List of unusual deaths in the 20th century

Antiquity

Middle Ages

Renaissance

Early modern period

19th century

20th century

21st century

Animal deaths

Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning

1900

In the English Midlands and North West England, over 6,000 were poisoned and 70 people died after drinking beer which used non-purified sulfuric acid laced with arsenic as an ingredient. Most survivors were paralysed.

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.

Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster

29 November 1900

During the 1900 Big Game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal American football teams, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent to $39 in 2025) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof then collapsed, severing fuel pipes and causing at least 100 pe

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.

R. Stanton Walker

25 October 1902

The 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio when a foul ball struck him in the hand, driving a knife he was passing to one of his friends into his chest. 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.

Ed Delahanty

2 July 1903

The 35-year-old American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train due to drunken horseplay, falling off International Bridge below Niagara Falls. Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, was the last to see him alive, reportedly scuffling with him. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is uncl

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.

Archibald Anderson

4 March 1907

The 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when a tooth plate fell out and got lodged in his throat, choking him to death.

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, becoming the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft.

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 II 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. The circumstances of his death were c

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 12 April 1909. He died from internal injuries and gangrene two weeks later.

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.

Sigmund Neuberger

9 May 1911

The 40-year-old German magician, better known as "The Great Lafayette", was so devastated by the death of his pet dog Beauty that he arranged burial for her with the Edinburgh City Council at Piershill Cemetery, under the condition that he would also be buried next to her when he died. Lafayette reportedly proclaimed that he would not live much lon

Franz Reichelt

4 February 1912

The 33-year-old tailor and inventor leaped from the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute made from cloth, his own invention, and fell 57 metres (187 ft) to his death. 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". His impact crater was 15 centimetres (5 in) deep

Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice

25 April 1913

The famed French goldsmith and his wife were killed when their house, in an aristocratic quarter of Paris, collapsed on them.

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. She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 da

Victims of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916

July 1916

Between 1 and 12 July 1916, four people were killed and one critically injured by a shark attack at Jersey Shore, New Jersey. Before 1916, American scholars and scientific community doubted that sharks would fatally wound a living person in the temperate waters of the northeastern United States without provocation. The attack led to a wave of panic

Grigori Rasputin

30 December [O . 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. According to his murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grigori Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine

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.

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.

Ivy Taylor

4 August 1920

The 12-year-old girl from Blackburn, Lancashire, England, died from ulceration of air passages after ingesting sodium silicate jelly inside a golf ball.

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.

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.

Thomas Lynn Bradford

5 February 1921

In an attempt to ascertain the existence of an afterlife, the 48-year-old spiritualist committed suicide by inert gas asphyxiation. Two spiritualists later claimed to have talked with his ghost.

Michael F. Farley

8 October 1921

The 58-year-old U . Representative and Gore–McLemore resolution supporter died of anthrax he contracted from his shaving brush.

Mrs. W. C. (Elizabeth) 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.

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.

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. Co-star Wilfred Lytell and a chauffeur were able to extinguish the flames and rush her

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).

Thornton Jones

1 August 1924

The lawyer from Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, slit his own throat while he was having a nightmare. An inquest at Bangor delivered a verdict of "suicide while temporarily insane".

Cora Stallman

1 August 1925

The 45-year-old schoolteacher from Cincinnati, Ohio, was found dead in a cistern in Coles County, Illinois, and was confirmed to be poisoned by a "strange man".

Phillip McClean

April 1926

The 16-year-old and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland, when it attacked Phillip and knocked him to the ground. The bird's claws punctured his jugular vein, and he died of blood loss before help could be summoned.

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.

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." However, other stories claim he was murdered. Who or what killed Houdini is still under speculation.

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.

Alexander Bogdanov

7 April 1928

The 54-year-old Soviet polymath and pioneer of blood transfusion died after exchanging his blood with his student who suffered from malaria and tuberculosis, presumably due to hemolytic transfusion reaction. Bogdanov's hypotheses were that the younger man's blood would rejuvenate his own aging body, and that his own blood, which he believed was res

Alfred Loewenstein

4 July 1928

The 51-year-old financier and third-richest man in the world at the time, died while flying from England to Belgium on his private Fokker F airplane. It is believed he fell out of the aircraft and into the water where he died.

Victims of the Gillingham Fair fire disaster

11 July 1929

In Gillingham, Kent, United Kingdom, an annual firefighting demonstration involving a rescue operation inside a three-storey dummy house was hosted at a fair in Gillingham park. The real fire was accidentally lit after the six men and nine boys aged between 10 and 14 were ready to enact their staged rescue. The canvas-clad wooden structure was quic

William Kogut

20 October 1930

The 26-year-old 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.

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.

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 forward, and he 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.

Eben Byers

31 March 1932

The 51-year-old American socialite and industrialist died after drinking excessive quantities of Radithor, a patent medicine that contained 2 microcuries of radium. 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 d

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 sa

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."

Catherine Steyer

20 January 1937

The 33-year-old hatcheck girl was accidentally electrocuted by a homemade booby trap, consisting of powered wires hidden within drapes, that her fiance had installed after her apartment was broken into a few months prior. Falling onto one wire, with another dangling above her arm, she completed the circuit each time the dangling wire touched her; s

Fred Clapp

28 May 1937

The 77-year-old farmer from Clark County, South Dakota, died after being dragged by a bundle of horses while being tied to the harness.

Benjamin Taylor

2 June 1937

During a carbuncle removal operation, an electric cautery ignited gases from the patient's lungs. This caused an explosion which killed Taylor and injured two nurses.

Harold Davidson

30 July 1937

The 62-year-old defrocked Anglican vicar died while re-enacting the story of Daniel in the Lions' Den at a sideshow in Skegness, by entering a cage containing two lions, which then mauled and fatally injured him.

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; he 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.

Italo Balbo

28 June 1940

The 44-year-old governor of Italian Libya was flying his personal Savoia-Marchetti SM when the Libyan airfield at Tobruk was attacked by a squad of British planes. He was killed by friendly fire from Italian anti-aircraft batteries on the ground.

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 an ice axe.

Sherwood Anderson

8 March 1941

The 64-year-old American writer died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing an olive that had a toothpick inside.

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

Rolf Mützelburg

11 September 1942

The 29-year-old commander of German submarine U-203 died during a World War II patrol southwest of the Azores when he dived from the sub's conning tower to swim in the ocean. The boat lurched suddenly, and Mützelburg's head and shoulder struck the sub.

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 bom

Victims of the Balvano train disaster

3 March 1944

At around midnight on 3 March 1944, a freight train headed from Naples to Potenza came to a stop inside the Armi tunnel in the town of Balvano due to its inability to climb over an incline. Due to a combination of carbon monoxide produced by poor-quality coal used on the locomotives and the lack of ventilation inside the tunnel, at least 517 people

Thomas Midgley Jr.

2 November 1944

The 55-year-old American chemical engineer, best known for inventing leaded gasoline and Chlorofluorocarbon gas, contracted polio in 1941, which left him severely disabled, leading him to devise 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.

Lothar Sieber

1 March 1945

The 22-year-old Luftwaffe test pilot died while making the only manned test flight of the Bachem Ba 349 Natter vertical take-off bomber. On his fatal flight, Sieber became the first human to fly a vertically-launched rocket.

Victims of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35)

30 July 1945

After completing the classified mission to deliver a component for the Little Boy atomic bomb, the American heavy cruiser was sunk by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, about 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced hypothermia, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the op

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". Slotin used a screwdriver to separate two half sphere-shaped neutron deflectors enclosing a plutonium core which came to be known as the "demon core" to observe how much he can defl

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 . Navy Skyhook balloon.

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.

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.

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

Nine members of a hiking group led by Igor Dyatlov

2 February 1959

Nine experienced hikers died under unexplained circumstances on a ski trek across Northern Urals. Their inadequately dressed bodies were found on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl mountain, 1 km away from their tent, which was cut open from the inside and abandoned along with equipment and supplies. The official investigation found no evidence of foul

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.

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 partway out by hand, but he pulled the rod further than intended. The reac

Victor Prather

4 May 1961

The 34-year-old U . 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.

Giulio Cabianca and 3 others

15 June 1961

The 38-year-old Italian racing driver died in a bizarre series of events at the Modena Autodrome after a gearbox failure; unable to stop, Cabianca went off track, struck a spectator and then went through the gate of the Autodrome which was open because of men at work near the track. The car crossed the Via Emilia, collided with several vehicles, th

Lee Harvey Oswald

24 November 1963

The 24-year old assassin of President John F. Kennedy was being led through the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters to be transferred to the county jail when he was shot at point-blank range by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The entire incident was filmed and broadcast live by NBC, making it the first death and first murder to occur on a l

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 V

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.

Jayne Mansfield, Samuel Brody, and Ronnie Harrison

29 June 1967

The 34-year-old American actress and Playboy model died when the driver of her 1966 Buick Electra 225 crashed into a tractor which had abruptly stopped to make way for an approaching mosquito insecticide fog-spraying truck, which released clouds of insecticide that obscured the tractor. Brody, her lover, and Harrison, the driver, also died, but her

Harold Holt

17 December 1967

The 59-year-old Prime Minister of Australia disappeared, presumed drowned, while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria. He was "simply one of the number of ordinary Australians who drown each year through poor judgment or bad luck"; his drowning has been described as "not unusual", and as "an ordinary death, a shockingly banal one that s

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 De

Alan Fish

20 May 1970

On 16 May, while watching a Los Angeles Dodgers—San Francisco Giants game, the 14-year-old was struck in the head by a Manny Mota foul ball, causing an intracerebral hemorrhage. He was sent to the hospital the next morning following a seizure and taken off life support two days later due to apparent brain death; he is the first fan in Major League

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.

Professor Zovek

10 March 1972

The 31-year-old Mexican escape artist and illusionist was descending from a helicopter by rope during a stunt in Cuautitlán. The helicopter suddenly ascended and flew in circles, leading him to lose his grip and fall 15 m (49 ft) to his death.

John Dimmer

5 July 1974

While working in saturation aboard oil platform Sedco 135F in the British Sector of the North Sea, the 27-year-old British commercial diver suffered a pneumothorax during decompression. The diving supervisor recognized Dimmer's condition, but the onshore physician consulted by the platform incorrectly diagnosed Dimmer as suffering from pneumonia. A

Deborah Gail Stone

8 July 1974

The 18-year-old hostess for the America Sings attraction at Disneyland died after being crushed between two walls around 11:00 pm. It is speculated that she either fell backward or tried to jump from one stage to another.

Christine Chubbuck

15 July 1974

The 29-year-old American news anchor from Hudson, Ohio, shot herself in the head 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 take their own life on live television.

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.

Roger Baldwin and Peter Holmes

9 September 1975

After a bell dive while working in saturation aboard the semi-submersible drill rig Waage Drill II in the North Sea, British commercial divers Baldwin, 24, and Holmes, 29, died of hyperthermia due to a large amount of helium being pumped into the diving chamber complex in response to an apparent pressure leak. The supervisor had mistakenly been mon

Mark Frechette

27 September 1975

The 27-year-old American-Canadian film actor, known for playing the lead role in the 1970 film Zabriskie Point, died while in prison for bank robbery when a barbell fell on his neck while he was weightlifting.

Luciano Re Cecconi

18 January 1977

The 28-year-old professional footballer for S . Lazio and the Italy national football team, was shot while pretending to rob a jeweller as a practical joke.

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.

Kurt Gödel

14 January 1978

The 71-year-old logician and mathematician developed an obsessive fear of being poisoned and refused to eat food prepared by anyone but his wife. 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).

Georgi Markov

11 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. Markov died four days later in hospital. No one was ever charged with the assassination.

Robert Williams

25 January 1979

The Ford plant worker became the first person known to be killed by a robot when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.

John Bowen

13 December 1979

While attending a 9 December NFL game at Shea Stadium, the 20-year-old native of Nashua, New Hampshire was struck in the head by a radio-controlled aircraft shaped like a lawn mower being flown by a local model plane club during halftime. He died four days later. Another spectator was also injured, but recovered.

Lourdes Maria da Silva

3 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.

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 hig

John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole, and Nick Mullon

19 March 1981 — 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 1

Boris Sagal

22 May 1981

The 57-year-old 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.

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

William Holden

12 November 1981

The 63-year-old American actor slipped on a rug in his apartment while intoxicated, gashed his head open on a bedside table and bled to death without calling for help. His body was discovered four days later.

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 caused the helicopter to fall on them. Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.

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.

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 Hel

Jimmy Ferrozzo

23 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.

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 horri

Jon-Erik Hexum

18 October 1984

The 26-year-old American actor died after playing a simulated Russian roulette with a 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.

Jason Findley

21 May 1985

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.

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 kilometr

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.

Franco Brun

9 June 1987

The 22-year-old inmate from Toronto being held at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, died while trying to swallow a pocket-size Bible.

Ivan Lester McGuire

2 April 1988

The 35-year-old veteran skydiver from Durham, North Carolina, was recording a jump by an instructor and student from the Franklin County Sports Parachute Center in Louisburg, North Carolina, when he jumped from a plane without a parachute. Focused on the recording process, he apparently forgot to put one on, and his camera equipment may have been m

Clarabelle Lansing

28 April 1988

On Aloha Airlines Flight 243 from Hilo to Honolulu, Hawaii, the 58-year-old flight attendant was blown out of the Boeing 737-209 30,000 feet (9,100 m) above the Pacific Ocean when the plane experienced explosive decompression due to metal fatigue.

3 people and Cachy the poodle

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.

Naoyuki Kanno

28 February 1989

The 23-year-old Japanese schoolteacher's deceased body was found horizontally wedged inside of a septic pipe connected to a toilet in Miyakoji village, Fukushima. To extract him, rescuers had to excavate the lavatory and cut the pipe open because the 36cm wide outlet was too small to pull him out manually.