List of unusual deaths in the 20th century
Updated: Wikipedia source
This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 20th century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
Tables
Antiquity
Antiquity
Lists of unusual deaths
Antiquity
Middle Ages
Middle Ages
Lists of unusual deaths
Middle Ages
Lists of unusual deaths
Renaissance
Lists of unusual deaths
Early modern period
19th century
19th century
Lists of unusual deaths
19th century
Lists of unusual deaths
20th century
Lists of unusual deaths
21st century
Animal deaths
Animal deaths
Lists of unusual deaths
Animal deaths
| Lists of unusual deaths | ||
| Antiquity | ||
| Middle Ages | Renaissance | Early modern period |
| 19th century | 20th century | 21st century |
| Animal deaths | ||
· 1900–1959
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning
Name of person
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning
Date of death
1900
Details
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
Jesse William Lazear
Name of person
Jesse William Lazear
Date of death
25 September 1900
Details
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.[verification needed]
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster
Name of person
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster
Date of death
29 November 1900
Details
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 $38 in 2024) 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 people to fall four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of a furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). 23 people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.
James Doyle Jr.
James Doyle Jr.
Name of person
James Doyle Jr.
Date of death
30 January 1901
Details
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
R. Stanton Walker
Name of person
R. Stanton Walker
Date of death
25 October 1902
Details
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
Ed Delahanty
Name of person
Ed Delahanty
Date of death
2 July 1903
Details
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 unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.
Mary Ellen Rumble
Mary Ellen Rumble
Name of person
Mary Ellen Rumble
Date of death
19 December 1905
Details
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
Archibald Anderson
Name of person
Archibald Anderson
Date of death
4 March 1907
Details
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
Thomas Selfridge
Name of person
Thomas Selfridge
Date of death
17 September 1908
Details
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
Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler
Name of person
Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler
Date of death
14 November 1908
Details
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 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.
Doc Powers
Doc Powers
Name of person
Doc Powers
Date of death
26 April 1909
Details
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
Ada Gregory
Name of person
Ada Gregory
Date of death
3 June 1910
Details
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
Sigmund Neuberger
Name of person
Sigmund Neuberger
Date of death
9 May 1911
Details
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 longer after Beauty's death. Four days later, he was performing at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland, when a fire broke out and engulfed the stage within minutes. The audience, thinking that this was all part of the illusion, did not evacuate until the theatre manager signaled for the orchestra to play God Save the King. Two days after the fire, Lafayette's body double was misidentified as Lafayette himself until his real body was identified a day later and was buried per his wishes. Other than Lafayette, ten other people also died in the disaster.
Franz Reichelt
Franz Reichelt
Name of person
Franz Reichelt
Date of death
4 February 1912
Details
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 (5.9 in) deep.
Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice
Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice
Name of person
Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-Meurice
Date of death
25 April 1913
Details
The famed French goldsmith and his wife were killed when their house, in an aristocratic quarter of Paris, collapsed on them.
Emily Davison
Emily Davison
Name of person
Emily Davison
Date of death
8 June 1913
Details
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 days later.
Victims of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
Victims of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
Name of person
Victims of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
Date of death
July 1916
Details
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 that led to shark hunts aimed at eradicating the population of "man-eating" sharks, and entered into American popular culture, serving as an inspiration of the novel Jaws and its film adaptation.
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin
Name of person
Grigori Rasputin
Date of death
30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916
Details
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.[page needed] 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.
Gustav Kobbé
Gustav Kobbé
Name of person
Gustav Kobbé
Date of death
27 July 1918
Details
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.[unreliable source?]
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood
Name of person
Victims of the Great Molasses Flood
Date of death
15 January 1919
Details
21 people were killed and 150 injured after a large tank of molasses burst in Boston's North End.
Ivy Taylor
Ivy Taylor
Name of person
Ivy Taylor
Date of death
4 August 1920
Details
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
Ray Chapman
Name of person
Ray Chapman
Date of death
17 August 1920
Details
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
Alexander of Greece
Name of person
Alexander of Greece
Date of death
25 October 1920
Details
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
Thomas Lynn Bradford
Name of person
Thomas Lynn Bradford
Date of death
5 February 1921
Details
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, quietly waiting until the gas asphyxiated him. In the week following his death, two fellow spiritualists claimed to have communicated with his ghost.
Michael F. Farley
Michael F. Farley
Name of person
Michael F. Farley
Date of death
8 October 1921
Details
The 58-year-old U.S. Representative and Gore–McLemore resolution supporter died of anthrax he contracted from his shaving brush.[unreliable source?]
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley
Name of person
Mrs. W. C. Eckersley
Date of death
25 November 1922
Details
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
Frank Hayes
Name of person
Frank Hayes
Date of death
4 June 1923
Details
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
Martha Mansfield
Name of person
Martha Mansfield
Date of death
30 November 1923
Details
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 to a hospital, where she died the following day from her injuries.
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn
Name of person
Mr. and Mrs. Earl J. Dunn
Date of death
13 July 1924
Details
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
Thornton Jones
Name of person
Thornton Jones
Date of death
1 August 1924
Details
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".[failed verification]
Cora Stallman
Cora Stallman
Name of person
Cora Stallman
Date of death
1 August 1925
Details
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
Phillip McClean
Name of person
Phillip McClean
Date of death
April 1926
Details
The 16-year-old and his brother were clubbing a cassowary on the family property in Mossman, Queensland, when it knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[verification needed]
Bobby Leach
Bobby Leach
Name of person
Bobby Leach
Date of death
26 April 1926
Details
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
Harry Houdini
Name of person
Harry Houdini
Date of death
31 October 1926
Details
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
Isadora Duncan
Name of person
Isadora Duncan
Date of death
14 September 1927
Details
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
Alexander Bogdanov
Name of person
Alexander Bogdanov
Date of death
7 April 1928
Details
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 resistant to tuberculosis, would treat the student's disease. The student injected with his blood made a complete recovery.
Alfred Loewenstein
Alfred Loewenstein
Name of person
Alfred Loewenstein
Date of death
4 July 1928
Details
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.VII airplane. It is believed he fell out of the aircraft and into the water where he died.
Victims of the Gillingham Fair fire disaster
Victims of the Gillingham Fair fire disaster
Name of person
Victims of the Gillingham Fair fire disaster
Date of death
11 July 1929
Details
At Gillingham, Kent, United Kingdom, an annual firefighting demonstration involving a rescue operation inside a three-storeys 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 quickly engulfed in flames, trapping the occupants inside. The crowd reportedly cheering and applauding what they believed to be realistic and spectacular effects until they witnessed two boys with their clothing ablaze jump to their deaths from the top of the structure. The fire resulted in the death of 15 people.
William Kogut
William Kogut
Name of person
William Kogut
Date of death
20 October 1930
Details
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
Arnold Bennett
Name of person
Arnold Bennett
Date of death
27 March 1931
Details
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.[page needed][verification needed]
James Leo McDermott
James Leo McDermott
Name of person
James Leo McDermott
Date of death
26 August 1931
Details
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
Eben Byers
Name of person
Eben Byers
Date of death
31 March 1932
Details
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 died the next year.
Michael Malloy
Michael Malloy
Name of person
Michael Malloy
Date of death
22 February 1933
Details
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".[page needed]
Susan Grace Kelly
Susan Grace Kelly
Name of person
Susan Grace Kelly
Date of death
16 January 1935
Details
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
Catherine Steyer
Name of person
Catherine Steyer
Date of death
20 January 1937
Details
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; she died slowly from the repeating doses of electricity.
Fred Clapp
Fred Clapp
Name of person
Fred Clapp
Date of death
28 May 1937
Details
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.
Benjamin Taylor
Benjamin Taylor
Name of person
Benjamin Taylor
Date of death
2 June 1937
Details
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.
Nicholas Comper
Nicholas Comper
Name of person
Nicholas Comper
Date of death
17 June 1939
Details
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
Italo Balbo
Name of person
Italo Balbo
Date of death
28 June 1940
Details
The 44-year-old governor of Italian Libya was flying his personal Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 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
Leon Trotsky
Name of person
Leon Trotsky
Date of death
21 August 1940
Details
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
Sherwood Anderson
Name of person
Sherwood Anderson
Date of death
8 March 1941
Details
The 64-year-old American writer died of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing an olive that had a toothpick inside.[unreliable source?][unreliable source?]
Jack Budlong
Jack Budlong
Name of person
Jack Budlong
Date of death
5 August 1941
Details
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.
Rolf Mützelburg
Rolf Mützelburg
Name of person
Rolf Mützelburg
Date of death
11 September 1942
Details
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.[self-published source?]
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar
Name of person
Maj. Kenneth D. McCullar
Date of death
12 April 1943
Details
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.
Victims of the Balvano train disaster
Victims of the Balvano train disaster
Name of person
Victims of the Balvano train disaster
Date of death
3 March 1944
Details
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 (most of whom were stowaway passengers) died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. The disaster remains the deadliest train accident in Italian history.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
Name of person
Thomas Midgley Jr.
Date of death
2 November 1944
Details
In 1940, the 51-year-old contracted polio, 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
Lothar Sieber
Name of person
Lothar Sieber
Date of death
1 March 1945
Details
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)
Victims of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35)
Name of person
Victims of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35)
Date of death
30 July 1945
Details
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 open ocean for four days, with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. Only 316 survived the sinking; no U.S. warship sunk at sea has lost more sailors.
Louis Slotin
Louis Slotin
Name of person
Louis Slotin
Date of death
30 May 1946
Details
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 deflect the neutron without the core went over its critical mass. His screwdriver slipped, causing the top deflector to fully encase the core, resulting into a criticality accident that exposed him to a fatal dose of radiation. Slotin died 9 days later; the other people in the room observing the experiment survived.
Thomas Mantell
Thomas Mantell
Name of person
Thomas Mantell
Date of death
7 January 1948
Details
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.
Mary Reeser
Mary Reeser
Name of person
Mary Reeser
Date of death
2 July 1951
Details
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
Margaret Wise Brown
Name of person
Margaret Wise Brown
Date of death
13 November 1952
Details
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.[unreliable source?]
Gareth Jones
Gareth Jones
Name of person
Gareth Jones
Date of death
30 November 1958
Details
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.
Nine members of a hiking group led by Igor Dyatlov
Nine members of a hiking group led by Igor Dyatlov
Name of person
Nine members of a hiking group led by Igor Dyatlov
Date of death
2 February 1959
Details
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, 1.5 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 play and determined that six of the hikers died from hypothermia, while the other three sustained fatal physical trauma. Inexplicable injuries, traces of radiation on victims' clothing, and reports of bright burning objects in the sky have led to much speculation about the exact nature of the incident.
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
| 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.[verification needed] |
| 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 $38 in 2024) 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 people to fall four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of a furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). 23 people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history. |
| 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 unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump. |
| 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 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. |
| 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 longer after Beauty's death. Four days later, he was performing at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland, when a fire broke out and engulfed the stage within minutes. The audience, thinking that this was all part of the illusion, did not evacuate until the theatre manager signaled for the orchestra to play God Save the King. Two days after the fire, Lafayette's body double was misidentified as Lafayette himself until his real body was identified a day later and was buried per his wishes. Other than Lafayette, ten other people also died in the disaster. |
| 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 (5.9 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 days later. |
| 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 that led to shark hunts aimed at eradicating the population of "man-eating" sharks, and entered into American popular culture, serving as an inspiration of the novel Jaws and its film adaptation. |
| 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.[page needed] 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. |
| 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.[unreliable source?] |
| 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 sealing his Detroit apartment, blowing out the pilot of his heater, and turning on the gas, quietly waiting until the gas asphyxiated him. In the week following his death, two fellow spiritualists claimed to have communicated with his ghost. |
| 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.[unreliable source?] |
| 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. | |
| 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 to a hospital, where she died the following day from her injuries. |
| 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".[failed verification] | |
| 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 knocked him down, kicked him in the neck, and opened a large cut, leading to death from loss of blood.[verification needed] | |
| 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 resistant to tuberculosis, would treat the student's disease. The student injected with his blood made a complete recovery. |
| 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.VII 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 | At Gillingham, Kent, United Kingdom, an annual firefighting demonstration involving a rescue operation inside a three-storeys 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 quickly engulfed in flames, trapping the occupants inside. The crowd reportedly cheering and applauding what they believed to be realistic and spectacular effects until they witnessed two boys with their clothing ablaze jump to their deaths from the top of the structure. The fire resulted in the death of 15 people. |
| 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.[page needed][verification needed] |
| 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 died the next year. |
| 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".[page needed] |
| 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; she died slowly from the repeating doses of electricity. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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.79 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. |
· 1960s
Alan Stacey
Alan Stacey
Name of person
Alan Stacey
Date of death
19 June 1960
Details
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.[unreliable source?]
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
Name of person
John A. Byrnes, Richard Leroy McKinley, and Richard C. Legg
Date of death
3 January 1961
Details
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 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-lined coffins. The three remain the only human beings killed by a reactor explosion in the United States.
Victor Prather
Victor Prather
Name of person
Victor Prather
Date of death
4 May 1961
Details
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.
Giulio Cabianca and 3 others
Giulio Cabianca and 3 others
Name of person
Giulio Cabianca and 3 others
Date of death
15 June 1961
Details
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, then crashed against the wall of a coachbuilder shop. Cabianca was killed, as were three others on the road.
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross
Name of person
Joseph A. Walker and Carl Cross
Date of death
8 June 1966
Details
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.
Nick Piantanida
Nick Piantanida
Name of person
Nick Piantanida
Date of death
29 August 1966
Details
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.[verification needed]
Jayne Mansfield, Samuel Brody, and Ronnie Harrison
Jayne Mansfield, Samuel Brody, and Ronnie Harrison
Name of person
Jayne Mansfield, Samuel Brody, and Ronnie Harrison
Date of death
29 June 1967
Details
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 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.
Harold Holt
Harold Holt
Name of person
Harold Holt
Date of death
17 December 1967
Details
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 still befalls dozens every summer." Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories.
Albert Dekker
Albert Dekker
Name of person
Albert Dekker
Date of death
5 May 1968
Details
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.
| 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.[unreliable source?] |
| 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 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-lined coffins. The three remain the only human beings killed by a reactor explosion in the United States. |
| 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. |
| 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, then crashed against the wall of a coachbuilder shop. Cabianca was killed, as were three others on the road. |
| 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. |
| 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.[verification needed] |
| 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 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. |
| 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 still befalls dozens every summer." Holt's disappearance gave rise to a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories. |
| 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. |
· 1970s
Alan Fish
Alan Fish
Name of person
Alan Fish
Date of death
20 May 1970
Details
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 Baseball history to die of injuries caused by a foul ball.
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
Name of person
Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev
Date of death
29 June 1971
Details
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.
James Connolly
James Connolly
Name of person
James Connolly
Date of death
21 January 1973
Details
After the 21-year-old construction company employee and three of his friends left a Sanilac County, Michigan tavern following a discussion about dangerous stunts that they each had done in the past, the group drove to a nearby farm in Bridgehampton Township during the early morning hours, where Connolly attempted to display a daring feat of courage by holding a half-stick of dynamite, lighting its three-inch fuse and placing it in his mouth like a cigar. Moments later, as he was reaching towards himself to remove the small explosive, it suddenly detonated, killing him instantly. Two of his friends survived with minor injuries while the third one escaped injury.[verification needed][verification needed]
John Dimmer
John Dimmer
Name of person
John Dimmer
Date of death
5 July 1974
Details
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. As a result, decompression continued, and Dimmer's pneumothorax proved fatal.
Deborah Gail Stone
Deborah Gail Stone
Name of person
Deborah Gail Stone
Date of death
8 July 1974
Details
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
Christine Chubbuck
Name of person
Christine Chubbuck
Date of death
15 July 1974
Details
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
Alex Mitchell
Name of person
Alex Mitchell
Date of death
24 March 1975
Details
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
Roger Baldwin and Peter Holmes
Name of person
Roger Baldwin and Peter Holmes
Date of death
9 September 1975
Details
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 monitoring the pressure in the diving bell rather than in the chamber complex.
Mark Frechette
Mark Frechette
Name of person
Mark Frechette
Date of death
27 September 1975
Details
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
Luciano Re Cecconi
Name of person
Luciano Re Cecconi
Date of death
18 January 1977
Details
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.
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren
Name of person
Tom Pryce and Frederick Jansen van Vuuren
Date of death
5 March 1977
Details
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
Kurt Gödel
Name of person
Kurt Gödel
Date of death
14 January 1978
Details
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).[failed verification]
Georgi Markov
Georgi Markov
Name of person
Georgi Markov
Date of death
11 September 1978
Details
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
Robert Williams
Name of person
Robert Williams
Date of death
25 January 1979
Details
The Ford plant worker became the first person known to be killed by a robot[verification needed] when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.[verification needed]
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
| 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 Baseball history to die of injuries caused by a foul ball. | |
| 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. |
| James Connolly | 21 January 1973 | After the 21-year-old construction company employee and three of his friends left a Sanilac County, Michigan tavern following a discussion about dangerous stunts that they each had done in the past, the group drove to a nearby farm in Bridgehampton Township during the early morning hours, where Connolly attempted to display a daring feat of courage by holding a half-stick of dynamite, lighting its three-inch fuse and placing it in his mouth like a cigar. Moments later, as he was reaching towards himself to remove the small explosive, it suddenly detonated, killing him instantly. Two of his friends survived with minor injuries while the third one escaped injury.[verification needed][verification needed] | |
| 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. As a result, decompression continued, and Dimmer's pneumothorax proved fatal. | |
| 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 monitoring the pressure in the diving bell rather than in the chamber complex. |
| 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.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).[failed verification] |
| 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[verification needed] when a factory robot's arm struck him in the head.[verification needed] |
· 1980s
Lourdes Maria da Silva
Lourdes Maria da Silva
Name of person
Lourdes Maria da Silva
Date of death
3 August 1980
Details
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
Azaria Chamberlain
Name of person
Azaria Chamberlain
Date of death
17 August 1980
Details
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.
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole, and Nick Mullon
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole, and Nick Mullon
Name of person
John Bjornstad, Forrest Cole, and Nick Mullon
Date of death
19 March 1981, 1 April 1981, and 11 April 1995
Details
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.
Boris Sagal
Boris Sagal
Name of person
Boris Sagal
Date of death
22 May 1981
Details
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
David Alan Kirwan
Name of person
David Alan Kirwan
Date of death
21 July 1981
Details
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.
William Holden
William Holden
Name of person
William Holden
Date of death
12 November 1981
Details
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
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen
Name of person
Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen
Date of death
23 July 1982
Details
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.[failed verification] Morrow and Le were decapitated and Chen was crushed.
Dick Wertheim
Dick Wertheim
Name of person
Dick Wertheim
Date of death
15 September 1983
Details
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
Truls Hellevik
Name of person
Truls Hellevik
Date of death
5 November 1983
Details
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.
Jimmy Ferrozzo
Jimmy Ferrozzo
Name of person
Jimmy Ferrozzo
Date of death
23 November 1983
Details
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
Reginald Tucker
Name of person
Reginald Tucker
Date of death
4 July 1984
Details
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.
Jon-Erik Hexum
Jon-Erik Hexum
Name of person
Jon-Erik Hexum
Date of death
18 October 1984
Details
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.[verification needed]
Jason Findley
Jason Findley
Name of person
Jason Findley
Date of death
21 May 1985
Details
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
Victims of the Lake Nyos disaster
Name of person
Victims of the Lake Nyos disaster
Date of death
21 August 1986
Details
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.
Marc Aaronson
Marc Aaronson
Name of person
Marc Aaronson
Date of death
30 April 1987
Details
The 36-year-old astronomer was crushed to death by a hatch and a revolving telescope dome at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Franco Brun
Franco Brun
Name of person
Franco Brun
Date of death
9 June 1987
Details
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.[unreliable source?]
Ivan Lester McGuire
Ivan Lester McGuire
Name of person
Ivan Lester McGuire
Date of death
2 April 1988
Details
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 mistaken by others in the plane for one. The tape from his helmet camera was partially recovered.
Clarabelle Lansing
Clarabelle Lansing
Name of person
Clarabelle Lansing
Date of death
28 April 1988
Details
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
3 people and Cachy the poodle
Name of person
3 people and Cachy the poodle
Date of death
21 October 1988
Details
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.
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
| 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 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. | |
| 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. |
| 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 died the next day. |
| 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.[failed verification] 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 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. |
| 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 horrified onlookers attending holiday celebrations heard the glass shatter and saw him fall to his death. |
| 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.[verification needed] |
| 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 kilometres (16 mi) of the lake, resulting in the death of 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock. |
| 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.[unreliable source?] | |
| 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 mistaken by others in the plane for one. The tape from his helmet camera was partially recovered. | |
| 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. |
· 1990s
Daniel John O'Brien
Daniel John O'Brien
Name of person
Daniel John O'Brien
Date of death
14 January 1990
Details
The 31-year-old tourist took his own life by jumping into one of the engines of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad. He is said to have scaled an airport wall in the nude, stolen a vehicle from four security guards, and smeared himself with grease before hurling himself into one of the plane's engines.
Parker Turner
Parker Turner
Name of person
Parker Turner
Date of death
17 November 1991
Details
The 39-year-old American cave diver died in the partial collapse of an underwater cave during a dive at Indian Springs, Florida. Of the several hundred cave diving deaths in Florida between 1960 and 2010, Turner's was the only one caused by a partial cave collapse.
Ramon Prado Jr.
Ramon Prado Jr.
Name of person
Ramon Prado Jr.
Date of death
9 May 1992
Details
The 3-year-old boy from Santa Ana was killed when a rear tire of the minibus on which he was riding blew out, causing its steel treads to burst through the floor of the bus, snatch him from the arms of his mother and throw him onto Interstate 5 in Oceanside, California, where he was struck by the bus and at least one other vehicle.
Greg Austin Gingrich
Greg Austin Gingrich
Name of person
Greg Austin Gingrich
Date of death
28 November 1992
Details
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. 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.
Brandon Lee
Brandon Lee
Name of person
Brandon Lee
Date of death
31 March 1993
Details
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.
Garry Hoy
Garry Hoy
Name of person
Garry Hoy
Date of death
9 July 1993
Details
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.
Victims of the Khamar-Daban incident
Victims of the Khamar-Daban incident
Name of person
Victims of the Khamar-Daban incident
Date of death
5 August 1993
Details
Six Kazakhstani hikers died in the Khamar-Daban mountain range in Buryatia, Russia under uncertain circumstances. According to Valentina Utochenko, the sole survivor of the seven-person hiking group, while descending the mountain, each of the climbers except Utochenko suffered from a mysterious symptom involving screaming, bleeding from eyes and ears, frothing at the mouth, and clawing at their throat or clothes before dying.
Gloria Ramirez
Gloria Ramirez
Name of person
Gloria Ramirez
Date of death
19 February 1994
Details
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.
Jeremy T. Brenno
Jeremy T. Brenno
Name of person
Jeremy T. Brenno
Date of death
9 July 1994
Details
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's shaft to break and pierce Brenno's heart, killing him.
Quimby Ghilotti
Quimby Ghilotti
Name of person
Quimby Ghilotti
Date of death
2 June 1997
Details
The 18-year-old from Napa, California died on a school field trip when students tried to fit as many kids as possible on a water slide. The water slide collapsed under the weight of all the students, injuring at least 30 others.
Karen Wetterhahn
Karen Wetterhahn
Name of person
Karen Wetterhahn
Date of death
8 June 1997
Details
The 48-year-old 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.
Jonathan Capewell
Jonathan Capewell
Name of person
Jonathan Capewell
Date of death
29 July 1998
Details
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.
John Lewis
John Lewis
Name of person
John Lewis
Date of death
12 April 1999
Details
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. His body was not found until 30 April 1999.
Valerie Olusanya
Valerie Olusanya
Name of person
Valerie Olusanya
Date of death
25 April 1999
Details
The 35-year-old 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.
Owen Hart
Owen Hart
Name of person
Owen Hart
Date of death
23 May 1999
Details
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.
Jon Desborough
Jon Desborough
Name of person
Jon Desborough
Date of death
10 June 1999
Details
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.
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
| Daniel John O'Brien | 14 January 1990 | The 31-year-old tourist took his own life by jumping into one of the engines of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Piarco International Airport, Trinidad. He is said to have scaled an airport wall in the nude, stolen a vehicle from four security guards, and smeared himself with grease before hurling himself into one of the plane's engines. | |
| Parker Turner | 17 November 1991 | The 39-year-old American cave diver died in the partial collapse of an underwater cave during a dive at Indian Springs, Florida. Of the several hundred cave diving deaths in Florida between 1960 and 2010, Turner's was the only one caused by a partial cave collapse. | |
| Ramon Prado Jr. | 9 May 1992 | The 3-year-old boy from Santa Ana was killed when a rear tire of the minibus on which he was riding blew out, causing its steel treads to burst through the floor of the bus, snatch him from the arms of his mother and throw him onto Interstate 5 in Oceanside, California, where he was struck by the bus and at least one other vehicle. | |
| 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. 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. | |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Victims of the Khamar-Daban incident | | 5 August 1993 | Six Kazakhstani hikers died in the Khamar-Daban mountain range in Buryatia, Russia under uncertain circumstances. According to Valentina Utochenko, the sole survivor of the seven-person hiking group, while descending the mountain, each of the climbers except Utochenko suffered from a mysterious symptom involving screaming, bleeding from eyes and ears, frothing at the mouth, and clawing at their throat or clothes before dying. |
| 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. | |
| Jeremy T. 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's shaft to break and pierce Brenno's heart, killing him. | |
| Quimby Ghilotti | 2 June 1997 | The 18-year-old from Napa, California died on a school field trip when students tried to fit as many kids as possible on a water slide. The water slide collapsed under the weight of all the students, injuring at least 30 others. | |
| Karen Wetterhahn | | 8 June 1997 | The 48-year-old 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. |
| Jonathan Capewell | 29 July 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. | |
| 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. His body was not found until 30 April 1999. | |
| Valerie Olusanya | | 25 April 1999 | The 35-year-old 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
References
- Snopes rates this account of Kogut's death as a "Legend".
- Medico-Chirurgical Transactionshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2036791
- American Journal of Epidemiologyhttps://doi.org/10.1093%2Faje%2Fkwj197
- American National Biographyhttps://dx.doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1200521
- mru.inkhttps://mru.ink/unusual-deaths-history/
- The San Francisco Callhttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1900-12-01/ed-1/seq-6/
- Stanford Magazinehttps://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-big-game-disaster-of-1900
- San Francisco Chroniclehttps://www.sfchronicle.com/college/ostler/article/Big-Game-s-most-gruesome-incident-Sizzling-10619405.php
- The San Francisco Callhttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-01-31/ed-1/seq-3/
- Stockton Recordhttps://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SRX19010131.2.43&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
- The Tucson Citizenhttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020674/1902-11-01/ed-1/seq-1/
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- Moree Gwydir Examiner and General Advertiserhttps://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/111850655/12275256
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- WOAI-TVhttps://news4sanantonio.com/news/our-city-our-history/hollywood-actress-dies-in-freak-accident-while-filming-in-san-antonio-back-in-1923
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- "Poison Theory Probed in Teacher's Strange Death|Illinois Woman, Found Dead in Cistern, Delirious Night Before She Vanished, Sister Says—Threatening Letters Examined"https://newspaperarchive.winona.edu/?a=d&d=TWH19250803-01.2.68&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
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- New York Posthttps://nypost.com/2022/10/31/murder-mysteries-still-surround-harry-houdinis-halloween-death/
- The New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/1927/09/15/archives/isadora-duncan-dragged-by-scarf-from-auto-killed-dancer-is-thrown.html
- The Observerhttps://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/aug/18/vanessathorpe.theobserver
- The Telegraphhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/4949201/Isadora-Duncan-sublime-or-ridiculous.html
- BloodFMBA.ruhttps://web.archive.org/web/20070928113942/http://www.bloodfmba.ru/interesno/index.php?id=interesting_bogdanov
- Transfusion Medicine Reviewshttps://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.tmrv.2007.05.008
- Taunton Daily Gazettehttps://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/674670
- Evening Independenthttps://news.google.com/newspapers?id=K99PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=l1QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3107%2C2967110
- Chatham, Rochester and Gillingham Observerhttps://firemanswedding.weebly.com/1929-publications.html
- The Chatham Newshttps://firemanswedding.weebly.com/1929-publications.html
- The Healdsburg Tribunehttps://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=HT19301020.2.24&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
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- Arnold Bennett: A Biography
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- Santa Cruz Evening Newshttps://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SCEN19310827.1.2&srpos=8&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------
- Imperial Valley Presshttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92070146/1931-08-27/ed-1/seq-3/
- "LASD Deputy James McDermott – End of Watch: Aug. 26, 1931, Unusual Accident"http://shq.lasdnews.net/content/uoa/SHQ/SHQ-PR-LASDDeputyJames.pdf
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- On the House: The Bizarre Killing of Michael Malloy
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- The Morning Callhttps://www.newspapers.com/article/the-morning-call/101133365/
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- Salt Lake Tribunehttps://www.newspapers.com/newspage/598204763/
- The Washington Timeshttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1937-06-02/ed-1/seq-1/
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- Salon.comhttps://www.salon.com/2009/10/01/trotsky/
- The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/13/trotsky-ice-axe-murder-mexico-city
- Listversehttps://listverse.com/2013/04/05/10-notably-weird-deaths-of-the-20th-century/
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- Turner Classic Movieshttps://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/92817/they-died-with-their-boots-on#articles-reviews
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- uboat.nethttps://uboat.net/men/muetzelburg.htm
- On Our Doorstephttps://www.merseamuseum.org.uk/MMPDFs/OOD_PARTS12.pdf
- Minneapolis Star-Journalhttps://www.newspapers.com/newspage/187402112/
- Dickenson County Heraldhttps://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn95079130/1943-05-06/ed-1/seq-7/
- The Yankee Boomerhttps://www.trenidicarta.it/treno8017/19440309theyankeeboomer.html
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- The Telegraphhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/02/titanic-train-disasters-italy-finally-commemorates-hushed-up/
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
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- The New Yorkerhttps://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin
- "About Me"https://gomezlaberge.org/about/
- Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945–1962https://books.google.com/books?id=chD8HUd5uXcC&pg=PA19
- The Mantell Incident: Anatomy of a Re-Investigationhttps://www.nicap.org/mantell/mantell_part_2_1.htm
- Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind: Suspicious Deaths, Mysterious Murders, and Bizarre Disappearances in UFO Historyhttps://books.google.com/books?id=edxEDwAAQBAJ&dq=The+Thomas+Mantell+UFO+Encounter&pg=PT33
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- St. Petersburg Timeshttps://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sARZAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lE8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3822,1539798
- All Thats Interestinghttps://allthatsinteresting.com/unusual-deaths
- The Strangerhttps://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/13/25560712/the-strange-sudden-death-of-the-author-of-goodnight-moon-and-the-runaway-bunny
- The Guardianhttps://web.archive.org/web/20170410133156/https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/may/31/television-drama-theatre
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- CNNhttps://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/04/europe/dyatlov-pass-incident-scli-intl/index.html
- New Scientisthttps://www.newscientist.com/article/2266212-strange-death-of-russian-mountaineers-may-be-due-to-unusual-avalanche/
- National Geographichttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/has-science-solved-history-greatest-adventure-mystery-dyatlov
- The Daily Telegraphhttps://www.newspapers.com/newspage/829431287/
- RaceFanshttps://www.racefans.net/2010/06/19/f1-fanatic-round-up-1962010/
- Motor Sporthttps://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/jim-junior/
- Proving the Principle: A History of The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949–1999https://web.archive.org/web/20110807212441/http://www.inl.gov/proving-the-principle/chapter_15.pdf
- Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accidenthttps://books.google.com/books?id=ATkLIZ06YJQC&pg=PA16
- Atomic America: How a Deadly Explosion and a Feared Admiral Changed the Course of Nuclear Historyhttps://archive.org/details/atomicamericahow00todd
- Arlington National Cemeteryhttps://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rlmckinl.htm
- Daily Herald-Telephonehttps://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-mail-shepard-article-gagarin-a/39434447/
- Navy Medicinehttps://archive.org/details/NavyMedicineVol.89No.5September-october1998/page/n7/mode/2up
- The "Forgotten" Drivers of F1https://www.f1forgottendrivers.com/drivers/giulio-cabianca/
- www.formula1-dictionary.nethttps://www.formula1-dictionary.net/61-65.html
- Oakland Tribunehttps://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=OT19660630.1.24&srpos=2&e=------196-en--20--1--
- The Tactical Air Network – Global Military Aviationhttps://tacairnet.com/2014/10/27/crash-of-the-valkyrie/
- Magnificent Failure: Free Fall from the Edge of Spacehttps://archive.org/details/magnificentfailu00crai
- Vanity Fairhttps://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/felix-baumgartner-jump-story?srsltid=AfmBOoqfxCaTAIo01z3gigOranYl-0IFxUUw_eh5OHod5hVa0JTgxnL8
- Smithsonian Magazinehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/truck-driver-who-jumped-edge-space-180960114/
- "12 Unusual Celebrity Deaths You've Never Heard Of..."https://www.vintag.es/2018/02/unusual-celebrity-deaths.html
- Untitledhttps://untitled-magazine.com/the-devil-made-her-do-it-who-was-the-real-jayne-mansfield/
- The Strategisthttps://www.aspistrategist.org.au/beyond-lbj-remembering-harold-holts-legacy-of-asian-engagement-50-years-on/
- The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/17/harold-holt-the-legacy-is-evident-50-years-after-his-disappearance
- Robert Menzies Institutehttps://web.archive.org/web/20240317033103/https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/afternoon-light-podcast/tom-frame-an-orderly-and-seamless-transition-of-power-the-life-and-achievements-of-harold-holt
- National Archives of Australiahttps://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers/harold-holt
- The Life and Death of Harold Holthttps://archive.org/details/lifedeathharoldh00fram
- "New probe into missing PM mystery"https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/08/24/australia.mystery/index.html
- Tales of Hollywood the Bizarrehttps://books.google.com/books?id=NGnbgyBjHUEC&pg=PA23
- Grungehttps://www.grunge.com/945472/troubling-details-of-albert-dekkers-unexplained-1968-death/
- Slatehttps://slate.com/culture/2009/05/death-at-the-ballpark-a-compendium-of-all-the-people-who-have-died-at-baseball-games.html
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- Channel 4https://web.archive.org/web/20081004071025/http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/space.html
- Astronomyhttps://www.astronomy.com/space-exploration/how-many-astronauts-have-died-in-space/
- https://www.newspapers.com/image/11709177https://www.newspapers.com/image/11709177
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- The Other Price of Britain's Oil: Safety and Control in the North Sea
- Into the Lion's Mouth: The Story of the
- The Los Angeles Timeshttps://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-girl-employe-kille/101422352/
- Inside the Magichttps://insidethemagic.net/2023/06/tiktok-captures-death-of-disneyland-cast-member-zg1/
- The New Yorkerhttps://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-shocking-suicide-a-long-lost-friend-and-a-movie-trailer
- Burger-A-Dayhttps://burgeraday.com/2017/02/07/christine-chubbuck/
- Snopeshttps://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-laughs-on-him/
- The Telegraphhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9344957/Man-who-died-laughing-at-Goodies-had-Long-QT-syndrome.html
- Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1975-10-14/debates/1e6b75f9-d1fc-4e09-9200-5ec836e2b59a/OffshoreOil(Divers)
- The Other Price of Britain's Oil: Safety and Control in the North Sea
- North Sea Divers – a Requiemhttps://books.google.com/books?id=lPp68NAoUF0C&pg=PA132
- Labour Law and Off-Shore Oilhttps://books.google.com/books?id=EXTCDgAAQBAJ&pg=RA2-PR6
- Rolling Stonehttps://www.trussel.com/lyman/frech5.htm
- Slatehttps://slate.com/culture/2009/07/was-zabriskie-point-michelangelo-antonioni-s-biggest-flop-just-misunderstood.html
- Goalhttps://www.goal.com/it/notizie/dallo-scudetto-alla-tragedia-lassurda-morte-di-luciano-re/blt14025baa7bf1fc22
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- Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödelhttps://archive.org/details/logicaldilemmasl0000daws/mode/2up
- The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/apr/26/maths.highereducation
- The New York Timeshttps://web.archive.org/web/20210602063311/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/books/review-journey-edge-of-reason-kurt-godel-biography-stephen-budiansky.html
- Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945https://books.google.com/books?id=fj7aU0qzTLYC
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- The Hollywood Scandal Almanac: Twelve Months of Sinister, Salacious and Senseless History!
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- Strange Deaths: More Than 375 Freakish Fatalitieshttps://books.google.com/books?id=fijmTMOJrJcC
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- Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
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