Many people know that the great dancer Isadora Duncan was killed when a long scarf she was wearing around her neck while riding in a convertible billowed over the side of the car, got caught in the wheel, and wound tight, strangling her to death.
Some of you know that the great dramatist Aeschylus was killed while walking along the beach when an eagle flying overhead mistook his bald pate for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it, killing him. (Or so the ancient accounts have it.)
Are there any other famous people who met their end in bizarre fashion?
17th century composer Jean-Baptise Lully’s death was pretty bizarre, especially since it might easily have been prevented. He was conducting an orchestra, which at that time was often done by beating a heavy staff against the floor, when he accidentally smashed his toe. The wound later became gangrenous. He refused to allow it to be amputated, and he died a couple of months later from the infection.
Becky Godwin, the adopted daughter of the then-Governor of VA, Mills Godwin, was struck by lightning while walking along VA Beach. The sky was completely clear but there was a thunder storm several miles offshore.
There’s the disappearance (and presumed subsequent death) of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, bizarre mostly because he was in office at the time, and his body was never found.
I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Stephen J. Cannell the other day, and was surprised to learn of the freak accident that killed his son several years ago:
In the late Malcolm Forbes’ book They Went That-a-Way, Forbes claims that Atilla the Hun met his demise when a young maiden, rebuffing his affections, punched him in the schnozz. Atilla later died by choking on his own blood from his bleeding nose (being passed out from drunkenness).