Here’s some from The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists:
King George II, according to his German valet de chambre, was a loud and garrulous farter. One evening, he heard a roar from the palace privy which he judged to be “louder than the usual royal wind” and found the king slumped dead on the floor. George had fallen off the toilet, smashing his head on a cabinet as he fell.
Sussex’s messiest death occured in 1856 when Matthew Gladman fell into a Lewes High Street cesspit. He had apparently entered a water closet in the dark, unaware that the floorboards had been removed in order to empty the chamber below. Doctors tried to revive him with electric shock therapy, but failed. He died of asphyxiation by methane gas.
In 1957, King Haakon VII of Norway slipped on some soap in his marble bathroom and smashed his head on some taps, fatally fracturing his skull.
accidental self-shootings:
15-year-old high school student, Detroit, December, leg (bent over to pick up pencil in class). (actually not fatal)
Michael Bent, 30, New York City, September, hit an artery near the groin (fatal) (fooling with gun in car while talking to his girlfriend);
Randal Lewis, 40, near St. Louis, September, in the head (fatal) (while demonstrating to 12-year-old son how to unload gun)
bizarre deaths are only a tiny part of the site, however, it’s still good for a laugh (and a wince)
This happened a few years ago in Vienna:
Streetcar going too fast, driver loses control in a curve, the streetcar jumps off the rails, crashes into a bank, straight into the counter, and kills a teller who had just started there that day…
No other casualties.
Also eligible for the department “First Days at Work that Really Suck”.
Well, I had to look it up now, of course. Found one cite that said nosebleed, but it was a story rather than anything resembling fact. But it turns out my story wasn’t the only truth out there, either: while I realise Hollywood Squares isn’t exactly Cambridge University either:
Hmmm.
Let’s just say mr The Hun knocked back a case of lager during his wedding, and upon arrival in the bridal -uh- tent, enthousiastically mounted his new bride, upon which a nosebleed (aggravated by the alcohol-diluted blood) occured, killing him, and seriously soiling the bridal gown of his rather unamused wife.
Just last month here in Vic, a volunteer firefighter had been doing some ‘mop-up’ work with other CFA (Country Fire Authority) workers after our devastating bushfires in the NE region. She had battled the fires over the previous two weeks, putting her life in danger every day, but had managed to come out unscathed.
However, there had been a decent amount of rain over the previous 24 hours, and the poor woman got caught in a flash-flood and drowned. She was the only person to lose her life in the Vic bushfires: that it was by drowning is especially sad and bizarre.
I briefly had a job that gave me access to state death certificates, and sometimes I’d browse through the books while on lunch. None of these are historical or remotely amusing but I read one where a little girl accidentally killed her little brother by throwing a nut at him. It hit his nose and broke it and the shards apparently penetrated his brain.
One of my co-workers said she found one where a woman tried to give herself an abortion by drinking bleach.
A friend of a friend died when he fell on a bottle and one of the shards severed an artery in his leg. He was camping at the time but managed to get airlifted to a hospital. He survived cardiac arrest once, but it happened again just as he got to the hospital and that was it.
I was read in the Darwin Awards of two people driving towards each other on a foggy night. Apparently the visibility was so bad that each had the bright idea of driving with their head sticking out the windows. According to the police, the cause of death was head trauma. Apparently there wasn’t a scratch on either car but they smacked heads going 30 mph or so.
(my browser has been having fits, so my apologies if that didn’t code properly)
Basically, she committed suicide by OD’ing on sleeping pills. That was the end of the story until Kenneth Anger wrote his book Hollywood Babylon in the 60’s, in which he claimed that Velez tried to die dramatically by OD’ing, but got sick, ran to toilet, and slipped and cracked her head on the bowl. She drowned in the toilet and was found the next morning in as undignified a position as possible.
Neat story, but there’s absolutely no evidence for it. No police photos, no stories from the people who found her, nothing. It wasn’t even a rumor until Anger put it in his book 20 years later. Eve, our resident classic film authority (and a published one, at that), has been waging an uphill battle to undo the damage he’s done.
Alright, I was talking about mr The Hun with Heloise, and she said that he was actually poisoned by his wife, who was a Roman spy. I have to say that this version DID ring a very faint bell in the back of my head. Checking it on the Internet is hard, mostly because “Attilla the Hun” appears to have reincarnated as Porn King, seriously cutting back on meaningful “Attlla the Hun” +sex +poison -pics searches.
Maybe I ought to pick up a book to find out which story’s true. Not that I have any reason to doubt Heloise, she’s got an excellent memory for detail. But it’s interesting that there are so many versions of the story out there.
A good way to search on Atilla is to drop the “hun” part (for reasons that Coldfire alluded to.
According to this site he died by choking on his own blood following an alcohol induced nosedbleed. The only witness, though, was wife #3, Ildico.
I think the Roman spy wife was Honoria, the sister of the Western Roman emperor, Valentinian III. The two lovebirds never actually tied the knot, so war happened.
Only if you consider suicide bizarre. The story floated by his wife, that he was merely engaging in a little recreational sexual asphyxia, never got much credence.
And hanging one’s self from a shower rod is hardly original. Darling, it’s been done.
This happened here in Idaho about five years ago. According to police a woman was crossing Galena Summit on a rainy night. Her car skidded on the wet pavement and went over the side of the summit, down several hundred feet and came to a rest at the bottom. She apparently was unscathed, and decided to climb back up to the road. Just a couple feet from the top she slipped on the mud. She rolled back down the slope, hit her head on a rock and landed face down in a puddle. That’s where she was later found, drowned.
cite (the story is a little more than halfway down the page, the “Love Bug” story)
A guy enjoyed being harnessed. He would attach the harness to his Volkswagen and situate the steering wheel so that it would drive in circles, dragging him behind it. He decided to stop the car, the chain connecting the harness to the car got tangled in the axle and he was pulled until his chest was crushed.
My boss worked for the Philadelphia P.D. long ago and he told me that either a police journal or a medical journal would have a “special” page dedicated to bizarre deaths. I wish I could remember which one.
