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List of unusual deaths in the 20th century

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Lists of unusual deaths
Antiquity
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Animal deaths

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 20th century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

20th century

[edit]

1900–1959

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning
1900 In the English Midlands and North West England, over 6,000 were poisoned and 70 people died after drinking beer which used non-purified sulphuric acid laced with arsenic as an ingredient. Most survivors were paralyzed.[1][2]
Jesse William Lazear
25 September 1900 The 34-year-old American physician was convinced that mosquitoes were carriers for yellow fever. He allowed himself to be bitten by multiple mosquitoes and died days later from the disease.[3][verification needed][4]
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster
29 November 1900 During the 1900 Big Game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal American football teams, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent to $37 in 2023) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof then collapsed, severing fuel pipes and causing at least 100 people to fall four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of a furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). 23 people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.[5][6][7]
James Doyle Jr. 30 January 1901 The lineworker in Smartsville, California, was killed by an electric shock through a telephone receiver after a broken power line came in contact with the telephone wire.[8][9]
R. Stanton Walker 25 October 1902 The 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio when a foul ball struck him in the hand, driving a knife he was passing to one of his friends into his chest. His friends asked if he was hurt and he said "not much", but the wound soon began to bleed heavily and he died within minutes.[10][11]
Ed Delahanty
2 July 1903 The 35-year-old American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train due to drunken horseplay, falling off International Bridge, and going over Niagara Falls. Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, was the last to see him alive, reportedly scuffling with him. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.[12][13][verification needed]
Mary Ellen Rumble 19 December 1905 The daughter of a farmer in Watervale near Murrumburrah in New South Wales was killed when one of a group of horses attempting to escape from a paddock knocked her down, causing her neck to snap.[14][15]
Archibald Anderson 4 March 1907 The 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when a tooth plate fell out and got lodged in his throat, choking him to death.[16][17]
Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler
14 November 1908 The Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet suffered a heart attack and died aged 56 after giving a ballet performance to Kaiser Wilhelm Il and other members of a hunting party staying at Donaueschingen Palace. Shortly after ending his recital with a bow, he collapsed and was pronounced dead at the scene.[18][19] The circumstances of his death were covered up by military officials so as not to further inflame public outrage over the Eulenburg affair, a government scandal dealing with accusations of homosexual behavior against members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage.[20]
George Spencer Millet
A black-and-white photograph of George Millet.
 15 February 1909 The American teenager who worked as an office boy at an insurance company at the Metropolitan Life Building in New York City, was fleeing six young women stenographers at his workplace intent on giving him kisses for his 15th birthday while carrying a metal ink eraser in his breast pocket. As the women moved in for their kisses, he fell forward, and the eraser's point pierced his heart, killing him.[21][22][failed verification]
Doc Powers
26 April 1909 The 38-year-old American Major League Baseball player ran into a wall while chasing a foul ball during a Boston Red Sox-Philadelphia Athletics game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park, on 12 April 1909. He died from internal injuries and gangrene two weeks later.[23][24]
Ada Gregory 3 June 1910 The 52-year-old widow in Bentleigh, Victoria, who had been suffering from "fits of melancholia", began convulsing after rubbing powder on her teeth and asking her two children to take some medicine, which they did not do. She was believed to have taken strychnine.[25][26]
Franz Reichelt
4 February 1912 The 33-year-old tailor and inventor leaped from the Eiffel Tower and fell to his death wearing a parachute made from cloth, his own invention. He was asked by friends and authorities to use a dummy for the feat, but declined, saying "I intend to prove the worth of my invention".[27][28][29]
Emily Davison
8 June 1913 On 4 June 1913, the 40-year-old suffragette from London was mortally injured at the Epsom Derby when she ran onto the racetrack wearing a suffragette flag and was run over by Anmer, George V's horse, which jockey Herbert Jones was riding.[30][31] She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 days later.[32]
Grigori Rasputin
30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916 The 47-year-old Russian mystic died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation.[33][34][page needed] According to his murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grigori Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine which had been laced with cyanide but he did not appear to be affected by it. He was then shot once in the chest and believed to be dead but, after a while, he leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who freed himself and fled. Rasputin followed and made it into the courtyard before being shot again, and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped his body and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.[33][35][36][37]
Gustav Kobbé
27 July 1918 The 61-year-old author and music critic was sailing in Great South Bay, New York, when he noticed a low-flying seaplane heading toward him. Kobbé attempted to get into the water, but the plane crashed into the mast of Kobbé's boat, splitting his head open.[38][39][unreliable source?]
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood
15 January 1919 21 people were killed and 150 injured after a large tank of molasses burst in Boston's North End.[40][41][42][43]
Ray Chapman
17 August 1920 On 16 August 1920, while he was up to bat, the 29-year-old Cleveland Indians baseball player was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by the New York Yankees' Carl Mays and died 12 hours later.[44][45]
Dan Andersson
16 September 1920 The 32-year-old Swedish poet died from hydrogen cyanide left in his Hotel Hellman room by a lice, flea, and bed bug extermination.[39][unreliable source?]
Alexander of Greece
25 October 1920 The 27-year-old Greek king died of sepsis after being bitten by a palace steward's pet Barbary macaque in his garden, while trying to break up a fight between his German shepherd and another monkey.[33][46]
Thomas Lynn Bradford
5 February 1921 In an attempt to ascertain the existence of an afterlife, the 48-year-old spiritualist committed suicide by sealing his Detroit apartment, blowing out the pilot of his heater, and turning on the gas, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. In the week following his death, two fellow spiritualists claimed to have communicated with his ghost.[47][48]
Michael F. Farley
8 October 1921 The 58-year-old U.S. Representative and Gore–McLemore resolution supporter died of anthrax he contracted from his shaving brush.[49][unreliable source?][50]
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley 25 November 1922 The woman from Glen Innes, New South Wales, was found drowned in a cask of water. It was surmised that she was leaning over the cask when she suddenly fainted and fell into it.[51][52]
Frank Hayes
Portrait of Frank Hayes
 4 June 1923 The 22-year-old jockey from Elmont, New York, died of a heart attack mid-race and collapsed on the horse, which nonetheless crossed the finish line first, still carrying his body.[53][54][55]
Martha Mansfield
30 November 1923 While the 24-year-old American film actress was on location in San Antonio, Texas filming the American Civil War drama The Warrens of Virginia, a lit match was carelessly tossed by a crew member, which ignited the hoop skirts and ruffles of her Civil War costume. Co-star Wilfred Lytell and a chauffeur were able to extinguish the flames and rush her to a hospital, where she died the following day from her injuries.[56][57]
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn 13 July 1924 While attempting to turn around at Grand View in Yellowstone National Park, the Dunns somehow backed their car over a cliff, despite a tree barrier that would normally have made this impossible. The vehicle fell 800 feet (240 m) and then rolled another 200 feet (61 m).[58][59][60]
Thornton Jones 1 August 1924 The lawyer from Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, slit his own throat while he was having a nightmare.[61][62] An inquest at Bangor delivered a verdict of "suicide while temporarily insane".[63][failed verification]
Phillip McClean April 1926 The 16-year-old and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland, when it knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[64][verification needed][65][66]
Bobby Leach
26 April 1926 The American stunt performer died after a botched amputation of the infected leg which he had broken after slipping on an orange peel. He had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel 15 years earlier.[67][68]
Harry Houdini
31 October 1926 The 52-year-old Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer reportedly died from a punch from college student J. Gordon Whitehead, which gave him "peritonitis, caused by a ruptured appendix."[37][69] However, other stories claim he was murdered. Who or what killed Houdini is still under speculation.[69]
Dr. J. S. F. Barnet 29 August 1927 The 32-year-old physician in Armidale, Australia, was shocked to death in his bed by an excessive quantity of electrical power from a medical device. Barnet had picked up a telephone beside his bed to answer a call at the moment the device's current came on.[70]
Isadora Duncan
14 September 1927 The 50-year-old American dancer broke her neck in Nice, France, when her long scarf became entangled in the open-spoked wheel and rear axle of the Amilcar CGSS automobile in which she was riding.[71][72][73]
Alfred Loewenstein
4 July 1928 The 51-year-old financier and third-richest man in the world at the time died whilst flying from England to Belgium on his private Fokker F.VII airplane. It is believed he fell out of the aircraft and into the water where he died.[74][75]
William Kogut
20 October 1930 The 26-year-old convicted murderer, a death row inmate at San Quentin in California, reportedly committed suicide using a pipe bomb he made with playing cards and a hollow steel leg from his cot.[76][77][note 1]
Arnold Bennett
27 March 1931 The 63-year-old British novelist was dining in Paris with his partner, Dorothy Cheston Bennett. He drank two glasses of tap water during the meal, scoffing at Dorothy's claims that the water in Paris was not properly treated to be safe to drink. Within two days, he contracted typhoid fever and died two months later.[78][79][80][page needed][verification needed]
James Leo McDermott 26 August 1931 After the 40-year-old deputy sheriff stepped out of his car at an oil station, the vehicle began to roll forwards, and he attempted to hop onto the car's running board to stop it. It carried him forward and slammed him into a hook used to hold air and water hoses, which impaled him just below the heart.[81][82][83]
Eben Byers
31 March 1932 The 51-year-old American socialite and industrialist died after drinking excessive quantities of Radithor, a patent medicine that contained 2 microcuries of radium. He drank a total of around 1400 doses, which concentrated in his bones, continually irradiating him. By 1931, his bones were reportedly disintegrating and his jaw had been removed; he died the next year.[84][85][86]
Michael Malloy
22 February 1933 Five people, called the "Murder Trust," planned to kill Malloy for life insurance. Over the course of two months, they added antifreeze, turpentine, horse liniment, and finally rat poison in his alcohol, but Malloy drank it with no problems whatsoever. They then tried feeding him wood alcohol, expired oysters, and then a sandwich made of expired sardines and shrapnel, none of which had the desired effect. The group then tried to freeze him to death, and when that failed they ran him over twice with a taxi, from which Malloy recovered. Finally, they connected a hose to a coal gas jet and placed it in his mouth, which caused his death from carbon monoxide poisoning. Malloy was given nicknames such as "Mike the Durable", "Iron Mike", and "The Irish Rasputin".[87][88][page needed][89]
Susan Grace Kelly 16 January 1935 The 80-year-old woman in Armidale, New South Wales, was sitting with her daughter when she fell back dead after hearing a loud clap of thunder. Her last words were, "That was very close."[90][91]
Catherine Steyer 20 January 1937 The 33-year-old hatcheck girl was accidentally electrocuted by a homemade booby trap, consisting of powered wires hidden within drapes, that her fiance had installed after her apartment was broken into a few months prior. Falling onto one wire, with another dangling above her arm, she completed the circuit each time the dangling wire touched her; she died slowly from the repeating doses of electricity.[92][93]
Fred Clapp 28 May 1937 A 77-year-old farmer from Clark County, South Dakota, died after being dragged by a bundle of horses while being tied to the harness.[94][95]
Benjamin Taylor 2 June 1937 During a carbuncle removal operation, an electric cautery ignited gases from the patient's lungs. This caused an explosion which killed Taylor and injured two nurses.[96][97]
Nicholas Comper 17 June 1939 The 42-year-old aviator and aircraft designer was attempting to light a firework in Hythe, Kent, when a passerby enquired what he was doing; he replied that he was an IRA man planning to blow up the town hall. The passerby knocked down Comper, who hit his head on the curb.[98][99]
Italo Balbo
28 June 1940 The 44-year-old governor of Italian Libya was flying his personal Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 when the Libyan airfield at Tobruk was attacked by a squad of British planes. He was killed by friendly fire from Italian anti-aircraft batteries on the ground.[100][101]
Leon Trotsky
21 August 1940 The 60-year-old Russian socialist and revolutionary was murdered in his villa in Mexico by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader with an ice axe.[37][102][103]
Sherwood Anderson
8 March 1941 The 64-year-old American writer died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a toothpick.[37][39][unreliable source?][104][unreliable source?]
Jack Budlong 5 August 1941 The friend of Errol Flynn was working as an extra on the film They Died with Their Boots On, starring Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Budlong insisted on using a real saber rather than a prop one. While filming a cavalry charge, Budlong's horse was frightened by the sounds of simulated explosions and threw Budlong, causing him to impale himself with the sword.[105][106][107]
Rolf Mützelburg
11 September 1942 The 29-year-old commander of German submarine U-203 died during a World War II patrol southwest of the Azores when he dove from the sub's conning tower to swim in the ocean. The boat lurched suddenly, and Mützelburg's head and shoulder struck the sub.[108][self-published source?][109]
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar
12 April 1943 The 27-year-old member of the 64th Bombardment Squadron was taking off for a night mission in New Guinea when he struck something with his bomber, referred to in reports as a "brush kangaroo" or "baby kangaroo" and later found to be a wallaby. The bomber crashed on takeoff, which detonated its load of bombs, killing McCullar and the rest of the bomber's crew.[110][111]
Clarence Stagemyer 29 September 1943 The 32-year-old was watching a Cleveland Indians-Washington Senators doubleheader in Griffith Stadium when an errant throw by Senators' third baseman Sherry Robertson struck him in the forehead. Despite appearing uninjured afterwards, he heeded the Senators' team physician's entreaties to go to the hospital, where he died the next day of a fractured skull. Stagemyer was the first fan in Major League Baseball history killed by a ball leaving the field, and the only such fatality to date to have been struck by a thrown ball.[112]
Thomas Midgley Jr.
2 November 1944 In 1940, the 51-year-old contracted polio, which left him severely disabled, leading him to devise an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[113][114]
Louis Slotin
30 May 1946 The 35-year-old Canadian physicist and Manhattan Project scientist died as the result of an accident while performing an experiment called "tickling the dragon's tail" with a plutonium core which came to be known as the "demon core". His screwdriver slipped, exposing him to a fatal dose of radiation. Slotin died 9 days later; the other people in the room observing the experiment survived.[115][116]
Thomas Mantell
7 January 1948 The 25-year-old P-51 Mustang fighter pilot crashed while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object near Franklin, Kentucky, thus becoming the first person known to have died as a result of a UFO sighting. Officially, the object remains unidentified, though the most likely explanation is that it was a U.S. Navy Skyhook balloon.[117][118][119][120]
Mary Reeser
2 July 1951 The 67-year-old woman was found by the police in her St. Petersburg, Florida, home almost totally cremated where she sat, while her apartment was relatively damage-free. Some speculate that she spontaneously combusted.[121][122]
Margaret Wise Brown
13 November 1952 The 42-year-old author of Goodnight Moon was hospitalized for an ovarian cyst. To prove how healthy she was after treatment, she kicked her foot in the air, dislodging a blood clot in her leg. The blood clot quickly travelled to her brain, and she died in emergency surgery.[39][unreliable source?][123]
Gareth Jones 30 November 1958 The 33-year-old British actor died of a heart attack between scenes of a live television play, Underground on the ITV network. Other members of the cast improvised lines, such as, "I'm sure if So‑and‑so were here he would say...", to compensate for his absence. Coincidentally, his character was scripted to die of a heart attack in a later scene of the play.[124][125]

1960s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Alan Stacey
19 June 1960 The 26-year-old British racing driver died in a crash during the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix when a bird struck him in the face. 22-year-old British driver Chris Bristow was killed during the same race.[126][127][unreliable source?][128]
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
3 January 1961 During the testing of an experimental nuclear reactor design, in Arco, Idaho, two soldiers and a sailor were killed, but their deaths were not due to radiation poisoning. While trying to bring the reactor online, Byrnes, an army specialist, was supposed to pull a control rod partway out by hand, but he pulled the rod further than intended. The reactor instantly went prompt critical, which flash-boiled the water around the reactor. The force of the steam expanding lifted the entire reactor into the air about 2.77 metres (9 ft 1 in), in what has been described as a water hammer-like effect. Many components were thrown out of the top, one of which impaled Legg, a navy electrician's mate, lifted him from a catwalk, and penetrated the ceiling, leaving him dangling. While the reactor was airborne the radioactive steam escaped, spraying the room. The steam was so hot that Byrnes instantly died of severe thermal burns. McKinley suffered a head wound, from which he died later that day. The steam left the bodies of all three men radioactive, so they were buried in lead-lined coffins. The three remain the only human beings killed by a reactor explosion in the United States.[129][130][131][132]
Victor Prather
4 May 1961 The 34-year-old U.S. Navy flight surgeon drowned at the end of the record-setting Strato-Lab V balloon flight when he slipped from the rescue sling during recovery operations in the Gulf of Mexico and his pressure suit filled with water.[133][134]
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross
8 June 1966 Astronaut and NASA test pilot Walker, flying a Lockheed F-104N Starfighter, and North American Aviation test pilot Cross, co-piloting a North American XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, were killed in a mid-air collision during a publicity photo shoot of multiple aircraft with General Electric engines flying in formation near Edwards Air Force Base. With the Valkyrie in a spin, pilot Alvin S. White ejected and survived, but centrifugal force prevented Cross' ejection seat from retracting into the escape capsule.[135][136]
Nick Piantanida
29 August 1966 The 34-year-old skydiver died four months after an attempt to break the record for the highest parachute jump near Joe Foss Field, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; his suit had depressurized, causing brain damage from lack of oxygen.[137][verification needed][138][139]
Jayne Mansfield
29 June 1967 The 34-year-old American actress and Playboy model died when the driver of her 1966 Buick Electra 225 crashed into a tractor which had abruptly stopped. Her lover and the driver also died, but her children, including Mariska Hargitay, who was 3 years old at the time, survived. Many people speculated that the accident was the result of a Satanic curse.[140][141]
Harold Holt
17 December 1967 The 59-year-old Prime Minister of Australia disappeared, presumed drowned, while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria.[142][143][144][145] He was "simply one of the number of ordinary Australians who drown each year through poor judgment or bad luck";[146] his drowning has been described as "not unusual",[147] and as "an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that still befalls dozens every summer."[143] Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories.[143]
Albert Dekker
5 May 1968 The 62-year-old American actor and politician was found dead kneeling naked in his bathtub with a noose wrapped around his neck, a dirty hypodermic needle in each arm, a scarf over his eyes, a ball in his mouth secured to his head with wire, his wrists in handcuffs, and leather belts and thongs around his torso, one of them tied to a rope around Dekker's ankles. There were vulgar phrases and drawings in lipstick all over his body. His death was ruled an accidental case of erotic asphyxiation.[148][149]

1970s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Alan Fish 20 May 1970 The 14-year-old was struck in the head by a Manny Mota foul ball on 16 May while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium, and was knocked unconscious for a minute. He appeared to recover and the Dodger Stadium infirmary gave him an ice pack, two aspirin and released him to watch the rest of the game, during which he behaved normally. The Giants ended up winning the game 5–4. Afterwards, he began shaking and crying uncontrollably during the bus ride to his nearby home; when he arrived, his parents sought medical attention but had to go to three hospitals, despite his worsening condition, before they found one that would accept him early the next morning. His condition required neurosurgery, but continued to worsen, and after a seizure led to apparent brain death, he was taken off life support two days later; the autopsy showed that part of his fractured skull had become lodged in his brain, causing an intracerebral hemorrhage. He was the first fan in Major League Baseball history to die of injuries caused by a foul ball.[150]
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
29 June 1971 The Soviet cosmonauts died when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurized during preparations for re-entry. They are the only reported human deaths outside the Earth's atmosphere.[151][152]
Deborah Gail Stone 8 July 1974 The 18-year-old hostess for the America Sings attraction at Disneyland mysteriously died after being crushed between two walls around 11:00 p.m. It is speculated that she either fell backwards or tried to jump from one stage to another.[153][154]
Christine Chubbuck
15 July 1974 The 29-year-old American news anchor from Hudson, Ohio, killed herself on live television at the start of Suncoast Digest, a local newscast for WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, after reading some of the area's breaking news headlines. Chubbuck was the first person to commit suicide on live television.[155][156]
Alex Mitchell 24 March 1975 After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, the resident of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, laughed continuously for 25 minutes and then fell dead on his sofa from heart failure due to what doctors discovered years later, via his granddaughter, was a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.[157][158]
Mark Frechette
27 September 1975 The 27-year-old American-Canadian film actor, known for playing the lead role in the 1970 film Zabriskie Point, died while in prison for bank robbery when a barbell fell on his neck while he was weightlifting.[159][160]
Luciano Re Cecconi
18 January 1977 The 28-year-old professional footballer for S.S. Lazio and the Italy national football team, was shot while pretending to rob a jeweller as a practical joke.[161][162]
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren 5 March 1977 Pryce, a driver in the 1977 South African Grand Prix, struck and killed Van Vuuren at 170 miles per hour (270 km/h) as Van Vuuren ran across the Kyalami racetrack to extinguish a burning car. The fire extinguisher which Van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce's head and killed him.[163][verification needed][164][page needed][165][verification needed] Renzo Zorzi, the driver of the burning car, was uninjured.[citation needed]
Kurt Gödel
14 January 1978 The 71-year-old logician and mathematician developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food prepared by anyone but his wife. When she became ill and was hospitalized, he starved to death.[166][167] At the time of his death, he only weighed around 65 pounds (29 kg).[168][failed verification]
Georgi Markov
11 September 1978 The Bulgarian dissident writer was poisoned on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by an assassin associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. At the time, this secret police force was affiliated with the KGB. Markov died four days later in hospital. No one was ever charged with the assassination.[36][169]
Robert Williams
25 January 1979 The Ford plant worker became the first person known to be killed by a robot[50][170][verification needed] when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.[171][verification needed]

1980s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Lourdes Maria da Silva 3 August 1980 The resident of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, was walking upstairs carrying a Pyrex glass when she tripped, broke it, and fell on the shards, cutting an artery in her neck. She died on her way to the hospital.[172][173]
Azaria Chamberlain 17 August 1980 The 9-week-old from Australia was dragged off and killed by a wild dingo during a family camping trip to Uluru in the Northern Territory. This was the first recorded instance of a dingo killing a human. Azaria's parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, received intense media speculation due to the perceived implausibility of a dingo attack; in a highly-publicized trial, Lindy was convicted of murder and Michael named as an accessory. Their convictions were later overturned after Azaria's matinee jacket was discovered in an area with many dingo lairs nearby.[174][175][176]
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole, and Nick Mullon
19 March 1981, 1 April 1981, and 11 April 1995 At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, five workers suffered anoxia due to pure nitrogen atmosphere in the aft engine compartment of Space Shuttle Columbia during a countdown demonstration test for the STS-1 mission. 51-year-old John Bjornstad died at the scene; 50-year-old Forrest Cole went into a coma and died two weeks later, and Nick Mullon died 14 years later from complications of injuries sustained.[177][178][179]
Boris Sagal 22 May 1981 The 57-year-old Ukrainian-American film director died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III in Portland, Oregon, after he walked into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter and was partially decapitated.[180][181][182]
David Alan Kirwan
21 July 1981 The 24-year-old tourist from La Cañada Flintridge, California, jumped into the alkaline (pH 9) and scalding (202 °F (94 °C)) Celestine Pool at Yellowstone National Park to save his friend's dog. The dog died within moments and its body dissolved in the hot spring. Kirwan, blinded and burned over his entire body, was airlifted to Salt Lake City and died the next day.[183][184]
William Holden
12 November 1981 The 63-year-old American actor slipped on a rug in his apartment while intoxicated, gashed his head open on a bedside table and bled to death without calling for help. His body was discovered four days later.[185][186]
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen
23 July 1982 During the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the 53-year-old Morrow, seven-year-old Le, and six-year-old Chen were performing a scene in which their characters are pursued by a helicopter. Heat from special-effects explosions caused the helicopter to fall on them.[187][failed verification] Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.[186][188][189]
Dick Wertheim 15 September 1983 The 61-year-old tennis linesman died after a ball served by player Stefan Edberg at the US Open struck him in the groin and he fell out of his chair, striking his head on the hardcourt surface.[190][191][192]
Truls Hellevik
5 November 1983 The 34-year-old Norwegian diver was explosively dismembered in a diving bell accident on the North Sea Byford Dolphin drilling rig. Three other divers, 35-year-old Edwin Arthur Coward, 38-year-old Roy P. Lucas and 29-year-old Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, and 32-year-old dive tender William Crammond, were also killed. Crammond opened the clamp before Hellevik could close the chamber door. The nine-atmosphere air pressure explosively decompressed, instantly forcing Hellevik's body through a 60-centimetre-diameter (24 in) opening, fragmenting it into numerous pieces. The other tender, Martin Saunders, was severely injured.[193][verification needed][194]
Jimmy Ferrozzo November 1983 The bouncer at the Condor Club in San Francisco died while engaging in sexual intercourse with his girlfriend, Theresa Hill, on a grand piano that was lowered from the ceiling by a hydraulic motor. He accidentally activated the lifting mechanism which pinned him against the ceiling leading to his suffocation. Hill survived the accident.[195][196]
Jon-Erik Hexum
18 October 1984 The 26-year-old American actor died after playing a simulated Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum pistol loaded with blanks. They contained paper wadding and when he pulled the trigger against his temple, the wadding was propelled with a force that broke his skull, causing massive brain bleeding.[186][197][198][verification needed]
Jason Findley 21 May 1985 The 17-year-old, from Piscataway, New Jersey, was electrocuted during a thunderstorm when a lightning strike caused an electrical surge to shoot through the wire of a telephone the boy was holding and enter his left ear, causing his heart to stop beating.[199][200]
Victims of the Lake Nyos disaster
21 August 1986 At Lake Nyos, northwestern Cameroon, a limnic eruption of unknown cause released about 100,000–300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the lake's bed. The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph; 28 m/s) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake, resulting in the death of 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.[201][202][verification needed][203]
Marc Aaronson
30 April 1987 The 36-year-old astronomer was crushed to death by a hatch and a revolving telescope dome at Kitt Peak National Observatory.[204][205]
Franco Brun 9 June 1987 The 22-year-old inmate at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre in Canada died trying to swallow a pocket-size Bible.[206][207][unreliable source?]
Clarabelle Lansing
28 April 1988 On Aloha Airlines Flight 243 from Hilo to Honolulu, Hawaii, the 58-year-old flight attendant was blown out of the Boeing 737-209 30,000 feet (9,100 m) above the Pacific Ocean when the plane experienced explosive decompression due to metal fatigue.[208][209]
3 people and Cachy the poodle 21 October 1988 A poodle named Cachy, in Caballito, Buenos Aires, fell 13 floors and hit 75-year-old Marta Espina, killing both instantly. In the course of events, 46-year-old Edith Solá came to see the incident and was fatally hit by a bus. An unidentified man who witnessed her death had a heart attack and also died on his way to the hospital.[210][211]

1990s

[edit]
Name of person Image Date of death Details
Daniel John O'Brien 14 January 1990 The 31-year-old tourist committed suicide by jumping into one of the engines of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad.[212] He is said to have scaled an airport wall in the nude, stolen a vehicle from four security guards, and smeared himself with grease before hurling himself into one of the plane's engines.[213]
Bo Díaz 23 November 1990 The 37-year-old Venezuelan professional baseball catcher was crushed to death by a satellite dish he was attempting to adjust on the roof of his home in Baruta, Caracas.[214][215]
Greg Austin Gingrich 28 November 1992 While the 38-year-old was vacationing at the Grand Canyon in Coconino County, Arizona, with his teenaged daughter, he began to play-act losing his balance to frighten her. His daughter, unimpressed with his antics, walked on. Gingrich, however, missed his footing and fell approximately 400 feet (120 m) into the canyon to his death.[216][217]
Brandon Lee 31 March 1993 The 28-year-old film actor, martial artist, and son of Bruce Lee was killed by a squib loaded prop gun while filming The Crow.[186][218][219][220]
Garry Hoy 9 July 1993 The 38-year-old lawyer from Toronto fell from the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre while demonstrating that its windows were "unbreakable". He threw himself against one, which, true to his assertion, did not break, but instead popped out of its frame.[221][222]
Gloria Ramirez 19 February 1994 The 31-year-old died from kidney failure related to her cervical cancer at the emergency room of Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California. While treating her, several of the hospital staff became ill, suffering from loss of consciousness, shortness of breath, and muscle spasms. Shortly before dying, she was allegedly covered with an oily sheen, which smelled of fruit and garlic.[223][224][225]
Jack Nance
30 December 1996 The 53-year-old American actor was punched in the head during an altercation with two men outside a Winchell's Donuts store in South Pasadena, California. A friend found Nance on the bathroom floor of his apartment the following morning, having died from a subdural hematoma.[186][226]
Karen Wetterhahn 8 June 1997 The 48-year-old chemistry professor at Dartmouth College died ten months after a few drops of dimethylmercury (an organomercury compound and one of the strongest-known neurotoxins) landed on her protective gloves. Although she had been following the required procedures, it permeated the gloves and her skin within seconds.[227][228][229]
Jonathan Capewell 29 July 1998 The 16-year-old from Oldham, England, died from a heart attack brought on by the buildup of butane and propane in his blood after excessive use of deodorant sprays. He was reported to have been obsessed with personal hygiene.[41][230][231]
John Lewis 12 April 1999 The 64-year-old businessman from Minsterworth, England, attempted to light a bonfire with gasoline, but inadvertently set his clothes on fire. He then ran to the River Severn, jumped in, and eventually drowned. His body was not found until 30 April 1999.[232][233]
Valerie Olusanya
25 April 1999 The 35-year-old electronic musician, better known as Kemistry, was a front-seat passenger in a car travelling on the M3 motorway in Hampshire, behind a van which dislodged a cat's eye in the road. The metal body flew through the windscreen hitting Olusanya in the face, killing her instantly.[234][235][236]
Owen Hart
23 May 1999 The 34-year-old professional wrestler fell to his death during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event. He was supposed to be lowered into the ring from the rafters as part of his Blue Blazer persona's entrance, but the equipment lowering him into the ring malfunctioned, causing him to fall 78 feet (24 m) and land chest-first on the top rope. The impact severed his aorta, causing death within minutes.[237][238]
Jon Desborough 10 June 1999 The 41-year-old geography and physical education teacher died due to a chest infection a month after being impaled in the eye with the blunt end of a javelin during an athletics session at the Liverpool College in Mossley Hill, Liverpool. It is believed that he had lost his footing while retrieving the javelin. He remained in a coma until his death.[239][240]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Snopes rates this account of Kogut's death as a "Legend".[77]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Reynolds, MD, Ernest Septimus (8 January 1901). "AN ACCOUNT of the EPIDEMIC OUTBREAK OF ARSENICAL POISONING occurring in BEER DRINKERS IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND AND THE MIDLAND COUNTINES IN 1900". Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. 84: 409–452. PMC 2036791. PMID 20896969. [...]if there was any known drug acting as a poison in the beer it was almost certainly arsenic. Improbable as this hypothesis at first seemed, yet it was a valid hypothesis, for it was not known to be untrue, it explained all the facts, and it was easily capable of proof or disproof.
  2. ^ Klasky, Arthur L. (2006). "Re: "Arsenic Exposure and Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review of the Epidemiologic Evidence"". American Journal of Epidemiology. 164 (2): 194–195. doi:10.1093/aje/kwj197. PMID 16769749. Unusual in arsenic poisoning, but especially prominent in this epidemic, were cardiovascular aspects.
  3. ^ del Regato, Juan A. (February 2000). "Lazear, Jesse William (1866–1900), physician". American National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1200521. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  4. ^ "Gruesome, bizarre, and some unsolved: 44 of the most unusual deaths from history". Weird. mru.ink. 30 September 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  5. ^ "The Glass Works Disaster". The San Francisco Call. 1 December 1900. Page 6, column 1. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Chronicling America. Hardly does any great national festival pass without leaving a record of disaster and death... It it true they seldom occur upon a scale of such magnitude or under circumstances so direful as that which fell upon the spectators of the football match from the roof of the glass works...
  6. ^ Scott, Sam (1 November 2015). "The Big Game Disaster of 1900". Features. Stanford Magazine. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2024. Jim Rutter, '86, Stanford's volunteer sports archivist... heard of the 1900 disaster only a few years ago, doubting at first something so incredible could be true.
  7. ^ Ostler, Scott (16 November 2016). "Big Game's most grisly incident: "Sizzling, Shrieking Human Mass"". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 7 December 2022. Retrieved 9 October 2024. The scene in San Francisco after the game had to be as strange as any in the city's history.
  8. ^ "Killed by Electricity While Telephoning — Peculiar Accident Ends the Life of Lineman James Doyle at Smartsville". The San Francisco Call. 31 January 1901. Page 3, column 2. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Chronicling America. By a peculiar accident James Doyle Jr., a lineman employed by the Bay Counties Power Company at Smartsville, lost his life to-day.
  9. ^ "SHOCKED TO DEATH". Stockton Record. Vol. XII, no. 97. 31 January 1901. Page 5, column 4. Retrieved 27 August 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. By a peculiar accident James Doyle Jr., a lineman, was killed at Smartsville yesterday.
  10. ^ "Batted Ball Drove the Knife — And the Blade Penetrated the Heart of a Spectator, Who Died Almost Instantly — A Bad Accident — Probably in the Whole History of the National Game Nothing of This Kind Occurred on a Ball Field". The Tucson Citizen. Vol. XXXVIII, no. 13. 1 November 1902. Page 1, column 5. Retrieved 4 September 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  11. ^ Weeks & Gorman 2015, p. 155.
  12. ^ Keats, Patrick (March 1990). "Hall of Famer Ed Delahanty: A Source for Malamud's The Natural". American Literature. 62 (1): 102–104. doi:10.2307/2926786. JSTOR 2926786. This is the story of the bizarre death of 1903 of Hall of Famer Ed Delahanty.
  13. ^ Sowell, Mike (1992). July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty. Macmillian. ISBN 978-0-02-612415-7. But there were more questions about Delahanty's bizarre and gruesome fate than there were answers.[page needed]
  14. ^ "GIRL'S STRANGE DEATH". The Argus. Melbourne. 20 December 1905. Page 8, column 4. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove. SYDNEY, Tuesday.—Mary Ellen Rumble, the daughter of a farmer at Watervale, in the Murrumburrah district, was killed in a peculiar manner to-day.
  15. ^ "Peculiar Death of a Girl". The Sydney Morning Herald. 20 December 1905. Page 10, column 4. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Trove.
  16. ^ "Youth's Strange Death — Choked by a Tooth Plate — Coronial Investigation — Dr. Cole's Remarks". The Melbourne Herald. 4 March 1907. Page 1, column 6. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Trove.
  17. ^ "BATHER'S STRANGE DEATH". The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times. Tasmania. 5 March 1907. Page 3, column 4. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove.
  18. ^ Manchester, William (1969). The Arms of Krupp. Michael Joseph. p. 265.
  19. ^ James, Harold (1989). A German Identity: 1770–1990. New York: Routledge. p. 82.
  20. ^ Steakley, James D. (1990). "Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the Eulenburg Affair in Wilhelmin Germany". In Duberman; et al. (eds.). Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay & Lesbian Past. New York: Meridian, New American Library. p. 20. ISBN 0-452-01067-5. Retrieved 14 June 2023. Like the bizarre death of Hülsen-Häseler, the entire Eulenburg Affair has been discreetly hushed up in all but the most recent historiography.
  21. ^ Barbier, Laetitia (18 February 2013). "Morbid Monday: Kissed to Death". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 3 April 2022. His gravestone, erected in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, is a monument to bizarre death, with a story so unusual that it needed to be carved in stone for posterity.
  22. ^ Morton, Ella (3 October 2014). "George Spencer Millet: The Boy Who Was Kissed to Death". Atlas Obscura. Slate. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  23. ^ "Another Theory for Strange Malady That Took Powers". The Detroit Times. 19 May 1909. Page 4, column 6. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  24. ^ Warrington, Robert D. (Fall 2014). "A Ballpark Opens and A Ballplayer Dies: The Converging Fates of Shibe Park and "Doc" Powers". The Baseball Research Journal. 43 (2). They were wrong, but reporters could not have been expected to imagine that Powers was fatally ill with a rare disorder none of them likely had ever heard of.
  25. ^ "A WIDOW'S STRANGE DEATH". The Advertiser. Adelaide, South Australia. 6 June 1910. Page 9, column 9. Retrieved 31 August 2024 – via Trove.
  26. ^ "Fatalities and Accidents — Woman's Peculiar Death". The Age. 6 June 1910. Page 8, column 4. Retrieved 9 October 2024 – via Trove.
  27. ^ "Le Saut dans la mort"  [The Leap into Death]. Le Figaro (in French). pp. 3–10. 5 February 1912 – via Wikisource. Animé de la foi prodigieuse des inventeurs, François Reichelt, que tous les malheureux essais de son appareil avec des mannequins auraient dû mettre à l'abri d'une aussi folle audace, osa — calme et souriant — faire cette chose inouïe : sauter de 60 mètres de haut, dans le vide... [Driven by the prodigious faith of inventors, François Reichelt, whom all the unfortunate tests of his device with dummies should have protected from such crazy audacity, dared – calm and smiling – to do this unheard-of thing: to jump from a height of 60 meters, into the void...]
  28. ^ "A Fatal Parachute Experiment" (PDF). Scientific American. 24 February 1912. Page 178, column 2. Retrieved 10 October 2020 – via Internet Archive. It seems incredible that any man should venture on such a hazardous attempt and repeat it on so large a scale after failure.
  29. ^ Girona, Ramon; Quintana, Àngel (2013). "Constructed news: events and rituals of political life". Barcelona, Research, Art, Creation. 2 (1): 81–99. doi:10.4471/brac.2014.03. Retrieved 18 October 2024. When in 1912 Franz Reichelt invited the cameras of the main newsreel companies to gather under the Eiffel Tower to witness how his batwing-inspired costumes would allow him to descend comfortably to earth with no risk, what motivated the companies was attraction... In this case, attraction to the unusual is accommodated as news...
  30. ^ Pitogo, Heziel (28 June 2014). "The Little Things that Changed the Course of History (From Wars to the Sinking of the Titanic)". War Articles. War History Online. Retrieved 4 September 2024. However, a return train ticket to London later found in her purse gave the idea that her plight might have been just a freak accident.
  31. ^ "International Woman's Day and the Suffragettes". Victoria Business Improvement District. 26 February 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2024. Whether it was or was not intentional – a debate that will never reach an end, however her return ticket and future holiday plans would point to it being a freak accident – Davison being trampled by the King's horse at the Epsom Derby whilst wearing a suffragette-coloured scarf brought attention to the cause...
  32. ^ Purvis, June (3 June 2024) [Originally published June 2013]. "Emily Davison: the suffragette who stepped in front of the king's horse". Edwardian. History Extra. Retrieved 4 September 2024. Following the shocking events of Derby day, the WSPU leadership was quick to hail Davison as a martyr for the women's cause.
  33. ^ a b c "10 Historical Figures Who Died Unusual Deaths". Medieval. History Hit. 14 July 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  34. ^ Smith, Douglas (2016). Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-71123-8. Retrieved 16 July 2024 – via Google Books.
  35. ^ Smith, Douglas (2016). Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 590–592. ISBN 978-0-374-71123-8. Retrieved 16 July 2024 – via Google Books. Even people who know almost nothing about the man have heard of how he died, and his bizarre end has long since become part of global popular culture.
  36. ^ a b "The world's most unusual assassinations". World. BBC News. 16 February 2017. Retrieved 19 October 2024.
  37. ^ a b c d Paoletti, Gabe (31 July 2019) [Originally published 13 November 2017]. Kuroski, John (ed.). "The Strange Deaths Of 16 Historic And Famous Figures". All That's Interesting. Retrieved 8 August 2024. Many of history's most important figures have suffered strange deaths that do not seem to befit their noble legacy.
  38. ^ "Gustav Kobbe Killed — Seaplane Hits His Boat — Well-Known Writer on Music and Drama Meets Death in Singular Accident". Springfield Weekly Republican. 1 August 1918. Page 11, column 1. Retrieved 4 September 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  39. ^ a b c d Wallace, Lorna (13 March 2023). "13 Authors Whose Deaths Were Stranger Than Fiction". Mental Floss. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  40. ^ 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.
  41. ^ a b Bryant, Charles W. (9 March 2009). "10 Bizarre Ways to Die". Death & Dying. HowStuffWorks. Archived from the original on 17 February 2014. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
  42. ^ Greenwood, Veronique (17 August 2016). "The killer flood made of molasses". BBC News. Retrieved 11 October 2024. BBC Future looks at a design defect that created a bizarre – and deadly – flood.
  43. ^ Cavanaugh, Ray (14 January 2019). "How the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Made the World a Little Bit Safer". TIME. Retrieved 11 October 2024. This bizarre and terrifying event, known as the Great Molasses Flood, claimed 21 lives, with victims ranging in age from 10 to 78.
  44. ^ Livingston, Bill (17 August 2013). "Almost a century after The Pitch That Killed, remembering the Cleveland Indians' Ray Chapman". The Plain Dealer. Retrieved 11 October 2024. He remains the only player in baseball history to die as a result of a play on the field.
  45. ^ Fecteau, Mary (17 August 2020). "Remembering Cleveland's Ray Chapman, Major League Baseball's Lone Fatality". Ideastream. Retrieved 11 October 2024. Michael Sowell, author of "The Pitch That Killed" and Jeremy Feador, the Cleveland Indians' Team Historian reflect on this singular baseball tragedy.
  46. ^ Burke, Edmund (1921). The Annual Register. Vol. 162. London: Rivington & Co. ISBN 978-1142328900. The King's death took place under the most tragic and unusual circumstances.
  47. ^ Gullickson, Joel (4 September 2015). "A Ghost Story From Detroit's Past You've Probably Never Heard". Daily Detroit. Retrieved 13 October 2024. ...Bradford's legacy is nothing more than a bizarre and somewhat tragic story that has faded into the abyss of time.
  48. ^ Vitelli, Romeo (27 September 2013). "The Bradford Experiment". Swift. James Randi Educational Foundation. Retrieved 13 October 2024. Though the circumstances of Bradford's suicide seemed mundane enough to the police investigators, his reason for committing suicide was, well, out of this world.
  49. ^ Walker, Zoe (3 December 2018). "31 of the Strangest Deaths ever recorded!". Bungard Funeral Directors. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
  50. ^ a b Steve (7 August 2019). "20 Unusual Deaths from the History Books". History Collection. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  51. ^ "PECULIAR DEATH". Moree Gwydir Examiner and General Advertiser. New South Wales. 30 November 1922. Page 4, column 4. Retrieved 11 October 2024 – via Trove. A remarkable fatality occurred at Glen Elgin, near Glen Innes, on Saturday morning when Mrs. W. C. Eckersley, a well-known and respected resident of the district, was drowned.
  52. ^ "Peculiar Fatality. DROWNED IN CASK OF WATER". The Armidale Express and New England General Advertiser. New South Wales. 1 December 1922. Page 7, column 4. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Trove. Mrs. W. C. Eckersly, of Glen Elgn (Glen Innes), met her end in peculiarly distressing circumstances on Saturday last.
  53. ^ "Mother of Jockey Who Died After First Victory, Scores Employer For Not Telling Her of Tragedy". Brooklyn Daily Times. 5 June 1923. Page 1, column 4. Retrieved 13 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. He died a victim of his almost fanatic enthusiasm and worship of horsemanship.
  54. ^ Alberswerth, Matt (2 November 2012). "Unusual Death #9: A Stellar Finish". Diabolique Magazine.
  55. ^ Britton, Bianca (10 December 2018). "Frank Hayes: The jockey who won a race despite being dead". CNN. Retrieved 13 October 2024. In the weird and wonderful history of horse racing, Frank Hayes holds a unique place.
  56. ^ "Hollywood actress dies in freak accident while filming in San Antonio back in 1923". WOAI-TV. 30 November 2020. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  57. ^ Paulus, Daniel (29 November 2023). "100 Years Ago, Texas Saw One of the Most Tragic Filming Accidents". KLAQ. Retrieved 18 October 2024. We know many movies were filmed in Texas, but you don't hear too many stories of accidents or deaths occurring while filming a movie. But that wasn't the case 100 years ago on November 29th, 1923 where one woman would be the victim of the craziest and saddest filming accidents in cinema history.
  58. ^ "Auto Over Cliff 800 Feet, in Park – Two Die in Strange Accident". The Helena Independent. 15 July 1924. Retrieved 19 August 2024 – via NewspaperArchive.
  59. ^ "Two Plunge to Death When Car Backs Down Precipice of Canyon". The Livingston Enterprise. 15 July 1924. p. 1. Retrieved 19 August 2024 – via Newspapers.com. The first and only fatal mishap ever recorded from Yellowstone Canyon, occurred Sunday afternoon at 3:30 o'clock, when a Ford coupe in some mysterious manner evidently got out of control of the driver and backed between trees that normally would afford protection...
  60. ^ Whittlesey, Lee H. (2014). Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. Roberts Rinehart Publishers. pp. 141–142. ISBN 9781570984518. Retrieved 19 August 2024 – via Google Books. This truly strange occurrence not only made a front-page headline in the local newspaper, but also a prominent editorial as well.
  61. ^ "REMARKABLE SUICIDE STORY". Diss Express. 1 August 1924. p. 7. Retrieved 13 October 2024 – via British Newspaper Archive. The extraordinary suggestion that he had cut his throat whilst asleep was made at an inquest at Bangor on Thornton Jones, a solicitor.
  62. ^ Wallechinsky, David (2009). The Book Of Lists (2nd ed.). Canongate Books. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-84767-667-2 – via Google Books. In 1924 British newspapers reported the bizarre case of a man who apparently committed suicide while asleep.
  63. ^ "Sleeping Man A Suicide. Evidence Given That He Cut Throat While Unconscious". Evening Star. Washington, D.C. 14 August 1924. Page 34, column 4. Retrieved 20 September 2024 – via Chronicling America.
  64. ^ Kofron, Christopher P.; Chapman, Angela (2006). "Causes of mortality to the endangered Southern Cassowary Casuarius casuarius johnsonii in Queensland, Australia". Pacific Conservation Biology. 12 (3): 175–179. doi:10.1071/PC060175.
  65. ^ Borrell, Brendan (October 2008). "Invasion of the Cassowaries". Science. Smithsonian. Vol. 37, no. 2. Retrieved 18 October 2024. The last person known to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean, whose throat was punctured on his Queensland ranch in 1926.
  66. ^ Christensen, Liana (2011). Deadly Beautiful: Vanishing Killers of the Animal Kingdom. Wollombi, New South Wales: Exisle Publishing. p. 6. ISBN 978-1-921497-22-3 – via Google Books. Most cassowary-human encounters don't end in death, but the possibility exists.
  67. ^ Zavitz, Sherman. "Bobby Leach". Niagara Falls Museums. City of Niagara Falls. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 13 August 2024. His death, 15 years after his famous plunge, was sadly ironic.
  68. ^ Evon, Dan (2 October 2021). "Did Bobby Leach Survive Niagara Falls, Only To Die After Slipping on Orange Peel?". Snopes. Retrieved 13 October 2024. An image supposedly showing stunt performer Bobby Leach sitting on a purpose-built barrel next to Niagara Falls is frequently circulated on social media along with a seemingly ironic story about his death.
  69. ^ a b Byrne, Kerry J. (31 October 2022). "'Murder?': Mysteries still surround Harry Houdini's Halloween death". Human Interest. New York Post. Fox News. Retrieved 18 August 2024. But questions continue to surround the bizarre circumstances of Houdini's death at age 52, including suggestions by some fans that the celebrated performer was murdered.
  70. ^ "DOCTOR'S DEATH. Collapsed in Bed. WHILE TAKING ELECTRICAL TREATMENT". The Sydney Morning Herald. 30 August 1927. Page 12, column 5. Retrieved 17 November 2024 – via Trove. Dr. J. S. F. Barnet died in strange circumstances at his home in Barney-street to-day, apparently as the result of receiving an excessive charge of energy from an electrical therapeutic apparatus.
  71. ^ "ISADORA DUNCAN, DRAGGED BY SCARF FROM AUTO, KILLED; Dancer Is Thrown to Road While Riding at Nice and Her Neck Is Broken". The New York Times. 15 September 1927. Page 1, column 3. Retrieved 14 October 2024. According to dispatches from Nice, Miss Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed by the force of her fall to the stone pavement.
  72. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (18 August 2002). "Rare sketches reveal forgotten steps that made Isadora Duncan famous". The Observer. Retrieved 14 October 2024. Autograph material of Isadora Duncan is extremely rare on the market," explained Westwood-Brookes. "And she has always remained one of the great legends of early twentieth-century dance, fuelled by the bizarre way in which she was killed.
  73. ^ Brown, Ismene (6 March 2009). "Isadora Duncan, Sublime or Ridiculous?". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 October 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2021. Isadora Duncan's bizarre death was a brutal end to a controversial life.
  74. ^ "LOEWENSTEIN DROPS INTO SEA FROM PLANE — Financier Meets His Death in Queer Accident". Taunton Daily Gazette. United Press. 5 July 1928. p. 8. Retrieved 9 August 2024 – via RareNewspapers.com.
  75. ^ "SUICIDE HINTED IN STRANGE DEATH OF EUROPE'S CROESUS — Alfred Lowenstein Believed to Have Opened Wrong Door of Cabin and Plunged Out Into Space Over Channel". Evening Independent. AP. 5 July 1928. Page 1, column 3. Retrieved 13 October 2024 – via Google News.
  76. ^ United Press; Tribune Service (20 October 1930). "PRISON BOMBER DIES OF BLAST DEATH FELON CHEATS ROPE WITH SUICIDE Butte County Slayer Rocks San Quentin With Odd Bomb". The Healdsburg Tribune. Page 1, columns 1–7. Retrieved 13 October 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  77. ^ a b Snopes Staff; Mikkelson, Barbara (28 September 2000). "Death by Playing Cards". Fact Check. Snopes. Retrieved 7 August 2024. As unlikely as this must sound, playing cards have reportedly been used as an instrument of death.
  78. ^ Pound, Reginald (1953). Arnold Bennett: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace.
  79. ^ Drabble, Margaret (1974). Arnold Bennett. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
  80. ^ Henthorn, Tom (Spring 2008). ""Stench!" Arnold Bennett's End and the Beginning of "Finnegans Wake"" (PDF). Twentieth Century Literature. 54 (1). Duke University Press: 31–46. doi:10.1215/0041462X-2008-2002.
  81. ^ "Water Hose Hook Causes Man's Death". Santa Cruz Evening News. AP. 27 August 1931. Page 2, column 4 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. A freak accident was blamed today for the death of J. L. McDermott, 40, deputy sheriff.
  82. ^ "Freak Accident Causes Death". Imperial Valley Press. El Centro, California. United Press. 27 August 1931. Page 3, column 2. Retrieved 24 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. Deputy Sherriff J. L. McDermott died early today from injuries received in a freak accident in which he was impaled upon a hook holding a water hose.
  83. ^ Stanley, John (2014). "LASD Deputy James McDermott – End of Watch: Aug. 26, 1931, Unusual Accident" (PDF) (Press release). Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Retrieved 14 October 2024. This makes his bizarre accidental death while servicing his car at a gas station just north of downtown Los Angeles a greater tragedy.
  84. ^ "RADIUM POISONING IS ENDANGERING LIVES OF SEVERAL HUNDREDS – "Radither" Is Sort of Radium Water and Was Recommended By Pittsburg Physio-Therapist—Prominent Sportsman Already Dead". The Waterbury Democrat. United Press. 1 April 1932. Page 5, column 2. Retrieved 14 October 2024. Many deaths had been attributed to radium poisoning, but only one previously to poisoning contracted in this manner.
  85. ^ Winslow, Ron (1 August 1990). "The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off" (PDF). The Wall Street Journal. p. A1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 February 2017. What happened next led ultimately to his gruesome death 4 years later and to his place as a central character in a bizarre episode in U.S. medicine.
  86. ^ Morrow, K. John (June 2005). "Book Review: Inside the FDA". BioPharm International. 18 (6). His bizarre death was the result of his addiction to a quack cure, radium-laced water.
  87. ^ Pett, Saul (8 February 1953). "Mike Malloy Was Very Durable; His Killers Were Very Sloppy". Des Moines Sunday Register. Page 29, columns 3–5. Retrieved 18 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. For as murders go, the slaying of Mike Malloy was an extraordinary inept, hapless, bumbling comedy of errors and human endurance.
  88. ^ Read, Simon (2005). On the House: The Bizarre Killing of Michael Malloy. Berkley. ISBN 978-0425206782.
  89. ^ Brody, Giles (24 April 2020). "The murder trust of Mike Malloy: the strange tale of an insurance scam and a man who refused to die". Prospect Magazine. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  90. ^ "DEATH FOLLOWS NOISE OF THUNDER". The Barrier Miner. Broken Hill, New South Wales. 16 January 1935. Page 3, column 5. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Trove. Susan Grace Kelly (80) died under unusual circumstances at Armidale.
  91. ^ "STRANGE NEWS OF THE WEEK – Fell Dead When She Heard Thunder". The Sun. 20 January 1935. Page 17, column 1. Retrieved 15 October 2024.
  92. ^ "GIRL ELECTROCUTED BY BURGLAR TRAP MADE BY FIANCE". The Cedar Rapids Gazette. 24 January 1937. Page 1, column 3. Retrieved 2 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. Her fiance, George Anton, 33, also of Brooklyn, owner of a radio store, who with Joseph Freitag, grocer living in Miss Styer's three-story red brick four-family house, discovered the body, explained the bizarre mystery to puzzled police.
  93. ^ "Hat Check Girl Killed by Own Burglar Trap; Slowly Electrocuted When She Comes in Contact With 300-volt Live Wire". The Morning Call. AP. 24 January 1937. Page 1, column 2; page 12. Retrieved 2 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. The friend who provided the bizarre man-trap, police said, was one of those who found the body.
  94. ^ "Farmer, 77, Dragged to Death by Horses". The Washington Times. INS. 28 May 1937. Page 16, column 7. Retrieved 15 October 2024 – via Chronicling America. Clark County authorities today investigated the weird death of Fred Clapp, 77-year-old farmer, while being dragged by his team of horses.
  95. ^ "Weird death in South Dakota investigated". Salt Lake Tribune. 29 May 1937. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  96. ^ "Freak Gas Explosion Fatal to Patient". The Washington Times. 2 June 1937. Page 1, column 5. Retrieved 15 October 2024 – via Chronicling America. What is believed to be one of the most unusual deaths in medical history occurred here yesterday when anesthetic gasses in the lungs of a Johns Hopkin Hospital patient exploded, killing the sick person instantly.
  97. ^ Darnall, Marcy B. (17 June 1937). "Sidelights". The Key West Citizen. Page 2, column 2. Retrieved 22 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. An unusual death was that of Benjamin Taslor of Maryland, reported by Dr. Winford Smith of Johns Hopkins.
  98. ^ "Aircraft Designer's Strange Death". The Adelaide Advertiser. 23 June 1939. Page 21, column 4. Retrieved 15 October 2024 – via Trove.
  99. ^ Riding, Richard (2003). "Database [article]: Comper Swift". Aeroplane Monthly. 31 (3): 73–90. Retrieved 15 August 2024 – via Science Museum Group Library. [B]etween 1924 and his bizarre death in 1939, Nicholas Comper designed and built a series of light aircraft...
  100. ^ Taylor, Blaine (March 2002). "The Strange Death Of Air Marshal Italo Balbo". WWII History. Vol. 1, no. 2. pp. 24–30. Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  101. ^ Fitzgerald, Clare (10 January 2023). "Italo Balbo: The Mastermind Behind Mussolini's Air Force Died a Strange Death". World War 2. War History Online. Retrieved 25 September 2024.
  102. ^ O'Hehir, Andrew (1 October 2009). "Critic's Picks: The tragic twilight of Leon Trotsky". Salon.com. Retrieved 17 October 2024. No matter what your political orientation, if you believe – or ever did believe – in the potential betterment of humanity, then you've got something to learn from the strange and tragic story of Leon Trotsky.
  103. ^ Borger, Julian and Tuckman, Jo (13 September 2017). "Bloodstained ice axe used to kill Trotsky emerges after decades in the shadows". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 August 2024. The story of the ice axe is a convoluted one, befitting the extraordinary and macabre story of the Trotsky assassination.
  104. ^ "10 Notably Weird Deaths of the 20th Century". Listverse. 5 April 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  105. ^ Cox, Kellie (17 October 2013). "Stunts Gone Wrong". Critic's Corner. The Spectator. Retrieved 18 October 2024. In a bizarre and morbid twist of fate, an extra named Jack Budlong was impaled by his own sword during the film's cavalry charge scene—the charge also took the lives of two other stuntmen.
  106. ^ "They Died with Their Boots On (1942)". Articles. Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on 27 June 2017. Retrieved 8 September 2024. Three men were killed during the filming... The third, actor Jack Budlong, insisted on using a real saber to lead a cavalry charge under artillery fire. When an explosive charge sent him flying off his horse, he landed on his sword, impaling himself. No stranger to freak accidents himself, director Raoul Walsh had lost an eye in a car accident while shooting In Old Arizona in 1929.
  107. ^ Elhassan, Khalid (4 July 2018). "10 Historical Deaths Weirder Than the Movies". History Collection. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  108. ^ "Rolf Mützelburg". The Men. uboat.net. Guðmundur Helgason. Retrieved 6 November 2024. Kptlt. Rolf Mützelburg died on 11 September 1942 in a freak accident.
  109. ^ Sparrow, E. J. On Our Doorstep (PDF). p. 39. Retrieved 6 November 2024 – via Mersea Museum. Mützelburg himself had died in a freak accident a few months earlier.
  110. ^ "Baby Kangaroo Brings Death to Hero of 68 Raids on Japs". Minneapolis Star-Journal. 19 April 1943. Retrieved 6 September 2024 – via Newspapers.com. It is truly ironical that McCullar should meet his death while still practically on the ground.
  111. ^ "Kangaroo Victim". Dickenson County Herald. Clintwood, Virginia. 6 May 1943. Page 7, column 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024 – via Chronicling America. Maj. Kenneth McCullar, 27, above, of Courtland, Miss., outstanding master of heavy bombardment tactics, was killed in a freak accident.
  112. ^ Weeks & Gorman 2015, p. 161.
  113. ^ Bryson, Bill (2004) [First published 2003]. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Black Swan paperback ed.). Transworld Publishers. p. 152. ISBN 0-552-99704-8. [Midgley]'s death was itself memorably unusual.
  114. ^ Dykstra, Peter (1 March 2021). "Science's fallen hero". The Daily Climate. Retrieved 17 October 2024. In the cruelest of ironies, Midgley's final invention directly caused his demise.
  115. ^ Wellerstein, Alex (21 May 2016). "The Demon Core and the Strange Death of Louis Slotin". Annals of Technology. The New Yorker. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  116. ^ Gómez-Laberge, Camille (25 January 2020). "About Me". Retrieved 6 September 2024. ...it was Slotin's bizarre death that woke me to physics... Slotin tragically died from radiation poisoning one week after his incident in 1946 at the age of 35.[self-published source]
  117. ^ Lucanio, Patrick; Coville, Gary (25 June 2002). Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945–1962. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-7864-1233-4. Retrieved 11 October 2024 – via Google Books. Mantell's death was sensational fodder for sensational media.
  118. ^ Ridge, Francis (2010). "Part 2 – 1: March 2006: The Re-Investigation Begins". The Mantell Incident: Anatomy of a Re-Investigation. With Jean Waskiewicz and Dan Wilson. National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena. Retrieved 11 October 2024. For over 58 years the case had been written about in about every book and mentioned on numerous TV shows, and had finally been written off as a mistaken balloon, with the pilot killed in either a freak accident or misgauging his ability to fly at certain altitudes without oxygen.
  119. ^ Redfern, Nick (23 June 2014). Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind: Suspicious Deaths, Mysterious Murders, and Bizarre Disappearances in UFO History. Red Wheel/Weiser. pp. 33–34. ISBN 9781601634733. Retrieved 18 October 2024 – via Google Books. It's the strange saga of U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Thomas P. [sic] Mantell, who lost his life in 1948...
  120. ^ Stacy, Kendra (28 May 2024). "Murdered by UFOs? Expert Explains Bizarre Fatality Cases Linked to These Unidentified Flying Objects". Space. The Science Times. Retrieved 6 September 2024. One of these bizarre cases was the death of Thomas Mantell, a captain of the US Air Force.
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  122. ^ Redmond, Caroline (20 December 2012). "Gruesome, Odd, And Some Unsolved: 16 Of The Most Unusual Deaths From History". All Thats Interesting. Retrieved 4 September 2024. Because of the inexplicable and strange circumstances of her case, it is suspected that Reeser was a victim of spontaneous combustion.
  123. ^ Frizzelle, Christopher (13 November 2017). "The Strange, Sudden Death of the Author of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny". The Stranger. Retrieved 14 February 2022.
  124. ^ Rubin, Gareth (30 May 2009). "Live TV drama is resurrected as Sky shrugs off lessons of history". Television. The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 April 2017. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  125. ^ 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. 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.
  126. ^ "2 BRITONS KILLED IN GRAND PRIX — Bristow Loses Control: Stacey Hit By Bird — MOSS BREAKS LEGS: WIN BY BRABHAM". The Daily Telegraph. London, England. 20 June 1960. p. 1. Retrieved 25 September 2024 – via Newspapers.com. ...death seems almost certainly to have been due to a freak accident.
  127. ^ Collantine, Keith (19 June 2010). "F1 Fanatic round-up: 19/6/2010". RaceFans. Collantine Media Ltd. Retrieved 25 September 2024. Stacey, a popular driver who had graduated to F1 with Lotus from club racing, was killed in a freak accident on the Burnenville right-hander, part of the old Spa track.[self-published source]
  128. ^ Fearnley, Paul (4 March 2021) [Originally published 2 April 2018]. "Jim Clark the Junior". F1. Motor Sport. Retrieved 25 September 2024. Not only had he swerved around the "rag doll" that was the mortally injured Chris Barstow but also team-mate Stacey had been killed in a freak accident.
  129. ^ Stacy, Susan M. (2000). "The SL-1 Reactor" (PDF). Proving the Principle: A History of The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949–1999. U.S. Department of Energy, Idaho Operations Office. pp. 138–149. ISBN 0-16-059185-6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2024. The accident was unprecedented.
  130. ^ McKeown, William (2003). Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident. Toronto: ECW Press. pp. 16, 31. ISBN 978-1-55022-562-4. Retrieved 29 October 2024 – via Google Books. But just a few short hours later, the ordinary became extraordinary... one of the most bizarre stories never told to the American public.
  131. ^ Tucker, Todd (2009). Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear History. New York: Free Press. dust jacket. ISBN 978-1-4165-4433-3. Retrieved 30 October 2024. ...SL-1 is the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in American history... See summary: "Sample text for Library of Congress control number 2008013842". Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2024. It remains the only fatal reactor incident in American history.
  132. ^ Patterson, Michael Robert (1 March 2024). "Richard Leroy McKinley - Specialist 4th Class, United States Army". Arlington National Cemetery. Retrieved 30 October 2024. The SL-1 accident was the first fatal nuclear accident in the United States.
  133. ^ "Freak Accident Kills Navy 'Sub-Astronaut' Falls From Rescuing Sling". Daily Herald-Telephone. UPI. 5 May 1961. Page 21, columns 1–3. Retrieved 2 September 2024 – via Newspapers.com. A freak accident took the life of a Navy officer Thursday minutes after he and another "sub-Astronaut" returned from a record flight more than 21 miles into the atmosphere aboard a 411-foot balloon.
  134. ^ Herman, Jan K. (September–October 1998). "Strato-Lab High 5: Triumph and Tragedy". Feature. Navy Medicine. Vol. 89, no. 5. U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. pp. 6–11. Retrieved 2 September 2024 – via Internet Archive. However, in an instant, the triumph of that mission would turn to tragedy as one of the crewmembers drowned in a freak accident during recovery.
  135. ^ Hines, William (30 June 1966). "Public Relations and XB70". Oakland Tribune. Page 24, column 1. Retrieved 22 October 2024 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection. The reason for XB70's final mission was unusual, perhaps, but not unique.
  136. ^ Demerly, Tom (27 October 2014). "Crash of The Valkyrie". In History. The Tactical Air Network – Global Military Aviation. Retrieved 8 September 2024. One of the most bizarre accidents in aviation history was happening, an accident so remarkable it compares to the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937, the collision of two 747 Jumbo Jets on the island of Tenerife in 1977 and the crash of the Concorde in Paris in 2000.
  137. ^ 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.
  138. ^ Langewiesche, William (9 April 2013). "Felix Baumgartner's Story: Who Is the Man Who Pierced the Sky?". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 30 October 2024. It is a reaction to the parade of schemers and oddballs who have long approached the company for help in breaking Kittinger's record. The most troublesome proved to be a charismatic but ill-disciplined jumper named Nick Piantanida...
  139. ^ Betancourt, Mark (15 August 2016). "The Truck Driver Who Jumped From the Edge of Space". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 30 October 2024. It's easy to dismiss Nick Piantanida's story when you first hear it... It sounds inherently crackpot, like something from the Darwin Awards.
  140. ^ "12 Unusual Celebrity Deaths You've Never Heard Of..." Vintage Everyday. 27 February 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
  141. ^ Lloyd, Sophie (6 June 2018). "The Devil Made Her Do It: Who Was the Real Jayne Mansfield?". Culture, Film + TV. Untitled. Retrieved 5 September 2024. In the freak accident, the couple's Buick smashed into the back of a truck, hidden by a cloud of insecticide dust that seeped out from the trailer it was hauling.
  142. ^ Hawker, Cam (6 December 2017). "Beyond LBJ: remembering Harold Holt's legacy of Asian engagement 50 years on". The Strategist. Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Retrieved 3 September 2024. It is Holt's misfortune, and our own, that he is now better remembered for the unusual circumstances of his death than for his life.
  143. ^ a b c Hocking, Jenny (16 December 2017). "Harold Holt: the legacy is evident, 50 years after his disappearance". Australian politics. The Guardian. Retrieved 3 September 2024. It was an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that still befalls dozens every summer. That it happened to a prime minister, swimming alone in dangerous conditions without bodyguards, made it extraordinary.
  144. ^ "Tom Frame, 'An Orderly and Seamless Transition of Power' The Life and Achievements of Harold Holt". Afternoon Light Podcast. Robert Menzies Institute. Archived from the original on 17 March 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024. Standing in the shadow of his record-breaking predecessor, all that most people know about Holt is the unusual manner of his demise.
  145. ^ "Harold Holt". Australia's prime ministers. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 3 September 2024. The third Prime Minister to die in office, Harold Holt is widely remembered for the unusual circumstances of his death while swimming off the Victorian coast in December 1967.
  146. ^ Frame, Tom (2005). The Life and Death of Harold Holt. Allen & Unwin. p. 295. ISBN 1-74114-672-0 – via Internet Archive.
  147. ^ "New probe into missing PM mystery". CNN. 25 August 2003. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
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  149. ^ Deutschmann, Jennifer (29 July 2022). "Troubling details of Albert Dekker's unexplained 1968 death". Old Hollywood. Grunge. Retrieved 4 September 2024. However, rumors about his unusual death nearly overshadowed his entire acting career.
  150. ^ Weeks & Gorman 2015, p. 153.
  151. ^ Platt, Steve (2 February 2006). Duin, Nancy (ed.). "Space disasters and near misses". Channel 4. Archived from the original on 4 October 2008. Retrieved 20 October 2024. Indeed, in the whole history of space flight, there has only been one fatal accident in space itself: that resulting in the deaths of the three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts in June 1971.
  152. ^ Parks, Jake (25 September 2023). "How many astronauts have died in space?". Astronomy. Retrieved 23 October 2024. However, of the roughly 550 people who have so far ventured into space, only three have actually died there.
  153. ^ "Girl Employe Killed at Disneyland". The Los Angeles Times. 10 July 1974. Page 42, columns 4-6. Retrieved 22 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. Miss Stone, of 1633 Avalon St., Santa Ana, was the first employe to be killed in an accident at Disneyland during its 19-year history.
  154. ^ Gass, Zach (3 June 2023). "TikTok Captures Death of Disneyland Cast Member". Disneyland Resort. Inside the Magic. JAK Schmidt, Inc. Retrieved 11 August 2024. What happened to Deborah Stone was a freak accident, but it's a cold reminder that not even a name as big as Disney is immune from disaster.
  155. ^ Kormann, Carolyn (18 October 2016). "A Shocking Suicide, A Long-Lost Friend, and a Movie Trailer". Cultural Comment. The New Yorker. Retrieved 21 August 2024. Shilowich first ran across Chubbuck's story six years ago, in the middle of the night, while he was failing to write another screenplay about an unusual death.
  156. ^ Winckowski, Marisa (7 February 2017). ""You're All a Bunch of Fucking Sadists": Looking at Christine Chubbuck Through Film". Burger-A-Day. Retrieved 5 October 2024. And it seems odd that such an unusual story is suddenly getting film adaptations after so many years of being largely forgotten...
  157. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (3 January 2004). "Have People Died Laughing?". Snopes. Retrieved 23 October 2024. While Mitchell had expired from heart failure, what felled him was not a classic heart attack, but rather the result of an unusual inheritable heart rhythm disorder...
  158. ^ Singh, Anita (21 June 2012). "Man who died laughing at Goodies had Long QT syndrome". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2024. Mrs Corke said: "My granddad died one of the most famous strange deaths."
  159. ^ O'Brian, Dave (6 November 1975). "The Sorry Life & Death of Mark Frechette". Rolling Stone. No. 199. p. 32. Archived from the original on 5 January 2023. Retrieved 15 November 2024 – via trussel.com. He was the apparent victim of a bizarre accident in a recreation room at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk...
  160. ^ Lim, Dennis (14 July 2009). "Sex on the Desert: Was Zabriskie Point—Antonioni's biggest flop—just misunderstood?". DVD Extras. Slate. Retrieved 16 November 2024. Two years later, while serving out his sentence, he died in an apparent freak accident while weightlifting, choked to death by a bar that fell on his throat.
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  162. ^ West, Rafael (3 March 2019). "The Bizarre Death of Luciano Re Cecconi". Football Talk. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
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  164. ^ Stevenson, Val (2000). Sieveking, Paul; Simmons, Ian (eds.). Strange Deaths: More Than 375 Freakish Fatalities. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 978-0-7607-1947-3 – via Internet Archive.
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  166. ^ Dawson Jr., John W. (1997). Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel. Wellesley: A K Peters. p. 255. ISBN 978-1-56881-025-6 – via Internet Archive. Gödel's demise was fraught with Pyrrhic irony.
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  168. ^ Szalai, Jennifer (2 June 2021). "A New Biography of Kurt Gödel, Whose Brilliant Life Intersected With the Upheavals of the 20th Century". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2 June 2021. Retrieved 2 May 2024.
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  173. ^ "Aumenta número de mortes violentas" [Number of violent deaths increases]. Jornal de Caxias (in Portuguese). 9 August 1980. p. 41. Retrieved 23 October 2024 – via Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira. O trânsito matou quatro pessoas, ocorreram dois homicídios e uma morte estranha. [Traffic killed four people, there were two homicides and one strange death.]
  174. ^ "Dingo blamed over missing baby". The Canberra Times. 19 August 1980. Page 7, columns 2-3. Retrieved 23 October 2024 – via Trove. A spokesman for the Melbourne zoo said yesterday no one at the zoo had ever heard of a dingo killing a human before.
  175. ^ Linder, Douglas O. "The Trial of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain ("The Dingo Trial")". www.famous-trials.com. University of Missouri–Kansas City. Retrieved 11 February 2024. ...the cry heard that night marked an astonishing and rare human fatality caused by Australia's wild dogs...
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  182. ^ "Katey Sagal". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 30 October 2024. ...Sagal suffered further personal tragedy when her father was killed in a freak accident on the set of "World War III" (NBC, 1982), getting nearly decapitated after walking into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter.
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  197. ^ "Actor Hexum dies from gunshot injuries". The Salina Journal. AP. 20 October 1984. Retrieved 24 October 2024 – via Newspapers.com. The body of actor Jon-Erik Hexum, who shot himself in a freak accident on the set of the television series "Cover Up", was taken Friday to an San Francisco hospital so his vital organs could be removed for donation, officials said.
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  201. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (17 February 2004). "Carbon Dioxide Deaths". Fact Check. Snopes. Retrieved 7 August 2024. Persons not employed in the coal mining trade are unlikely to encounter deadly masses of carbon dioxide, yet such clouds have been known to form in the open air and at a cost dear in human life.
  202. ^ Socolow, Robert H. (July 2005). "Can We Bury Global Warming?". Scientific American. Vol. 293, no. 1. pp. 49–55. Bibcode:2005SciAm.293a..49S. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0705-49. ISSN 0036-8733. JSTOR 26061071. PMID 16008301.
  203. ^ Mathew Fomine, Forka Leypey (2011). "The Strange Lake Nyos CO2 Gas Disaster". Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies. 2011–1. ISSN 1174-4707. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  204. ^ Sieveking, Paul; Simmons, Ian; Stevenson, Val (2000). Strange Deaths: More Than 375 Freakish Fatalities. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. p. 14. ISBN 0-7607-1947-0. Retrieved 4 January 2022 – via Google Books.
  205. ^ Krisciunas, Kevin (27 June 2012). "Strange Cases from the Files of Astronomical Sociology". Texas A&M University. Retrieved 4 January 2022. Most importantly, it does not help our present reputation that some very unusual stories are associated with astronomers of the past... In the strange death and near-death department... Marc Aaronson (1950–1987) was crushed to death in the dome of the 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak.
  206. ^ "When People DIED In Freak Accidents: Head Stuck Under Cinema Seat in Birmingham, Eating a Pocket-Size Bible + 2 More". Nexter.org. 21 March 2018. Archived from the original on 12 December 2019. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  207. ^ "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.
  208. ^ Witkin, Richard (30 April 1988). "Bomb Discounted as Cause Of Hawaii Plane Explosion". The New York Times. Page 7, columns 1-3. Retrieved 1 November 2024. I think this is a very unusual circumstance that is not related to any other accidents we have had.
  209. ^ History.com Editors (9 April 2024). "Aloha Airlines Flight 243 miraculously lands after losing roof". HISTORY. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved 1 November 2024. The bizarre incident happened about 20 minutes into the flight from Hilo International Airport to Honolulu, at 24,000 feet with 95 passengers and crew members on board.
  210. ^ "Créase o no: hace 30 años un perrito mató a tres personas al caer desde el piso 13" [Believe it or not: 30 years ago a puppy killed three people when it fell from the 13th floor]. Diario de Cuya (in Spanish). 23 October 2018. Retrieved 24 October 2024. Hace tres décadas atrás, un insólito y trágico suceso tuvo lugar en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. [Three decades ago, an unusual and tragic event took place in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.]
  211. ^ Wille, Germán (21 October 2022). "Cayó un caniche desde un piso 13 y murieron tres personas: a 34 años del insólito accidente que conmovió a Caballito" [A poodle fell from the 13th floor and three people died: 34 years after the unusual accident that shocked Caballito]. La Nación (in Spanish). Retrieved 31 August 2024.
  212. ^ Joseph, Francis (16 January 1990). "Bizarre death at Piarco; visitor minced to bits by jet engine". Trinidad Guardian. Archived from the original on 27 November 2019 – via calvinshields.com.
  213. ^ "American Killed When He Jumps Into Jet's Engine". Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. 17 January 1990. Archived from the original on 27 August 2022. Airports Authority chief Winston Suite said the bizarre death Sunday night was an apparent suicide.
  214. ^ "Catcher Bo Diaz, 37, Dies in Freak Accident". Tampa Bay Times. AP. 24 November 1990. Retrieved 20 November 2024.
  215. ^ "Diaz Dies in Freak Accident at Home". Deseret News. 25 November 1990. Retrieved 20 November 2024. Bo Diaz, former major-league catcher who died in a freak accident at home, was laid to rest Saturday in a ceremony attended by President Carlos Andres Perez.
  216. ^ Ghiglieri, Michael P.; Myers, Thomas M. (2001). Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon (revised ed.). Puma Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-9700973-1-6. Alcohol and the world's most frightening drop-off is a lethal combination whose tragic outcome few of us find surprising. Far more shocking, however, is this sort of outcome stemming from a practical joke.
  217. ^ "Be careful out there! 7 unusual ways people have died on vacation". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 10 June 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2024.
  218. ^ "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.
  219. ^ 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.
  220. ^ 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... It was also among the eeriest and most tragic in a whole set of other ways.
  221. ^ Snopes Staff (2 November 2000). "Did a Man Die Demonstrating a Window's Strength?". Fact Check. Snopes. Retrieved 7 August 2024. It isn't often we have occasion to employ the term "accidental self-defenestration" in an article, but that phrase certainly applies to the case of Garry Hoy...
  222. ^ Moodley-Judhoo, Udesha (16 June 2023). "Lawyer tries to prove his case and falls out of skyscraper". East Coast Radio. Retrieved 28 October 2024. Freak accidents are named as such due to the nature of their occurrence. But this story really takes a toll when it comes to setting a precedent.
  223. ^ Boodman, Sandra G. (12 September 1994). "WAS IT A CASE OF MASS HYSTERIA OR POISONING BY A TOXIC CHEMICAL?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 28 October 2024. "The whole thing sounds strange to me," says Brian S. Schwartz, a clinical toxicologist who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
  224. ^ Gorman, Tom (4 November 1994). "Lab Suggests Mystery Fumes Answer". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 October 2024. The mystery fumes that felled emergency room attendants as they treated a dying cancer patient in February were most likely the result of a bizarre chain of chemical reactions in the patient's blood that produced a potentially lethal gas, officials announced Thursday.
  225. ^ Stone, Richard (April 1995). "Analysis of a Toxic Death". Discover. Archived from the original on 29 April 2018. Retrieved 23 October 2024. That surreal night would throw Riverside General Hospital into newspapers and tv news broadcasts for weeks...
  226. ^ Smith, Kyle; Benet, Lorenzo (10 February 1997). "A Mysterious End: The Death of Twin Peaks Actor Jack Nance Was as Strange as the Characters He Played". People. Vol. 47, no. 5. Archived from the original on 19 March 2016. Retrieved 2 November 2024.
  227. ^ 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 23 October 2024. ..."an unusual situation"...
  228. ^ Endicott, Karen (April 1998). "The Trembling Edge of Science". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Archived from the original on 14 November 2011. Retrieved 23 October 2024 – via Iaomt.org. The accident seemed so improbable as to be impossible.
  229. ^ Cotton, Simon (October 2003). "Dimethylmercury and Mercury poisoning". Chm.bris.ac.uk. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.5245807. Archived from the original on 19 February 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2024. By an exquisite irony, she became a victim of a heavy metal poison.
  230. ^ "Excessive deodorant spray kills teen". Cape Cod Times. Associated Press. 10 October 1998. Retrieved 28 October 2024. Sue Rogers of the British Aerosol Manufacturing Association said she had never heard of a similar incident. "It is extraordinarily unusual and terribly tragic," she said.
  231. ^ "Deodorant obsession killed boy". Health. BBC News. 29 October 1998. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 23 October 2024. Jonathan's death is believed to be the first by accidental inhalation in the country.
  232. ^ "Police find body of mower man". UK: News In Brief. BBC News. 30 April 1999. Retrieved 30 August 2024. After the bizarre accident police found scorched items of clothing in the garden.
  233. ^ "Freak accident kills gardener". UK. BBC News. 16 June 1999. Retrieved 30 August 2024. A businessman drowned in a river after a freak gardening accident, an inquest has heard.
  234. ^ "DJ killed by flying motorway Cat's-eye". Southern Daily Echo. 11 November 1999. Retrieved 13 February 2024. Recording a verdict of accidental death, [the coroner] said: "The chance of a Cat's-eye being thrown in the air must have been minute in the extreme. It was a tragic accident."
  235. ^ Verma, Rahul (12 April 2014). "DJ History: Kemistry". Features. Mixmag. Retrieved 23 October 2024. It's 15 years ago to the day that drum 'n' bass DJ Kemistry died in a freak accident.
  236. ^ Harrison, Angus (11 May 2016). "Looking Back on the Life of Drum and Bass Pioneer DJ Kemistry". Music. Vice. Retrieved 23 October 2024. It is one of the only times an incident of this nature has ever been recorded, and is the only time it has resulted in a fatality.
  237. ^ "Wrestler dies in freak accident". Sport. BBC News. 24 May 1999. Retrieved 7 September 2024.
  238. ^ Greene, Dan (23 May 2019). "The Owen Hart Tragedy Was the Moment We Came to See Wrestlers as Human". Wrestling. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 7 September 2024. Yet the combination of Hart's status, the unusual nature of his death, and wrestling's white-hot popularity at perhaps the peak of its late-90s boom produced a wholly distinct context for the proceedings.
  239. ^ "Bravery of teacher speared in the eye with a javelin". Birmingham Post & Mail. 19 May 1999. Retrieved 23 October 2024 – via The Free Library. A hero teacher, who is a former member of Moseley RUFC, told pupils not to look at him after he was speared in the eye with a javelin in a freak accident yesterday.
  240. ^ Breslin, Maria (11 June 1999). "Teacher hit by javelin dies". News. The Independent. Retrieved 10 September 2024. A teacher injured by a javelin in a freak accident at a leading independent school died in hospital yesterday.

Works cited

[edit]
  • Weeks, David; Gorman, Robert (2015). "15: Fans". Death at the Ballpark: More Than 2,000 Game-Related Fatalities of Players, Other Personnel and Spectators in Amateur and Professional Baseball, 1862–2014 (2nd ed.). McFarland. ISBN 9780786479320. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
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