by James Proud
UNUSUAL WAYS TO DIE
Copyright © Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2018
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CONTENTS
Title page
Introduction
Unusual Ways to Die
INTRODUCTION
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, five people will have died somewhere in the world. They probably passed away quite peacefully in thankfully boring ways, but occasionally humans shuffle off this mortal coil in a more interesting fashion. This book contains a choice selection of particularly noteworthy deaths from around the globe, spanning the ancient world to the present day. Some of these exits serve as tragic warnings from beyond the grave, such as the sword swallower who took on a violin bow, and some are unbelievable accidents, like the farmer killed by her own sheep. And some are so shocking that they don't belong in the introduction. What they all have in common is that they are very, very unusual. Enter – if you dare! – the world of the dead.
THE WIRE
MICHAEL ANDERSON GODWIN
Date of Death (D.O.D.) 5 March 1989
Godwin was serving time for murder in a South Carolina jail after narrowly escaping the electric chair on appeal. Six years into his sentence, a routine check found him dead in his cell, sitting naked on his metal toilet with a badly burned mouth. It transpired that while trying to fix a pair of earphones attached to his TV, the convict had bitten into a live wire and was killed in his own electric chair.
TRAGICOMEDY
ALEX MITCHELL
D.O.D. 24 March 1975
Alex Mitchell was watching an episode of the comedy show The Goodies at home in Norfolk when a particularly funny sketch involving bagpipes sent him into a fit of hysterics. His wife didn't find it funny when he laughed himself into cardiac arrest, but she later sent a letter to the show to thank them for making her husband's final moments so amusing.
DID YOU KNOW?
Legend has it that the eccentric Scottish Royalist Thomas Urquhart died from a laughing fit in 1660 after hearing that Charles II had been restored to the throne.
DID YOU KNOW?
* * *
You are more likely to be killed by a cow, a champagne cork, a ballpoint pen, hot tap water, a vending machine or being left-handed than by a shark.
More people die in the first week of the year than any other.
People are most likely to die in the morning, around 11 a.m.
Monday is the most common day to suffer a fatal heart attack.
If you are over 60, you are more likely to die on your birthday than any other day. Nobody is sure why, but theories include the psychological effects of reaching a milestone and the dangers of overindulgence on the big day.
SKY DIED
REGINALD CHUA
D.O.D. 25 MAY 2000
Three hundred passengers on a flight in the Philippines were terrorised by an armed man wearing a balaclava and swimming goggles who threatened to detonate a grenade unless they gave him money. The hijacker then told the pilot to fly at a lower altitude so that he could escape with the swag, and donned what appeared to be a home-made parachute. He was reluctant to jump, so one of the crew helped him on his way with a shove. The robber's body was found embedded in mud the next day, having fallen from 1,800 metres. His makeshift canopy had failed to open.
PAIN OF THRONES
GYÖRGY DÓZSA
D.O.D. 1514
Hungarian hero Dózsa was the leader of a failed peasant uprising against the ruling classes. After his defeat he was made an example of. A red-hot crown was forced on to his head, and he was tied to an iron throne, which was heated until his body started to cook. To add insult to injury, his fellow rebels were forced to eat the charred flesh from his bones before he died.
WATER WAY TO GO
JENNIFER STRANGE
D.O.D. 12 January 2007
Twenty-eight-year-old mother Jennifer Strange took part in a contest called 'Hold Your Wee for a Wii' on a live radio show to try to win a games console for her family. The winner would be the person who drank the most water without taking a leak. After drinking almost 9 litres in three hours, Strange complained of feeling ill and failed to win the contest. A few hours later, she collapsed and died of water intoxication.
TOXIC TOADS
UNIDENTIFIED
D.O.D. MARCH 2017
A man died after eating a highly poisonous species of toad caught from a reservoir near Daejeon in South Korea. The unidentified 57-year-old had been fishing with friends for bullfrogs, an edible delicacy, which he then took to a local restaurant for preparation. Unfortunately, bullfrogs look very similar to the Korean water toad, the skin of which contains a deadly poison, and he had caught both. After eating his dish of bullfrogs, he began vomiting violently, was taken to hospital and died early the next morning.
THE HUMAN OVEN
VLADIMIR LADYZHENSKIY
D.O.D. 7 August 2010
In Finland, sitting in saunas is a competitive sport. At the 2010 world championships in Heinola, two men were left sitting in the 110ºC heat: the home favourite and reigning champ Timo Kaukonen and Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy from Siberia. The Russian lasted the longest but the new champion was in no condition to celebrate, and both men passed out after suffering extensive burns. Kaukonen awoke from a coma several weeks later, but Ladyzhenskiy died as a result. It was the last ever such event.
A GAME OF TWO HALVES
BENA TSHADI FC
D.O.D. 25 October 1998
The football team Basanga were hosting Bena Tshadi in a match in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The score was 1–1 when a bolt of lightning struck the pitch, knocking the players off their feet. As the Basanga players slowly recovered, they realised that the entire away team had been killed, while they had survived unscathed. Local media speculated that witchcraft was to blame.
DID YOU KNOW?
* * *
Cotard's Delusion, or 'walking corpse syndrome', is a mental condition in which the patient believes they are dead.
Botulinum Neurotoxin type H, similar to that used in Botox treatments, is so toxic that just 1.8 kilograms of it would be enough to kill every person on earth.
Eighteen people died playing American football at US colleges during 1905.
A storm of giant hailstones killed 246 people (plus 1,600 cattle and sheep) in Moradabad, India, in 1888.
Devastating tornadoes caused four deaths in North Texas in March 2000. Juan Carlos Oseguera from
Honduras ran for cover when the storm hit, but he was struck on the head by a hailstone the size of a cricket ball and died the next day.
SUGARY GRAVE
NATASHA HARRIS
D.O.D. FEBRUARY 2010
A coroner in New Zealand found that a habit of drinking up to 10 litres of Coca-Cola a day was a 'substantial factor' in the premature death of Natasha Harris, who suffered a cardiac arrest at the age of 30. The coroner revealed that Harris would suffer withdrawal symptoms if she ran out of the drink, and that her teeth had fallen out as a result of her addiction. The amounts of caffeine and sugar Harris was reported to have been drinking daily were equivalent to downing ten cups of coffee and a whole bag of sugar.
OWW DE TOILETTE
EDMUND IRONSIDE
D.O.D. 30 November 1016
In the eleventh century, the young King Edmund II ruled southern England in a fragile truce with the Viking King Canute. At least, he did for a few months – until he became one of history's most undignified murder victims. A traitorous nobleman called Eadric told his son to crawl into the cesspit underneath a privy (a medieval toilet) and wait for the king to do his business. When unsuspecting Edmund dropped his trousers, the youth stuck a sword into his bowels from below.
GOING UNDERGROUND
DANIEL JONES
D.O.D. 7 August 1997
One minute, you're happily digging a hole at the beach; the next, you've buried yourself alive. Daniel Jones was sitting at the bottom of the 8-feet-deep hole he had dug in the beach at Buxton, North Carolina, when his sandy excavations collapsed on top of him. Fellow beachgoers frantically tried to reach him, but to no avail. It took rescue workers with heavy equipment an hour to finally dig him out, but he had suffocated already.
I REST MY CASE
CLEMENT VALLANDIGHAM
D.O.D. 17 June 1871
Clement Vallandigham was a distinguished Ohio lawyer whose dedication to the job would be the end of him. In 1871 he defended a man accused of shooting someone dead during a card game, and he went to great lengths to get his man off the charge. Vallandigham suspected that the victim shot himself in the stomach when drawing his own weapon, and he conducted his own experiments to prove it. He demonstrated his theory to colleagues by drawing a gun from his own pocket, as the victim might have done, and pulling the trigger. Unfortunately, the gun was loaded and he shot himself in the stomach. Vallandigham's demonstration won the case, but he died the next day from his injuries.
SHOCK 'N' ROLL
LESLIE HARVEY
D.O.D. 3 May 1972
The Stone the Crows guitarist was playing a gig in Swansea when he touched an ungrounded microphone and was electrocuted. A roadie unplugged his guitar to try to save him, but it was too late and he collapsed onstage, dying later in hospital.
BULLETPROOF
ALEOBIGA ABERIMA
D.O.D. MARCH 2001
Aberima asked a local witch doctor in his native Ghana if he could cast a spell that would render him impervious to bullets. The witch doctor set to work – presumably safe in the knowledge that the spell would never be put to the test – and smeared a herbal lotion on the patient's skin over several days. Unfortunately for both of them, Aberima asked a friend to shoot him to test the spell. Surprisingly, it didn't work, and the doctor was almost beaten to death himself by angry villagers.
VEGGING OUT
BASIL BROWN
D.O.D. February 1974
Scientific adviser Basil Brown, from Surrey, was fanatical about his health. He began drinking a lot of carrot juice because he thought he was deficient in vitamin A – up to 4.5 litres of juice a day, topped up with vast amounts of vitamin pills. He drank so much carrot juice that his body couldn't process it, causing him to turn bright yellow and die of cirrhosis of the liver. A doctor had warned him that his liver was becoming enlarged, but, as the inquest was told, 'he had a low opinion of doctors'.
UNUSUAL CUSTOMS
* * *
The Yanomami people of the Amazon drink the cremated ashes of their dead with banana juice at funeral ceremonies.
The Änga people of Papua New Guinea traditionally mummified their dead relatives by smoking them over a fire. They wore their fingers as jewellery.
The Malagasy people of Madagascar exhume their dead every few years. The bodies are wrapped in fresh cloth, sprayed with perfume and wine, and then relatives dance with the bones of their ancestors.
In Indonesia, the Batak people ritually dig up the bodies of their dead relatives, clean their bones and move them to a new burial site.
The native people of the Philippines have many different funeral traditions. In Benguet province, dead bodies are blindfolded then propped up in a chair outside their house for a week before the funeral. The Ilongot people are buried sitting up. The Isneg people of Apayao bury their dead underneath their kitchens; while in the mountains of Sagada, the dead are put to rest in coffins hanging from cliffs.
KNIGHTS OUT
PAUL ALLEN
D.O.D. 20 September 2007
Paul Allen, 54, was a history enthusiast who enjoyed military re-enactments. In 2007, he took part in a medieval jousting demonstration for the Time Team TV show, using light balsa wood lances for safety. As he rode into his adversary's lance, it shattered on impact with his shield as required, but a splinter flew through a slit in his helmet, penetrated his eye and lodged in his brain. He was taken to hospital but died a week later. Hundreds of people wearing historical costumes attended his funeral.
SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOU
GARY ALLEN BANNING
D.O.D. 28 FEBRUARY 2012
Forty-three-year-old Banning was at a friend's house in North Carolina when he picked up a jar of petrol from the kitchen and took a swig, mistaking the contents for a drink. He spat the fuel out in disgust, and went on with his evening. Sometime later, he decided to have a cigarette. As he lit up, he really lit up, as the gasoline residue on his clothes burst into flames. He was taken to hospital after firefighters responded to a call from a neighbour who detected the blaze, but he died the next day.
IT'S A GAS
JASON ACKERMAN AND SARA RYDMAN
D.O.D. 3 June 2006
Two students from Florida were found dead inside a giant helium balloon used to advertise an apartment complex. It appeared that Jason Ackerman and Sara Rydman had pulled the 8-foot balloon to the ground and crawled inside for a laugh. Helium gas makes your voice squeaky, but it also displaces oxygen in the bloodstream, so when the pair inhaled the amounts contained in the giant balloon, it caused them to lose consciousness and die as their brains were starved of oxygen.
KITCHEN NIGHTMARE
PHILLIP QUINN
D.O.D. 28 November 2004
Phillip Quinn, 24, of Washington, USA, was found dead in his static caravan with a shard of glass from a broken lava lamp stuck through his heart. Nobody else was present when he died, and his death was a mystery, until investigators concluded that Quinn had heated the lava lamp on a cooker. The heat had caused such pressure in the lamp that it violently exploded, sending shards of glass into Quinn's chest. The reasoning behind the risky experiment remains unknown.
PLAYING DEAD
BRANDON LEE
D.O.D. 31 MARCH 1993
Actor Brandon Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce, was filming a scene for The Crow in which his character is shot at from close range. Blank cartridges, with powder but no bullets, were required for authenticity. As the gun was 'fired', Lee crumpled to the floor, fatally wounded in the stomach by a real bullet that had remained in the gun from a previous scene – the blank propelled that bullet out of the barrel and into Lee.