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.
Franz Reichelt, known as the "Flying Tailor", prior to his death testing an early wingsuit
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]
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]
During the 1900 Big Game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford CardinalAmerican 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]
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 below 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]
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]
Thomas Selfridge and Orville Wright were presenting the 1908 Wright Military Flyer to the US Army Signal Corps Division at Fort Myer. The plane made 41⁄2 rounds around the Fort before running into problems and crashing. Selfridge fractured his skull and died three hours later, becoming the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft.[18][19][20][21][22]
The Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet suffered a heart attack and died aged 56 after giving a ballet performance to Kaiser Wilhelm II 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.[23][24] 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.[25]
George Spencer 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.[26][27][failed verification]
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.[30][31]
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".[32][33][34]
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.[38][39] She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 days later.[40]
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.[41][42][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.[41][43][44][45]
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.[46][47][unreliable source?]
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.[41][54]
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.[55][56]
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.[59][60]
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.[61][62][63]
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.[64][65]
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).[66][67][68]
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.[72][verification needed][73][74]
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.[75][76]
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."[45][77] However, other stories claim he was murdered. Who or what killed Houdini is still under speculation.[77]
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.[78]
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.[79][80][81]
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.[82][83]
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.[84][85][note 1]
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.[86][87][88][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.[89][90][91]
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.[92][93][94]
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".[95][96][page needed][97]
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."[98][99]
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.[100][101]
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.[104][105]
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.[106][107]
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.[108][109]
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.[113][114][115]
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.[118][119]
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.[120]
On the evening of 2 March 1944, a freight train departed from Naples to Potenza, Italy. On board were hundreds of stowaway passengers who travelled to trade for commodities with Allied servicemen due to shortages caused by World War II and the Italian Civil War. At around midnight on 3 March, the heavy train came to a stop inside the Armi tunnel in the town of Balvano due to its inability to climb over an incline. Due to a combination of carbon monoxide produced by poor-quality coal used on the locomotives and the lack of ventilation inside the tunnel, at least 517 people (most of whom were stowaway passengers) died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. The disaster remains the deadliest train accident in Italian history.[121][122]
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.[125][126]
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.[47][unreliable source?][133]
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.[134][135]
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.[139][140][141][142]
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.[143][144]
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.[150][151]
The 59-year-old Prime Minister of Australia disappeared, presumed drowned, while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria.[152][153][154][155] He was "simply one of the number of ordinary Australians who drown each year through poor judgment or bad luck";[156] his drowning has been described as "not unusual",[157] and as "an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that still befalls dozens every summer."[153] Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories.[153]
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.[158][159]
1970s
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.[160]
The 27-year-old American musician died after choking on his own vomit while intoxicated with barbiturates. Hendrix's September 21 autopsy, citing "insufficient evidence of the circumstances", declared an open verdict. Hendrix's partner, Monika Dannemann, later revealed that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.[161]
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.[162][163]
John Dimmer
5 July 1974
While working in saturation aboard oil platformSedco 135F in the British Sector of the North Sea, the 27-year-old British commercial diver suffered a pneumothorax during decompression. The diving supervisor recognized Dimmer's condition, but the onshore physician consulted by the platform incorrectly diagnosed Dimmer as suffering from pneumonia. As a result, decompression continued, and Dimmer's pneumothorax proved fatal.[164][165]
The 18-year-old hostess for the America Sings attraction at Disneyland 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.[166][167]
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.[168][169]
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.[170][171]
After a bell dive while working in saturation aboard the semi-submersible drill rigWaage Drill II in the North Sea, British commercial divers Baldwin, 24, and Holmes, 29, died of hyperthermia due to a large amount of helium being pumped into the diving chamber complex in response to an apparent pressure leak. The supervisor had mistakenly been monitoring the pressure in the diving bell rather than in the chamber complex.[172][173][174][175]
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.[176][177]
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.[183][184] At the time of his death, he only weighed around 65 pounds (29 kg).[185][failed verification]
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. Markov died four days later in hospital. No one was ever charged with the assassination.[44][186]
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.[189][190]
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.[191][192][193]
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.[194][195][196]
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.[200][201]
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.[202][203]
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.[204][failed verification] Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.[203][205][206]
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.[207][208][209]
Truls Hellevik
5 November 1983
The 34-year-old Norwegian diver was explosively dismembered in a diving bell accident on the North SeaByford Dolphindrilling 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-atmosphereair pressureexplosively 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.[210][211]
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.[212][213]
Reginald Tucker
4 July 1984
The 29-year-old lawyer, who raced along a Chicago skyscraper corridor without wearing his glasses, crashed through a window and plunged 39 stories to his death during an early Fourth of July party. Police said portions of the man's body were scattered around the street near the 41-story Prudential Building in the city's downtown area. Several horrified onlookers attending holiday celebrations heard the glass shatter and saw him fall to his death.[214][215]
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.[218][219]
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.[220][221][222]
The 35-year-old veteran skydiver from Durham, North Carolina, was recording a jump by an instructor and student from the Franklin County Sports Parachute Center in Louisburg, North Carolina, when he jumped from a plane without a parachute. Focused on the recording process, he apparently forgot to put one on, and his camera equipment may have been mistaken by others in the plane for one. The tape from his helmet camera was partially recovered.[227][228][229]
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.[232][233]
1990s
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 AirwaysBoeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad.[234] 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.[235]
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.[236][237]
Parker Turner
17 November 1991
The 39-year-old American cave diver died in the partial collapse of an underwater cave during a dive at Indian Springs, Florida. Of the several hundred cave diving deaths in Florida between 1960 and 2010, Turner's was the only one caused by a partial cave collapse.[238][239]
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.[240][241]
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.[245][246]
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.[247][248][249]
Jeremy T. Brenno
9 July 1994
The 16-year-old from Gloversville, New York, was playing golf when he hit a bench out of frustration with his club. This caused the club's shaft to break and pierce Brenno's heart, killing him.[250][251]
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.[203][252]
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.[253][254][255]
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.[49][256][257]
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.[258][259]
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.[260][261][262]
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.[263][264]
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.[265][266]
Notes
^Snopes rates this account of Kogut's death as a "Legend".[85]
^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. PMID16769749. Unusual in arsenic poisoning, but especially prominent in this epidemic, were cardiovascular aspects.
^"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...
^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.
^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. JSTOR2926786. This is the story of the bizarre death of 1903 of Hall of Famer Ed Delahanty.
^Sowell, Mike (1992). July 2, 1903: The Mysterious Death of Hall-Of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty. Macmillian. p. 7. ISBN978-0-02-612415-7. But there were more questions about Delahanty's bizarre and gruesome fate than there were answers.
^"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.
^"Our Brief Aviation Camelot"(PDF). FROM BADDECK TO THE YALU: Canadian Airmen at War. p. 8. Retrieved 30 October 2024 – via Collections Canada. Events took a bizarre twist on September 17, 1908 when Selfridge, a member of the aeronautical board that was appraising a Wright machine in U.S. army acceptance trials, was killed.
^James, Harold (1989). A German Identity: 1770–1990. New York: Routledge. p. 82.
^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. ISBN0-452-01067-5. 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.
^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.
^"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...]
^"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.
^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...
^"Escape From a Falling House". Paris Herald. April 1913. Unusual, almost unique, the collapse of the house in the rue d'Anjou, Paris, on Friday evening [April 25] has naturally aroused widespread comment in the city., cited in "100, 75, 50 Years Ago". Opinion. The New York Times. 26 April 2013. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
^"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...
^Smith, Douglas (2016). Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 590–592. ISBN978-0-374-71123-8. 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.
^ abcdPaoletti, 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.
^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.
^Burke, Edmund (1921). The Annual Register. Vol. 162. London: Rivington & Co. ISBN978-1142328900. The King's death took place under the most tragic and unusual circumstances.
^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.
^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.
^"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.
^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.
^"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...
^"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.
^Wallechinsky, David (2009). The Book Of Lists (2nd ed.). Canongate Books. p. 335. ISBN978-1-84767-667-2 – via Google Books. In 1924 British newspapers reported the bizarre case of a man who apparently committed suicide while asleep.
^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.
^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.
^"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.
^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.
^ abSnopes 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.
^"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.
^"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.
^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.
^"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.
^"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.
^"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.
^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.
^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.
^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.
^"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.
^"Rolf Mützelburg". The Men. uboat.net. Guðmundur Helgason. Retrieved 6 November 2024. Kptlt. Rolf Mützelburg died on 11 September 1942 in a freak accident.
^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.
^"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.
^"The world's worst train disasters". Features. Railway Technology. 1 January 2014. Retrieved 27 November 2024. An accident near Balvano in southern Italy in March 1944 caused death of 520 people making it the worst ever train disaster in the country. It is also regarded as one of the moret [sic] unusual rail accidents of the century.
^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.
^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]
^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.
^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]
^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.
^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. ISBN0-16-059185-6. Archived from the original(PDF) on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2024. The accident was unprecedented.
^"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.
^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.
^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.
^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.
^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...
^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.
^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.
^ abcHocking, 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.
^"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.
^Brown 1997, pp. 172–174 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBrown1997 (help)
^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.
^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.
^Carson, W. G. (1982). The Other Price of Britain's Oil: Safety and Control in the North Sea. Crime, Law, and Deviance. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 66. ISBN0-8135-0957-2. Apart from one extraordinary incident in which a medical practitioner misdiagnosed pneumothorax as pneumonia and persisted in this opinion despite other well-informed advice to the contrary...
^Smart, Michael (2011). Into the Lion's Mouth: The Story of the Wildrake Diving Accident. Medford, Oregon: Lion's Mouth Publishing. pp. 36–37. ISBN978-0-615-52838-0. Strangely [the physician] failed to diagnose and prescribe the proper treatment even after diving expert Al Krasberg... correctly indicated to the doctor that Dimmer was suffering from a burst lung (pneumothorax).
^"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.
^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.
^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.
^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...
^John Smith, Under-Secretary of State for Energy (14 October 1975). "Offshore Oil (Divers)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol. 897. United Kingdom: House of Commons. Retrieved 20 November 2024. This is the first time in North Sea diving operations that hyperthermia has been found to be a hazard to divers.
^Carson, W. G. (1982). The Other Price of Britain's Oil: Safety and Control in the North Sea. Crime, Law, and Deviance. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 65. ISBN0-8135-0957-2. This accident has been described at some length because, more than any other single incident, it has been picked up by the media and by others as epitomizing the way in which diving takes its practitioners close to, and sometimes across, the threshold of the known and the familiar.
^Limbrick, Jim (2001). North Sea Divers – a Requiem. Hertford: Authors OnLine. pp. 132–133. ISBN0-7552-0036-5. Retrieved 10 November 2024 – via Google Books. This double fatality was unusual in that it was not on an actual dive that the two divers met their deaths, but in what should have been the relevant [sic] comfort of a safe, warm and reasonably comfortable chamber complex following a perfectly successful bell dive from saturation, breathing oxy/helium.
^Kitchen, Jonathan S. (2017) [Originally published in 1977]. Labour Law and Off-Shore Oil. Routledge Library Editions: Transport Economics. Routledge. p. vi. ISBN9781351806510. Retrieved 29 November 2024 – via Google Books. ...in some cases the fatalities occur... in a totally unforeseen manner. A good example of the latter type of fatality, well illustrating the fact that the divers are operating at the limits of modern underwater and medical technology, was provided in September 1975 when two experienced, competent divers... died in a decompression chamber aboard the drilling rig 'Waage II' from what was subsequently discovered to have been hyperthermia, i.e. overheating, a problem which no one had ever encountered before.
^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...
^Devlin, Keith (26 April 2001). "Lost innocence". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 October 2024. ...[Gödel] developed a paranoia that he was being poisoned and, as a result, starving himself to death (an altogether odd end for one of the greatest logicians the world has ever known).
^Rózsa, Lajos; Nixdorff, Kathryn (2006). "Biological Weapons in Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact Countries". In Wheelis, Mark; Rózsa, Lajos; Dando, Malcolm (eds.). Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 165–168. ISBN0-674-01699-8. Retrieved 21 October 2024 – via Google Books. One of the most dramatic incidents involving the reported use of a biological weapon, which occurred in 1978 and can only be described as bizarre, was the Markov case.
^Kiska, Tim (11 August 1983). "Robot firm liable in death". The Oregonian.
^"Mulher cai sobre caco de prato e morre" [Woman falls on broken plate and dies]. O Pioneiro (in Portuguese). 6 August 1980. p. 25 – via Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira. A mulher Lourdes Maria da Silva, residente na Rua Tronca 1148, residência de um seu irmão, morreu de forma inacreditável no fim de semana. [The woman Lourdes Maria da Silva, resident at Rua Tronca 1148, the residence of her brother, died in an unbelievable way over the weekend.]
^"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.]
^"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.
^Vanovac, Neda; Damjanovic, Dijana (31 December 2016). "NT release Cabinet documents on Azaria Chamberlain case". ABC News. Retrieved 23 October 2024. It seems fitting, for such an historic and unusual case, that the NT Government had to create legislation to allow it to hold the Commission of Inquiry into the conviction of the Chamberlains...
^"One Dead In Shuttle Accident". The Spartanburg Herald. AP. 20 March 1981. Page 1, columns 2–4. Retrieved 31 August 2024 – via Google News. It was the first launch pad fatality since a Jan 27, 1967 flash fire killed three Apollo 1 astronauts during a pre-launch test.
^"Katey Sagal's Peg Bundy a (Low) Class Act". News. Chicago Tribune. 7 May 1989. Retrieved 30 October 2024. Her father, Boris Sagal, was a prominent television director who died in 1981 in a freak accident when a helicopter blade hit his head during shooting of the mini-series "World War III."
^"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.
^Mikkelson, David (8 January 2022) [Originally published 23 July 2001]. "Man Burns to Death Rescuing Dog from Hot Springs". Fact Check. Snopes. Retrieved 7 August 2024. Twenty-two scalding deaths have been recorded in connection with Yellowstone's hot springs since 1870, all of them known or believed to have involved people who inadvertently fell into the springs through accident or carelessness—save one.
^"Actor Vic Morrow, who died in a movie location..."United Press International. 5 August 1982. Retrieved 24 October 2024. In a hand-printed will that contained numerous spelling errors, Morrow—who died July 23 in the freak accident—named three people as beneficiaries.
^Plasse, Marcel (3 May 1995). "'O Corvo' transforma morte de ator em clipe" ['The Crow' turns actor's death into a video]. Folha de S.Paulo (in Portuguese). Em Hollywood, apenas John Landis teve experiência semelhante -com Vic Morrow, morto num acidente bizarro no cenário de "No Limite da Realidade" (1983). [In Hollywood, only John Landis has had a similar experience -with Vic Morrow, killed in a bizarre accident on the set of "Twilight Zone" (1983).]
^"Tennis serve kills official". The Afro American. UPI. 24 September 1983. Page 9, columns 3–4. Retrieved 15 August 2024 – via Google News. Dick Wertheim, 61, of Lexington, Mass., had been "unresponsive" since the freak accident Sept. 10, said Flushing Hospital and medical Center spokesman Donald Rodda.
^Pellissier, Hank (14 August 2010). "Condor Club | North Beach, San Francisco". Local Intelligence. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2022. The rising piano at the Condor Club played a crucial role in a bizarre death in 1983 and also gave a cocktail its name.
^Flanigan, Brian (6 July 1984). "600-FOOT PLUNGE FROM WINDOW: A promising career, shocking end". Detroit Free Press. p. 1. Retrieved 1 December 2024 – via Newspapers.com. Reggie Tucker, the bright kid who "had it all" — captain of the CC debate team, honors graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan law school and a rising star in Chicago's legal community — was dead at 29 because of an almost unbelievable accident.
^"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.
^Roberts, Jerry (2012). The Hollywood Scandal Almanac: Twelve Months of Sinister, Salacious and Senseless History!. Arcadia Publishing. p. 149. ISBN978-1614237860.
^Llorente, Elizabeth (11 September 1985). "Teen-Ager's Sudden Death Bewilders Forensic Experts". The New York Times. Page 2, columns 1-3. Retrieved 24 October 2024. It's a bizarre case," said Dr. Marius Lombardi, a forensic investigator with the Medical Examiner's office in Newark, which also handles Union County cases. "We've never seen anything like this.
^"Lightning in Telephone Lines Caused Jersey Youth's Death". The New York Times. 16 February 1986. Page 52, columns 3-4. Retrieved 24 October 2024. Officials of New Jersey Bell Telephone Company said telephone-related accidents are not rare, but such fatal accidents are very unusual.
^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.
^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.
^"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.
^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.
^"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.]
^"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.
^"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.
^Gavin, Bill. "The Accident Report from Indian Springs"(PDF). Technical Diver: 12–14. Archived from the original(PDF) on 22 December 2024. Retrieved 13 January 2025. When Bill Gavin's account of the freak accident that resulted in Parker Turner's death first appeared in the NACD Journal (Vol. 23 No. 4, 4th Qt. 1991) it caused a number of us to reexamine our own experiences in light of the circumstances that were put to Gavin and Parker.
^Ghiglieri, Michael P.; Myers, Thomas M. (2001). Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon (revised ed.). Puma Press. p. 16. ISBN978-0-9700973-1-6. 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.
^"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.
^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.
^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...
^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.
^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.
^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.
^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...
^Mikkelson, Barbara (1 July 2008). "Golf Club Death". Fact Check. Snopes. Retrieved 1 December 2024. Surprisingly, however, this particular story is true: the life of a teenage boy was indeed ended by the very club he used on a bench as a way of venting his displeasure over a bad shot.
^Shaffer, Brandi (22 November 2013). "The Independent Lists Deadliest Golf Courses". Club + Resort Business. Retrieved 1 December 2024. A freak accident landed Kingsboro Golf Course in Gloversville, N.Y., on the list when 16-year-old Jeremy T. Brenno was so frustrated after missing a shot at the sixth hole that he hit a bench with his club back in 1994.
^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.
^"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.
^"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.
^"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.
^"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.
^"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."
^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.
^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.
^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.
^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
Cannon, Sarita (2021). "Red, Black, and Blue: Jimi Hendrix's Musical Self-Expression". Black-Native Autobiographical Acts: Navigating the Minefields of Authenticity. Lexington Books. ISBN978-1-7936-3057-5.
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. ISBN9780786479320. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
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