Unusual Ways to Die

by James Proud

  GIVEN A GRILLING

  SAINT LAWRENCE

  D.O.D. 10 August 258

  Saint Lawrence was a clergyman in Rome, during the third century, who met his death after refusing to give up the treasures of his church to the authorities. The Roman prefect was so enraged by Lawrence's resistance that he had him tied to a giant gridiron and roasted over a fire. The story goes that when his torturers asked if he had suffered enough, Lawrence said, 'Turn me over. I'm well done!' Suitably, he is the patron saint of chefs and comedians to this day.

  RISQUÉ BUSINESS

  PAUL COWLEY AND KIM FONTANA

  D.O.D. 3 March 2002

  An amorous couple were on a night out in Sheffield when their urges got the better of them, and they decided to get down to it in the middle of a public road. A passing off-duty paramedic stopped to tell them of the danger they were in, but they went on with their courting – until an approaching bus driver mistook the pair for 'a bag of rubbish' in the dim light. The bus failed to take avoiding action, and they were both killed instantly.

  HUNGRY HOGS

  TERRY GARNER

  D.O.D. 26 September 2012

  Terry Garner was an Oregon pig farmer who owned some gigantic specimens weighing as much as 320 kilograms. On the day he died, he went to feed the animals as usual, and never came back. When a relative went to the pigpen to look for Garner, what he found chilled his blood. Strewn amongst the snuffling sows were Garner's personal items, a pair of dentures and what remained of the man himself – which wasn't much. Not even enough, in fact, to determine a cause of death. All we know is that the 69-year-old farmer was eaten by his own pigs.

  FIGHTING BLIND

  JOHN OF BOHEMIA

  D.O.D. 26 AUGUST 1346

  King John I of Bohemia had been blind for several years before he met his end at the Battle of Crécy. He was determined not to be left out of the fun, so he ordered his men to tie their horses to his own, in order that he could ride into battle with them. They all died at the hands of the English and were found still tied together the next morning.

  THE EMPEROR'S NEW PILLS

  QIN SHI HUANG

  D.O.D. 210 BCE

  Huang was the first emperor of China, the man famous for building the Great Wall and being buried with thousands of terracotta warriors. He became paranoid about death after surviving three assassination attempts, and sought out herbs and potions from far and wide in his search for a life-giving elixir. One such 'cure' was mercury pills, a surprisingly common treatment at the time. It's unclear why Huang thought eating the toxic metal would be a good idea – but it wasn't, and he fatally poisoned himself.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  * * *

  In 897, Pope Stephen VI exhumed his penultimate predecessor, Formosus, and put him on trial for being a bad pope. He was found guilty.

  In 1920, 10,000 people attended the funeral of a canary called Jimmy in Newark, New Jersey.

  It is legal to marry a dead person in France – if the wedding was planned before their death.

  Before he became the president of the USA in 1885, Grover Cleveland acted as executioner as part of his duties while sheriff of Erie County, and hanged two people.

  DANCE TILL YOU DROP

  HOMER MOREHOUSE

  D.O.D. 14 April 1923

  In the 1920s, a new fad of dance marathons took hold in the USA. Couples would dance for as long as they could, with only short breaks, in order to remain the last dancers standing and claim a prize. Some competitions lasted for several weeks at a time. One of several casualties was 27-year-old Homer Morehouse of New York, who dropped down dead from heart failure upon leaving the dance floor after 87 hours of jiving.

  CASKET FALL

  HENRY TAYLOR

  D.O.D. 19 October 1872

  An extra death haunted a funeral in a London cemetery when one of the pall-bearers, 60-year-old Henry Taylor, tripped on a gravestone and fell as the coffin was transported along a narrow path towards the grave. His fellow coffin carriers lost control of the casket and dropped it on top of him. After some confusion, the burial continued as planned while Taylor was taken to hospital, but he died of his injuries a few days later.

  DISAPPEARING ACT

  CHARLES ROWAN

  D.O.D. 1930

  The South African Charles Rowan performed as Karr the Magician. One of his tricks was to escape from a straitjacket as a car accelerated towards him. His last performance was in Springfontein in front of a large crowd. He managed to wriggle free from the jacket with seconds to spare, which unfortunately wasn't enough. The car struck him and 'almost severed' his right leg, and he quickly succumbed to his injuries.

  MAKING A SPLASH

  CHARLES STEPHENS

  D.O.D. 11 July 1920

  Charles Stephens, a 58-year-old English barber and amateur daredevil, went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1920. He optimistically wanted to remain upright, so he installed straps for his arms and tied an anvil to his feet for ballast. Stephens plunged into the pool at the bottom of the falls with such force that the anvil smashed through the bottom of the barrel and took the barber with it, leaving only his right arm to be found.

  NIAGARA FAIL

  GEORGE A. STATHAKIS

  D.O.D. 5 July 1930

  When George A. Stathakis plunged over Niagara Falls in a home-made barrel, the 46-year-old chef from New York was accompanied for unknown reasons by his pet turtle Sonny. His custom barrel was ten feet long, reinforced with steel, and said to weigh a ton. Its strength ensured that Stathakis survived the 50-metre drop, but the heavy barrel didn't emerge from the maelstrom until the next morning, by which time he had suffocated. Incredibly, Sonny is reported to have survived the fall.

  ISN'T IT IRONIC

  BOBBY LEACH

  D.O.D. April 1926

  Bobby Leach was an English stuntman who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in July 1911. But the fall didn't kill him (though it took six months for him to recover from his injuries), and he became only the second person to survive the trip. He went on to perform other death-defying feats, including several failed attempts at swimming the Niagara rapids, and toured the world regaling audiences with the tales of his escapades. In 1926, Leach's luck ran out after slipping on a banana skin and breaking his leg in New Zealand. The injury became infected and he died two months later.

  BAD AIM

  KAREL SOUCEK

  D.O.D. 20 JANUARY 1985

  In 1984, Canadian Karel Soucek survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel unscathed. So why is he in this book? The following year, Soucek planned a stunt where he would be nailed into another barrel and dropped from 180 feet into a water tank just 12 feet wide. As the barrel plunged towards the ground, it spun off target and bounced off the side of the tank on to the ground. The 45,000- strong crowd applauded the stunt, but realised that things had not gone to plan when paramedics rushed on to the scene and carried the daredevil away. Soucek suffered terrible crush injuries and a fractured skull, from which he did not recover.

  MAD SCIENTIST

  JESSE WILLIAM LAZEAR

  D.O.D. September 1900

  Scientist Jesse William Lazear worked at a US Army barracks in Cuba, where he was part of a team investigating the deadly yellow fever that its troops were suffering from. He was so determined to prove his theory that mosquitoes were responsible for the illness that he deliberately allowed the bugs to bite him in order to study the disease in his own body. Sure enough, he soon contracted yellow fever, triumphantly proving his theory – but bringing about his own death within a couple of weeks.

  OLIVE TWIST

  SHERWOOD ANDERSON

  D.O.D. 8 March 1941

  The American novelist Sherwood Anderson committed the grave error of making a meal of a cocktail on board a ship bound for South America. He swallowed an 8-centimetre toothpick from an olive while drinking a Martini, his favourite drink. He developed terrible stomach pains, and died in Panama of peritonitis.

  DEAD LEG

/>   SIR ARTHUR ASTON

  D.O.D. 10 SEPTEMBER 1649

  During the invasion of Ireland in the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's Roundhead forces laid siege to Drogheda. The town was held by Royalist troops under the command of Sir Arthur Aston, who had lost a leg earlier in the campaign and was rumoured to keep gold coins in the replacement wooden limb. Cromwell offered to let Aston surrender, but the veteran refused. When the Roundheads finally breached the town walls and found Aston, they seized his wooden leg and 'beat his brains out' with it.

  LAVA LEAP

  EMPEDOCLES

  D.O.D. 430 BCE

  Empedocles was a Greek philosopher from the island of Sicily. He believed that death was caused by the cooling of the blood; therefore it followed that by jumping into the active volcanic crater of Mount Etna you would become a god and live for ever. It's not certain whether Empedocles was successful, but he certainly moved on from this life in one way or another.

  UNLUCKY LETTER

  THAN SINGH

  D.O.D. June 2010

  Seventy-year-old Than Singh of India was surprised to receive a letter from a local crematorium, as none of his family or friends had died recently. When he opened it, he was shocked to see that it was a receipt for his own cremation – so shocked, in fact, that he suffered a heart attack and died later in hospital. When Singh was cremated for real, in the very same crematorium, his family received another receipt, with the same serial number.

  PIPE DRAMA

  RAY LANGSTON

  D.O.D. September 1996

  Ray Langston's day went from bad to really, really bad after he dropped his car keys down a drain outside his brother's house in Detroit, Michigan. The 41-year-old managed to hoist open the 60-kilo drain cover using a coat hanger, and squeezed his body into the 45-centimetre-wide hole. But as he stretched for his keys, he fell down the pipe, pinning himself head first in the sewer water. Despite his brother's efforts to shift him, Ray was stuck fast, and he drowned in 2 feet of water.

  THE HYPOCHONDRIAC

  MOLIÈRE

  D.O.D. 17 FEBRUARY 1673

  The French playwright and actor Molière suffered from tuberculosis for many years, and, unsurprisingly, it caused his death. More surprising were the time and place of his demise. He collapsed in a bloody coughing fit onstage during a performance of The Imaginary Invalid, a new play he had written, in which he played a hypochondriac constantly suffering from 'illness'. Molière managed to complete the show, but died later that day.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  * * *

  It's estimated that 50,000 people were burned as witches in Europe between 1450 and 1750, and 20 per cent of them were men.

  Powder made by grinding up ancient Egyptian mummies became a popular medicine in Europe in the sixteenth century and was still in use as late as the twentieth century.

  In 1900, the average global life expectancy was 31 years.

  A small number of people still die of the Black Death every year in the USA.

  The last execution by guillotine in France took place in 1977.

  FEEDING TIME

  NORDIN MONTONG

  D.O.D. 13 November 2008

  A Malaysian cleaner who worked at Singapore Zoo gave up his life in a bizarre fashion when he jumped into an enclosure containing three gigantic white tigers. The big cats immediately started to play with their new toy, who had only a bucket and broom for protection. By the time the tigers were distracted by keepers, they had inflicted fatal injuries.

  PLANT POWER

  DAVID GRUNDMAN

  D.O.D. 1982

  David Grundman and his friend James Suchochi were playing around with guns in the desert in Arizona, taking potshots at the large saguaro cacti that grow in the area, a practice known as 'cactus plugging'. Grundman took aim at one old specimen that stood more than 7 metres high, and blew a heavy branch off with his first shot. He was standing too close, however, and the spiky limb crushed him to death.

  PAIN IN THE NECK

  PATRICK MULRANEY

  D.O.D. 29 June 1891

  Mulraney was a circus juggler and sword swallower who set aside his swords during a performance in Columbus, Ohio, and endeavoured to swallow a violin bow instead. After trying and failing twice on account of the pain, he began to cough up blood in front of the horrified audience. Mulraney continued to suffer in this fashion until the next morning, when he died.

  TIGHT SPOT

  JOHN JONES

  D.O.D. 25 NOVEMBER 2009

  John Jones was part of a group of cavers crawling through underground tunnels at a popular site in Utah. He branched off on his own and squeezed head-first through a downward-sloping passage just 45 by 25 centimetres. It was a dead end, but as he tried to back out, Jones realised he was stuck fast. His friends tried and failed to shift him, and despite the efforts of 50 rescue workers he remained trapped 38 metres below ground. After 28 hours, Jones lost consciousness, and his rescuers had to concede defeat. His body was never recovered, and the cave was permanently sealed.

  BUNGEE BUNGLE

  MICHAEL LUSH

  D.O.D. 13 November 1986

  In the 1980s, the BBC programme The Late, Late Breakfast Show enlisted and trained members of the public to perform genuinely dangerous stunts live on TV. Michael Lush, a builder, was one of those chosen. He was to escape from a box suspended by a crane 36 metres above the ground before it 'exploded' then jump to the ground on a bungee rope. During rehearsals, he managed to escape from the box but fell to his death when the rope came loose. The series was cancelled as a result of the tragedy.

  WORK SUCKS

  RAVI SUBRAMANIAN

  D.O.D. 16 December 2015

  The crew of Air India flight 619 from Mumbai to Hyderabad were running late due to a scheduling clash. They rushed to the cockpit and prepared for take-off. In his haste to get going, the co-pilot mistook a gesture from the ground crew for a thumbs-up all-clear signal, and started the engine while someone was still working under the plane. Technician Ravi Subramanian was sucked into the jet engine's turbine and obliterated.

  DEEP FREEZE

  CHELSEA AKE-SALVACION

  D.O.D. 20 October 2015

  Whole-body cryotherapy involves exposing the body to extremely cold air (below –100°C) in liquid nitrogen tanks for up to 4 minutes at a time. The process is supposed to burn calories, reduce inflammation and prevent ageing. Las Vegas cryotherapist Chelsea AkeSalvacion texted her boyfriend while working late one evening to say that she was going to use one of the pods. He never heard from her again. The next morning, colleagues found her frozen solid at the bottom of the tank. It's thought that Ake-Salvacion died from asphyxiation due to inhaling the noxious gas produced by the liquid nitrogen.

  RUN THROUGH

  JON DESBOROUGH

  D.O.D. 10 JUNE 1999

  Pupils at a Liverpool school were being shown how to throw the javelin in a PE class. The teacher, Jon Desborough, demonstrated how to safely retrieve the javelin from the field, but as he reached for a spear sticking out of the ground, he slipped on the grass and fell on to the blunt end of the shaft. It passed through his eye socket and into his skull. Desborough was able to calmly tell his pupils to walk away and get help, but he fell into a coma and died three weeks later due to complications from his injury.