From a Viking ruler done in by a severed head to a Greek lawmaker who
was literally smothered with affection, these historical figures came to truly bizarre ends.
The most famous illusionist in American history, Harry Houdini, is best known as an escape artist.
"Everybody wants to escape something."
But he was also known for having iron abs, which he claimed could withstand any blow.
Unfortunately, his fans didn't realize the trick required preparation. Before a show in Montreal
on October 22, 1926, a college student visited Houdini backstage and decided to test the truth
of his claims by suddenly — and repeatedly — slugging him in the midsection as hard as
he could. Houdini, taken off-guard by the attack, wasn't able to defend himself. It probably didn't
help that the magician was lying on a couch at the time, having fractured his ankle during a
performance, a few days earlier. He suffered a ruptured appendix and underwent surgery, but
it was too late. Houdini died less than ten days after the Montreal incident, on Halloween night.
Tycho Brahe was one of the most important, influential astronomers of all time, thanks
to his groundbreaking work measuring the stars and planets and furthering our understanding of
the solar system. He was also famous for wearing a metal nose to cover a disfiguring injury suffered
during a duel. You'd think that would be quirky enough, but Brahe actually died because he didn't
want to go to the bathroom. In October 1601, while attending a royal banquet, Brahe found himself
desperately in need of a potty break. Not wanting to cause a breach of etiquette by getting up to
use the can, he just sat there until his bladder burst. The subsequent infection killed him.
Boggled historians tried to come up with more plausible theories,
like maybe he was actually poisoned by his assistant, Johannes Kepler. But a few years ago,
scientists proved once and for all that it was pee, not mercury,
that killed Brahe. When you gotta go, you gotta go, etiquette be damned.
"Come on! Come on! Okay"
Thomas "Tennessee" Williams is one of the
most famous playwrights and literary figures in history,
winning worldwide acclaim and Pulitzer Prizes for his 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire –
"Hey Stella!"
– and 1955's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Williams had one of the most unusual deaths on record, at least for 1983, when, at the age of 71,
he suffocated in his New York City hotel suite after getting a bottle cap stuck in his throat.
Williams, who had suffered from alcohol and drug issues for decades,
was apparently trying to swallow some barbiturates when he accidentally inhaled
a bottle cap. It got lodged in his throat and blocked his airway, smothering him.
When you hear the name Draco, your mind probably autocompletes "Malfoy." But back
in ancient Greece, there was a real guy named Draco, who came up with a notoriously severe
legal system for the city of Athens. According to the book Rhetoric and the Law of Draco,
his statutes permitted the death penalty for nonviolent crimes such as theft and
adultery. He was so successful, his name became an adjective in English: draconian.
And the people of Athens loved him for his innovations. In fact,
they loved him to literal death. See, it was traditional in Athenian culture
to show your appreciation by throwing your hats or cloaks at someone. One night at the theater,
Draco's supporters were so overwhelmed with love that they literally buried him in clothes.
Legend has it that they threw so many hats and cloaks on him, he suffocated beneath them. Yikes.
Clement Vallandigham was a lawyer and politician during the Civil War. Leader of the fiercely
pro-Confederacy Copperhead movement, Vallandigham was court-martialed by the Union Army,
and he ran for governor of Ohio while living in exile in Canada. All of that became a footnote,
though, when, in 1871, he suffered one of the most ironic deaths of all time. While arguing a case,
Vallandigham attempted to prove that the victim had accidentally shot himself,
so he decided to re-enact the scene. Vallandigham proved his case, all right,
by accidentally shooting and killing himself in the exact same way the victim had.
Crazier still, just a couple days later, another person accidentally shot and killed himself while
attempting to demonstrate how Vallandigham had accidentally shot and killed himself. The moral?
Be very, very careful telling your friends this story, and hey – maybe don't use a gun.
Sigurd Eysteinsson was one of the Viking leaders in the conquest of Scotland, reigning over Orkney
for nearly 20 years with an iron hand and a steel sword. Immortalized in the Heimskringla
and Orkneyinga sagas as Sigurd the Mighty, there's no doubting his ability on the battlefield. But
he was also a cheater, and the gods don't like cheaters. After agreeing to a 40 vs. 40 battle
against the rival leader Máel Brigte, Sigurd actually showed up with 80 men and massacred
his hapless foe. Sigurd then beheaded Máel Brigte and strapped the head to his saddle as a trophy.
On the ride home, though, Sigurd scratched his leg on the severed head's teeth — the
scratch became infected, and Sigurd died. The moral of this story? Don't carry heads around!
"Ahh! Oh my God!"
Men, get out of here, because this is a painful one. It's fair to say that
Gouverneur Morris holds an esteemed place in American history. A member of Congress
during the American Revolution, Morris was a staunch ally of George Washington,
and went on to help write the U.S. Constitution in 1787. In fact,
Morris is credited with shortening the original, rather clumsy preamble, which namechecked each
state in the Union, to the considerably more elegant "We the People of the United States."
Unfortunately, this Founding Father died a needless, tragic death on November 6,
1816, following an attempt to clear a blockage in his
urinary tract by inserting a whale bone into his urethra. Naturally,
this resulted in massive internal injuries and a subsequent infection that he didn't survive.
Grigori Rasputin's [grih-GOR-ee ra-SPYOO-tin] rise to the heights of Russian society around
the turn of the 20th century was as unexpected as it was rapid. Rasputin was revered by Russian
nobility as a mystic holy man who claimed he could heal the sick, including, it seemed,
the son and heir to Nicholas II, Aleksey Nikolayevich, who suffered from hemophilia.
Rasputin wasn't your typically spartan religious figure. Even while he was a teenager the young
man had earned himself a reputation for excess, in particular when it came to sex.
"His sexual passion was so strong that he could
make you lose consciousness even when he was behind you."
Rasputin had developed his own creed during his teen years: that sexual activity brought him
closer to God. He traveled to Greece and the Middle East as a penniless holy man,
indulging himself and claiming to heal the sick in exchange for donations, food,
and shelter. His supposedly miraculous powers eventually gave him incredible
influence at the Russian court, even as his debauched lifestyle became a major scandal.
Though Rasputin retained the support of the imperial family, in 1916 a group of conservatives
conspired to kill the mystic. A memoir by one of the killers claims they first attempted to
poison him with huge doses of cyanide, though he continued to drink the wine they had spiked
without issue. The assassins then shot him, but once again, Rasputin survived and turned on his
attackers, who were forced to shoot him repeatedly before drowning him in a St. Petersburg river.
Born on April 28, 1906, the Czech logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel had a seismic
effect on thought in the 20th century and beyond. Gödel was a member of the
famous Vienna Circle of rationalists. He was known for his "Incompleteness
Theorem," which states that "undecidable" statements exist in mathematics. His work
was a major shock to experts at the time and is still highly influential.
Tragically, Gödel's personal life was hampered by mental health issues in
the form of hypochondria and paranoia around food, which he often suspected
of being poisoned. Gödel relied on his wife to allay his fears by preparing his food or
acting as his food taster. But when his wife was hospitalized following a stroke in 1977,
Gödel was unwilling to eat. He died of self-imposed starvation on January 14, 1978.
In the final year of famed writer Edgar Allen Poe's life,
he was busy conducting a lecture tour of the United States to raise funds for The Stylus,
a literary magazine he had long dreamed of launching. However, in September,
Poe went missing following a trip to Baltimore. There were reports from various people alleging
that he'd been on a non-stop drinking spree. Poe resurfaced on October 3. A printer at the time
described him in a letter as "rather the worse for wear" and in "great distress."
"A drink to any man in this room who can finish this line: 'Quoth the raven.'"
He was discovered outside a public house, lying delirious in the gutter,
wearing someone else's clothes. Poe died four days later,
plagued by hallucinations and repeating the name of an unknown person: Reynolds.
Poe's death was vaguely attributed to "congestion of the brain," but
countless theories have emerged as to the real cause in the many decades since. Some
have speculated that Poe was in a fight or that he drank himself to death. More recently,
however, experts have claimed that Poe may actually have died of rabies.
Over the course of his 25 year reign, King George V of England,
grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, modernized the royal family
in a way that made it palatable to the wider working-class British citizenry.
King George's death at the age of 71 was described in the newspapers as "a peaceful ending at
midnight." However, in 1986, a source revealed that, rather than a natural death, King George
V had been euthanized by his doctor using fatal amounts of morphine and cocaine, with the king's
death timed so that it would be announced in the morning papers, rather than the evening ones.
When the circumstances of the king's death were revealed, The New York Times contacted
Buckingham Palace in an attempt to gauge Queen Elizabeth II's reaction. A spokesperson replied:
”It happened a long time ago [...] and all those concerned are now dead.”