referring to the bizarre death of Brandon Lee, he said: 'This latest tragedy is almost too much. I don't know what to make of it. It's almost like something unseen is taking place that's more than a coincidence.'
  193. "The Reliable Source". The Washington Post. 1 April 1993. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016. Hollywood was aghast yesterday over the sudden and bizarre death of 27-year-old actor Brandon Lee, who was filming in Wilmington, N.C.
  194. Robey, Tim (30 October 2015). "Brandon Lee and the 'curse' of The Crow". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 19 August 2016. The accident that had just occurred may be the unluckiest in the history of Hollywood production, for a bleak variety of logistical reasons that only came to light afterwards. It was also among the eeriest and most tragic in a whole set of other ways.
  195. Window Test Death – Through a Glass, Quickly at Snopes.com
  196. Goodman and Carr falls prey to rivals Archived 11 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine by Jacquie McNish, The Globe and Mail, 15 March 2007.
  197. Stone, Richard (April 1995). "Analysis of a Toxic Death". Discover Magazine. Archived from the original on 29 April 2018. Retrieved 7 April 2018.
  198. Peterson, Gary (4 June 2017). "20 years ago: 'Bodies came falling out of the sky' in Concord water park tragedy". East Bay Times. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  199. "Dimethylmercury and Mercury Poisoning". Chm.bris.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 19 February 2012. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
  200. "The Trembling Edge of Science". Iaomt.org. Archived from the original on 14 November 2011. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
  201. Loback, Erin (24 February 1997). "Accident hospitalizes Wetterhahn". The Dartmouth. Hanover, New Hampshire. ISSN 0199-9931. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  202. "Lightning Kills 11 in Soccer Game". Congolese Press Agency. Associated Press. 28 October 1998. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  203. "Health Deodorant obsession killed boy". BBC. 29 October 1998. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  204. UK: News In Brief, BBC (30 April 1999) "After the bizarre accident police found scorched items of clothing in the garden."
  205. Freak accident kills gardener, BBC (16 June 1999) "A businessman drowned in a river after a freak gardening accident, an inquest has heard."
  206. Author, No (11 June 2000). "Doctors confirm parasite killed girl". Japan Times. One or two cases of the disease are reported annually in Okinawa, but it is the first death linked to the parasite.
  207. "German cannibal tells of fantasy". BBC News. 3 December 2003. Archived from the original on 26 August 2007. Retrieved 9 July 2007.
  208. "NBC: Cannibal trial shocks Germany". NBC News. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  209. "Cannibal trial reveals perverse intimacy". The Age. 19 January 2004. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017.
  210. Chen, David W. (1 August 2001). "Small Town Reels From Boy's M.R.I. Death". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  211. "'Pizza Bomb' Update: Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong sentenced to life for bizarre Pa. collar-bomb killing". CBS News. 2 March 2011. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017.
  212. Peabody, Zanto; Chronicle, Copyright 2003 Houston (29 August 2003). "Autopsy of doctor killed in elevator accident finds alcohol". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  213. "Lava Lamp Death". Snopes. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  214. Family of decapitated passenger pleads mercy for driver, AccessWDUN (2 September 2004) "The family of a man decapitated in a bizarre car accident is pleading with authorities to free his best friend, who was behind the wheel and apparently didn't notice that his passenger had been beheaded."
  215. "DUI-Decapitation Horror". CBS News. 2 September 2004. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  216. Sokol, Zach (16 July 2015). "The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse". Vice. Vice.com. Archived from the original on 8 February 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
  217. "Sisters died after folding bed collapsed entombing them for four days". 18 December 2009. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  218. "Steve Irwin's final words: Cameraman present at death opens up about deadly stingray attack for the first time". The Independent. 10 March 2014.
  219. "CNN.com – Stingray deaths rare and agonizing". web.archive.org. 21 September 2006.
  220. "Fire Hydrant Death – Fire Plugged". Snopes.com. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  221. Harris, Harry (23 June 2007). "Flying fire hydrant kills man". Oakland Tribune. ISSN 1068-5936. Archived from the original on 9 July 2015.
  222. "Flying fire hydrant kills Calif. man". USA Today. 23 June 2007. Archived from the original on 19 August 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  223. "Brazil priest flying party balloons lost at sea". Reuters. 22 April 2008.
  224. "Body of ballooning Brazilian priest found at sea". Reuters. 30 July 2008.
  225. "- Morte de 'padre do balão' completa 11 anos | TNOnline". tnonline.uol.com.br. 23 April 2019.
  226. Carlos Alhinho – O melhor Cabo-Verdiano do Séc. XX brilhou em Alvalade, Sporting Canal "Estava precisamente ao serviço deste último emblema quando, a 31 May 2008, morreu vítima dum acidente bizarro ao cair no poço dum elevador dum hotel em Benguela..."
  227. Halfpenny, Martin (19 November 2008). "Chainsaw death was 'carefully thought through suicide'". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 30 December 2008. Retrieved 22 November 2008.
  228. "Man cut off head in flat protest". BBC News. 19 November 2008.
  229. "Leaping ray kills Florida boater". BBC News. 21 March 2008. Archived from the original on 25 March 2008.
  230. "Blunt force trauma killed woman struck by ray". CNN. 21 March 2008. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016.
  231. "Stingray kills woman on boat". NBC News. 20 March 2008. Archived from the original on 2 February 2016.
  232. "Woman Died From Sex With Dog, Sean McDonnell Arrested In Limerick, Ireland". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 21 July 2016.
  233. "Bus driver avoids prison in bestiality case". Limerick Post. 19 December 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  234. Jeff Brucculeri. "Watching shows about 'The Bird' Fidrych, Billy Martin". Tulsa Beacon. Retrieved 23 May 2020. Fidrych died at the age of 54, as a result of a freak accident on his farm in Northborough, Mass
  235. "Coyotes kill Toronto singer in Cape Breton". CBC News. 29 October 2009. Archived from the original on 18 August 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2016. Bob Bancroft, a retired biologist with the Department of Natural Resources, said this kind of attack is extremely rare...
  236. "When coyotes attack". Explore. 22 February 2010. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2016. As headline writers across the continent tried to marry some unfamiliar words—fatal, coyote, mauling—most people who spend time outdoors found it hard to believe that coyotes had actually killed a human.
  237. Horgan, Colin (30 October 2009). "Coyote killings are rare and shocking". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 September 2013. Retrieved 22 August 2016. Singer Taylor Mitchell's death was highly unusual ... [D]espite the frequency of coyote encounters, attacks are rarely very serious, and deaths as a result are virtually unheard of.
  238. "Grocery store employee missing for 10 years found behind store's cooler". CNN. 22 July 2019.
  239. "转椅又爆炸!少年被碎片从臀部击穿胸腔亡". 阿波罗新闻网. 6 March 2009.
  240. Woman badly injured by exploding computer chair, Asia one
  241. Irvine, Andrew Hough and Chris (4 March 2010). "Woman killed 'in freak lawnmower accident' named". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 20 October 2019.
  242. "Mike Edwards hay bale death: celebrities in freak killings". The Daily Telegraph. 6 September 2010. Archived from the original on 13 September 2017.
  243. "ELO cellist Mike Edwards's hay bale death 'preventable'". BBC News. 8 November 2012. Archived from the original on 20 December 2013. Retrieved 7 August 2013.
  244. sterlingwit (2 November 2012). "Mike Edwards – Killed by a Hay Bale". Ultimate Classic Rock. Archived from the original on 4 August 2017.
  245. "Owner of Segway pilots Segway off cliff, dies". The Inquisitr News. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017.
  246. "Man stabbed to death by cockfighting bird". BBC News. 8 February 2011. Archived from the original on 16 March 2011. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
  247. Peralta, Eyder (7 February 2011). "Weird News: California Man Fatally Stabbed By Rooster : The Two-Way". NPR. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013. Retrieved 26 September 2013.
  248. "Florida man who died in cockroach-eating contest choked to death, autopsy says". NBC News. 26 November 2012. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013.
  249. Robert Nolin; Sun Sentinel (10 October 2012). "Edward Archbold, roach eating contest death: What really killed the West Palm Beach man?". Archived from the original on 28 October 2013. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  250. "Equine expert killed as horse shoe sparks explosion heard 30 miles away". The Daily Telegraph. 13 February 2012. Archived from the original on 13 May 2014.
  251. "Officials: Horse's metal shoes sparked fatal blast in oxygen chamber". NBC News. 17 February 2012. Archived from the original on 4 January 2013.
  252. "Explosion at Fla. horse center kills worker, horse". 10 February 2012. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018.
  253. Moye, David (16 October 2012). "Ilda Vitor Maciel, 88, Dies After Allegedly Being Injected With Soup". HuffPost. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  254. "The Strange Death of Elisa Lam". Snopes. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  255. Billones, Cherrie Lou (21 January 2013). "Father bites his own son to death for being 'possessed by a snake'". Japan Daily Press. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  256. "Widow Sues for Her Husband's Horrible Death in a Dumpster". Courthouse News Service. 13 February 2014. Archived from the original on 18 April 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2016.
  257. "Beaver kills man in Belarus". The Guardian. 29 May 2013. Archived from the original on 11 September 2013.
  258. Jones, Simon (31 May 2013). "Beavers are born to bite wood, not people". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
  259. Roper, Matt (13 July 2013). "Brazilian man dies after cow falls through his roof on top of him". The Daily Telegraph. London. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 18 March 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  260. "Oklahoma Man Sentenced To 30 Years In 'Atomic Wedgie' Death Case". South Western Times. 17 July 2015. Archived from the original on 6 June 2016.
  261. Aric Mitchell (17 July 2015). "Atomic Wedgie Killer Sentenced: Brad Lee Davis Gets 30 Years for Unusual M.O." Inquistr. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016.
  262. Dandron, Jennifer. "US Justice Department: No criminal charges in gym mat death". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 24 September 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2016.
  263. "Federal prosecutor will look into Kendrick Johnson case". CNN. Archived from the original on 2 November 2013. Retrieved 31 October 2013.
  264. Tinuoye, Kunbi. "Kendrick Johnson family makes emotional plea for surveillance to be released". Archived from the original on 17 May 2014.
  265. Zdanowicz, Christina (10 May 2013). "Family demands answers in Kendrick Johnson's death". CNN. Archived from the original on 17 May 2014.
  266. Gutierrez, Gabe (31 October 2013). "Feds to investigate mysterious death of Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson". NBC News. Archived from the original on 17 May 2014.
  267. Troopers: Dog Runs Over, Kills Man with Van, WDAF-TV (January 17, 2013) "Investigators say that a dog appears to be to blame in the death of a Florida man in a bizarre accident in the man’s driveway."
  268. Dog Runs Over Man In Deadly Freak Accident, Business Insider (January 18, 2013)
  269. "Boy fatally impaled on statue outside Texas Tech's National Ranching Heritage Museum". Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. 24 June 2013. Archived from the original on 7 January 2016. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
  270. "Python's strangling of 2 boys in Canada investigated Archived 9 August 2013 at the Wayback Machine", CBS News, 6 August 2013.
  271. "Python enclosure in N.B. boys' deaths had 'flaw' Archived 29 August 2013 at the Wayback Machine", CBC News Archived 6 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine, 14 August 2013.
  272. "「逸失利益で賠償金の差つけないで」 重度の知的障害者死亡巡り22日判決". The Mainichi (in Japanese). 17 February 2019. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  273. "ハヤト裁判:支援 名古屋で会発足集会 /愛知". The Mainichi (in Japanese). 26 December 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  274. "13-year-old killed after goat falls from roof of building in Turkey". Hürriyet Daily News. 5 October 2014. Archived from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  275. Rankin, Jennifer; Penketh, Anne (21 October 2014). "Total boss killed in plane crash: investigators blame drunk driver". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 7 August 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  276. "The legacy of oil executive Christophe de Margerie, dead in freak Moscow plane crash". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 12 September 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  277. "Chinese chef dies after severed cobra head bites him". Archived from the original on 5 December 2017.
  278. "Chef cooking snake dies after..." Mirror. Archived from the original on 1 August 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  279. Augustine, Bernie (20 October 2014). "Indian soccer player dies after goal celebration goes awry". Daily News. New York. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  280. "Jumping sturgeon kills 5-year-old girl boating with family". USA TODAY. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  281. "Death by Wine Glass Was Freaky But No Signs of a Crime". TMZ. Retrieved 10 August 2019.
  282. Sara Coughlin (26 October 2015). "Chelsea Ake-Salvacion Death Cryotherapy Chamber Spa". Refinery29. Archived from the original on 5 December 2017.
  283. Tess Koman (26 October 2015). "24-Year-Old Salon Worker Found Dead Inside Cryotherapy Chamber". Cosmopolitan. Archived from the original on 4 December 2017.
  284. "Man dies after lorry crashes into Derriford Hospital". ITV. 8 June 2015.
  285. "Derriford trucker death: Lee Jane 'died trying to save others'". BBC. 30 June 2016.
  286. Mansfield, Katie (17 December 2015). "Airline horror as airport worker is killed by being sucked into plane engine". Retrieved 5 February 2017.
  287. Rama Lakshmi (16 December 2015). "A ground crew member is sucked into the aircraft engine at Mumbai airport". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 10 August 2016.
  288. Agency (2 June 2015). "Rabbit hunter died in freak accident after getting his head stuck in a hole on New Year's Day". ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  289. "That Wasn't a Meteorite That Killed a Man in India, NASA Says". Archived from the original on 11 March 2018. Retrieved 22 June 2018.
  290. "Indian bus driver 'killed by meteorite strike'". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 26 April 2018.
  291. "Meteorite Killed Man at Indian College, Says Chief Minister". The Wall Street Journal.
  292. "Blast samples from Vellore college are meteorite parts, says Trichy lab report". The Indian Express.
  293. "Woman dies after being stabbed by beach umbrella while celebrating her birthday at Virginia Beach". The Independent. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  294. "Woman Impaled By Umbrella While Celebrating Birthday At The Beach". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 5 December 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  295. "Woman dies after being stabbed in chest with umbrella at Virginia Beach Oceanfront". Retrieved 3 April 2018.
  296. "A year after a promise that Verruckt will come down, fatal water slide still stands". kansascity. Retrieved 11 December 2017.
  297. "Indonesian pop star Irma Bule bitten by cobra on stage, continues for 45 minutes before fatal collapse". The Age. 8 April 2016.
  298. Yenni Kwok. "The Real Story of the Indonesian Singer and the Cobra". Time.com. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  299. Visser, Steve (19 June 2016). "Anton Yelchin, 'Star Trek' actor, dies". CNN. Retrieved 19 June 2016.
  300. "Anton Yelchin's bizarre death spurs investigation of Jeep SUV". NBC News. 21 June 2016. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  301. "Girl dies after elephant throws stone in Morocco zoo". BBC News. 28 July 2016.
  302. Chris Johnston (28 July 2016). "Girl, 7, dies after being hit by rock thrown by elephant in Morocco zoo". The Guardian.
  303. "County: Corrections Officer and Inmate Fell into Elevator Shaft". WNEP 16 News. 19 July 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
  304. Melbourne thunderstorm asthma victims left waiting for ambulances which had not been despatched by Karen Percy (ABC News)
  305. Thunderstorm asthma deaths: ambulance dispatch 'unlikely' factor – coroner by Melissa Davey (The Guardian)
  306. "Family friends identify 5-year-old boy killed in freak accident at Atlanta rotating restaurant". CBS News.
  307. "Missing man killed, swallowed whole by python | Toronto Sun". 29 March 2017.
  308. News, P. M. N. (16 June 2018). "7-meter-long python swallows Indonesian woman | National Post".
  309. "Florida man crashes into fire hydrant and drowns on 89th birthday". NBC News.
  310. Bill Lindelof. "Woman dies after falling from golf cart onto wine glasses". The Sacramento Bee. Archived from the original on 13 July 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2017. Co-workers of Debra Bedard of San Jose, Calif., expressed condolences after she died in a freak golf cart accident in an olive orchard Friday night.
  311. Barnes, Zahra. "Fitness Blogger Rebecca Burger Died After a Whipped Cream Dispenser Exploded". SELF.
  312. Getuige in zaak Holleeder dood door bizar visongeluk (in Dutch; "Witness in Holleeder case dead after bizarre fishing accident"), NOS
  313. "Naked care worker trapped in airing cupboard dies trying to dig herself out, inquest hears". The Independent. 20 June 2018.
  314. Homem embriagado morre afogado em balde de água no Entroncamento de Jaguaquara, MídiaBahia (October 22, 2017)
  315. Homem embriagado morre afogado em balde de água no Entroncamento de Jaguaquara, Itiruçu online (October 22, 2017) "Raildo Matias Santos, de 49 anos, morreu de forma inusitada no Entroncamento de Jaguaquara neste domingo (22)."
  316. "Man dies after being sucked into MRI machine". The Week. Archived from the original on 29 January 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  317. "Mumbai MRI accident: Ward boy told us machine was switched off, said relative of deceased". Hindustan Times. 29 January 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
  318. "Indian man killed after being sucked into MRI machine". Archived from the original on 30 January 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
  319. "Self-driving Uber kills Arizona woman in first fatal crash involving pedestrian". The Guardian.
  320. "Uber halts self-driving car tests after death". BBC. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018.
  321. "Man who died after getting trapped in cinema seat named". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 March 2018.
  322. "An Ohio 16-Year-Old Died In A Freak Accident In A Van Despite Calling Police Twice". BuzzFeed News.
  323. "Southwest sends apology, $US5,000, to passengers on damaged jet". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 21 April 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
  324. "First picture of mum killed after being 'sucked out of Southwest plane' during mid-air engine explosion". MSN. Archived from the original on 21 April 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2018.
  325. "1 dead, 1 in critical condition from dry ice in Seattle car". ABC News. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  326. "Dry ice linked to death of Washington woman traveling in Dippin' Dots' deliveryman's car". USA Today. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  327. https://www.clickorlando.com/news/worker-killed-after-falling-into-vat-of-oil-on-disney-property ("Freak accident" appears in the caption on the lower photo.) Graham Media, WKMG-TV (CBS), Orlando, Florida
  328. "Why an Australian Man Died 8 Years After Eating a Slug". Motherboard. 5 November 2018. Retrieved 7 November 2018.
  329. "A baseball killed a woman at Dodger Stadium, MLB's first foul-ball death in nearly 50 years". 28 August 2018.
  330. Chakraborty, Barnini (11 January 2019). "Florida man decapitated in freak helicopter accident identified, authorities say". Fox News Channel. Retrieved 13 February 2019.
  331. Staff, A. O. L. "Man dies after eating fishcake so hot it burned his throat, left him unable to breathe: Coroner". AOL.com.
  332. "Deer kills man, injures woman near Wangaratta in north-east Victoria". ABC News. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  333. "Father dead, mother fights for life after pet deer attack near Wangaratta". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  334. "Metal drinking straw fatally impales woman through her eye after fall". USA Today. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  335. Ball, Without A. Crystal (15 July 2019). "Woman's Death From Metal Straw Prompts New Discussion about Plastic Straw Ban". Without A Crystal Ball. Retrieved 12 August 2019.
  336. "Two-year-old child 'kills mum after pressing switch to close car window on her parent's neck'". 13 September 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  337. "Freak remote-start car accident kills man in South Jamaica". 12 December 2019. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  338. "Man killed by car being remotely started". 12 December 2019. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  339. Palomo, David (15 January 2020). "La plancha de una tonelada que voló 3 km antes de matar al frutero Sergio en Tarragona" [The 1 ton plate that flew 3 km before killing fruit seller Sergio in Tarragona] (in Spanish). Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  340. Ward, Mary (18 February 2020). "Man killed by falling gas bottle in 'freak' Sydney CBD accident". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
  341. Smith, Rohan (18 February 2020). "Police appeal for information after man killed by falling gas bottle". news.com.au. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
  342. "Three dead after dry ice thrown into swimming pool during birthday party". The Independent. 29 February 2020.
  343. Schild, Darcy. "3 people died at an Instagram influencer's birthday party in Moscow after dry ice was poured into a swimming pool". Insider.
  344. "Three die in dry-ice incident at Moscow pool party". 29 February 2020 via bbc.com.
  345. "Young chess players 'killed by laughing gas'". BBC News. 6 March 2020. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  346. Doggers, Peter (6 March 2020). "GM Stanislav Bogdanovich And Girlfriend 'Found Dead In Moscow Apartment'". Chess.com. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
  347. https://www.redetv.uol.com.br › can... Cantor Paulynho Paixão morre após sofrer dois acidentes ... RedeTV! Uol
  348. "Cantor morre após sofrer dois acidentes no mesmo dia". Metrópoles. 3 April 2020.
  349. "Paulynho Paixão, rei do coladinho, morre após sofrer dois acidentes". entretenimento.uol.com.br.
  350. "Cantor Paulynho Paixão morre após sofrer dois acidentes seguidos em rodovia no Piauí". Extra Online.
  351. "7 Ridiculous Cases Where Animals Were Put On Trial". Cracked.com. 12 April 2009.
  352. Wallace, Amy. The Book of Lists 3. New York: Bantam Books, 1983
  353. Daly, Michael (2013). Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 333. ISBN 978-0802119049.
  354. Olson, Ted (2009). The Hanging of Mary, a Circus Elephant. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press. pp. 219–227.
  355. Krajicek, David J. (14 March 2015). "'Fed up' circus elephant lynched for 'murder' in 1916". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on 12 September 2016. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  356. Was it suicide? – A Moo Cow's End., Townsville Bulletin (15 January 1932)
  357. Johansson atropela e mata um veado na pista, Jornal dos Sports (15 August 1987) "The incident that most called the attention of spectators of the first official training for the Austrian Grand pix was, perhaps, the most unexpected documented in the history of Formula 1."
  358. Dog Owner Guilty in Bizzare Death, Chicago Tribune (21 September 1993)
  359. "Remember When: Randy Johnson Hit a Bird With His Fastball (video)".
  360. 17 Years Ago: Randy Johnson Makes Bird Explode In Spring Training Game, Forbes (28 March 2018) "It wasn't on purpose; it would have been impossible to do. The timing was too perfect, and in the end, well… shocking, tragic, crazy… you pick the superlative, history was made."
  361. Jacques Rudolph Kills A Pigeon – Cricket Ball Air Strike (video)
  362. "Pigeon killed by cricket star Jacques Rudolph during match". The Telegraph. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  363. RIP Alan the dachshund: Tatler magazine's 'office dog' killed in grisly revolving door accident, The Independent (January 15, 2013) "Staff at the high-society magazine Tatler are in mourning after their in-house dachshund came to a grisly end, killed by the office revolving doors."
  364. Tatler's dog, Alan, dies in bizarre revolving door accident, The Guardian (January 15, 2013)
  365. Lawmaker Railed Against Squirrels. One Fought Back, Newser (November 23, 2016) "The squirrel died in the bizarre accident, and Brookins didn't get off unscathed: He suffered a fractured skull and broken nose and lost multiple teeth. He now faces a months-long recovery and multiple surgeries."

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.