There’s no business like show business, and there’s no people like show people.
But even if that’s true, celebrities aren’t immune from death.
This is Dumb Ways to Die — Celebrity Edition.
Not everyone on this list is at fault for their own deaths, but they still managed to
die in a pretty ridiculous way.
Before we start, let’s get one popular misconception out of the way, since it’s usually one of
the first deaths people think of when thinking of bizarre celebrity deaths.
Some of you may think we him left off the list by accident, so let’s clear up this
misunderstanding first.
Tennessee Williams was a prolific playwright and screenwriter, best known for A Streetcar
Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Night of the Iguana.
Sadly, despite his genius, he was a troubled and self-destructive person.
He was a known alcohol and drug abuser.
At the age of 71, Tennessee Williams was found dead in New York City in his suite at the
Hotel Elysée on February 25th, 1983.
It was first reported that Williams had choked to death on a plastic bottle cap he’d used
to take barbiturates, a type of drug that is used to treat seizures and other similar
conditions.
It sounds like a dumb way to die, right?
Choking on the bottle cap instead of the drugs?
What many people don’t know is that the report was corrected months later, on August
14th, 1983.
He hadn’t actually died of the small choking hazard, but an overdose of Seconal, or Secobarbital,
a type of barbiturate.
Now, if you still categorize this as a dumb way to die, we’ll leave it up to you.
We felt we would be remiss not to correct this often repeated piece of misinformation.
Aeschylus is the oldest celebrity death on our list.
He was an ancient Greek tragedian, and he was considered the father of tragedy.
If you’re familiar with Greek plays, you may know his works: The Oresteia, The Persians,
or Seven Against Thebes.
It’s possible he also authored Prometheus Bound, but this claim is disputed by historians.
Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise.
He was 67 when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head.
It’s believed that the eagle thought his bald head was a rock, and the bird had intended
to use the rock to crack open the turtle’s shell.
Roman author Pliny stated that Aeschylus spent a lot of time outdoors because of a prophecy
that he would be killed by a falling object.
There’s no way to verify if this is actually true, as is the case with many deaths from
the ancient world, but we personally want to believe it the story, as death by tortoise
is a rather ironic way to go for the father of tragedy.
You may not remember Martha Mansfield, but she was an American actress during America’s
silent film and vaudeville days.
In other words, she was one of the original celebrities!
Mansfield died in 1923, when she was only 24 years old, in a freak accident on set.
She was playing the lead role in a silent film known as “The Warrens of Virginia,”
a film about a Southern woman falling in love with a Union soldier in the Civil War.
It was the movie that was going to skyrocket her to stardom.
They were filming in San Antonio when Mansfield was sitting in her car just after finishing
her scenes.
She was still in a costume that had a billowing hoop skirt and flimsy ruffles.
Someone on set tossed a match that would ignite her costume.
The car’s chauffeur burned his hands trying to remove the enflamed clothing, while Wilfred
Lytell, the film’s leading man, threw his overcoat on her to put her out.
She was rushed to the hospital, where she died on November 30, 1923.
The doctors noted she had burns on all extremities, general toxemia, and suppression of urine.
She would be interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
No one knows who threw the match.
Some say they saw someone throw a match into the car, which would mean someone on set was
stupid enough just to toss a match anywhere.
Others believe Mansfield wanted to smoke a cigarette to calm her nerves, and she ignited
the dress by dropping the match on herself, which would still be tragic but a lesson to
maybe not mess with fire around large frilly dresses.
Mansfield’s mother, Harriet Ehrlich, would immediately reject that theory though, saying
that her daughter was uncomfortable with smoking.
Either way, this tragedy resulted from someone’s carelessness and stupidity.
If you’re wondering if the film was released, it was.
They simply edited down Mansfield’s role, and Rosemary Hill was changed into the leading
lady.
Isadora Duncan was originally from San Francisco but moved to Europe to become a dancer in
her early 20s.
Isadora Duncan always loved dance, and she worked as a dance teacher at her mother’s
music school, even though she wasn’t a classically trained ballerina.
Her dances were improvisational, and she preferred to dance barefoot.
She was particularly popular with female audiences, and she had good reason to want to start a
dancing career in Europe - Her American citizenship was revoked in the early 1920s due to her
being a Communist.
Duncan would meet her end on September 14, 1927.
She was the passenger in a brand new convertible sports car, wearing an enormous red scarf
she had adopted since embracing communism.
What should have been a fun day turned dark.
She leaned her head back to enjoy the sea breeze, and her scarf somehow blew into the
rear wheel well on the passenger side of the car.
The scarf wound around the axle.
It tightened around Duncan’s neck and dragged her out of the car.
She fell onto the cobblestone street, dying instantly.
If you’re familiar with the song Country Roads, you may already know John Denver, who
was one of the original composers and the original singer.
Denver was a popular singer and songwriter in the 1970s, focusing on acoustic folk music.
Denver died in a plane crash in October 1997.
By itself, that’s not so dumb.
It’s simply tragic.
The dumb part of this deaths comes from how he died in the plane crash.
John Denver was the pilot and only passenger on the plane, and it’s not totally clear
what caused the crash.
The details we do know make it immediately clear the whole thing was a bad idea from
the start.
Denver was flying an experimental, homebuilt aircraft.
He was also flying without a pilot’s license.
Due to his arrest record for drunk driving, he was not legally permitted to fly any plane.
Although the autopsy found no signs of alcohol or drugs in his system, it seems like a bad
idea to fly a plane without a license.
So, while his death was tragic, we do have to add him to the list of dumb ways to die
— celebrity edition.
And perhaps the cherry on top was one of Denver’s most popular songs: Leaving on a Jet Plane.
Hungarian-born Harry Houdini was a renowned escape artist.
He would jump off bridges in handcuffs and leg irons, submerge himself in a “Chinese
Water Torture Cell” upside down by his ankles, and escape sealed milk cans filled with water.
Although impressive, Houdini was an accident waiting to happen.
So, what did him in?
Did he drown?
Suffocate?
Or did he plunge to his death?
On October 24, Houdini was performing for a packed house, only to be whisked away to
be treated for appendicitis, dying a week later on Halloween.
People were confused.
It sounds like such an ordinary death for such an extraordinary man.
It was a series of extremely peculiar events that would lead to Houdini’s death, beginning
with a botched performance of the Chinese Water Torture Cell.
He was struck on the leg by faulty equipment, fracturing his ankle.
He was told to rest by his doctor, unsurprisingly Houdini ignored the advice.
He would give a lecture at McGill University and, afterwards, spoke with some of the students
in his dressing room at the Princess Theater.
One of the students, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked Houdini if he could resist hard punches
to his abdomen.
Houdini confirmed the rumors, and Whitehead immediately punched Houdini in the stomach
four to five times.
It was said his punches had a great deal of force behind them, and they were deliberate
and well-directed.
Houdini was still in a reclining position when Whitehead struck, and he had no time
to prepare for the punches.
However, Houdini shrugged the incident off.
Later that same evening, he would complain of discomfort and stomach cramps, and his
condition worsened the next day.
While on an overnight train to Detroit to continue performing, Houdini struggled with
severe abdominal pain, cold sweats, fatigue, and his temperature rose to 104 degrees.
Instead of going to the doctor, Houdini was determined to continue performing, which was
likely his undoing.
Although he managed to make it through his routine, he would collapse after the final
curtain.
He was taken to a hospital for surgery, where the doctors removed his appendix, but it was
too late.
It had ruptured days before, and it had already poisoned him.
He would die on October 31 with his wife, Bess, and his brothers by his side.
Our advice is, if your doctor puts you on bed rest, listen to him and rest!
Oh, and don’t just punch people in the stomach.
That’s pretty stupid and messed up.
Rod Hull was a British comedian and entertainer who was often seen with his sidekick, Emu,
a silent and aggressive emu puppet.
He died while trying to watch a football match on TV between Manchester United and Inter
Milan.
A lot of you may be too young to remember that, once upon a time, televisions had TV
aerials, or television antennae.
They were antennas that were designed for TVs to receive over-the-air broadcast television
signals from a television station.
Sometimes, if your TV was messing up, you had to adjust the antennae to get it working
again.
When the picture on Hull’s TV started to deteriorate, he climbed up onto the roof of
his home in Winchelsea, East Sussex, to adjust the antenna so he could continue watching
the game.
Hull would fall to his death trying to fix his television.
No one witnessed his death, so it’s not entirely clear what happened.
He may have simply lost his footing, but some people have brought up the possibility he
may have had a heart attack.
However, no one can say if he had a heart attack before or after the fall.
While this is a dumb way to die, it’s also not a likely cause of death in this day and
age.
What we will say is, be careful climbing up on rooftops, otherwise you might be doomed
to share Hull’s fate.
Hollywood has a history of stupid, on-set accidents that have gotten people killed.
As of 2021, at least 43 people have died on film sets in the United States since 1990.
Brandon Lee was an actor, martial artist, and the son of late martial arts star, Bruce
Lee.
In 1993, he met a tragic but avoidable end while filming a death scene for “The Crow.”
He accidentally died when he was shot with a prop gun.
The autopsy revealed that the gun had actually fired a .44-caliber slug that ended up lodged
near the actor’s spine.
Jon-Erik Hexum was an actor and model best known for “Voyagers!” and “Cover Up.”
While on the set of “Cover Up,” Hexum pretended to shoot himself in the head with
a prop gun for a fake game of Russian Roulette.
Unfortunately, the .44 Magnum fired off a real bullet into his head.
While the actors are not at fault, the disregard that those in charge had for the actors’
safety lands this on our list of dumb ways to die.
Why were prop guns loaded in the first place?
62-year-old Jimi Heselden was a British businessman who bought the Segway company from Dean Kamen,
the inventor of the Segway and iBOT, in 2009.
Not long after, he died by accidentally riding one of the scooters off a cliff near his Yorkshire
home.
Witnesses watched as Heselden drove his scooter off a cliff, after which he fell over 30 feet
into a river below.
When authorities arrived, they pronounced Heselden dead at the scene, finding his destroyed
scooter close by in the water.
Dying as a result of a electric scooter joyride, made by our own company nonetheless, is certainly
a death that deserves its spot on our list.
Claude François was a French pop singer, composer, songwriter, record producer, drummer,
and dancer in the 1960s and 70s.
He was known as “Clo-Clo” to his fans, and he was one of the most popular recording
artists in France.
One afternoon, François planned to head out to a recording studio but wanted to have a
shower first.
When he finished, he noticed that the light bulb above the shower had burned out.
François’ feet were still in the water when he reached up to change the light bulb,
as he touched the metal part of the light fitting he was electrocuted.
All efforts to revive him were in vain, and he died at 3:30 PM.
If you ever see a burned-out light in your bathroom, make sure to dry yourself thoroughly
before even attempting to change the light.
Jon James McMurray was a Canadian rapper, stuntman, and freeskier who died on October
20, 2018.
He was filming a music video where he was walking on the wing of a plane while rapping.
The further McMurray went out on the wing, the more weight he put on the edges, causing
the plane to go into a downward spiral.
The pilot was unable to recover from the maneuver, and while McMurray did have a parachute, he
clung to the wing of the plane for far too long.
By the time he let go it was far too.
He fell to the ground and died on impact.
No one else was physically injured during the stunt.
You may have heard of Alan and Alex Stokes, two Tiktokers who staged two fake bank robberies
for a video.
One incident even led to an unsuspecting Uber driver being held at gunpoint by police.
Social media may have people doing crazy things, but even before social media hit the scene,
people were doing some pretty dumb stuff for attention.
The Stokes reminded us of Luciano Re Cecconi, also known as l’Angelo Biondo, meaning the
Blond Angel.
He was an Italian footballer who was known to have a good sense of humor throughout his
career.
That sense of humor would lead to his demise.
On January 18, 1977, Re Cecconi, his teammate Pietro Ghedin, and another friend headed to
a jewellery shop in Rome owned by Bruno Tabochini.
Re Cecconi and Ghedin decided to play what they thought would be a harmless prank on
Tabochini.
When their friend entered the jewellers ahead of them, Re Cecconi and Ghedin covered their
faces with their jackets and shouted, “Hands in the air!
This is a stick-up!”
What Re Cecconi and Ghedin didn’t know is that just a few weeks earlier, the jewellery
shop had been robbed, so Tabochini was prepared.
When he pulled out a shotgun Ghedin noticed it immediately and put his hands in the air.
Re Cecconi, on the other hand, didn’t see it and continued on with his prank.
Tabochini opened fire, and Re Cecconi was shot in the chest at close range.
Despite everyone’s best efforts, Re Cecconi would die 30 minutes after being shot.
His last words were, “It’s a joke!
It’s just a joke!”
Re Cecconi’s stupid prank meant he left behind his wife and two children.
Tabocchini was arrested but never charged for the murder.
Perhaps Re Cecconi could act as a morality tale for all social media influencers.
The Stokes twins are fortunate that the only consequences they faced were 160 hours of
community service and a year of probation.
Kinks aren’t unusual.
If you aren’t hurting anyone, there’s really no reason to shame anyone for having
them, but you have to be careful.
We warned you as, if you’re not careful, certain kinks can get deadly.
Such as in the case of beloved actor David Carradine, who was found dead in the closet
of a Bangkok hotel room on June 3rd, 2009.
Carradine was best known for playing the titular Bill from the “Kill Bill” film series.
Thai police believe Carradine accidentally died while engaging in auto-erotic asphyxia,
which is a sub-category of sexual masochism.
It involves intentionally restricting oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.
Since it is typically practiced alone, it’s particularly dangerous.
We’re not here to yuck anyone’s yum, but please be careful, or you might be on the
next list of dumb ways to die.
To this day, Australian zookeeper and conservationist Steve Irwin is still a beloved figure, but
we think that even he would have a good sense of humor about his death.
He knew the risks he was taking working with wild animals.
It’s not a career for the faint of heart.
Irwin’s death was a complete freak accident that no one could have predicted.
While filming in the Great Barrier Reef, during a lull in filming, Irwin decided to snorkel
in shallow waters.
He wanted to help provide footage for his daughter’s television show, Bindi the Jungle
Girl.
It was during this time he was stung by a stingray.
It’s barb pierced through his chest, hitting his thoracic wall and heart.
At first, he believed it had only punctured his lung.
But the barb to the heart caused internal bleeding, eventually leading his untimely
demise.
Although CPR was administered and Irwin was rushed to the nearby Low Island, he was pronounced
dead by medical staff.
His death is the only known stingray fatality caught on film, and he is one of the few people
to die by stingray.
The conclusion of the story is, watch out around wildlife.
It’s as unforgiving as it is unpredictable.
Even animals believed to be relatively safe can be deadly.
But with what we know about Steve Irwin, we’re sure he wouldn’t want us to hold it against
Mother Nature.
Canadian country-folk singer and environmentalist Taylor Mitchell would also learn this lesson
the hard way.
Mitchell was alone in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, a park where the resident coyotes
had adapted to survive on a limited food supply.
They had learned how to hunt and kill moose, something that is out of the ordinary for
most coyotes.
While hiking alone, Mitchell was attacked by two coyotes on the trail.
Her screams were heard by another hiker who called 911.
When RCMP officers arrived, they shot one of the coyotes and had Mitchell airlifted
to Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Center in Halifax.
She was covered in bites, and she died early Wednesday morning on October 27, 2009.
Don’t underestimate wildlife, and be careful when hiking alone.
In Mitchell’s defense, this sort of attack is out of character for most coyotes.
They’ve been known to attack pets, but attacking and killing an adult human is rare.
It’s just proof that you should always be on your guard around wild animals, no matter
how harmless they may seem.
Business magnate Steve Jobs doesn’t seem like an obvious choice for our list.
He died due to complications from pancreatic cancer.
So why is he on the list?
He might’ve lived if he had received proper medical care instead of trying to cure himself.
In 2003, when he was first diagnosed, doctors recommended surgery, but Jobs delayed the
surgery for nine months.
He attempted to treat himself with alternative medicines, which may have actually made his
condition worse.
He had let his cancer spread for nine months before he finally agreed to surgery, and doctors
believe that delay is what led to his death.
According to medical professionals, he had a type of pancreatic cancer that is treatable.
Instead, Jobs turned to alternative therapies like acupuncture, herbal, diet, fruit juice
therapy, and spiritual consultations.
He found a lot of these “cures” on the Internet, ignoring pleas from his distressed
friends and family to have the surgery.
Once he decided to undergo surgery, it’s said that Jobs completely changed his mind
about this type of treatment.
He put energy into researching experimental methods of cancer treatment to try and survive.
He spent thousands of dollars on alternative treatments, such as genome sequencing and
targeted drug therapy.
He was put on the list to receive a liver transplant.
Sadly, it was too late, and the doctors were no longer able to save him.
So, while Steve Jobs isn’t an idiot for having cancer, as that would be a ridiculous
claim, he is the poster child for why it’s important to listen to your doctor.
Take cancer seriously folks.
Get checked often, get a second opinion when necessary, and, most importantly, listen to
your doctors.
It may just save your life.
If you want to hear about more dumb ways to die can check out “Dumb Ways To Die - Florida
Edition.”
Or watch this video instead!