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10 Strange Deaths
10 Strange Deaths
1. Aeschylus, a Greek playwright, supposedly met his making in 458 B.C. when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock. He dropped a tortoise on the rock to try to kill it and break its shell open, but since the rock was actually Aeschylu skull, it didnt really work out well. Except for the tortoise: legend has it that it walked away, unharmed.
2. It was long believed that astronomer Tycho Brahe died because he wouldnt get up to go to the loo. He was at a banquet in 1601 and had to pee something awful. But to get up and leave the banquet would have been unspeakably rude, so he, you know, held it. The theory is that it stretched his bladder beyond repair, he developed an infection and died 11 days later. However, these days, it looks like Tycho may have suffered from mercury poisoning. One school of thought thinks that his then-assistant, Johannes Kepler, intentionally poisoned him.
3. Speaking of faulty bladders, in 1862, baseball player Jim Creighton died when his bladder ruptured. Well, maybe. He was at bat and swung a little too hard, he gave himself some sort of internal injury and died a few days later. Many sources say it was his bladder; others say his appendix burst. He is largely regarded as baseballs first superstar.
4. If you visit the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, you ll hear the story of how Jasper Newton Daniel met his untimely demise. It was blood poisoning, which isn t that unusual, until you hear how he got it: years earlier, he kicked a safe because he couldnt remember the combination. This resulted in a toe injury, which resulted in blood poisoning.
5. Its entirely possible that King Alexander of Greece is the only King to ever die from a monkey attack. Seriously. He was out walking his dog in the Royal Gardens when a monkeys descended upon them. He tried to defend his poor dog, but got bitten a couple of times in the process. Infection set in and the King died of sepsis later that month.
6. George Herbert died of blood poisoning, but those in the know say he was the first victim of King Tut s curse. He was the once who financed the excavation, which he probably regretted when a seemingly harmless mosquito bite turned into a deadly infection in 1923.
7. Famous dancer Isadora Duncan died because she loved accessories. Scarves, to be exact. As she was riding in a car, her scarf fluttered out and got wrapped up in the spokes of the tires. The scarf was wrapped around her so well that it wouldn t come loose and instead dragged her out of the car and strangled her.
8. Robert Williams was the first person to be killed by a robot (see, Flight of the Conchords know what they are talking about). Williams worked at Ford and was getting a part out of a storage bin when the arm of a robot performing the same function caught him in the head with enough force to kill him.
9. Im sure Tennessee Williams would have written a much more poetic death for himself than what actually happened. He was at a hotel in New York when he put the cap to some eye drops in his mouth, then leaned back to put the drops in his eye. This was something he did a lot, but this time, the cap slipped and he choked to death.
10. I suppose after the unsinkable Titanic sunk, we should have learned to never declare things definitively impossible. Garry Hoy would certainly know better, if he had survived his fall. In 1993, he hurled himself against a glass wall on the 24th story on his office building. He was at an after-hours party and was proving to the party patrons that the glass was unbreakable. Except it wasnt.
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