Follow us on Twitter
10 (more) Bizarre Deaths in History
If you find the first part interesting, here are 10 more unusual deaths that have occurred throughout history.
For the first part, click here.
Steve Irwin (1962 - 2006): Death by Stingray
Irwin was an Australian wildlife expert and a well-loved TV personality, who gained worldwide fame from his internationally broadcast wildlife documentary program “The Crocodile Hunter,” which he co-hosted with his wife Terri. While filming the documentary “Ocean’s Deadliest” at the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Irwin swam too close above one of the stingrays with the cameraman directly right in front of it. Threatened by their presence, the ordinarily harmless stingray instinctively responded by flexing upward its razor-sharp, barbed tail which pierced Irwin’s chest and into his heart, an injury that brought about his untimely demise at only 44 years of age.
Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626): Death by Stuffing Chicken
One of the leading figures of the English Rennaisance, Bacon was a statesman, philosopher, scientist and author, whose celebrated works “Novum Organum” (1620) and “The New Atlantis” (1626) contributed significantly to the European scientific revolution. During a particularly heavy snowstorm in 1626, Bacon suddenly came up with the thought of possibly using snow to preserve meat. Desirous of finding out, he went to nearby marketplace to buy a fowl and had its internal organs removed. Standing outside in the snow, he immediately began stuffing the fowl to freeze it. However, the fowl never froze, but he did. He contracted pneumonia and died a few days after.
Gregori Rasputin (1869 - 1916): Death by Poison, Gunshot, Beating and Drowning
Rasputin was a Russian mystic and monk who gained considerable influence on Tsar Nicholas II due to his unusual ability to use hypnosis to control the hemophilia suffered by Alexei, the heir to the throne. Rasputin survived being fed cakes laced with potassium cyanide and being shot through the heart. He was shot three more times by his assassins who found him to be alive and struggling to get up as they drew near to his body. He was then beaten with clubs and thrown into the freezing Neva River. When his body was recovered, an autopsy revealed that the cause of death to be hypothermia.
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632 - 1687): Death by Conductor’s Staff
Lully was an Italian-born French composer who worked most of his life as the appointed musician in the court of Louis XIV of France. While conducting the Te Deum in honor of Louis XIV’s recent recovery from sickness, Lully was so deeply engrossed on keeping the tempo by banging his long staff against the floor (as was the custom of the time before the baton came into common usage) that he struck his toe so hard that the would developed into an abscess. He refused to have his toe amputated even if the wound had turned gangrenous and had spread, leading to his death two months after the incident.
Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941): Death by Toothpick
Anderson was an American author best known for his collection of short stories “Winesburg, Ohio” (1919) and the novel “Dark Laughter” (1925). He died in Panama of peritonitis that developed after accidentally swallowing a toothpick embedded in a martini olive at a party held on an ocean liner bound for Brazil.
George Allen (1918 - 1990): Death by Gatorade
Allen was an American Football coach, who was showered by some of his Long Beach State players with an ice cold bucket of Gatorade in celebration of their season-ending win over the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on November 17, 1990. Afterwards, he even granted media interviews for some time under the cold weather with a piercing wind and boarded the bus back to Long Beach State still in his drenched clothing. Since then, he acknowledged that he had not been feeling completely well. He finally succumbed to pneumonia on December 31, 1990.
Alexander Litvinenko (1962 - 2006): Death by Radiation Poisoning
Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian State Security Services, who fled his country to the United Kingdom where he was granted political asylum in 2000. Litvinenko was hospitalized on November 1, 2001 when his health unexpectedly deteriorated. It was later discovered that he had been poisoned with significant amounts of the rare and extremely toxic radioactive element polonium-210. He died three weeks later, thus becoming the first known casualty of deliberate radiation poisoning. His murder marked the start of a new era of nuclear terrorism.
Jack Daniel (1850 - 1911): Death from Stubbed Toe
In 1905, Jack Daniel, founder of Tennessee whiskey distillery, had trouble opening his safe early one day at work as he always had difficulty remembering the right combination. He kicked the safe in frustration resulting in a toe injury that later became infected; and eventually died (six years later) from blood poisoning attributable to the mishap. He could have just dipped his toe in his famous whiskey to ward off infection.
Isadora Duncan (1877 - 1927): Death by a Scarf
Duncan was an American dancer, considered by many to be the mother of modern dance. Her extreme fondness for long flowing scarves was the cause of her death in a freak automobile accident in France at the age of 50. Duncan was strangled by her own scarf when it got caught in the rear wheel of a moving car.
Claude François (1939 - 1978): Death by a Light Bulb
François was a French pop singer, best known for writing “Comme d’habitude,” which was adapted for the English public by Paul Anka into the celebrated hit “My Way” famously sung by Frank Sinatra. François noticed a broken light bulb while standing in a bathtub filled with water in his Paris apartment. But being a stickler for orderliness and cleanliness, he cannot help but try to change the bulb, resulting in his death by electrocution.
For more articles on the unusual, the strange and the bizarre, click on the following links:
Liked it
64 Comments
Thanks for the very-well presented information Eddie. You must be a walking heap of articles about who’s who in the world.
These are all bizarre deaths, the scarf strangle was terrifying to think of!
Wonderful! I love this type of content. Keep them coming!
Really bizarre deaths.
Very cool stuff Eddie! Well done again.
Interesting read, thanks.
Thanks for a flashback to college English class where I learned about Bacon. LOL. Another great, informative article!
A well penned second installment. Will there be more to this series? Great work!
-Michele
You should chalk up John Keats for death by not wearing a scarf.
Pneumonia is a lung infection - viral or bacterial. You can get it in the summer. I don’t get how freezing or cold and pneumonia have much correlation.
Great link as always Eddie!
Glad you remembered Steve Irwin.
good post. done so well!
Death by chocolate
I wouldn’t say that Alexander’s assassination marked the start of a new era of nuclear terrorism. It was just murder. You may say it’s just semantics, but I’m getting pretty tired of “terrorist did this and that”. It’s just a word, which now means that you should be as shocked as possible for some unknown reason.
…sorry for that. Interesting info!
Gregori Rasputin sounds like a hardcore badass.
Seriously, wtf?
Great list! But I call shenanigans on Claude Francois. That’s a description of suicide if I’ve ever heard one. I haven’t yet read your first collection, but if it doesn’t include Tycho Brache, then it’s time you start working on a third.
These are great. I haven’t read the first installment, but I surely intend to after seeing these.
Thanks for an interesting and enjoyable read.
Damon D. Brewer aka johnny yuma
Chuck Norris could take out Rasputin with one punch.
Pneumonia is the cause of death, the only bizarre thing is how they got pneumonia… Sorry.. but that’s what I know. That Rasputin guy’s a really hard badass.. Wonder if he never died that day.
Interesting info, although have read most of them in the “Bathroom Reader” Series of books before now, and also Litvinenko didn’t die in 2001 as claimed, but 2006. Nevertheless very interesting, and a thumble up from me!
Great article! Very interesting material!
The scarf one happens to people who snowmobile frequently. A lot of them are people being dumb especially changing a broken lightbulb while standing in water. That’s Darwin award material.
This is nice. Well researched and really good stuff to fill some of the empty shelves in our brain.
Many thanks.
Be blessed and be a blessing.
nice work bro………..
go on ,i really learned something……….
u gave me a chance yo rally get excited….
another great article…
Sherwood Anderson is one of my favorite short story writers! Next to Flannery O’ Connor, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ernest Hemingway, of course!
Now that was some freaky stuff! Brilliant!
That was one interesting article. Well done for that!
A very interesting article. I really enjoyed reading it.
Another great read full of interesting facts. I love learning things I never knew before. Keeps me young.
I know I’m aging myself here but what about “death by stereo” in the classic movie “Lost Boys”? That’s my favourite part of my favourite movie.
LOL killed by a toothpick? Wow that seems interesting. The pictures and stuff were well presented. I miss steve irwin, he was a good guy, and I wouldn’t say that was bizarre, because it has happened before then, however it is rare, so I’ll accept it
that’s pretty weird..
An interesting note about Bacon, there was servant who had been rumored to work for him. A man by the name of William Shakespeare. Rumor has it that “The Bard” took Bacon’s writings and claimed them for his own. A rumor that, to this day, may hold some water.
i like this one too
swallowing a toothpick? stumping a toe?
i’m skeerd!
good, interesting info!
Great compilation! Great work. Nice idea
Great work!
This is so sad and unfortunate. Poor people. I know about Steve Irwin and the Russian spy. It was all over the news here.
Another interesting piece.
I have a feeling that if some of these people were to die today in the ways that they died, they just might win a Darwin award.
This article was just too interesting to read. I couldn’t stop. Great article.
Great article! How does one ‘accidently’ swallow a toothpick, anyway? Think of how long they are…chewed pieces, I can go with. But an intact toothpick? Maybe he had just come back from the ship’s dentist, and his mouth was still numb? Ha ha. I love the topics you choose!!!
I think that it is nice that someone took the to honer him.
I could also imagine something like, death by Triond.
An individual, so eager to become Triond’s Hot User, they die from overwork, stress and tiredness in an attempt to reach the top of the pile in here.
Great work, J
What an interesting read. I must read the first ten. Love this type of content.
Interesting thanks for this, Check out my articles, i have some good interesting stuff for you all
http://www.picable.com/Nature/Animals/Firin-Mah-Lazor.324171
This one is even better than the first! WOW!!! Great article…
i heard rasputin died of drowning not hypothermia
I loved it! What an interesting topic; I’m going to keep my eye out for your stuff, so keep it up!
you are so good at this. congratulations!
Great article. Very entertaining.
Very Nice presentation…very easy to read as well as to understand good job keep up the great content.
Haha, nicely made list. Portraits of people who died, info and dates. Just like reading a very interesting history book because it is bizzare
I enjoyed reading this article very much!! Thanks
Very informative and interesting. Thanks, Eddie.
Wow that one about Rasputin freaked me out. Maybe he did have some freaky powers!!
Great list. Have you ever seen the comparison of the deaths of Lincoln and Kennedy?
http://www.socyberty.com/History/The-Comparison-of-the-Assassinations-of-Kennedy-and-Lincoln.28212
oh my! this one is great! You’re one of the great writers here
Very interesting–also shows human vulnerability.
freaky yet interesting esp the death b toothpick.
always like to read freaky stuff about others —makes my
life seem quite normal.
superb. i really like the one about Jack Daniel. i had no idea and the Alexander Litvinenko case is so fascinating. really did a great job here
what a deadly article.