List of unusual deaths

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Menes		c. 3200 BC	According to Manetho, the Egyptian pharaoh and unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt was carried off and then killed by a hippopotamus.[2][3]
Teti		c. 2323 BC	According to Manetho, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt was mysteriously killed when he was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards. Other sources say he was killed by Userkare, who would then succeed him. His odd death is the earliest-known assassination but is still the subject of speculation.[4][5]
Sisera		1200 or 1235 BC	According to Judges 4-5, Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite Army for King Jabin of Hazor, was killed in his sleep when the Kenite woman Jael stabbed him in the temple with a tent peg.[2]
Abimelech Ben Gideon		1126 BC	The king of Shechem and son of Gideon was killed in the city of Thebez by a woman who threw a millstone on his head which crushed his skull or mortally wounded him.[6]
Tiberinus Silvius		c. 914 BC	It is said that the legendary king of Alba Longa drowned while crossing the Albula river, which became known as the Tiber. This is usually known as the earliest case of someone drowning.[7]
Terpander		7th century BC	The Greek poet and citharode, considered the father of Greek music and lyric poetry, reportedly choked to death on a fig thrown at him during one of his performances.[8]
Draco of Athens		c. 620 BC	The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre in Aegina, Greece.[9][10][11]
Charondas		c. 612 BC	According to Diodorus Siculus, the Greek lawgiver from Sicily issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death. One day, he arrived at the Assembly seeking help to defeat some brigands in the countryside, but with a knife still attached to his belt. In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide.[12][13][14][15]
Duke Jing of Jin		581 BC	In 581 BC a shaman warned the ruler that he would not live to see the new wheat harvest. The ruler dismissed him and had the shaman murdered. However, when the Duke was about to eat the wheat, he felt the need to visit the bathroom. Upon arriving in the bathroom, the Duke fell through the hole and drowned.[11][16]
Arrhichion of Phigalia		564 BC	The Greek pankratiast caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrhichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot/ankle injury that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time Arrhichion suffered a fatally broken neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrhichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously.[17][18]
Sisamnes		525 BC	A corrupt Persian judge was killed and flayed alive for accepting a bribe.[19]
Milo of Croton		6th century BC	The Olympic champion wrestler's hands reportedly became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart; he was then devoured by wolves (or, in later versions, lions).[20][21][22]
Zeuxis		5th century BC	The Greek painter died of laughter while painting an elderly woman.[23][24]
Pythagoras of Samos		c. 495 BC	Ancient sources disagree on how the Greek philosopher died,[25][26] but one late and probably apocryphal legend reported by both Diogenes Laërtius, a third-century AD biographer of famous philosophers, and Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist philosopher, states that Pythagoras was murdered by his political enemies. Supposedly, he almost managed to outrun them, but he came to a bean field and refused to run through it, as he had prohibited beans as ritually unclean.[26][27] Since cutting through the field would violate his own teachings, Pythagoras simply stopped running and was killed. This story may have been fabricated by Neanthes of Cyzicus, on whom both Diogenes and Iamblichus rely as a source.[26]
Anacreon		c. 485 BC	The poet, known for works in celebration of wine, choked to death on a grape stone according to Pliny the Elder. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that "the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits".[20][23]: 104 [28][29]
Heraclitus of Ephesus		c. 475 BC	According to one account given by Diogenes Laertius, the Greek philosopher was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy.[30][31]
Themistocles		c. 459 BC	The Athenian general who won the Battle of Salamis actually died of natural causes in exile,[32][33] but was widely rumored to have committed suicide by drinking a solution of crushed minerals known as bull's blood.[32][33][34][35] The legend is widely retold in classical sources. The early twentieth-century English classicist Percy Gardner proposed that the story about him drinking bull's blood may have been based on an ignorant misunderstanding of a statue showing Themistocles in a heroic pose, holding a cup as an offering to the gods. The comedic playwright Aristophanes references Themistocles drinking bull's blood in his comedy The Knights (performed in 424 BC) as the most heroic way for a man to die.[33][36]
Aeschylus		c. 455 BC	According to Valerius Maximus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed that day "by the fall of a house".[15][20][23]: 104 [37][38][39][40][41][42]
Empedocles of Akragas		c. 430 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, the Pre-Socratic philosopher from Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declared himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal",[43] tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano.[44][45] The Roman poet Horace also alludes to this legend.[46]
Sogdianus		423 BC	The ruler of the Achaemenid Empire was captured by his half-brother Ochus, who had him executed by being suffocated by ash.[11][47]
Polydamas of Skotoussa		5th century BC	The Thessalian pankratiast, and victor in the 93rd Olympiad (408 BC), was in a cave with friends when the roof began to crumble. Believing his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, he tried to support the roof with his shoulders as the rocks crashed down around him, but was crushed to death.[20][48]
Sophocles		c. 406 BC	A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of another of the three great Athenian tragedians are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape.[39] Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful.[20][39] A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation.[39]
Mithridates		401 BC	The Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days.[49][50]
Democritus of Abdera		c. 370 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, the Greek Atomist philosopher died aged 109; as he was on his deathbed, his sister was greatly worried because she needed to fulfill her religious obligations to the goddess Artemis in the approaching three-day Thesmophoria festival. Democritus told her to place a loaf of warm bread under his nose and was able to survive for the three days of the festival by sniffing it. He died immediately after the festival was over.[51][52]
Diogenes of Sinope		c. 323 BC	According to 3rd century biographer, Diogenes Laërtius, he died by consuming raw octopus. His contemporaries, however, claimed he died by holding his breath.[53]
Anaxarchus		320 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxarchus gained the enmity of the tyrannical ruler of Cyprus, Nicocreon, for an inappropriate joke he made about tyrants at a banquet in 331 BC. When Anaxarchus visited Cyprus, Nicocreon ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar. During the torture Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon, "Just pound the bag of Anaxarchus, you do not pound Anaxarchus." Nicocreon then threatened to cut his tongue out; Anaxarchus bit it off and spat it at the ruler's face.[54]
Antiphanes		c. 310 BC	According to the Suda, the renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy died after being struck by a pear.[55][56]
King Wu of Qin		307 BC	The king and member of the Qin dynasty reportedly challenged his friend Meng Yue to a lifting contest. When Wu tried to lift a giant bronze pot believed to have been cast for Yu the Great, it crushed his leg, inflicting fatal injuries. Meng Yue and his family were sentenced to death.[11][57]
Susima		3rd century BC	The crown prince of the Maurya Empire died when he fell into a pit of "hot embers". The trap had been made by Ashoka when he found out his rival was en route.[11]
Agathocles of Syracuse		289 BC	The Greek tyrant of Syracuse was murdered with a poisoned toothpick.[23]: 104 [58]
Pyrrhus of Epirus		272 BC	During the Battle of Argos, Pyrrhus was fighting a Macedonian soldier in the street when the elderly mother of the soldier dropped a roof tile onto Pyrrhus' head, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed. According to a soldier named Zopyrus, they then proceeded to decapitate the king.[59]
Philitas of Cos		c. 270 BC	The Greek intellectual is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death.[60] British classicist Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.[61]
Zeno of Citium		c. 262 BC	The Greek philosopher from Citium (Kition), Cyprus, tripped and fell as he was leaving the school, breaking his toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" He died on the spot through holding his breath.[62]
Qin Shi Huang		August 210 BC	The first emperor of China, whose artifacts and treasures include the Terracotta Army, died after ingesting several pills of mercury, in the belief that it would grant him immortality.[15][63][64][65]
Chrysippus of Soli		c. 206 BC	One ancient account of the death of the third-century BC Greek Stoic philosopher tells that he died laughing at his own joke[66] after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).[15][40][41][67][note 1]
Eleazar Avaran		c. 163 BC	The brother of Judas Maccabeus; according to 1 Maccabees 6:46, during the Battle of Beth Zechariah, Eleazar spied an armored war elephant which he believed to be carrying the Seleucid emperor Antiochus V Eupator. After thrusting his spear in battle into its belly, it collapsed and fell on top of Eleazar, killing him instantly.[40][68]
Manius Aquillius and Marcus Licinius Crassus		1st century BC	The late Roman Republic-era consul was sent as ambassador to Asia Minor in 90 BC to restore Nicomedes IV of Bithynia to his kingdom after the latter was expelled by Mithridates VI of Pontus. But Aquillius encouraged Nicomedes to raid part of Mithridates' territory, which started the First Mithridatic War. Aquillius was captured and brought to Mithridates, who in 88 BC had him executed by pouring molten gold down his throat. According to one story, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman general and statesman, who was very greedy despite being called "the richest man in Rome," was executed in the same manner by the Parthians after they defeated him in the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, in symbolic mockery of his thirst for wealth. However, it has been disputed as to whether this is how Crassus met his end.[69][70]
Quintus Lutatius Catulus		87 BC	After his former comrade-in-arms Gaius Marius took control of Rome and had him prosecuted for a capital offence, the Roman Republic consul shut himself inside his house, which was heated to a high temperature and daubed with lime, thus suffocating himself.[20][71]
Licinius Macer		66 BC	At the end of his trial by Cicero for extortion, the Roman annalist and politician suffocated himself with a handkerchief, thus nullifying his conviction.[20]
Porcia Catonis		June 43 BC to October 42 BC	The daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis and second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, according to ancient historians such as Cassius Dio and Appian, killed herself by swallowing hot coals.[72] Modern historians find this tale implausible.[73]
Cleopatra and two handmaidens		August 30 BC	The 39-year-old last queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom killed herself with an asp (a viper). Two of her handmaidens were also bitten by the asp.[11]
Tiberius Claudius Drusus		c. 20 AD	According to Suetonius, the eldest son of the future Roman emperor Claudius died while playing with a pear. Having tossed the pear high in the air, he caught it in his mouth when it came back, but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.[74][75]
Tiberius		16 March 37	The Roman emperor died in Misenum aged 78. According to Tacitus, the emperor appeared to have died and Caligula, who was at Tiberius' villa, was being congratulated on his succession to the empire, when news arrived that the emperor had revived and was recovering his faculties. Those who had moments before recognized Caligula as Augustus fled in fear of the emperor's wrath, while Macro, a prefect of the Praetorian Guard, took advantage of the chaos to have Tiberius smothered with his own bedclothes, definitively killing him.[76]
Saint Peter		Between 64 and 68 AD	The apostle of Jesus was crucified upside-down in Rome, based on his claim of being unworthy to die in the same way as his Saviour.[77][78]
Bartholomew the Apostle		69 or 71 AD	St. Bartholomew, an apostle of Jesus Christ, died after either being knocked out and thrown into the sea or being skinned alive and beheaded in Armenia.[79]
Antipas of Pergamum		68 or 92 AD	Antipas was burned alive inside the brazen bull for supposedly casting out demons who were worshipped in Pergamum.[80]
Simon the Zealot		1st century AD	According to an ancient tradition, the apostle of Jesus was sawn in half in Persia.[81]
Saint Lawrence		258	The deacon was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian.[82][83] Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over—I'm done on this side".[84] He is now the patron saint of cooks, chefs, and comedians.[85]
Marcus of Arethusa		362	The Christian bishop and martyr was hung up in a honey-smeared basket for bees to sting him to death.[23]: 104
Cassian of Imola		13 August 363	Cassian of Imola was sentenced to death by Julian the Apostate and was handed over to his pupils to carry out the deed, which they did by binding him to a stake and stabbing him with a poisoned stylus.[86]
Valentinian I		17 November 375	The Roman emperor suffered a stroke which was provoked by yelling at foreign envoys in anger.[11][87]
Attila		c. 453	Attila the Hun reportedly died on his wedding night by choking on his own blood, which flowed into his mouth from a nosebleed.[41][88][89]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Constans II		15 July 668	The Byzantine Emperor was assassinated with a bucket according to Theophilus of Edessa.[90]
Li Bai		30 November 762	The famous Chinese poet of the 8th century died drunk after embracing the Moon. While riding his boat along the Yangtze River, he saw the reflection of the Moon in the water. When he tried to hug it, he fell off his boat and later drowned.[91]
Popiel		830	According to legend, after the wife of the dissolute Polish ruler poisoned his uncles to prevent them from deposing him, a horde of rats and mice swarmed out of the uncles' bodies, which had been cast into lake Gopło, pursued Popiel and his wife to a tower in which they had taken refuge and ate them alive.[92]
Ragnar Lodbrok		c. 865	The semi-legendary Viking leader whose exploits are narrated in the Ragnars saga loðbrókar, a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga, is said to have been captured by Ælla of Northumbria, who had him executed by throwing him into a pit of snakes.[15][93]
Louis III of France		5 August 882	The king of West Francia died aged around 18 at Saint-Denis. Whilst mounting his horse to pursue a girl who was running to seek refuge in her father's house, he hit his head on the lintel of a low door and fell, fracturing his skull.[94]
Basil I		29 August 886	The Byzantine emperor's belt was entangled between antlers of a deer during a hunt and the animal subsequently dragged him for 16 miles (26 km) through the woods. Because of this accident, Basil contracted fever and he died shortly afterwards.[95][96]
Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney		892	The second Earl of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe Máel Brigte to his horse's saddle. Brigte's teeth rubbed against Sigurd's leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection, according to the Old Norse Heimskringla and Orkneyinga sagas.[15][89][96][97]
Hatto II		18 January 970	The archbishop of Mainz, like the Polish ruler Popiel, is claimed in legend to have been eaten alive by rodents.[98]
Abu Nasr al-Jawhari		1003 or 1010	The Kazakh Turkic scholar from Farab died after a failed aviation test. It is said he used two wooden wings and rope. He leaped off the roof of the Nisābūr Mosque and then died on impact. His death was most likely caused after he had delusions of being a bird. al-Jawhari is said to be the first person killed by an aviation invention.[99]
Edmund Ironside		30 November 1016	The English king was allegedly stabbed whilst on a toilet by an assassin hiding underneath.[100][101]
Béla I of Hungary		11 September 1063	After the Holy Roman Empire decided to launch a military expedition against Hungary to restore young Solomon to the throne, the Hungarian king was seriously injured when "his throne broke beneath him" in his manor at Dömös.[15][102] The king—who was "half-dead", according to the Illuminated Chronicle—was taken to the western borders of his kingdom, where he died at the creek Kanizsa on 11 September 1063.[15][103][104]
Victims of the White Ship wreck		25 November 1120	While carrying intoxicated nobles across the English Channel, the ship was crashed into a rock by the also-intoxicated helmsman and began sinking. A lifeboat was launched, but William Adelin, the son of Henry I, jumped into and capsized it. All aboard died.[15]
Crown Prince Philip of France		13 October 1131	Died while riding through Paris when his horse tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap.[15][96][105][106]
Henry I of England		1 December 1135	While visiting relatives, he supposedly ate too many lampreys against his physician's advice, causing a pain in his gut, and ultimately his death.[15][41][101][107]
John II Komnenos		1 April 1143	Cut himself with a poisoned arrow during a boar hunt, and subsequently died from an infection.[108]
Pope Adrian IV		1 September 1159	The only Englishman to serve as Pope reportedly died after choking on a fly while drinking spring water.[89][96][109][110][111]
Victims of the Erfurt latrine disaster		26 July 1184	While Henry VI, the King of Germany, was holding an informal assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.[96][112]
Frederick Barbarossa		10 June 1190	While leading the German army on the Third Crusade, the Holy Roman Emperor unexpectedly drowned while bathing in the Saleph River.[113][114]
Henry I of Castile		6 June 1217	The 13-year-old king of Castile was killed by a tile that fell from a roof.[115][116]
Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ap Iorwerth		1 March 1244	The first-born son of Llywelyn the Great died while attempting to lower himself from the Tower of London in an escape attempt. The rope, made out of sheets and other fabrics, snapped, and his neck was broken in the fall, according to English monk and chronicler, Matthew Paris.[96]
Al-Musta'sim		20 February 1258	The last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.[15][117]
Edward II of England		21 September 1327	The English king was rumoured to have been murdered after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body.[89][101][118][119][120] However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II's death, and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda.[120][121]
John of Bohemia		26 August 1346	After being blind for 10 years, the Bohemian king died in the Battle of Crécy when—at his command—his companions tied their horses' reins to his own and charged. He was slaughtered in the ensuing fight.[15][122][123]
Charles II of Navarre		1 January 1387	The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that the king of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad", suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire, and Charles later died of his injuries. Froissart considered the horrific death to be God's judgment upon the king.[124][125][126]
Martin of Aragon		31 May 1410	The Aragonese king died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to legend, Martin was suffering from indigestion, caused by eating an entire goose, when his favorite jester, Borra, entered the king's bedroom. When Martin asked Borra where he had been, the jester replied with: "Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs." This joke caused the king to die from laughter.[89][96][127][128]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence		18 February 1478	The 1st Duke of Clarence was allegedly executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine, apparently his own choice once he accepted he was to be killed.[15][96][129]
Charles VIII of France		7 April 1498	The French king died as the result of striking his head on the lintel of a door while on his way to watch a game of real tennis.[23]: 105
Victims of the 1518 dancing plague		July 1518	Several people died of either heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion during a dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (Holy Roman Empire).[15][130][131]
Robert Pakington		13 November 1536	The 47-year-old merchant was killed in London by a wheellock pistol, making his death the first political assassination performed by a firearm.[132]
Pietro Aretino		21 October 1556	The influential Italian author and libertine is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much at an obscene joke during a meal in Venice. Another version states that he fell from a chair from too much laughter, fracturing his skull.[42][133]
Henry II of France		10 July 1559	On 30 June 1559, a tournament was held near Place des Vosges to celebrate the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with the French king's longtime enemies, the Habsburgs of Austria, and to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Elisabeth of Valois to King Philip II of Spain. During a jousting match, Henry, wearing the colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers,[134] was wounded in the eye by a fragment of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery, captain of the King's Scottish Guard.[135] Despite the efforts of royal surgeons Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, the court doctors ultimately "advocated a wait-and-see strategy";[136] as a result, the king's untreated eye and brain damage led to his death by sepsis ten days later.[137] His death played a significant role in the decline of jousting as a sport, particularly in France.[138]
Amy Robsart		8 September 1560	The 28-year-old wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was found dead by a staircase with two wounds on her head and a broken neck. Theories suggest she threw herself down the stairs.[139][140]
Hans Staininger		1567	The burgomaster of Braunau (then Bavaria, now Austria), died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard.[141] The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch.[142]
Marco Antonio Bragadin		17 August 1571	The Venetian Captain-General of Famagusta in Cyprus, was gruesomely killed after the Ottomans took over the city. He was dragged around the walls with sacks of earth and stone on his back; next, he was tied to a chair and hoisted to the yardarm of the Turkish flagship, where he was exposed to the taunts of the sailors. Finally, he was taken to his place of execution in the main square, tied naked to a column, and flayed alive.[143] Bragadin's skin was stuffed with straw and sewn, reinvested with his military insignia, and exhibited riding an ox in a mocking procession along the streets of Famagusta. The macabre trophy was hoisted upon the masthead pennant of the personal galley of the Ottoman commander, Amir al-bahr Mustafa Pasha, to be taken to Constantinople as a gift for Sultan Selim II. Bragadin's skin was stolen in 1580 by a Venetian seaman and brought back to Venice, where it was received as a returning hero.[144]
Victims of the Black Assize of Oxford 1577		July 1577	In Oxford, England, at least 300 people, including Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Robert Bell and Serjeant Nicholas Barham, died in the aftermath of the trial of Rowland Jenkes, a Catholic bookseller convicted of distributing pamphlets defaming Queen Elizabeth I, at the assize at Oxford. The dead reportedly included no women or children.[145]
Mary, Queen of Scots		8 February 1587	The 44-year-old queen of Scotland was told that she was to be executed for plotting the assassination of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. However, when the executioner, only known as Bull, prepared to chop off her head with an axe, the first blow did not kill Mary. It only hit her head. The second blow severed her neck, but the tendon was still left. The executioner later pulled off Mary's head only to reveal that her hair was a wig.[89][146]
Andrew Perne		26 April 1589	The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and Dean of Ely was known for his frequent religious conversions to match the established faith of the time in England. He reportedly died due to having heard the jester of Queen Elizabeth I make a joke about his uncertain spiritual state, referring to him as "one that is neither heaven nor earth, but hangs betwixt both".[147]
Tycho Brahe		24 October 1601	The astronomer contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague and died eleven days later. According to Johannes Kepler's first-hand account, Brahe had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself, because it would have been a breach of etiquette.[41][148][149] After he had returned home, he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain.[41][150] Though initially ascribed to a kidney stone, and later still to potential mercury poisoning, modern analyses indicate Brahe's death resulted from a fatal case of uremia caused by an inflamed prostate.[151][152]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Sir Francis Bacon		9 April 1626	The English philosopher and statesman died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken carcass with snow to learn whether it could preserve meat.[41][42]
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke		30 September 1628	A disgruntled servant stabbed the English poet, dramatist and statesman in the stomach after he used the toilet. Physicians treated the wounds with animal fat, which rotted, causing a fatal case of gangrene.[42]
Jörg Jenatsch		24 January 1639	The Swiss political leader was assassinated by a person who dressed in a bear costume so he could assassinate him with an axe. Other stories say that the axe was the same one that Jenatsch had used to kill a rival.[120]
Safi of Persia		12 May 1642	The Safavid ruler of Iran allegedly died due to alcohol intoxication in a drinking contest against a Georgian nobleman, Scedan Chiladze, invited from Mingrelia.[153]
Thomas Granger		8 September 1642	Granger was executed for buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. Granger was one of the first people to be executed in the Plymouth Colony and the first Caucasian juvenile to be sentenced to death and executed in the territory of what is now the United States. The mare, the cow and the calves were also executed.[154]
Sir Arthur Aston		1649	During the Siege of Drogheda, Arthur Aston was beaten to death by Oliver Cromwell's army with his own wooden leg because they suspected gold coins were concealed inside.[155]
Thomas Urquhart		1660	The Scottish aristocrat, polymath, and first translator of François Rabelais's writings into English is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.[42][156][157]
James Betts		1667	Died from asphyxiation after being sealed in a cupboard by Elizabeth Spencer, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in an attempt to hide him from her father, John Spencer.[158][159]
François Vatel		24 April 1671	The majordomo of Prince Louis II de Bourbon-Condè was responsible for a banquet for 2,000 people hosted in honour of King Louis XIV at the Château de Chantilly, where he died. According to a letter by Madame de Sévigné, Vatel was so distraught about the lateness of the seafood delivery and about other mishaps, that he committed suicide with his sword, and his body was discovered when someone came to tell him of the arrival of the fish.[40][160]
Molière		17 February 1673[42][161]	The French playwright suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the part of a hypochondriac in his own play Le malade imaginaire.[42][161][162] He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show,[161] which ends with his character dead in a chair. After the show, he was carried in the chair to his house, where he died.[161][162][163]
Thomas Otway		14 April 1685	The English dramatist fell on hard times and was suffering from poverty in his later years, and was driven by starvation to beg for food. A gentleman who recognized him gave him a guinea, with which he hastened to a baker's shop, purchased a roll, and choked to death on the first mouthful.[164]
Jean-Baptiste Lully		22 March 1687	The French composer died of a gangrenous abscess after accidentally piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum. It was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.[165]
William III of England		8 March 1702	The king of England was riding his horse when it stumbled on a molehill. William fell and broke his collarbone, then contracted pneumonia and died several days later. After he died, Jacobites were said to have toasted in the mole's honour, calling it "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat".[101]
Hannah Twynnoy		October 1703	The 33-year-old barmaid of The White Lion was mauled to death by a tiger in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. She was the first person to be killed by a tiger in British history.[166]
Edward Teach		22 November 1718	The famous English pirate was shot five times and slashed ~20 times with swords by Robert Maynard and his men. He was still alive, but died a day later on the 22nd.[89]
Sarah Grosvenor		14 September 1742	The 19-year-old woman was getting an abortion from Dr. John Hallowell. However, on the 14th, she died from the complications of the surgery. Grosvenor was the first case of a surgical abortion.[167]
Frederick, Prince of Wales		31 March 1751	The son of George II of Great Britain and father of George III died of a pulmonary embolism, but was commonly claimed to have been killed by being struck by a cricket ball.[23]: 105 [168]
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann		6 August 1753	The Russian physicist was killed when a globe of ball lightning which he created in his laboratory struck him in the forehead.[169][170]
Henry Hall		8 December 1755	The 94-year-old British lighthouse keeper died several days after fighting a fire at Rudyerd's Tower, during which molten lead from the roof fell down his throat. His autopsy revealed that "the diaphragmatic upper mouth of the stomach greatly inflamed and ulcerated, and the tuncia in the lower part of the stomach burnt; and from the great cavity of it took out a great piece of lead ... which weighed exactly seven ounces, five drachms and eighteen grains". The piece of lead is currently in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland.[171][172]
John Day		22 June 1774	The English carpenter and wheelwright was the first human known to have died in an accident with a submarine. Day submerged himself in Plymouth Sound in a wooden diving chamber attached to a sloop named the Maria and never resurfaced.[173]
Unknown concubine of King Tetui of Mangaia		1777	In approximately 1777, a concubine of King Tetui was killed by a falling coconut on the island Mangaia in the Cook Islands.[174]
Col. Francis Barber		2 February 1783	The 32-year-old colonel was killed when a tree fell on top of him as he was riding his horse to dine with George Washington[175] in Newburgh, New York.[176]
James Otis Jr.		23 May 1783	The 58-year-old son of famed lawyer James Otis was killed by a lightning strike in Andover, Massachusetts.[177][178]
Frantisek Kotzwara		2 September 1791	While in London, the 31-year-old Czech violinist visited a prostitute named Susannah Hill and requested his neck be tied with a noose around a door knob. He died after the sexual intercourse of erotic asphyxiation.[179]
Samuel Spencer		20 March 1793	A former colonel from North Carolina was sleeping on a porch in Anson County while wearing a red cap. Spencer's bobbling head drew the attention of a turkey, which viewed Spencer as another turkey and fatally wounded the 59-year-old with its talons.[180][181]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Thomas Millwood		3 January 1804	The 32-year-old plasterer was shot and killed by excise officer Francis Smith, who mistook him for the Hammersmith ghost due to his white uniform. Smith was later sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to one year's imprisonment with hard labor, and he received a full pardon later in the year.[40][182]
Victims of the London Beer Flood		17 October 1814	At Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vat of fermenting porter burst, causing chain reactions and destroying several large beer barrels. The beer subsequently flooded the nearby slum and killed eight people. Several people also subsequently died from alcohol poisoning as a result of vaporized liquor.[183][184][185]
William Henry Harrison		4 April 1841	The 9th President of the United States died a month after his inauguration from an illness (possibly pneumonia or enteric fever) that developed after he stood in the rain to deliver his 2-hour-long inaugural address, the longest by any U.S. President. Medical treatments Harrison received in the last week of his life included opium, castor oil and leeches. Harrison remains the U.S. President to have served the shortest term in office and was the first President to die in office.[41][186]
Zachary Taylor		9 July 1850	The 12th President of the United States died of diarrhea and dysentry 5 days after consuming raw cherries and iced milk at a 4th of July event at the site of the Washington Monument.[41][187][188] Persistent speculation that Taylor was poisoned would lead to the exhumation of some of his remains in 1991, but scientific testing found no evidence of poison.[187][188]
William Snyder		11 January 1854	The 13-year-old died in San Francisco, California, reportedly after a circus clown named Manuel Rays swung him around by his heels.[189][190]
Victims of the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning		1858	In Bradford, England, a batch of sweets accidentally poisoned with arsenic trioxide were sold by William Hardaker, colloquially referred to as "Humbug Billy". Around five boxes of sweets were delivered and sold. Around 20 people died and 200 people suffered from the effects of the poison.[191][192]
Jim Creighton		18 October 1862	The 21-year-old American baseball player from Manhattan died from abdominal pain, possibly caused by pitching or swinging at the ball, which likely gave him a ruptured bladder or a ruptured hernia.[193][194]
Julius Peter Garesché		31 December 1862	The Cuban-born professional soldier was killed on the first day of the Battle of Stones River when a cannon ball decapitated him.[195][196]
Archduchess Mathilda of Austria		6 June 1867	The daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen set her dress on fire while trying to hide a cigarette from her father, who had forbidden her to smoke.[197][198]
Mary Ward		31 August 1869	The 42-year-old Irish scientist, naturalist, microscopist, author, and artist was killed by a steam-powered car built by William Parsons' sons. While Ward was riding in the car, it hit a bend, causing Ward to fall out of the car. One of the car's wheels ran over her and broke her neck. She is the first person known to have been killed by a motor vehicle.[199][200]
Clement Vallandigham		17 June 1871	The American politician and lawyer, who was defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself while demonstrating how the victim might have done so. His client was acquitted.[15][201][202]
James "Jim" Cullen		6 November 1873	The 25-year-old Irish man became the only man ever lynched in Mapleton, Maine,[203] after he committed a robbery and beat two deputy sheriffs to death with an axe.[204][205][206]
Unknown man		1875	A factory worker in Manchester found a mouse on her table and screamed. A man rushed over to her and tried to shoo it away, but it tried to hide in his clothes, and when he gasped in surprise the mouse dove into his mouth and he swallowed it. The mouse tore and bit the man's throat and chest, and he later died "in horrible agony".[207][208]
Victims of the Dublin Whiskey Fire		18 June 1875	At The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), a fire broke out at Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored. The heat caused the barrels in the storehouse to explode, sending a stream of whiskey flowing through the doors and windows of the burning building. The burning whiskey then flowed along the streets where it quickly demolished a row of small houses. Despite the damage from the fire, all of the resulting 13 fatalities were caused by alcohol poisoning after drinking the undiluted flooded whiskey.[209][210]
Queen Sunanda Kumariratana		31 May 1880	The 19-year-old queen consort of King Rama V of Siam died when her boat flipped over. A large crowd formed but none of them could help because touching the queen was a capital offense.[41][211]
Hague and another female servant		October 1881	A British servant of one Mr. Birchall was instructed by his master to retrieve a four-chambered pistol.[212] Hague did so, but while examining the gun he shot himself in the jaw which caused instant death. He was discovered by another servant who also shot herself.[213]
Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet		19 December 1881	The former British MP died after sustaining severe internal injuries when he fell on a turnip while hunting.[214][215]
Samuel Wardell		31 December 1885	The lamplighter in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, had attached a 10-pound (4.5 kg) rock to his alarm clock, which would crash to the floor and awaken him. On Christmas Eve, he rearranged his furniture for a party, but forgot to change his room back afterwards. When the alarm mechanism went off the next morning, the rock fell on his head and killed him.[207][216][217]
George Murichson		13 May 1886	The 8-year-old boy from Aroostook County, Maine, died from a hemorrhage after having a live snake pulled out of his mouth. The snake was speculated to have gone down his throat after he had "gone to sleep in some field".[218][219][220]
Mary Agnes Lapish		April 1893	The Australian woman stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, possibly while intoxicated, and was strangled by her fur collar.[221][222]
Jeremiah Haralson		1895	The former United States Congressman from Alabama disappears from the historical record after his 1895 imprisonment for pension fraud in Albany, New York. He was reportedly killed by an unknown animal while coal mining near Denver, Colorado, c. 1916, but there is little or no historical evidence for this.[223][224]
Bridget Driscoll		17 August 1896	The 44-year-old, the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in Great Britain,[225] was struck on the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, by a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company while giving demonstration rides.[226]
Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg		October 1897	The group of men died of exhaustion on the island Kvitøya after trying to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon.[227][228][229]
Empress Elisabeth of Austria		10 September 1898	Stabbed with a thin file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni while strolling through Geneva with her lady-in-waiting Irma Sztáray. The wound pierced her pericardium and a lung. Her extremely tight corset held the wound closed, so she did not realize what had happened (believing a passerby had struck her), and walked on for some time before collapsing.[230][231]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning		1900	In the English Midlands, North West England, and Manchester, doctors saw that avid drinkers had numbness in the hands or feet. However, around 41 people succumbed to peripheral neuritis, and people decided to investigate. They discovered the cause to be alcoholic neuropathy caused by non-purified sulphuric acid laced with arsenic. Over 6,000 people died from the poison and most of the victims were paralyzed from the effects.[232][233]
Jesse William Lazear		25 September 1900	The 34-year-old American physician was convinced that mosquitoes were carriers for yellow fever. He allowed himself to be bitten by multiple mosquitoes and died days later from the disease.[19][234]
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster		29 November 1900	During the 1900 The Big Game American football match between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal in San Francisco, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent to $37 in 2023) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof collapsed, spilling many spectators onto a furnace. Of the hundreds of people on the roof, at least 100 people fell four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of the furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). Fuel pipes were severed as a result of the roof collapse, spraying many victims with scalding hot oil. The fuel also ignited, setting many bodies on fire.[235] Twenty-three people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.[236]
James Doyle Jr.		30 January 1901	The lineworker in Smartsville, California, was killed by an electric shock through a telephone receiver after a broken power line came in contact with the telephone wire.[237]
Adelbert S. Hay		23 June 1901	The 24-year-old American consul and politician died after falling 60 feet (18 m) from a window in the New Haven House in New Haven, Connecticut. The San Francisco Call speculated that Hay had been sitting on the window for air and eventually fell asleep, causing him to fall to his death.[238]
Mary Franks		12 July 1902	The woman died from suffocation caused by "matter from her tongue" which went into her throat after a tooth extraction.[239]
Jessie Smith		August 1902	The elderly woman in Te Aroha was found dead behind her house in a tank. She had come out of an asylum before her disappearance.[240]
R. Stanton Walker		25 October 1902	The 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio, with a friend on either side of him. One of the friends borrowed a knife from the other to sharpen his pencil as he was keeping score, and when he was finished passed the knife to Walker to pass to the other friend. As Walker was holding the knife, a foul ball struck him in the hand and drove the knife into his chest next to his heart. His friends asked if he was hurt and he said "not much", but the wound soon began to bleed heavily and he died within minutes.[241][242]
Unknown Hawaiian male		May 1903	An unidentified person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu, Hawai'i.[243][failed verification] He was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna, who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons;[244][failed verification] the Kahuna was charged with manslaughter.[citation needed]
Romaine Romania and John Banks		26 May 1903	Romania, a 45-year-old native of Belgium, died in Norfolk, Virginia, after taking a large amount of calomel, eating several oranges, and drinking a considerable amount of beer. Romania's head swelled to twice normal size. That same day, barge worker John Banks was electrocuted when the rigging of his vessel came in contact with the wires crossing a bridge belonging to the Norfolk Railway and Light Company.[245]
Ed Delahanty		2 July 1903	The 35-year-old American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train while drunk, falling off International Bridge, and going over Niagara Falls. Delahanty reportedly downed five shots of whiskey, broke into a fire axe case, attempted to shove over a partition, and allegedly grabbed a woman's ankles and tried to pull her out of her berth. He may also have threatened other passengers with razor blades. The conductor removed him from the train and asked him to calm down because he was still in Canada, to which he allegedly shouted, "I don't care if I'm in Canada or dead!" He later encountered and may have scuffled with Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, after which he went into the river and over the Falls. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.[246]
Benjamin Taylor A Bell		1 March 1904	On 18 February 1904, while taking his habitual shortcut to the Canadian Mining Review offices through an adjacent store, the 42-year-old Canadian journalist walked through the wrong door in the store and fell 10 feet (3.0 m) down an elevator shaft. He died of his injuries 12 days later.[247]
John Mortensen		1 May 1904	The 19-year-old duck hunter from Wairoa, New Zealand, drowned in about 6 inches (15 cm) of water on the Whare-o-Maraenui reserve in Napier, New Zealand, apparently having fallen while having a seizure.[248]
Benjamin and Edwin Coshkey		24 June 1904	Two brothers picking cherries near Wabank, Lancaster Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, were electrocuted when they made contact with an exposed wire in the branches.[249]
John Ericsen		4 July 1904	The 11-year-old boy from Butte, Montana, went missing on 4 July and was found dead 4 days later under a pile of coal in a bin near the North Pacific roundhouse.[250]
Melissa M. Tiemann		7 July 1904	The 50-year-old resident of Los Angeles fell from a streetcar and struck the back of her head on the ground, driving the teeth of an aluminum comb she was wearing into her skull.[251]
Clarence Madison Dally		2 October 1904	The 39-year-old American glassblower died from radiation on his hands while using a handmade X-ray. Dally is the first person known to have died from X-ray exposure.[252]
Jane Stanford		28 February 1905	The 76-year-old founder of Stanford University died mysteriously from strychnine poisoning. The case of her death was rumored as poisoning, but later changed into "natural causes," according to David Starr Jordan. Who or what killed Stanford is still a mystery.[253]
Charles Persich		March 1905	The baby from Sydney died from intussusception, meaning that his bowels had "telescoped".[254]
Thomas Melia		9 December 1905	An employee of a brewery in Brooklyn died when he was caught in "an avalanche of shifting malt and barley and was suffocated."[255]
Mary Ellen Rumble		19 December 1905	The daughter of a farmer in Watervale near Murrumburrah in New South Wales was killed when one of a group of horses attempting to escape from a paddock knocked her down, causing her neck to snap.[256]
L. R. Davis		1906	The 76-year-old inmate of the state insane asylum in Norfolk, Nebraska, was granted a parole. Upon seeing his grandson, who had come to take him home, "he was so filled with joy that he suddenly expired."[257]
Archibald Anderson		4 March 1907	The 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when he choked on a tooth plate.[258]
Jane Hewitt		1 September 1908	The woman residing in South Melbourne was found dead on the floor in her nighttime attire, having been unconscious for several days. She died from erysipelas and blood loss caused by a wound to her temple.[259]
Thomas Selfridge		17 September 1908	Thomas Selfridge and Orville Wright were presenting the 1908 Wright Military Flyer to the US Army Signal Corps Division at Fort Myer. The plane made 41⁄2 rounds around the Fort before running into problems and crashing. Selfridge fractured his skull and died three hours later.[260][261]
James Gough or Goff		18 October 1908	Gough was found with a rope tied around his neck in a hotel room in Plattsburg, New York, which led to the belief that he had committed suicide. However, it was also discovered that he had been robbed of all of his money.[262]
Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler		14 November 1908	The Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet suffered a heart attack and died aged 56 after giving a ballet performance to Kaiser Wilhelm Il and other members of a hunting party staying at Donaueschingen Palace. Shortly after ending his recital with a bow, he collapsed and was pronounced dead at the scene.[263][264] The circumstances of his death were covered up by military officials so as not to further inflame public outrage over the Eulenburg affair, a government scandal dealing with accusations of homosexual behavior against members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage.[265]
George Spencer Millet		15 February 1909	The American teenager who worked as an office boy at an insurance company at the Metropolitan Life Building in New York City, was fleeing six young women stenographers at his workplace intent on giving him kisses for his 15th birthday while carrying a metal ink eraser in his breast pocket. As the women moved in for their kisses, he fell forward, and the eraser's point pierced his heart, killing him.[266][267]
Peter A. Rees		17 February 1909	The former ice dealer in Philadelphia was found dead in his home. According to the newspaper, a woman was arrested and questioned, but later analysis of his body showed that he had died from "cirrhosis of the heart." Other accounts state that Rees was murdered.[268]
Unknown servant girl		March 1909	A young servant girl in Altendorf, near Cologne, Germany, died while writing a love letter. She "was overtaken by a fit, and fell with her head so heavily on the table that death ensued." The last words she had written were, "I shall adore thee to my last hour."[269]
Doc Powers		26 April 1909	The 38-year-old American Major League Baseball player ran into a wall while chasing a foul ball during a Boston Red Sox-Philadelphia Athletics game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park, on April 12, 1909. He died from internal injuries and gangrene two weeks later.[270]
Benjamin S. Kradwell		14 April 1910	The 26-year-old drug store owner from Boscobel, Wisconsin (who lived in Racine at the time), died when he fell off a Chicago and North Western train heading for Mountain Home, Idaho, into a creek in Vail, Iowa, under mysterious circumstances.[271]
Ada Gregory		3 June 1910	The 52-year-old widow in Bentleigh, Victoria, who had been suffering from "fits of melancholia", began convulsing after rubbing powder on her teeth and asking her two children to take some medicine, which they did not do. She was believed to have taken strychnine.[272]
Florence Hill Jelbert		10 July 1910	The 30-year-old woman in Ballarat was found dead at the residence of Chinese herbalist Yee Lee, also known as Peter Long. He was arrested as he was believed to have killed Jelbert. Analysis of her organs indicated that "an illegal operation had been performed on the girl."[273][274]
Patrick Dolan		22 October 1910	In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the labor unionist fell asleep, waiting for a train. He woke up as it was starting to leave the station. However, when he attempted to board the train, he fell under its wheels and was killed.[275]
George Vedder		25 February 1911	The man from Yonkers, New York, killed himself after hallucinating that his dead wife told him to do so. It is said that Vedder broke an "solemn oath" that he would be faithful to his wife. The man was found dead in the Fort Field Reservoir.[276]
Morris Quinn and James Ferrera		19 December 1911	Two miners in Virginia City, Nevada, died when they were hit with a strong rush of wind from a cave-in 100 feet (30 m) away, which hurled the two men against shaft timbers.[277]
Franz Reichelt		4 February 1912	The 33-year-old tailor and inventor leaped from the Eiffel Tower and fell to his death wearing a parachute made from cloth, his own invention. He was asked by friends and authorities to use a dummy for the feat, but declined, saying "I intend to prove the worth of my invention". He was known as the Flying Tailor.[40][278]
Ramón Fermin Artagaveytia Gomez		15 April 1912	A wealthy Argentinean was a survivor of the sinking of the steamship America in 1871. It took him 41 years to get over his fear of the ocean before he boarded the Titanic, which sank.[19]
A Swiss couple		December 1912	A couple visited the Handegg Falls near Meiringen, Switzerland. While they were there the bridge they were standing on broke and they fell 240 feet (73 m) into a whirlpool.[279]
Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice		25 April 1913	A famed French goldsmith and his wife were killed when their house, in an aristocratic quarter of Paris, collapsed on them.[280]
Mrs. Jim Thomason		6 May 1913	According to the Washington Telegraph, the wife of Jim Thomason died shortly after being stung by a bee in Columbus, Arkansas. The woman was directing her husband on hiving a swarm of bees when she was suddenly stung and fled into the house, where she fell unconscious and died three days later.[281]
Peter T. Graham		13 May 1913	A farmer from Stanwood, Iowa, was killed while trying to fix a metal fence. A bolt of lightning struck the fence, electrocuting the man to death.[282]
Emily Davison		8 June 1913	On 4 June 1913, the 40-year-old suffragette from London was mortally injured at the Epsom Derby when she ran onto the racetrack wearing a suffragette flag and was run over by Anmer, George V's horse, which jockey Herbert Jones was riding.[283] She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 days later.[284]
Romain Moll		July 1913	The California rancher fell head-first into a posthole 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 2 feet (0.61 m) wide. Unable to get out, he eventually suffocated.[285]
Julian Carlton		7 October 1914	The servant to American architect Frank Lloyd Wright committed a mass murder spree on 15 August 1914, at Wright's Taliesin studio, during which he killed seven people with a hatchet and set the studio ablaze. Carlton then attempted suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid. However, this failed to kill him. After nearly being lynched, Carlton was arrested and brought to a jail in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where, having severely damaged his esophagus, he starved to death 47 days later.[286][287]
Benjamin F. Steward		30 May 1915	The 45-year-old stock buyer attempted to throw part of a horse carcass over a railing into the Iowa River. Part of it caught on him, and he was pulled over as well.[288]
George William Edwards		30 June 1915	The fuelman in Junee, New South Wales, was killed by opening a truck door that struck him in the forehead. His body was found under a tub.[289]
George Feas		8 August 1915	The 15-year-old went to the Sand Island in the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to bathe and was struck by a bolt of lightning.[290]
Rose Talbot Bullard		22 December 1915	The 51-year-old physician and medical school professor from Birmingham, Iowa, unknowingly died from blood poisoning after complications from a failed dental infection cure.[291][292]
Martin Fisher		4 February 1916	Fisher, a farmer from Moran Township, Minnesota, was butchering a hog in a shed when the blade slipped and Fisher stabbed his leg, severing an artery. He died shortly thereafter.[293]
William or Martin McClelland		25 February 1916	The swagman from Queensland died from inflamed bowels brought on by eating wheat. His cause of death was later identified as a case of acute diarrhea.[294]
Grigori Rasputin		30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916	The 47-year-old Russian mystic died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation.[89][295] According to his murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grigori Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine which had been laced with cyanide but he did not appear to be affected by it. He was then shot once in the chest and believed to be dead but, after a while, he leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who freed himself and fled. Rasputin followed and made it into the courtyard before being shot again, and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped his body and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.[41][89][120][296]
William John Wallace		4 February 1917	The fisherman was talking to two men, leaning on a clothesline. The line split and Wallace fell on his back, dislocating his neck.[297]
Gustav Kobbé		27 July 1918	The 61-year-old author and music critic was sailing in Great South Bay, New York, when he noticed a low-flying seaplane heading toward him. Kobbé attempted to get into the water, but the plane crashed into the mast of Kobbé's boat, splitting his head open.[42][298]
Sewall Willis Rodgers		1 August 1918	The cadet from Brookline, Massachusetts, was riding his motorcycle at Chanute Field in Illinois and was killed when he was hit by an airplane flown by Lieut. Symnesttebedt.[299]
Rev. Walter Murray		1918	The YMCA worker in France was killed when two shells exploded simultaneously on either side of him. There were no wounds on his body.[300]
Pvt. Joseph Mantach		5 or 6 October 1918	the 28-year-old soldier from Kenosha, Wisconsin, drowned in Rock River by Camp Grant. He had been critically ill with Spanish flu and had escaped from the hospital in delirium.[301]
Arthur Thomas Hunter		12 December 1918	The soldier was found dead with his head stuck through a wooden fire escape and his neck dislocated.[302]
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood		15 January 1919	21 people were killed and 150 injured after a large tank of molasses burst in Boston's North End.[142][303][304][305]
Capt. P. H. Shaffer		3 October 1919	The Commander of The Salvation Army in Kearney, Nebraska, was killed by a Union Pacific Railroad train. He left his wife and another woman in his car to search for gasoline and was killed by a train. His wife, however, did not attempt to search for him due to her fear of African-American railroad workers.[306]
Ray Chapman		17 August 1920	On 16 August 1920, while he was up to bat, the 29-year-old Cleveland Indians baseball player was struck in the head by a pitch thrown by the New York Yankees' Carl Mays and died 12 hours later.[307]
Dan Andersson		16 September 1920	The 32-year-old Swedish poet died from hydrogen cyanide left in his Hotel Hellman room by a lice, flea, and bed bug extermination.[42]
Alexander of Greece		25 October 1920	The 27-year-old Greek king died of sepsis after being bitten by a palace steward's pet Barbary macaque in his garden, while trying to break up a fight between his German shepherd and another monkey.[89][308]
Thomas Lynn Bradford		5 February 1921	In an attempt to ascertain the existence of an afterlife, the 48-year-old spiritualist committed suicide by sealing his Detroit apartment, blowing out the pilot of his heater, and turning on the gas, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Bradford had intended to communicate his findings to fellow spiritualist Ruth Starkweather Doran, but three days after his death, The New York Times ran the article "Dead Spiritualist Silent".[309]
Michael F. Farley		8 October 1921	The 58-year-old U.S. Representative and Gore–McLemore resolution supporter died of anthrax he contracted from his shaving brush.[15]
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley		25 November 1922	The woman from Glen Innes, New South Wales, was found drowned in a cask of water. It was surmised that she was leaning over the cask when she suddenly fainted and fell into it.[310]
George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon		5 April 1923	The 56-year-old financier of Howard Carter's search for Tutankhamun died after a mosquito bite, which he had cut while shaving, became infected. Some attributed his death to the so-called curse of the pharaohs.[311][312]
Frank Hayes		4 June 1923	The 22-year-old jockey from Elmont, New York, died of a heart attack mid-race and collapsed on the horse, which nonetheless crossed the finish line first, still carrying his body.[15][313][314][315]
Martha Mansfield		30 November 1923	While the 24-year-old American film actress was on location in San Antonio, Texas filming the American Civil War drama The Warrens of Virginia, a lit match was carelessly tossed by a crew member, which ignited the hoop skirts and ruffles of her Civil War costume. Mansfield had just finished filming her scenes and retired to a car when her clothing burst into flames. Co-star Wilfred Lytell and a chauffeur were able to extinguish the flames, and Mansfield was rushed to a hospital, where she died the following day from her injuries.[316][317]
Calvin Coolidge Jr.		7 July 1924	The 16-year-old younger son of Calvin Coolidge played tennis with his elder brother at the White House tennis courts and neglected to wear socks. A blister on the third toe of his right foot quickly became infected, and he died just over one week later when sepsis set in.[318]
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn		13 July 1924	While attempting to turn around at Grand View in Yellowstone National Park, the Dunns somehow backed their car over a cliff, despite a tree barrier that would normally have made this impossible. The vehicle fell 800 feet (240 m) and then rolled another 200 feet (61 m).[319][320][321]
Thornton Jones		August 1924	The lawyer from Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, woke up to find that he had his throat slit. Motioning for a paper and pencil, he wrote, "I dreamt that I had done it. I awoke to find it true", and died 80 minutes later. He had done it himself while unconscious.[322] An inquest at Bangor delivered a verdict of "Suicide while temporarily insane".[323]
Carl Albright		22 December 1924	The construction-company timekeeper was found burned to death with his neck broken between Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and Omaha, Nebraska, near his burned-out car, from which pieces including the tires, radiator and carburetor had been removed. His time of death was estimated to be 8:20 PM according to his watch. The police initially theorized that thieves had broken into his car and set it on fire to make it look like an accident, but a physician who examined the body believed that Albright had been refueling his car when an explosion set it and Albright on fire. Further investigation suggested that the stolen pieces of the car were removed after the fire.[324][self-published source?]
Cora Stallman		1 August 1925	The 45-year-old former schoolteacher, found partially submerged in a cistern on her sister's farm in Humboldt Township, Coles County, Illinois, died from "unknown causes", according to a jury in her court case. It is said she may have committed suicide, been killed by a strange man, or died of fright.[325]
Bobby Leach		26 April 1926	The American stunt performer died after a botched amputation of the infected leg which he had broken after slipping on an orange peel. He had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel 15 years earlier.[326]
Phillip McClean		1926	The 16-year-old and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland,[327] when it knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[328]
Harry Houdini		31 October 1926	The 52-year-old Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer reportedly died from a punch from college student J. Gordon Whitehead, which gave him "peritonitis, caused by a ruptured appendix."[41][329] However, other stories claim he was murdered. Who or what killed Houdini is still under speculation.[329]
Isadora Duncan		14 September 1927	The 50-year-old American dancer broke her neck in Nice, France, when her long scarf became entangled in the open-spoked wheel and rear axle of the Amilcar CGSS automobile in which she was riding.[330]
Alfred Loewenstein		4 July 1928	51-year-old Alfred Loewenstein, the 3rd-richest man in the world at the time, died whilst flying from England to Belgium on his private Fokker F.VII airplane. It is believed he fell out of the aircraft and into the water where he died.[331]
Gladys Brockwell		2 July 1929	The 34-year-old film actress died from peritonitis and internal injuries reportedly from an automobile accident in Calabasas, California. While Thomas Stanley Brennan, a friend of Brockwell, was driving the automobile, it went over a 75-foot (23 m) embankment where she was crushed beneath it. She underwent four blood transfusions until peritonitis set in.[332]
William Kogut		20 October 1930	The convicted murderer, a death row inmate at San Quentin in California, reportedly committed suicide using a pipe bomb he made with playing cards and a hollow steel leg from his cot.[333][334][note 2]
Arnold Bennett		27 March 1931	The 63-year-old British novelist was dining in Paris with his partner, Dorothy Cheston Bennett. He drank two glasses of tap water during the meal, scoffing at Dorothy's claims that the water in Paris was not properly treated to be safe to drink. Within two days, he contracted typhoid fever and died two months later.[335][336][337]
Alfred Green		July 1931	The 17-year-old died of convulsions while being tickled "during a friendly wrestling match."[338]
James Leo McDermott		26 August 1931	After the 40-year-old Deputy Sheriff stepped out of his car at an oil station, the vehicle began to roll forwards, and McDermott attempted to hop onto the car's running board to stop it. It carried him forward and slammed him into a hook used to hold air and water hoses, which impaled him just below the heart.[339][340][341]
Eben Byers		31 March 1932	The 51-year-old American socialite and industrialist died after drinking excessive quantities of radium. He had developed persistent pain after a fall in 1927, for which he was prescribed Radithor, a patent medicine that contained 1 microcurie each of isotopes 226Ra and 228Ra. He drank a total of around 1400 doses, which concentrated in his bones, continually irradiating him. By 1931, his bones were reportedly disintegrating and his jaw had been removed; he died the next year.[342]
Peg Entwistle		16 September 1932	The 24-year-old film actress committed suicide by jumping off the letter "H" of the Hollywoodland Sign. The following day, a letter arrived for Entwistle offering her a role in a movie about a woman on the verge of suicide.[142]
Michael Malloy		22 February 1933	Five people, called the "Murder Trust," planned to kill Malloy for life insurance. Over the course of two months, they added antifreeze, turpentine, horse liniment, and finally rat poison in his alcohol, but Malloy drank it with no problems whatsoever. They then tried feeding him wood alcohol, expired oysters, and then a sandwich made of expired sardines and shrapnel, none of which had the desired effect. The group then tried to freeze him to death, and when that failed they ran him over twice with a taxi, from which Malloy recovered. Finally, they connected a hose to a coal gas jet and placed it in his mouth, which caused his death from carbon monoxide poisoning. Malloy was given nicknames such as "Mike the Durable", "Iron Mike", and "The Irish Rasputin".[343][344]
Rheta Gardner Wynekoop		21 November 1933	The 23-year-old was found in the basement surgery of her mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Wynekoop. She had been chloroformed, undressed, and shot in the back.[345]
Grace Weatherstone		15 December 1933	The wife of Mr. Roy Weatherstone from Mayfield Garden was found dead in the water wearing male attire. The cause of her death was found to be falling off some rocks which fractured her skull as she fell into the water.[346]
Marie Curie		4 July 1934	The 66-year-old physicist and chemist who discovered radium and polonium died from aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure.[41]
Susan Grace Kelly		16 January 1935	The 80-year-old woman in Armidale, New South Wales, was sitting with her daughter when she fell back dead after hearing a loud clap of thunder. Her last words were, "That was very close."[347]
Mary Emma Busch James		2 May 1936	The wife of the Los Angeles barber Robert James died from drowning in a fishing pond after being bound and thrust into a den of rattlesnakes. The Los Angeles Police Department later arrested a 38-year-old night manager of a nearby night club, who said that he was the one who bought the snakes from a Pasadena farm and took them to James's La Crescenta home.[348]
Fred Clapp		28 May 1937	A 77-year-old farmer from Clark County, South Dakota, died after being dragged by a bundle of horses while being tied to the harness.[349]
Benjamin Taslor		June 1937	During a carbuncle removal operation, an electric cautery ignited gases from the patient's lungs. This caused an explosion which killed Taslor and injured two nurses.[350]
Vivian Hensley		10 July 1938	The 42-year-old dentist died after accidentally swallowing a razor blade for a "sleight-of-hand" trick.[351]
Nicholas Comper		17 June 1939	The 42-year-old aviator and aircraft designer was attempting to light a firework in Hythe, Kent, when a passerby enquired what he was doing; Comper replied that he was an IRA man planning to blow up the town hall. The passerby knocked down Comper, who hit his head on the curb.[352]
Italo Balbo		28 June 1940	44-year-old Italo Balbo was the Governor of Italian Libya. While Balbo was flying his personal Savoia-Marchetti SM.79, the Libyan airfield at Tobruk was attacked by a squad of British planes. Balbo was killed by friendly fire from Italian anti-aircraft batteries on the ground.[353][354]
Leon Trotsky		21 August 1940	The 60-year-old Russian socialist and revolutionary was murdered in his villa in Mexico by Spanish-born NKVD agent Ramón Mercader with a ice axe.[41][355]
Sherwood Anderson		8 March 1941	The 64-year-old American writer died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a toothpick.[41][42][356]
Jack Budlong		5 August 1941	The friend of Errol Flynn was working as an extra on the film They Died with Their Boots On, starring Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Budlong insisted on using a real saber rather than a prop one. While filming a cavalry charge, Budlong's horse was frightened by the sounds of simulated explosions and threw Budlong, causing him to impale himself with the sword.[40][357][358]
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar		12 April 1943	The 27-year-old member of the 64th Bombardment Squadron was taking off for a night mission in New Guinea when he struck something with his bomber, referred to in reports as a "brush kangaroo" or "baby kangaroo" and later found to be a wallaby. The bomber crashed on takeoff, which detonated its load of bombs, killing McCullar and the rest of the bomber's crew.[359][360] The wallaby also died.
Clarence Stagemyer		29 September 1943	The 32-year-old was watching a Cleveland Indians-Washington Senators doubleheader in Griffith Stadium when an errant throw by Senators' third baseman Sherry Robertson struck him in the forehead. Despite appearing uninjured afterwards, he heeded the Senators' team physician's entreaties to go to the hospital, where he died the next day of a fractured skull. Stagemyer was the first fan in Major League Baseball history killed by a ball leaving the field, and the only such fatality to date to have been struck by a thrown ball.[361]
Thomas Midgley Jr.		2 November 1944	In 1940, the 51-year-old contracted polio, which left him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the device and died of strangulation.[362][363][364]
Mildred Roth		21 May 1945	The 23-year-old from North Braddock, Pennsylvania, died after locking herself inside a cedar chest while attempting to prank her sister. An autopsy later found that she died from suffocation.[365]
Louis Slotin		30 May 1946	The 35-year-old Canadian physicist and Manhattan Project scientist died as the result of an accident while performing an experiment called "tickling the dragon's tail" with a plutonium core which came to be known as the "demon core". Slotin's screwdriver slipped, exposing him to a fatal dose of radiation. Slotin died 9 days later; the other people in the room observing the experiment survived.[366][367]
Thomas Mantell		7 January 1948	The 25-year-old P-51 Mustang fighter pilot crashed while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object near Franklin, Kentucky, thus becoming the first person known to have died as a result of a UFO sighting. Officially, the object remains unidentified, though the most likely explanation is that it was a U.S. Navy Skyhook balloon.[368][369]
Mary Edith Sutton		30 October 1949	The 11-year-old girl from Indianapolis, Indiana, suffered burns to her legs and lower body after a jar of flaming gasoline was tossed from a stalled car in front of the girl while she was roller-skating back to her home. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she died from her injuries a few hours later.[370]
Mary Reeser		2 July 1951	The 67-year-old woman was found by the police in her St. Petersburg, Florida, home almost totally cremated where she sat, while her apartment was relatively damage-free. Some speculate that she spontaneously combusted.[371][372]
Margaret Wise Brown		13 November 1952	The 42-year-old author of Goodnight Moon was hospitalized for an ovarian cyst. To prove how healthy she was after treatment, she kicked her foot in the air, dislodging a blood clot in her leg. The blood clot quickly travelled to her brain, and she died in emergency surgery.[42][373][374]
Joseph L. Rauchut		30 November 1957	The 32-year-old Patrolman of the New York City Police Department died during a traffic stop on the Queens side of the Kosciuszko Bridge when a truck struck his parked patrol car, which struck and killed him.[375][376]
Gareth Jones		30 November 1958	The 33-year-old British actor died of a heart attack between scenes of a live television play, Underground on the ITV network. Other members of the cast improvised lines, such as, "I'm sure if So‑and‑so were here he would say...", to compensate for his absence. Coincidentally, his character was scripted to die of a heart attack in a later scene of the play.[377][378]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Alan Stacey		19 June 1960	The 26-year-old British racing driver died in a crash during the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix when a bird struck him in the face. 22-year-old British driver Chris Bristow was killed during the same race.[379][380][381]
Clarence Hudson		18 August 1960	The 66-year-old department store janitor was electrocuted by a homemade electric chair in his Wenatchee, Washington, apartment. Police reported that he had a wet towel at his feet and his head, and quarters at his temples that were connected by wire to a home-made transformer, which increased the voltage from a wall outlet to an estimated 1,000 volts.[382]
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg		3 January 1961	During the testing of an experimental nuclear reactor design, in Arco, Idaho, two soldiers and a sailor were killed, but their deaths were not due to radiation poisoning. While trying to bring the reactor online, Byrnes, an army specialist, was supposed to pull a control rod part way out by hand, but he pulled the rod further than intended. The reactor instantly went prompt critical, which flash-boiled the water around the reactor. The force of the steam expanding lifted the entire reactor into the air about 2.77 metres (9 ft 1 in), in what has been described as a water hammer-like effect. Many components were thrown out of the top, one of which impaled Legg, a navy electrician's mate, lifted him from a catwalk, and penetrated the ceiling, leaving him dangling. While the reactor was airborne the radioactive steam escaped, spraying the room. The steam was so hot that Byrnes instantly died of severe thermal burns. McKinley suffered a head wound, from which he died later that day. The steam left the bodies of all three men radioactive, so they were buried in lead coffins. Officials feared that moving them would risk spreading contamination along public roadways, so a graveyard was established in the desert only 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) from the explosion. The graveyard is still monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency. The three remain the only human beings killed by a reactor explosion in the United States.[383][384][385][386][387]
Victor Prather		4 May 1961	The 34-year-old U.S. Navy flight surgeon drowned at the end of the record-setting Strato-Lab V balloon flight when he slipped from the rescue sling during recovery operations in the Gulf of Mexico and his pressure suit filled with water.[388][389]
Leonard Lamoureaux		24 October 1965	The 64-year-old Marine Posse Deputy of the Humboldt County, California, Sheriff's Department sustained fatal internal injuries when his patrol jeep, the parking brake of which had not been set properly, rolled forward and pinned him against a steel gate.[390]
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross		8 June 1966	Astronaut and NASA test pilot Walker, flying a Lockheed F-104N Starfighter, and North American Aviation test pilot Cross, co-piloting a North American XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, were killed in a mid-air collision during a publicity photo shoot of multiple aircraft with General Electric engines flying in formation near Edwards Air Force Base. With the Valkyrie in a spin, pilot Alvin S. White ejected and survived, but centrifugal force prevented Cross' ejection seat from retracting into the escape capsule.[391]
Nick Piantanida		29 August 1966	The 34-year-old skydiver died four months after an attempt to break the record for the highest parachute jump near Joe Foss Field, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; his suit had depressurized, causing brain damage from lack of oxygen.[392][393]
Jayne Mansfield		29 June 1967	The 34-year-old American actress and Playboy model died when the driver of her Buick crashed into a tractor which had abruptly stopped. Her lover and the driver also died, but her children, including Mariska Hargitay, who was 3 years old at the time, survived. Many people speculated that the accident was the result of a Satanic curse.[394][395]
Harold Holt		17 December 1967	The 59-year-old Prime Minister of Australia disappeared, presumed drowned, while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria.[396][397][398][399] He was "simply one of the number of ordinary Australians who drown each year through poor judgment or bad luck";[400] his drowning has been described as "not unusual",[401] and as "an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that still befalls dozens every summer."[397] Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories.[397]
Echol Cole and Robert Walker		1 February 1968	The two Memphis, Tennessee, garbage collectors were crushed to death after the trash compactor of their garbage truck malfunctioned while they were taking refuge inside the back of the truck during a rainstorm. They were not allowed to take shelter inside a building due to segregation laws. As a result of their deaths, sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. During the strike, Martin Luther King Jr., who had come to Memphis to support the striking workers, was assassinated.[402]
Albert Dekker		5 May 1968	The 62-year-old American actor and politician was found dead kneeling naked in his bathtub with a noose wrapped around his neck, a dirty hypodermic needle in each arm, a scarf over his eyes, a ball in his mouth secured to his head with wire, his wrists in handcuffs, and leather belts and thongs around his torso, one of them tied to a rope around Dekker's ankles. There were vulgar phrases and drawings in lipstick all over his body. His death was ruled an accidental case of erotic asphyxiation.[403][404]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Alan Fish		20 May 1970	The 14-year-old was struck in the head by a Manny Mota foul ball on 16 May while watching the Los Angeles Dodgers play against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium, and was knocked unconscious for a minute. He appeared to recover and the Dodger Stadium infirmary gave him an ice pack, two aspirin and released him to watch the rest of the game, during which he behaved normally. The Giants ended up winning the game 5–4. Afterwards, he began shaking and crying uncontrollably during the bus ride to his nearby home; when he arrived, his parents sought medical attention but had to go to three hospitals, despite his worsening condition, before they found one that would accept him early the next morning. His condition required neurosurgery, but continued to worsen, and after a seizure led to apparent brain death, he was taken off life support two days later; the autopsy showed that part of his fractured skull had become lodged in his brain, causing an intracerebral hemorrhage. He was the first fan in Major League Baseball history to die of injuries caused by a foul ball.[405]
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev		29 June 1971	The Soviet cosmonauts died when their Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurized during preparations for re-entry. They are the only reported human deaths outside the Earth's atmosphere.[406]
Basil Brown		February 1974	The 48-year-old health food advocate from Croydon, England, died from liver damage after he consumed 70 million units of Vitamin A and around 10 US gallons (38 litres) of carrot juice over ten days, turning his skin bright yellow.[407][408][409]
Kenyon M. Lassiter		19 April 1974	The 51-year-old Trooper of the Alabama Department of Public Safety was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver whose life Lassiter had saved months earlier after an automobile accident.[410]
Deborah Gail Stone		8 July 1974	The 18-year-old hostess for the America Sings attraction at Disneyland mysteriously died after being crushed between two walls around 11:00 p.m. It is speculated that she either fell backwards or tried to jump from one stage to another.[411][412][413]
Christine Chubbuck		15 July 1974	The 29-year-old American news anchor from Hudson, Ohio, killed herself on live television at the start of Suncoast Digest, a local newscast for WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, after reading some of the area's breaking news headlines. Chubbuck was the first person to commit suicide on live television.[414]
Peter Kelly		27 August 1974	The British commercial diver died of anoxia due to pure helium being fed through his breathing mask during a bell dive in the Norwegian Sector of the North Sea. The other diver in the bell pulled off his mask before losing consciousness and survived.[415][416]
Alex Mitchell		24 March 1975	After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, the resident of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, laughed continuously for 25 minutes and then fell dead on his sofa from heart failure due to what doctors discovered years later, via his granddaughter, was a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.[417][418][419][420]
Luciano Re Cecconi		18 January 1977	The 28-year-old professional footballer for S.S. Lazio and the Italy national football team, was shot while pretending to rob a jeweller as a practical joke.[421][422]
Tina Christopherson		18 February 1977	The 28-year-old woman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, died at the Coral Gables Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, after drinking 4 US gallons (15 litres) of water a day to combat stomach cancer.[423]
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren		5 March 1977	Pryce, a driver in the 1977 South African Grand Prix, struck and killed Van Vuuren at 170 miles per hour (270 km/h) as Van Vuuren ran across the Kyalami racetrack to extinguish a burning car. The fire extinguisher which Van Vuuren was carrying struck Pryce's head and killed him.[424][425][426][427] Renzo Zorzi, the driver of the burning car, was uninjured.
George W. Redding		17 August 1977	The 43-year-old Officer of the California Highway Patrol was responding to a car accident when another car struck a downed telephone line, which wrapped around Redding's ankle and threw him into the air and back to the ground, killing him.[428]
Kurt Gödel		14 January 1978	The Austrian-American logician and mathematician developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food prepared by anyone but his wife.[429] When she became ill and was hospitalized, he starved to death. At the time of his death, he only weighed around 65 pounds (29 kg).[430]
Georgi Markov		7 September 1978	The Bulgarian dissident writer was poisoned on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by an assassin associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. At the time, this secret police force was affiliated with the KGB. Markov died four days later in hospital. No one was ever charged with the assassination.[120][431]
Robert Williams		25 January 1979	The Ford plant worker became the first person known to be killed by a robot[15][432] when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.[433]
John Bowen		13 December 1979	The 20-year-old resident of Nashua, New Hampshire, was fatally injured at a halftime show at Shea Stadium when a 40-pound (18 kg) model plane shaped like a lawnmower crashed into the stands. He died four days later.[434][435]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Monica Myers		20 March 1980	The mayor of Betterton, Maryland, was carrying out maintenance work around the sewage tanks at the town's largest municipal facility. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, she fell 4 feet (1.2 m) from the catwalks into a 15-foot (4.6 m) aeration tank, filled with human waste which a deputy in the town's police department described as having the consistency of "putty". Her body was found floating face down by the town engineer the next day.[436]
Lourdes Maria da Silva		August 1980	The resident of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, was walking upstairs carrying a Pyrex glass when she tripped, broke it, and fell on the shards, cutting an artery in her neck. She died on her way to the hospital.[437][438]
Azaria Chamberlain		17 August 1980	The 9-week-old from Australia was dragged off and killed by a wild dingo during a family camping trip to Uluru in the Northern Territory. This was the first recorded instance of a dingo killing a human. Azaria's parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, received intense media speculation due to the perceived implausibility of a dingo attack; in a highly-publicized trial, Lindy was convicted of murder and Michael named as an accessory. Their convictions were later overturned after Azaria's matinee jacket was discovered in an area with many dingo lairs nearby.[439][440]
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole and Nick Mullon		19 March 1981, 1 April 1981 and 11 April 1995	At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, five workers suffered anoxia due to pure nitrogen atmosphere in the aft engine compartment of Space Shuttle Columbia during a countdown demonstration test for the STS-1 mission. 51-year-old John Bjornstad died at the scene; 50-year-old Forrest Cole went into a coma and died two weeks later, and Nick Mullon died 14 years later from complications of injuries sustained.[441][442][443][444]
Boris Sagal		22 May 1981	The Ukrainian-American film director died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III in Portland, Oregon, after he walked into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter and was partially decapitated.[445][446] He died five hours later at a hospital in Portland.[445]
David Alan Kirwan		21 July 1981	The 24-year-old tourist from La Cañada Flintridge, California, jumped into the alkaline (pH 9) and scalding (202 °F (94 °C)) Celestine Pool at Yellowstone National Park to save his friend's dog. The dog died within moments and its body dissolved in the hot spring. Kirwan, blinded and burned over his entire body, was airlifted to Salt Lake City and died the next day.[447][448][449][450][451]
David Grundman		4 February 1982	While shooting at cacti with his shotgun near Lake Pleasant Regional Park, Arizona, Grundman was crushed when a 4-foot (1.2 m) limb detached and fell on him.[446][452][453]
Michael Scaglione		15 April 1982	Scaglione died after smashing his golf club in anger against a golf cart at a golf course near New Orleans, Louisiana. When the club broke the head rebounded and impaled him in the throat, severing his jugular vein.[454]
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen		23 July 1982	During the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the 53-year-old Morrow, seven-year-old Le, and six-year-old Chen were performing a scene in which their characters are pursued by a helicopter. Heat from special-effects explosions[455] caused the helicopter to fall on them. Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.[456]
Tennessee Williams		25 February 1983	The 71-year-old American playwright died from an overdose of Seconal; however, his initial autopsy report stated that he suffocated due to inhaling the plastic cap from a bottle of eye drops.[41][42][457][458][459]
Dick Wertheim		15 September 1983	The 61-year-old tennis linesman died after a ball served by player Stefan Edberg at the US Open struck him in the groin and he fell out of his chair, striking his head on the hardcourt surface.[460][461][462]
Truls Hellevik		5 November 1983	The 34-year-old Norwegian diver was explosively dismembered in a diving bell accident on the North Sea Byford Dolphin drilling rig. Three other divers, 35-year-old Edwin Arthur Coward, 38-year-old Roy P. Lucas and 29-year-old Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, and 32-year-old dive tender William Crammond, were also killed. Crammond opened the clamp before Hellevik could close the chamber door. The nine-atmosphere air pressure explosively decompressed, instantly forcing Hellevik's body through a 60-centimetre-diameter (24 in) opening, fragmenting it into numerous pieces. The other tender, Martin Saunders, was severely injured.[463][464][465]
Jimmy Ferrozzo		November 1983	The bouncer at the Condor Club in San Francisco died while engaging in sexual intercourse with his girlfriend, Theresa Hill, on a grand piano that was lowered from the ceiling by a hydraulic motor. He accidentally activated the lifting mechanism which pinned him against the ceiling leading to his suffocation. Hill survived the accident.[466]
Reginald Tucker		4 July 1984	The 29-year-old lawyer, who raced along a Chicago skyscraper corridor without wearing his glasses, crashed through a window and plunged 39 stories to his death, during an early Fourth of July party. Police said portions of the man's body were scattered around the street near the 41-story Prudential Building in the city's downtown area. Several horrified onlookers attending holiday celebrations heard the glass shatter and saw him fall to his death. One witness said it was "like an explosion" when he impacted a car.[467][468]
Jon-Erik Hexum		18 October 1984	The 26-year-old American actor died after playing a simulated Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum pistol loaded with blanks. They contained paper wadding and when he pulled the trigger against his temple, the wadding was propelled with a force that broke his skull, causing massive brain bleeding.[469]
Unknown male		1984	An unidentified 25-year-old man was using submersion as an erotic asphyxia method. Naked within a homemade plastic body suit, he tied himself to a boat and was using a homemade diving apparatus for air supply. He died from rebreathing, caused by the faulty apparatus.[470]
Jerome Moody		30 July 1985	The 31-year-old New Orleans man drowned in a swimming pool. He was attending a party held for lifeguards at a swimming pool inside the New Orleans Recreation Department building who were celebrating an entire summer season where no one drowned, his body being found at the bottom of the deep end after the party ended.[471]
Jason Findley		February 1986	The 17-year-old, from Piscataway, New Jersey, was electrocuted during a thunderstorm when a lightning strike caused an electrical surge to shoot through the wire of a telephone the boy was holding and enter his left ear, causing his heart to stop beating.[472]
Victims of the Lake Nyos disaster		21 August 1986	At Lake Nyos, northwestern Cameroon, a limnic eruption of unknown cause released about 100,000–300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the lake's bed. The gas cloud initially rose at nearly 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph; 28 m/s) and then, being heavier than air, descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake, resulting in the death of 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.[473][474][475]
Marc Aaronson		30 April 1987	The 36-year-old astronomer was crushed to death by a hatch and a revolving telescope dome at Kitt Peak National Observatory.[476][477][478]
Franco Brun		9 June 1987	The 22-year-old inmate at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre in Canada died trying to swallow a pocket-size Bible.[479][480]
Ivan Lester McGuire		2 April 1988	The 35-year-old veteran skydiver was filming a jump by an instructor and student from the Franklin County Sports Parachute Center when he jumped from a plane without a parachute. Focused on the filming process, he apparently forgot to put one on, and his camera equipment may have been mistaken for one. The tape was recovered.[481][482]
Cachy the Poodle, Marta Espina, Edith Solá, unidentified man		21 October 1988	A poodle named Cachy, in Caballito, Buenos Aires, fell 13 floors and hit 75-year-old Marta Espina, killing both instantly. In the course of events, 46-year-old Edith Solá came to see the incident and was fatally hit by a bus. An unidentified man who witnessed her death had a heart attack and also died on his way to the hospital.[483][484]
Michael Anderson Godwin Sloan		5 March 1989	The 28-year-old American criminal from Suffolk, Virginia, was initially given a death sentence by electrocution for the January 12, 1980, death of Molly Royem in West Columbia, South Carolina, before having his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Godwin died from electrocution when he bit into wires while attempting to fix a broken television set, at the same time sitting on a metal toilet in his prison cell at the Central Correctional Institute in neighboring Columbia, South Carolina.[485][486]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Daniel John O'Brien		14 January 1990	The 31-year-old committed suicide by jumping into one of the engines of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad.[487][488] He is said to have scaled an airport wall in the nude, attacked four security guards and stolen their four-wheel-drive vehicle, driven the vehicle into the jet, then clambered out of the wreckage, smeared grease on his bleeding shoulder and hurled himself into one of the plane's engines.[489]
Lori Mae Matthew		27 October 1991	A 485-pound (220 kg) umbrella, one of thousands installed in the Tejon Pass of southern California by environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was swept across a road by strong winds and crushed the 33-year-old against a boulder. The remaining umbrellas were all closed "out of respect".[490]
Greg Austin Gingrich		28 November 1992	While the 38-year-old was vacationing at the Grand Canyon in Coconino County, Arizona, with his teenaged daughter, he began to play-act losing his balance to frighten her. Gingrich leaped atop a guard wall and began wind-milling his arms in an exaggerated manner, then "comically" fell from the wall on the canyon side onto a short slope where he assumed he would land safely. His daughter, unimpressed with his antics, walked on. Gingrich, however, missed his footing and fell approximately 400 feet (120 m) into the canyon to his death.[491][492]
Brandon Lee		31 March 1993	The 28-year-old film actor, martial artist, and son of Bruce Lee was killed by a squib loaded prop gun while filming The Crow.[493][494][495]
Garry Hoy		9 July 1993	The 38-year-old lawyer from Toronto fell from the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre while demonstrating that its windows were "unbreakable". He threw himself against one, which, true to his assertion, did not break, but instead popped out of its frame.[496][497]
Gloria Ramirez		19 February 1994	The 31-year-old died from kidney failure related to her cervical cancer at the emergency room of Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California. While treating her, several of the hospital staff became ill, suffering from loss of consciousness, shortness of breath, and muscle spasms. Shortly before dying, she was allegedly covered with an oily sheen, which smelled of fruit and garlic. When drawing her blood with a syringe, nurses noticed it had a smell similar to ammonia and there were unusual particles floating in it.[498]
Jeremy Brenno		9 July 1994	The 16-year-old from Gloversville, New York, was playing golf when he hit a bench out of frustration with his club. This caused the club shaft to break, bounce back, and pierce his heart, killing him.[499][500]
Mark Gleeson		23 January 1996	The 26-year-old from Headley Down, Hampshire, attempted to cure his snoring by inserting tampons into his nostrils. He died from suffocation, with sleeping pills adding to his breathing difficulties.[501]
Karen Wetterhahn		8 June 1997	The chemistry professor at Dartmouth College died ten months after a few drops of dimethylmercury (an organomercury compound and one of the strongest-known neurotoxins) landed on her protective gloves. Although she had been following the required procedures, it permeated the gloves and her skin within seconds.[502][503][504]
Alberto Fargo		1998	The resident of Lisbon died from falling out of a 5-story window whilst performing a tango. According to witnesses, he was demonstrating to students how to keep their head high by looking at the ceiling, and failed to notice the open window beside him.[505]
Jonathan Capewell		1998	The 16-year-old from Oldham, England, died from a heart attack brought on by the buildup of butane and propane in his blood after excessive use of deodorant sprays. He was reported to have been obsessed with personal hygiene.[142][506]
John Lewis		12 April 1999	The 64-year-old businessman from Minsterworth, England, attempted to light a bonfire with gasoline, but inadvertently set his clothes on fire. He then ran to the River Severn, jumped in, and eventually drowned. Although the incident occurred on 12 April 1999, his body was not found until 30 April 1999.[507][508]
Valerie Olusanya		25 April 1999	At 2:30 am, the electronic musician, better known as Kemistry, was a front-seat passenger in a car travelling on the M3 motorway in Hampshire, behind a van which dislodged a cat's eye in the road. The metal body flew through the windscreen hitting Olusanya in the face, killing her instantly.[509][510][511]
Owen Hart		23 May 1999	The 34-year-old professional wrestler fell to his death during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event. He was supposed to be lowered into the ring from the rafters as part of his Blue Blazer persona's entrance, but the equipment lowering him into the ring malfunctioned, causing him to fall 78 feet (24 m) and land chest-first on the top rope. The impact severed his aorta, causing death within minutes.[512][513]
Jon Desborough		10 June 1999	The 41-year-old geography and physical education teacher died due to a chest infection a month after being impaled in the eye with the blunt end of a javelin during an athletics session at the Liverpool College in Mossley Hill, Liverpool. It is believed that he had lost his footing while retrieving the javelin. He remained in a coma until his death.[514][515]
Hisashi Ouchi		21 December 1999	On 30 September 1999, Ouchi and two other technicians, Masato Shinohara and Yutaka Yokokawa, were improperly preparing reactor fuel for the Jōyō reactor at the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant, leading to a criticality accident. The technicians' desire to quicken the process led to numerous safety protocols being bypassed, resulting in 16 kilograms (35 lb) of dissolved enriched uranium being contained in the precipitation tank, as opposed to the safe limit of 2.4 kilograms (5.3 lb). Ouchi, who was holding a funnel through which uranyl nitrate was being poured into the feeder tank, was dosed with approximately seventeen sieverts of radiation and received the highest dose of the three. After being transferred to the hospital, his condition rapidly deteriorated, though doctors were instructed to repeatedly revive him whenever his heart stopped in accordance with the wishes of his family. Attempts at treatment, including an early use of peripheral stem cell transplantation, were carried out over the course of almost 3 months, but they ultimately failed, and he died nearly three months later following a cardiac arrest.[516] Shinohara died of multiple organ failure complicated by infections following numerous attempts at treatment on 27 April 2000[517] while Yokokawa, who received the smallest dose, survived following three months of hospitalization.[518]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Bernd Brandes		9 March 2001	The 43-year-old engineer was voluntarily slaughtered and eaten by Armin Meiwes following an appointment via internet. At Brandes' request, Meiwes first amputated Brandes' penis and they unsuccessfully tried to eat it. Meiwes taped the entire amputation, killing, conserving, and eating Brandes' meat. Meiwes was eventually arrested and sentenced to life in prison.[519][520][521]
Unknown male		27 April 2001	An unnamed Canadian man was visiting his mother's house in order to attend his father's funeral when, whilst cleaning the kitchen, he tripped over the open dishwasher door and was impaled on knives sticking up out of the cutlery tray, the wounds eventually proving fatal.[522][523]
Michael Colombini		29 July 2001	The six-year-old died during an MRI scan at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, after an oxygen tank was magnetically pulled into the machine and fractured his skull.[524][525][526]
Brittanie Cecil		18 March 2002	The 13-year-old died from her injuries at an NHL game after a deflected puck struck her in the left temple. She was the first and only fan fatality in the league's history.[527]
Roger Wallace		18 May 2002	The 60-year-old auto parts salesman was flying his 5-foot (1.5 m) wingspan remote-control plane in Tucson, Arizona, when he lost sight of it in the bright sun. It struck him in the chest, killing him.[528][529][better source needed]
Jane McDonald		27 May 2003	While visiting a friend, the 31-year-old slipped and fell onto an open dishwasher, landing on an upright knife. She was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries.[530][531]
Rebecca Longhoffer		16 August 2003	The 39-year-old tourist, a mother of four, was electrocuted while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard when she stepped on a cast iron plate that covered electrical wiring and was hidden by a deep rain puddle.[532][533]
Hitoshi Nikaidoh		16 August 2003	The 35-year-old surgical resident from Houston, Texas, was killed after his head was trapped in elevator doors at the hospital where he worked. He was partially decapitated as the elevator ascended, and he also sustained injuries to his ribs and spine.[534][535]
Brian Wells		28 August 2003	The 46-year-old pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed after a collar bomb around his neck exploded as part of a bank robbery scheme.[536]
Unknown female		2004	A 45-year-old woman in Taiwan bathed in 40.5% ethanol in an attempt to protect herself from SARS during the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. She laid down in the fluid at 11. p.m. and was found dead at 11 a.m. by her family the next day. Her BAC was 1.35% and she most likely absorbed the alcohol through the skin.[537][538]
Francis Daniel Brohm		2 September 2004	The 23-year-old was hanging out the passenger window of 21-year-old John Hutcherson's car when Hutcherson drove off the road and sideswiped a telephone pole support wire, decapitating him. Hutcherson continued the final 12 miles (19 km) to his Atlanta home, parked in the driveway, and went to bed. A neighbor found Brohm's headless body in the truck the next morning.[539][540]
Kenneth Pinyan		2 July 2005	The 45-year-old Boeing engineer from Seattle, nicknamed Mr. Hands, died from acute peritonitis after having his colon perforated while being anally penetrated by a horse.[541][542]
Chandler Hugh Jackson		6 July 2005	The 12-year-old was playing at the Dogwood Hill golf club in Cunningham, Kentucky, when he fell on his 9-iron club while retrieving an out of bounds ball. The club broke, with a piece of the shaft piercing his aorta through his chest.[543][544]
Steve Irwin		4 September 2006	The 44-year-old Australian wildlife expert and television personality was pierced in the chest by a short-tail stingray's barb while filming in shallow water in the Great Barrier Reef.[545][546]
Alexander Litvinenko		23 November 2006	The 44-year-old, a naturalised British citizen, former Russian FSB officer, and defector, was assassinated by poisoning with polonium-210, which caused acute and irreversible radiation sickness.[120][547][548] One of just a handful of recorded deaths attributed specifically to polonium exposure,[549] Litvinenko was the first-known fatality from malicious polonium poisoning,[550] and remains the only confirmed such case as of 2024.[549][551]
Jennifer Strange		12 January 2007	The 28-year-old mother was participating in a contest sponsored by Sacramento-based radio station KDND, called "Hold Your Wee For A Wii", in which contestants had to drink excessive amounts of water without going to the bathroom. She vomited during the contest and returned home with a headache, later dying of water intoxication.[552][553][554]
Humberto Hernandez		21 June 2007	The 24-year-old Oakland, California, resident was struck in the back of the head by an airborne fire hydrant when a passing car struck it, and the water pressure shot it at him with great force.[555][556][557]
Abigail Taylor		March 2008	The 6-year-old girl from Edina, Minnesota, died from medical complications as a result of her 29 June 2007 evisceration caused by powerful suction from a pool drain at the Minneapolis Golf Club.[558][559]
Francis Pete Tovey		18 March 2008	The 81-year-old built a device that consisted of a jigsaw power tool attached to a .22 semi-automatic handgun containing four bullets. He then activated it, which fired multiple shots at his head, killing himself. Tovey built the device after downloading suicide plans on the Internet. Tovey, who originated from England and was living in Burleigh Heads, Australia at the time, left a note stating that he was struggling after pressure from relatives to move from his £450,000 home to a retirement home.[560][561][562]
Judy Kay Zagorski		20 March 2008	The 57-year-old from Pigeon, Michigan, died of blunt force craniocerebral trauma when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leaped out of the water and knocked her over off the coast of Marathon Key, Florida. The ray also died.[563][564]
Adelir Antônio de Carli		21 April 2008	The 41-year-old Brazilian Catholic priest and sky diver undertook a cluster balloon flight to raise funds for charity. During the flight, contact was lost and de Carli disappeared. The lower part of his body was found floating in the sea eleven weeks later on 4 July.[565][566]
Isaiah Otieno		13 May 2008	The student from Cranbrook, British Columbia, was struck and killed by a helicopter that plunged into a residential street he was walking in. The pilot and two other passengers of the helicopter were also instantly killed.[567][568]
David Phyall		5 July 2008	The 50-year-old last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, England, decapitated himself with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out of it.[569][570]
Unknown female		7 October 2008	A 43-year-old Irish woman died of an allergic reaction after having sex with a German Shepherd. Its owner, Seán McDonnell, and the woman met in an Internet chat room for bestiality. McDonnell was prosecuted and added to a sex offender list. The dog was later destroyed.[571][572]
Jeff Twaddle		27 March 2009	The 54-year-old charter boat deckhand from Huntington Beach, California, choked to death on a bait fish he had placed in his mouth to amuse a group of elementary school students on a fishing trip off Long Beach.[573][574]
Mark Fidrych		13 April 2009	The 54-year-old former Major League Baseball pitcher of the Detroit Tigers, died while working underneath his dump truck. His clothes became entangled with the power take-off drive shaft, suffocating him.[575][576]
Taylor Mitchell		28 October 2009	The 19-year-old Canadian folk singer was killed by a pair of coyotes while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in the only known fatal coyote attack on an adult.[577][578][579]
Vladimir Likhonos		2 December 2009	The 25-year-old student of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute from Konotop was killed when his chewing gum exploded. He had a habit of dipping his chewing gum in citric acid to increase the gum's sour taste. On his work table police found about 100 grams (3.5 oz) of unidentified explosive powder which he used for chemistry studies at home. It resembled citric acid, and it is thought that he confused the two, having accidentally coated his gum in the explosive powder before chewing it. The explosive was found to be four times stronger than TNT, and the explosion was possibly triggered either by reacting with Likhonos's saliva, or the pressure exerted by him chewing on the gum and explosive powder.[580][581][582]

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe		3 March 2010	The 42-year-old was struck in the head by a piece of a metal pipe flung by a tractor-pulled lawnmower as she walked to work in Townsville, Australia.[583][584]
Gareth Williams		16 August 2010	The 31-year-old Welsh mathematician and GCHQ analyst was found dead and naked in a bag that had been padlocked from the outside, in the bath of his home in Central London.[585] The inquest found his death was likely criminal, although a Metropolitan Police investigation later found that it was likely an accident.[586]
The 20 passengers and crew of a plane crash		25 August 2010	20 passengers and crew of a Let L-410 Turbolet were killed in a crash resulting from an escaped crocodile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the sole survivor of the crash, the animal was smuggled aboard by a passenger but escaped mid-flight. Panicked passengers surged forward, unbalancing the plane and causing a loss of control.[587] The crocodile survived the crash, but was promptly killed by a blow from a machete.[588]
Mike Edwards		3 September 2010	The 62-year-old cellist and founding member of the band Electric Light Orchestra died when a large, round bale of hay rolled down a hill and collided with the van he was driving.[589][590][591]
Jimi Heselden		26 September 2010	The 62-year-old owner of Segway Inc. died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System off a cliff in Thorp Arch, England.[592][593][594] The coroner came to the conclusion that Heselden had likely fallen from the cliff with the Segway after "getting into difficulty" reversing to allow a man walking his dog to pass him.[595]
Jose Luis Ochoa		30 January 2011	The 35-year-old died after being stabbed in the leg at an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California, by a bird with a knife-like spur strapped to its leg.[596][597]
Xavier Tondo		23 May 2011	The 32-year-old Spanish road racing cyclist was crushed to death between a garage door and his car as he prepared to leave his home in the Province of Granada, Spain, for a training ride in preparation for the 2011 Tour de France.[598][599]
Unknown man and woman		6 June 2011	Two unnamed people were killed in an accident on a rural Quebec road when a "flying bear" collided with their SUV. The 200-kilogram (440 lb) black bear was sent airborne by a car in front of the SUV after it had stepped into the path of traffic on Highway 148. The bear passed through the windshield, hitting the driver and the passenger sitting behind her before passing through the rear window. The driver's boyfriend was in the front passenger seat and received injuries to his upper body which were described as "not life-threatening". The bear also died.[600][601]
Erica Marshall		10 February 2012	The 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber kicked the wall, releasing a spark from its horseshoe, causing a fire and explosion. The horse was also killed and another worker was seriously injured.[602][603]
Anthony Hensley		14 April 2012	The 37-year-old was killed by a swan while kayaking across a pond at a residential complex in Des Plaines, Illinois. After getting too close to the bird's nest, the swan attacked him, threw him out of the kayak and prevented him from surfacing; he ultimately drowned.[604][605]
Kendrick Johnson		10 January 2013	The 17-year-old was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium. Police originally concluded he had climbed in it to retrieve a shoe and became trapped, but the case was later reopened as a possible homicide.[606][607][608][609][610] The homicide case was dismissed, and Kendrick's parents were accused of fabricating evidence. In 2014, they were sentenced to pay more than US$292,000 in legal fees.[611] The case was again reopened in 2021, but closed again in January 2022, with the Lowndes County Sheriff finding his death to be an accident when re-reviewing some 17 boxes of evidence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's findings.[612][613]
James Campbell		14 January 2013	The 68-year-old man from Cantonment, Florida had left his 1995 Chevrolet Van to open a gate from his driveway when his dog stepped on the van's gas pedal and ran him over.[614][615]
Elisa Lam		February 2013	The 21-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was missing for several weeks before being found dead in a large water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, after guests complained about low pressure and foul smell of the water.[616][617]
Unknown Belarusian man		2013	An unnamed 60-year-old Belarusian fisherman bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab in order to have his picture taken with it.[618][619]
João Maria de Souza		2013	The 45-year-old was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and his wife (who was in the bed next to him) were unharmed.[620][621]
Noah Barthe, Connor Barthe		5 August 2013	The brothers, aged 4 and 6 respectively, were killed by an African rock python during a sleepover at their friend's apartment in New Brunswick, Canada. The snake had escaped from its inadequate enclosure and moved through ducts that were easily accessible to the reptile, where the snake then fell through the ceiling where the boys slept 3 metres (9.8 ft) away. Though the snake suffocated them, it did not attempt to eat them. However, an African rock python would not constrict unless it planned on eating; therefore, it is likely that the owners of the python also failed to feed their pet. The python was euthanized.[622][623]
Roman Pirozek, Jr.		5 September 2013	The 19-year-old model airplane enthusiast was partially decapitated by the blade of his radio-controlled helicopter while performing aerobatic maneuvers in Calvert Vaux Park in Brooklyn, New York.[624][625]
Denver Lee St. Clair		21 December 2013	The 58-year-old was asphyxiated by an "atomic wedgie" administered by his stepson during a fight in Oklahoma. After he had been knocked unconscious, the elastic band from his torn underwear was pulled over his head and stretched around his neck, strangling him. The stepson was sentenced to 30 years in prison.[626][627]
J.R.N.		18 January 2014	A 52-year-old Brazilian man, identified only as J.R.N., attempted to commit bestiality with a sow in Tapurah, Mato Grosso, but was attacked by the animals and wounded in the genitals. He died from cardiac arrest. His arms and face were also mutilated by the animals. Initially police believed that the man had been murdered and disposed of at the farm, but this was disproven as numerous pieces of evidence showed that the man had drunk alcohol, used a condom and had been wearing only underwear. The man had worked at the farm for two years.[628][629][630]
Grant Adams		9 June 2014	The 17-year-old had just woken up when he tripped on a wire and fell into a free-standing tanning bed in his bedroom on the morning of June 8, 2014. One of the glass tubes of the bed broke, piercing Grant's neck in two places. He was airlifted from his house in South Shields to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, where he died the next day.[631][632]
Christophe de Margerie		20 October 2014	The French oil executive was killed when his corporate jet collided during take-off with an airport snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver in Moscow.[633][634]
Gary Anderson		3 November 2014	The 58-year-old from Somerdale, New Jersey, was delivering drywall to a construction site and leaned his head into the car of a co-worker while having a conversation. As he pulled his head out, a worker accidentally dropped a 1-pound (0.45 kg) tape measure which plummeted 50 stories, or approximately 500 feet (150 m), when it ricocheted off a piece of metal 10 feet (3.0 m) off the ground and smashed into Anderson's head. He was rushed to Jersey City Medical Center where he suffered cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 9:52 a.m. Hard hats were mandatory at the site, and it is unclear why Anderson was not wearing one when he was killed.[635][636]
Phillip Hughes		27 November 2014	The 25-year-old Australian Test and ODI cricketer was killed by a bouncer striking his neck during a cricket match, causing a vertebral artery dissection.[637][638]
Joshua Harrison-Jones		7 January 2015	The 16-year-old from Stretford, Greater Manchester, died when his neck became trapped between his exercise bench and a onesie he was using as a resistance band.[639][640][641]
Maxee		28 February 2015	The member of American R&B group Brownstone died after falling backward while holding a wine glass. During the fall, the glass shattered on the ground behind her head, and the shards pierced her neck, causing profuse bleeding.[642][643][644]
Stephen Woytack		30 March 2015	The 74-year-old was decorating his family's grave plot at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Throop, Pennsylvania, for Easter with his wife when the tombstone of his mother-in-law toppled over, pinning him underneath and crushing him to death. The stone had supposedly been dislodged when the previously frozen ground was thawed by the early spring temperatures. Woytack was buried in a plot directly in front of the tombstone that killed him.[645][646]
Randy Llanes		29 May 2015	The 47-year-old fisherman from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, was killed by a swordfish. He had harpooned the fish and jumped into the water to retrieve it, but the swordfish impaled him in the chest.[647][648]
Chelsea Ake-Salvacion		19 October 2015	The 24-year-old beauty salon employee in Henderson, Nevada, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.[649][650]
Ravi Subramanian		16 December 2015	The Air India technician was sucked into an aircraft's jet engine.[651][652]
V. Kamaraj		2016	The 40-year-old Indian bus driver was claimed by local newspapers to have been killed by a meteorite which left a two-foot (60 cm) crater, although officials from NASA oppose that view, saying that the most likely explanation was a land-based explosion. According to a preliminary report by the National College Instrumentation Facility (NCIF) in Trichy, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) study on the evidence of the samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore, from where the blast occurred, showed the "presence of carbonaceous chondrites".[653][654][655][656]
Irma Bule		4 April 2016	The 29-year-old Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.[657][658]
Lottie Michelle Belk		6 June 2016	The 55-year-old was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind in Virginia Beach, Virginia.[659] Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).[660]
Lane Graves		14 June 2016	The 2-year-old boy from Nebraska was on vacation and playing on the beach at Seven Seas Lagoon around 9 p.m. at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, just outside of Orlando, Florida. While he was playing, an alligator approached and dragged him under the water. Graves's body was found nearby the next day, intact and apparently drowned.[661][662][663]
Anton Yelchin		19 June 2016	The 27-year-old American actor, known for portraying Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movie series, was found pinned between his car and a brick wall. His driveway was on an incline and his car was found running and in neutral.[664][665] The manufacturer had recalled the car make in April 2016, for concerns about its gearshift design that could cause rollaway incidents, but the software patch to repair the vehicles did not reach dealers until the week of Yelchin's death.[666]
John William Ashe		22 June 2016	The 61-year-old Antiguan diplomat and politician, a former President of the United Nations General Assembly who was awaiting trial on bribery charges, died when a barbell fell on his neck at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, causing traumatic asphyxia and laryngeal fractures.[667][668]
Kristopher Moules and Timothy Gilliam Jr.		18 July 2016	Moules, a 25-year-old correctional officer, and Gilliam, a 27-year-old out-of-county inmate being housed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, fell to their deaths after an altercation between them caused them to slam into the exterior of the fifth-floor elevator doors. Despite the elevator having its up-to-date working credentials, the door popped open on impact, causing the men to fall five flights down the shaft to their deaths. The county declared Moules' death a homicide and declared Gilliam's an accident.[669][670][671]
Unknown girl		26 July 2016	A 7-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo in Rabat, Morocco.[672][673]
Caleb Schwab		7 August 2016	The 10-year-old was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide at Schlitterbahn Kansas City.[674][675]
Julio Macías González		26 August 2016	The 17-year-old from Mexico City died from a cerebrovascular accident caused by embolus formed on a neck hickey.[676][677]
Ten people		21 November 2016	A powerful southerly change in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who died from respiratory failure.[678] This was due to a stark 60-kilometre-per-hour (37 mph) wind that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks small enough to enter people's lungs.[679]
Kyle Thomson		26 December 2016	The 22-year-old Iowa State University student was bench-pressing about 315 pounds (143 kg) at a gym in Ankeny, Iowa, when the barbell slipped from his hands, crushing his neck. Thomson had spotters for the lift.[680][681][682]
Akbar Salubiro		March 2017	The 25-year-old was killed and swallowed by a reticulated python in West Sulawesi, Indonesia, in the first fully confirmed case of a snake swallowing an adult human.[683]
Charlie Holt		14 April 2017	The 5-year-old was killed at the Sun Dial, a rotating restaurant at the top of Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, when his head was caught in a small space between the rotating and non-rotating sections.[684]