It’s certainly a morbid subject to discuss, but we’ve all likely talked to our friends
about how we want to go out.
No doubt for a lot of people dying quietly in their sleep would seem like a good option,
a kind of painless, non-messy exit perhaps involving one last dream.
Nobody wants to leave this planet slowly, wasting away in pain, or maybe even losing
their minds.
And while it might be fast, it’s likely no one would like to go out in an extremely
violent way.
Then there’s the ironic death, and there are plenty of those.
We might recall the man in the U.S. in the 80s who avoided the electric chair after appeal
and then accidentally electrocuted himself in his cell and died.
With that in mind, welcome to this episode of the Infographics Show, The strangest ways
people have died.
13.
The irony of dying while keeping fit We’ll give you just one famous example of
a victim of irony, and that is the case of the former American jogging guru, Jim Fixx.
He wrote ‘The Complete Book of Running’ in 1977 and it became a best-seller.
In fact, he is said to be one of the main people that started what was called America’s
fitness revolution.
Fixx had once been overweight and also a heavy smoker, but then he started his exercise regime,
sold his books, and told the American people that running was the secret to having a long
life and good health.
He died of a heart attack while running when he was just 52-years old.
Ok, so that’s perhaps not so strange, and we’ll get stranger, but we just wanted to
give you an example of death by irony.
12.
Death by clothing You’ve all heard news media write stories
about what it calls “Draconian” laws or rules.
This just usually means out-of-date laws, or laws that seem way too strict or even brutal.
We get this adjective from a Greek lawmaker called Draco.
In Athens in the 7th century B.C. this man created laws that were said to be unfair,
or at least unfair if you were not part of the wealthy group of people.
His harsh legal code could mean cruel punishments for even petty crimes.
Nonetheless, it’s said he was popular at the time with the crowds, but then in those
days the public did seem to enjoy watching blood being spilled.
It’s said during one appearance in the Aeginetan theater the crowd wanted to show their adoration
so they threw their hats, cloaks, shirts, at him.
But they went overboard, and it’s said Draco suffocated under the avalanche of clothing
from his admirers.
We should say that this is an old story passed down, so one might question how it actually
happened.
Maybe they meant to kill him, but we’ll never know what happened that fateful day.
11.
Death by proving something is safe You may have heard about this one as it’s
popped up in various TV series from time to time.
The story is of a Canadian lawyer called Garry Hoy.
On July 9, 1993, he was taking people on a tour of the Toronto-Dominion Centre, a building
of many floors and with a lot of glass windows.
He wanted to demonstrate to the people just how strong the windows were as rightly some
folks were concerned about such a high glass-fronted building.
To do this he did something he’d done before and threw himself at a glass window to show
that the glass was very strong.
He was right that the glass didn’t smash, but on this occasion the window popped out
of its frame and Hoy fell a long way to his death.
An engineer later told the Canadian media, “I don’t know of any building code in
the world that would allow a 160-pound (72.5 kg) man to run up against a glass and withstand
it.”
That must have been some shock for the bystanders.
10.
Same, but different This is another story of a lawyer trying to
prove a point to people and in doing so killed himself.
The man was an American lawyer called Clement Vallandigham and in 1871 he was representing
a client that was accused of murder.
The lawyer was trying to prove that the victim wasn’t murdered but had accidently killed
himself.
He tried to show how this might have happened and accidently shot himself.
He died, but his client got off the murder charge.
9.
Death by beard A tourism website in Austria tells us that
people can visit the epitaph of a man called Hans Staininger.
He was a mayor of Braunau in the 16th century and was well known for having a really long
beard.
We are told it was so long that if not tied it would trail on the floor.
One day the poor guy was walking down the street and he tripped on his beard, broke
his neck and died.
To this day his beard is kept in the local museum.
8.
Death by banana Slipping on a banana skin is perhaps the best-known
gag joke, and of course it doesn’t happen very often.
But searching online we can find one death certificate from 1927 that did indeed blame
a banana skin for the death of a man.
The 74-year old slipped and died in Tennessee.
7.
Death by piano If people do actually die from slipping on
banana skins, do they also die by a piano falling on their heads?
Well, someone actually investigated this and that writer found at least one incidence when
a piano being pulled up a building had come crashing down on a person below.
The website StraightDope writes, “In 1931 a piano was being hoisted up to a second-story
window when a cornice broke free from the building, falling and killing a mover below.”
But perhaps the most famous piano death out there was that of a strip-club bouncer called
Jimmy Ferrozzo.
In 1983 at a club in San Francisco he and his girlfriend had been making love on a piano
that was connected to a hoist so it could be lowered down for performances and raised
when it wasn’t being used.
This time the piano was down on the floor, but during the act of passion one of the two
accidently hit the switch and the piano was pulled up.
Jimmy was consequently crushed against the ceiling, but we are told his lover survived
the incident.
6.
Killed by a bird We can actually find a few instances of people
being killed by birds, but this one has to be the strangest and also involves a fair
bit of karma.
In 2011, a 35-year old California resident called Jose Luis Ochoa was stabbed to death
by a bird.
The BBC writes that the man had been at an illegal cockfight and had taken with him a
cock that had sharp spurs on its legs, which were more like little knives.
The bird apparently turned on its owner and he suffered what the coroner called a sharp
force injury.
A police spokesperson told the media, “I have never seen this type of incident.”
No kidding.
5.
Killing your son, the snake In 2013, a Japanese man called Takuya Nagaya
had apparently been acting a bit weird at his parent’s apartment in Okazaki City.
He’d been slithering around like a snake.
Of course, his father came to the rational conclusion that his son had been possessed
by some kind of snake demon.
He then did the next rational thing and took matters into his own hands, well, we should
say head and teeth.
Reports tell us the son died from injuries sustained while the father was trying to get
the snake out of him by biting and headbutting him.
You can only imagine what that scene must have looked like.
4.
A cow through the roof The BBC reported in 2013 that a Brazilian
man was killed in his bed when a cow came crashing down through his roof.
Somehow the rather large animal got onto his asbestos roof and fell right through it.
Apparently, this wasn’t the first time a cow had fallen through a roof in this rural
area.
The 45-year old died from internal bleeding.
3.
Death by slug Many of us might have done some silly things
just because we were dared to do it or we wanted to win some money or just show off.
This goes wrong all the time and you can find endless video clips of Darwin Award types
of stunts online.
In November 2018, the world’s media reported the death of an Australian man called Sam
Ballard who had died aged 28.
Eight years prior to his death the skilled rugby player had been at a party with friends
in Sydney.
No doubt quite a bit of alcohol had been consumed and during the party a slug turned up on the
scene.
Ballard’s friends, writes The Independent, dared him to eat the slug.
That he did, but as a result he became very sick.
He was taken to hospital and it was found later that he had been infected by a parasite
known as rat lungworm.
This ended up paralyzing the young man and was the reason he died some years later.
2.
Death by cockroach You shouldn’t eat slugs, and you also probably
shouldn’t eat cockroaches.
The BBC tells us that in 2012 a man from Florida by the name of Edward Archbold had entered
himself into a live cockroach eating competition.
He had done well, devouring dozens of the creatures, but it also killed him.
The coroner ruled that his death was caused by “asphyxia due to choking and aspiration
of gastric contents.”
In short, he had choked on cockroach body parts.
The body of Christ We know that some Christians will take into
their mouths something that symbolizes the body of Christ, but one Canadian man took
this a step further in 1987.
According to the Toronto Globe and Mail a man called Franco Brun had been taken in by
police and left in the cells.
It turned out that in the cell the man had made use of a small Gideons Bible by swallowing
it.
He choked to death on it.
News reports tell us that for this mentally unwell man “the swallowing of the Bible
to him was some form of symbolism or allegory as though he was trying to purge himself of
the devil by consuming religion.”
What’s the strangest death you have heard about?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show What If Hitler Had Won?
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.