• From drowning at a pool party full of lifeguards to fatally tripping on your own
beard, we count fifteen strange ways people have died!
15 – The London Beer Flood, • Beer lovers might look at this and go
‘Hell yeah!
That’s how I want to go!’
On paper, it’s a bit like Futurama’s ‘Death by Snu Snu’, but the reality was actually
pretty horrifying.
• The London Beer Flood occurred in 1814 when a giant vat at a brewery burst.
It had a domino effect, rupturing all the surrounding vats and causing over 323,000
imperial gallons of beer to gush into the streets.
• The beer tsunami filled basements, destroyed homes and crumbled a local pub, trapping an
employee inside.
• Eight people died in the disaster, which, incredibly, was ruled an act of God.
14 – Death by Bookcase, • When Mariesa Weber was reported missing
by her family no one thought she’d turn up eleven days later behind a bookcase.
• Fearing she’d been kidnapped, Weber’s sister went to investigate a strange smell
coming from Mariesa’s bedroom.
She checked behind the bookcase and discovered a woman’s foot.
Her flashlight revealed Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.
• This wasn’t some marathon game of hide and seek that went wrong; family members suspect
she slipped and fell trying to adjust a television plug behind the bookshelf.
She would’ve been unable to breathe in the position she was in.
13 – Drowning at a Life Guard’s Pool Party, • In 1985, New Orleans lifeguards threw
a rockin’ pool party to celebrate their first drowning-free season.
• The party was a resounding success – until a thirty-one-year-old non-lifeguard guest
was found dead at the bottom of the recreation department’s pool.
• There were four lifeguards on duty at the party, and more than half of the two hundred
attendees were lifeguards themselves, but – somehow – no one was able to save Jerome
Moody.
12 – Death by Sheep, • In 1999, a sixty-seven-year-old woman
in Durham, England, carried a bale of hay to the back of her motorcycle to feed her
flock of sheep.
• Unfortunately, the hungry sheep flunked bovine university, so never learned patience.
They charged the bike and Betty Stobbs was knocked into a deep ravine.
• Incredibly, Stobbs survived the fall, but quickly died a Final Destination-style
death when her bike landed on top of her.
11 – Death by Garbage, • Two compulsive hoarders, Homer and Langley
Collyer, were found dead in their New York City home when the mountain of possessions
they’d accumulated collapsed, trapping them.
• The brothers had spent decades obsessively collecting newspapers and other junk items,
and even set up elaborate booby-traps.
I guess they feared intruders might break in and steal their world-renowned bottle cap
collection.
• The cave-in trapped Homer, leaving Langley to crawl through tunnels of newspapers to
bring his paralysed brother food.
During one of these runs, Langley set off one of his own traps, and Homer was left to
die of starvation.
• When police entered, they found Homer’s deceased body.
It took another two weeks to remove nearly a hundred tonnes of garbage from the house.
Only then did workers find Langley’s decomposed, rat-chewed body just ten feet from where they’d
found his brother.
10 – Death by Ridiculous Infections, • If someone asked you to guess how you’ll
one day die, chances are you wouldn’t say ‘infection caused by some really trivial
minor fuck-up’.
• But that’s exactly what happened to ninth-century Norse warrior, Sigurd the Mighty,
who, after emerging victorious in combat, strapped his enemy’s severed head to his
saddle and rode home.
He ended up grazing his leg on the exposed teeth and died from the ensuing infection.
• Allan Pinkerton, father of the Pinkerton detective agency, faced a similarly ridiculous
fate.
He slipped on the sidewalk, bit his own tongue and died from the infection.
• Finally, famous whiskey distiller Jack Daniel came into work one morning to open
his safe.
He couldn't remember the damn combination, so kicked the safe in anger.
His toe sustained injury, which later developed into an infection and killed him.
9 – Death by Dancing, • In 1518, a woman stepped into the streets
of Strasbourg City and started to dance.
Several days later, she was still at it, and hundreds joined in.
This was the first of what became Europe’s compulsive dancing outbreaks.
• Authorities believed the affliction would pass if the affected danced it out, Napoleon
Dynamite-style, so halls were made available and musicians were hired.
Days passed, but none quit.
Eventually, people dropped dead of sheer exhaustion.
• It took months for the epidemic to recede, and the afflicted had to be loaded onto wagons
and taken to a healing shrine.
It’s believed this mass hysteria was caused by extreme famine, disease and spiritual despair.
8 – Death by Misunderstanding, • Rumour has it that, while suffering from
a bad cough, Napoleon accidentally ordered the execution of over a thousand prisoners.
• To his officers, he said ‘Ma sacre toux’, which meant ‘My damn cough’; however,
his officers thought he said ‘Massacre-tous’, which means ‘Massacre all’.
• Accounts of the incident vary, but it’s pretty horrifying if true.
7 – Death by Re-Enactment, • In 1991, a fifty-seven-year-old Thai woman
named Yooket Paen was taking a stroll on her Bangkok farm when she slipped on some mud
and grabbed a naked live wire.
She died by electrocution.
• But wait, in case you think this is like some morbid version of Funniest Home Videos,
there’s more to the story.
• Later that same day, Paen’s sister was showing neighbours how the tragedy occurred
when she also slipped, grabbed the very same wire and, tragically, died.
6 – Death by Carrot Juice, • Basil Brown was a UK health fanatic who
managed to drink himself to death with carrot juice.
He reportedly drank more than a gallon of the sweet stuff a day, believing it would
give him x-ray vision – or just generally make him healthier.
• He ended up guzzling over ten gallons in ten days, which gave him ten thousand times
more than the recommended amount of vitamin A and, ultimately, led to fatal liver damage.
5 – Death by Beard, • In 1567, an Austrian man named Hans Steininger
broke his neck after tripping over his own beard while trying to escape a fire.
• Steininger was famous for having the world’s longest beard.
He’d grown it an impressive 4.5 feet, but, that day, had forgotten to roll it up.
• One would imagine a monstrous beard like that would make getting around tricky.
It’s probably why famous beardies like Gandalf, Merlin and Dumbledore used magic.
4 – Death by Showing Off, • Thirty-eight-year-old Canadian lawyer
Garry Hoy died while trying to prove that the glass in the windows of a 24th-floor office
was unbreakable.
• The lawyer, who was one of his firm’s best and brightest, had apparently developed
the strange habit of hurling himself against the window to demonstrate its strength.
• Ordinarily, he would bounce right off the window pane, leaving a roomful of onlookers
clapping.
But on a fateful day in 1993, his little trick failed and the window popped right out of
its frame, sending him plummeting to his death.
• Amusingly, the technical term for this kind of death is ‘accidental auto-defenestration’.
3 – Death by Sauna, • Russian Vladimir Ladyzhensky died during
the 2010 World Sauna Championships in Finland, after having spent six minutes in a sauna.
• He’d endured temperatures of 110°C and was trying to outlast the Finnish reigning
champ.
When the doors opened, both men collapsed and were bleeding from severe burns.
First aid was administered, but the Russian competitor later died.
• Apparently, all the ordinary competition rules were followed, so the death was considered
quite a shock.
2 – Death by Method Acting, • British actor Gareth Jones met an unfortunate
end when he suffered a heart attack while performing in a live televised play in 1958.
The weird thing is that his character was actually scripted to have a heart attack.
• The other cast members improvised around his death and redistributed his lines on the
fly.
Miraculously, they finished the play with the audience none the wiser, but Jones could
not be revived.
• Another death was narrowly avoided during a live play when an actor accidentally activated
a working defibrillator that was being used as a prop.
The receiving actor received severe burns to the chest, but pulled through.
• Suddenly all those plays that don’t have near-death experiences seem kinda boring.
1 – Death by Miraculous Lightning Strike, • An entire soccer team died mid-game in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo when lightning struck the wet field.
What’s freaky is that the entire home team survived.
• The lightning killed eleven young players aged between twenty and thirty-five.
Thirty others received burns, but the athletes from the other team came out curiously unscathed.
• Accusations of witchcraft arose.
Apparently, it’s a common practice for teams and fans to call upon the services of witchdoctors
to curse their opponents.
Guess they really take their sport seriously.