Random Unusual Deaths: Bizarre Deaths Of the 20 Century (55 items)

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  (#1) Alexander Bogdanov

  • Dec. at 55 (1873-1928)

  A Russian physician, passed following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis was given to him in a transfusion. He thought he was immune to tuberculosis, but his passing came soon after the transfusion. 
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  (#2) Boris Sagal

  • Dec. at 58 (1923-1981)

  A film director passed while shooting the TV miniseries "World War III." Not paying attention, Sagal walked into the rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.

   
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  (#3) Bruce Lee

  • Dec. at 33 (1940-1973)

  The martial artist and actor passed because of a severe allergic reaction to a pain medicine, Equagesic. His autopsy was written as "[perishing] by misadventure."
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  (#4) R. Budd Dwyer

  • Dec. at 48 (1939-1987)

  Dwyer, the State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, took his own life during a televised press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.
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  (#5) Carl McCunn

  • Dec. at 35 (1946-1981)

  McCunn paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska during the month of March to photograph wildlife, but failed to confirm arrangements for the pilot to pick him up again in August. Rather than starve, McCunn shot himself in the head. His body was found in February 1982.
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  (#6) Christine Chubbuck

  • Dec. at 29 (1944-1974)

  Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, took her own life during a live broadcast on July 15. A few minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.
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  (#7) Christopher Johnson McCandless

  • Dec. at 24 (1968-1992)

  Christopher McCandless suffered from starvation near Denali National Park after a few months trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. His life and passing were researched by Jon Krakauer, who then wrote the book Into the Wild, which was later turned into a movie.
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  (#8) Dan Andersson

  • Dec. at 32 (1888-1920)

  Andersson, a Swedish author, perished because of cyanide poisoning while staying at a hotel in Stockholm, because the hotel staff had failed to clear the room after using hydrogen cyanide against bedbugs.
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  (#9) David Allen Kirwan

  He perished after attempting to rescue a friend's dog from Celestine Pool, a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park on July 20, 1981. Kirwan is the only known case of someone passing after deliberately jumping into one of the park's hot springs.
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  (#10) David Grundman

  Grundman perished near Lake Pleasant, Arizona, in 1982 while shooting at cactuses for fun with his shotgun. After firing several shots at a 26 ft (8m) tall Saguaro Cactus from extremely close range, a large limb of the cactus that was weakened by the gunfire detached and fell on him, crushing him.
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  (#11) Deborah Gail Stone

  • Dec. at 18 (1956-1974)

  Stone was 18, an employee at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on June 28, 1974, when she was crushed between a moving wall and a stationary wall inside of the revolving America Sings attraction.
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  (#12) Eben Byers

  • Dec. at 52 (1880-1932)

  On March 31, 1932, Byers perished because of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of a popular patent medicine containing radium. He thought it improved his health.
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  (#13) Edward Juchniewicz

  In May 1991, a 76-year-old man perished when the ambulance stretcher he was strapped to rolled down a grade and overturned. Juchniewicz suffered a head injury and was no longer living a short time later.
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  (#14) Eileen Lonergan

  • Dec. at 28

  Lonergan was with her husband were scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef on January 25, 1998. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them owing to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their corpses were never recovered. The incident inspired the film Open Water.
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  (#15) Franco Brun

  • Dec. at 22

  Brun, a 22-year-old prisoner at Metro East Detention Centre, in Toronto, Canada, passed after attempting to swallow and choking on a 6.35 cm. (2.5 inches) by 10 cm. (4 inches) by 1.27 centimetres (half an inch) Gideon's Bible.

  Brun reportedly had mental deficiencies and as such, the coroner did not label his passing as him taking his own life, believing that "the swallowing of the Bible to him was some form of symbolism or allegory as though he was trying to purge himself of the devil by consuming religion." He was serving a 15-day sentence.
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  (#16) Franz Reichelt

  • Dec. at 33 (1879-1912)

  Reichelt, a tailor, fatally fell off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, a DIY parachute. 
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  (#17) Garry Hoy

  • Dec. at 38 (1955-1993)

  A 38-year old lawyer and a senior partner at the Holden Day Wilson Law firm in Toronto, Canada, fatally fell on July 9, 1993, after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visiting law students that the glass was unbreakable.

   
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  (#18) Georgi Markov

  • Dec. at 49 (1929-1978)

  Markov was a Bulgarian dissident and was slain on September 7, 1978, in London with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin into his leg.
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  (#19) Gloria Ramirez

  • Dec. at 31 (1963-1994)

  Ramirez passed in Riverside, California, for complications of advanced cervical cancer. Before she passed on February 19, 1994, her caregivers claimed that Ramirez's body mysteriously emitted toxic fumes that made several emergency room workers very ill. She was dubbed the "toxic lady" by the media.
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  (#20) Grigori Rasputin

  • Dec. at 47 (1869-1916)

  The Russian mystic was poisoned, shot in the head, shot three more times, bludgeoned, and then thrown into a frozen river in 1916. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of passing to be hypothermia.

   
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  (#21) Gustav Kobbé

  • Dec. at 61 (1857-1918)

  Kobbé, writer and musicologist, perished when the sailboat he was on was struck by a landing seaplane off Long Island, New York.
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  (#22) Harry Houdini

  • Dec. at 52 (1874-1926)

  Houdini, a famous American escape artist, was punched in the stomach by an amateur boxer who had heard that Houdini could withstand any blow to his body above his waist, excluding his head. Though this had been done with Houdini's permission, complications from this injury caused him to pass days later, on October 31, 1926. It was later determined that Houdini perished because of a ruptured appendix.
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  (#23) Isadora Duncan

  • Dec. at 50 (1877-1927)

  Duncan, a dancer, suffered from a broken neck when one of the long scarves she was known for caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
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  (#24) J. G. Parry-Thomas

  • Dec. at 43 (1884-1927)

  Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite passing in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph (275 km/h).
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  (#25) Jack Daniel

  • Dec. at 61 (1850-1911)

  Daniel, a distiller, passed because of blood poisoning. The infection started in his toe, which he injured kicking his safe in anger when he couldn't open it early one morning.
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  (#26) Janet Parker

  • Dec. at 40 (1938-1978)

  She was a British medical photographer and passed because of smallpox in 1978, 10 months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.
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  (#27) Jon-Erik Hexum

  • Dec. at 27 (1957-1984)

  He was an American television actor and shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. 
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  (#28) Keith Relf

  • Dec. at 33 (1943-1976)

  Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, passed while practicing his electric guitar. He was electrocuted because the amplifier was not properly grounded.
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  (#29) Kenji Urada

  • Dec. at 37 (1944-1979)

  In 1979, a Japanese factory worker was killed by a malfunctioning robot he was working on at a Kawasaki plant in Japan. The robot's arm stabbed Urada and crushed him. 
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  (#30) Len Koenecke

  • Dec. at 31 (1904-1935)

  The Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder was bludgeoned by the pilot of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight while the plane was in the air.
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  (#31) Martha Mansfield

  • Dec. at 24 (1899-1923)

  The American film actress passed after sustaining severe burns on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia after her Civil War-era costume caught fire.
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  (#32) Bandō Mitsugorō VIII

  • Dec. at 69 (1906-1975)

  The Japanese kabuki actor suffered severe poisoning after claiming not to be effected by the substances in fugu livers (also known as pufferfish). He consumed four and passed. 
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  (#33) Owen Hart

  • Dec. at 34 (1965-1999)

  Owen Hart, a Canadian-born professional wrestler for WWF, perished during a pay-per-view event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet (24 m), bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.
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  (#34) Richard Wertheim

  Wertheim, a linesman at the boys' singles finals in the US open, was struck by a ball hit by a young Stefan Edberg. He toppled backwards off his chair fracturing his skull as he hit the ground.
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  (#35) Robert Williams

  • 53

  Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known human to be slain by a robot.
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  (#36) Sergei Chalibashvili

  • Dec. at 21 (1962-1983)

  Chalibashvili, a professional diver, passed after a diving accident during the 1983 Summer Universiade in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position from the 10-meter platform, he smashed his head on the platform and was knocked unconscious. He didn't survive after being in a coma for a week.
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  (#37) Sharon Lopatka

  Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland, allegedly solicited a man via the internet to torture and slay her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
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  (#38) Sherwood Anderson

  • Dec. at 65 (1876-1941)

  Anderson, a writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then suffered from peritonitis.
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  (#39) Sirkka Sari

  Sari she fell down a chimney. She was at a cast party celebrating the completion of a movie, her third and last. She mistook a chimney for a balcony and fell into a heating boiler, perishing instantly.
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  (#40) Tennessee Williams

  • Dec. at 72 (1911-1983)

  He passed when he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. Williams' lack of gag response may have been due to the effects of drugs and alcohol abuse, and it is highly likely that Williams was high when the cap ended up in his throat, as drugs and alcohol were found in his room and inside his body. There is speculation that he took his own life or was slain (even his brother Walter Dakin alleged this), but nothing has been conclusively proven.
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  (#41) Terry Kath

  • Dec. at 32 (1946-1978)

  Kath, the lead guitarist of Chicago, accidentally shot himself after removing the gun's magazine but remaining unaware a loaded round was in the chamber.
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  (#42) Thomas Midgley, Jr.

  • Dec. at 55 (1889-1944)

  Midgley accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
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  (#43) Thich Quang Duc

  • Dec. at 66 (1897-1963)

  Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, sat down in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, covered himself in gasoline, and lit himself on fire. Burning himself was a protest against President Ngo Dinh Diem's administration for oppressing the Buddhist religion.
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  (#44) Tom Lonergan

  • 34

  Lonergan was stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them owing to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their corpses were never recovered. The incident inspired the film Open Water and an episode of 20/20.
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  (#45) Tom Pryce

  • Dec. at 28 (1949-1977)

  Tom Pryce passed at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce's car at approximately 170 mph (274 km/h). Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and perished instantly.
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  (#46) Tommy Cooper

  • Dec. at 63 (1921-1984)

  Tommy Cooper, a British slapstick comedian, suffered a fatal heart attack while performing at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, live on national television. The audience continued to laugh as he lay collapsed on the stage, thinking it was part of the act. Following the principle that the show must go on, his body was left on the stage, hastily curtained off, and while attempts were made to revive him the other actors continued the act on the small part of the set which remained.
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  (#47) Valentin Bondarenko

  • Dec. at 24 (1937-1961)

  Bondarenko, a Soviet cosmonaut trainee, passed from shock after suffering third-degree burns over much of his body due to a flash fire in the pure oxygen environment of a training simulator. This incident was not revealed outside of the Soviet Union until the 1980s.
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  (#48) Vic Morrow

  • Dec. at 53 (1929-1982)

  Morrow, an actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of The Twilight Zone.
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  (#49) Vladimir Komarov

  • Dec. at 40 (1927-1967)

  He became the first person to perish during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.
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  (#50) Vladimir Smirnov

  • 54

  Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, perished because of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, penetrated his mask, pierced his eyeball, and entered his brain.

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