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This is a 'list of unusual deaths' – unique causes or extremely rare circumstances – recorded throughout history. The list also includes less rare, but still unusual, deaths of prominent persons.
To be included on this list, an unusual death has to receive mention in the Wikipedia article of a person, or the death itself has to be the focus of a Wikipedia article.

Contents

Antiquity

Middle Ages

Early Modern Times

Modern Age

19th century

20th century

21st century

References

See also

Antiquity

''Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal (uncertain authenticity)''

★ 458 BC: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone.

★ 270 BC: The poet and grammarian Philetas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.^[1]

★ 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.^[2]

★ 53 BC: Following his defeat at Carrhae at the hands of the Parthians under Spahbod Surena, Marcus Licinius Crassus was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat. Some accounts claim that his head was then cut off and used as a stage prop in a play performed for the Parthian king Orodes II.

★ 48 BC: The Roman general Pompey, fleeing to Egypt after being defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus by his rival Julius Caesar, was stabbed, killed, and decapitated: his head was then preserved in a jar by the young king Ptolemy XIII and presented to Caesar, with whom he intended to ingratiate himself. Caesar was not pleased.

★ 43 BC: Cicero, the great Roman statesman, was labelled an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate. Like all those proscribed by the Triumvirate, he was hunted down and killed; his severed hands and head were then displayed on the Rostra in the Forum for several days, during which time Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, is supposed to have stabbed his once-skilled tongue several times with a hairpin.

★ 42 BC: Porcia Catonis, wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, killed herself by supposedly swallowing hot coals after hearing of her husband's death; however, modern historians claim that it is more likely that she poisoned herself with carbon monoxide, by burning coals in an unventilated room.

★ 4 BC: Herod the Great suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally gave up. ^[3] Similar symptoms-- abdominal pains and worms-- accompanied the death of his grandson Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, after he had imprisoned St Peter. At various times each of these deaths has been considered divine retribution.

★ 64 - 67: St Peter was executed by the Romans. According to many sources, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. This is the only recorded instance of this type of crucifixion.

★ 69: The short-time Roman emperor Galba was killed after becoming extremely unpopular with both the Roman people and the Praetorian guard-- however, 120 different people claimed credit for having killed him. All of these names were recorded in a list and they all were later themselves executed by the emperor Vitellius.

★ C. 98 Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum, was roasted to death in a brazen bull during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. Saint Eustace, as well as his wife and children supposedly suffered a similar fate under Hadrian. The creator of the brazen bull, Perillos of Athens, was according to legend the first victim of the brazen bull when he presented his invention to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum.

★ 258: St Lawrence was martyred by being burned or 'grilled' on a large metal gridiron at Rome. Images of him often show him holding the instrument of his martyrdom. Legend says that he was so strong-willed that instead of giving in to the Romans and releasing information about the Church, at the point of death he exclaimed "I am done on this side! Turn me over and eat."

★ 260: According to some accounts, Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by their king Shapur I. After a long period of mistreatment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had molten gold poured down Valerian's throat. He then had the unfortunate emperor skinned and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy in the main Persian temple. Only after Persia's defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial.^[4] (Interestingly, a recent report from Iran mentions the restoration of a bridge supposed to have been built by Valerian and his soldiers for Shapur in return for their freedom).^[5]

★ 415: The Greek mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp sea-shells and what remained of her was burned. (Various types of shells have been named: clams, oysters, abalones. Other sources claim tiles or pottery-shards were used.)

Middle Ages

★ 1016: Edmund II of England was rumored to have been stabbed in the gut or bowels while he was performing his ablutions.^[6]

★ 1277: Pope John XXI was killed in the collapse of his scientific laboratory.^[7]

★ 1305: Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace was stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse. He was hanged, drawn and quartered—strangled by hanging but released while still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts.

★ 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.^[8]

★ 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine^[9] at his own request.

Early Modern Times

★ 1559: King Henry II of France was killed during a stunt knight's jousting match, when his helmet's soft golden grille gave way to a broken lancetip which pierced his eye and entered his brain.

★ 1601: Tycho Brahe, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler, suicide, and lead poisoning among others) have come to the fore.^[10]

★ 1655: Pope Innocent X died and was hidden in a corner for three days by his sister-in-law and probable mistress Olimpia Maidalchini while she searched and robbed the papal palace of various treasures. Only when she had completed her search was the body allowed to be found.

★ 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn't stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish. This authenticity of this story is questionable.^[11]

★ 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a ''Te Deum''. The performance was to celebrate the king's recovery from an illness.^[12]

★ 1751: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the author of Man a machine, a major materialist and sensualist philosopher died of over eating at a feast given in his honour. His philosopher adversaries suggested that doing so, he had contradicted his theoretical doctrine with the effect of his practical actions.

★ 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning while observing a storm.^[13]

★ 1771: King of Sweden, Adolf Frederick, died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."

Modern Age

19th century

★ 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by the world's first passenger train (Stephenson's Rocket), at its public opening.

★ 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed.^[14]

★ 1841: William Henry Harrison, the 9th President of the United States, died of pneumonia one month after delivering his two-hour inauguration speech in cold weather without an overcoat.

★ 1868: Matthew Vassar, brewer and founder of Vassar College, died in mid-speech while delivering his farewell address to the College Board of Trustees.

★ 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.^[15]

★ 1899: French president Félix Faure died of a stroke while receiving oral sex in his office.

20th century

★ A number of performers have died of natural causes during public performances, including:

★
★ 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.^[16]

★
★ 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, ''Underground'', at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones's absence.

★
★ 1960: Baritone Leonard Warren collapsed on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera of a major stroke during a performance of ''La forza del destino''. According to legend, the last line he sang was "Morir? Tremenda cosa." ("To die? A tremendous thing.") However, witnesses say he was just past that aria and his actual last line was "Gioia, o gioia!" (Joy, oh joy!)

★
★ 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on ''The Dick Cavett Show''. According to urban legend, when he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?"^[17], which Cavett has recently stated in a May 2007 New York Times article was incorrect - the initial reaction to Rodale was fellow guest Pete Hamill noticing something was wrong, and saying in a low voice to Cavett, "This looks bad."^[18] The show was never broadcast.

★
★ 1984: Tommy Cooper collapsed from a massive heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act, on the popular ITV variety show, Live from Her Majesty's. At first the audience assumed he was joking.

★
★ 1987: Dick Shawn, a comedian who starred in the 1968 movie The Producers, died of a heart attack while portraying a politician. Just before he died, he announced, "if elected, I will not lay down on the job,".

★ A number of performers have died from unnatural causes during a practice or public performance, including:

★
★ 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero died during a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands when his knee was accidentally pierced. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, ''Invincible''.

★
★ 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.

★
★ 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar, electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded.^[19]

★
★ 1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWE died during a Pay-Per-View event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet head first, hitting the ring's turnbuckle, then landing in the wrestling ring. The PPV continued even after he was pronounced dead.

★ 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination code.^[20]

★ 1912: Tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he'd told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.

★ 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was poisoned while dining with a political enemy, and supposedly he was given enough poison to kill three men his size. When he did not die, the assassin snuck up behind him and shot him in the head, and while checking Grigori's pulse the mystic grabbed him by the neck and strangled him. He proceeded to run away, while the other assassins chased. He was caught up to, lying on the ground having been hit with three shots during the chase. The pursuers bludgeoned him then threw him into a river (in Russia in the winter). When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be drowning. There is now some doubt about the credibility of this account, though.

★ 1920: Baseball player Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch.

★ 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon allegedly became the first to die from King Tut's Curse after a mosquito bite on his face became seriously infected.

★ 1923: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, ''Sweet Kiss'', went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.

★ 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.^[21]

★ 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when her scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.^[22]

★ 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.^[23]

★ 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.^[24]

★ 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.

★ 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.^[25]

★ 1943: Lady be Good, a USAAF B-24 bomber lost its way and crash landed in the Libyan Desert. Mummified remains of its crew, who struggled for a week without water, were not found until 1960.

★ 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.

★ 1945: Scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a brick of tungsten carbide onto a sphere of plutonium while working on the Manhattan Project. This caused the plutonium to come to criticality; Daghlian died of radiation poisoning, becoming the first person to die in a criticality accident.

★ 1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.

★ 1950: Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire suffered a heart attack and died in Eastbourne, UK in the presence of his doctor, John Bodkin Adams, the suspected serial killer. 13 days earlier, Mrs Edith Alice Morrell — another patient of Adams — had also died. Adams was controversially acquitted of her murder in 1957 but pathologist Francis Camps linked Adams to 163 suspicious deaths in total, which would make him the second most prolific killer in British history after Harold Shipman.

★ 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.

★ 1967: A flash fire began in the pure oxygen atmosphere during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The door to the capsule was unable to be opened during the fire because of its specific design.

★ 1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy.

★ 1973: Péter Vályi, finance minister of Hungary fell into a blast furnace (some sources say a pit of molten iron) on a visit to a steelworks factory at Miskolc.^[26][27][28]

★ 1973: Bruce Lee, a martial arts actor, is thought to have died by a severe allergic reaction to Equagesic. His brain had swollen about 13%. His autopsy was written as "death by misadventure."

★ 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.

★ 1974: Austrian Formula One driver Helmut Koinigg died in a crash in the 1974 United States Grand Prix at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Race Course in Watkins Glen, New York. On approaching a corner, a suspension failure sent Koinigg's car crashing head-on into the outer Armco barrier. The bottom rail gave way but the top rail did not. Helmut Koinigg was decapitated and died instantly, in what was only his second Formula One race.

★ 1975: On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn literally died laughing while watching an episode of ''The Goodies''. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing while watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure.

★ 1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver, and a 19-year-old track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce's car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.^[29]

★ 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated by poisoning in London by an unknown assailant who jabbed him in the calf with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin poison.

★ 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.

★ 1981: A 25-year-old Dutch woman studying in Paris, Renée Hartevelt, was killed and eaten by a classmate, Issei Sagawa, when he invited her to dinner for a literary conversation. The killer was declared unfit to stand trial and extradited back to Japan, where he was released from custody within fifteen months.

★ 1981: Carl McCunn, in March 1981, paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska to photograph wildlife, but had not arranged for the pilot to pick him up again in August. Rather than starve, McCunn shot himself in the head. His body was found in February 1982.

★ 1981: Boris Sagal, a motion picture-director, died while shooting the TV miniseries ''World War III'' when he walked into the tail-rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.

★ 1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of '', along with two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.

★ 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.

★ 1983: A diver on the Byford Dolphin oil exploration rig was violently dismembered and pulled through a narrowly opened hatch when the decompression chamber was accidentally opened, causing explosive decompression.

★ 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during World University Games. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position, he smashed his head on the board and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.

★ 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired at point-blank range.

★ 1986: While on the air giving a traffic report, the helicopter that Jane Dornacker was riding in stalled and crashed into the Hudson River, killing her. This was the second helicopter crash she had been in that year.

★ 1987: R. Budd Dwyer, a Republican politician, committed suicide during a televised press conference. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.

★ 1987 Andy Warhol, pop artist and coiner of the term "15 minutes of fame", checked in to New York Hospital's Baker Pavillion for gallbladder removal surgery. He gave a false name "Bob Roberts" and listed his next of kin as "Fred Hughes". Although the gallbladder operation went fine, Warhol died early the next morning from an unexpected heart attack.

★ 1990: Joseph W. Burrus, aged 32, an aspiring magician, decided to perform the "buried alive" illusion in a plastic box covered with cement. The cement crushed the box and he died of asphyxia.^[30]

★ 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players gave him a Gatorade Shower following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football). Some argue this resulted in pneumonia.

★ 1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie ''The Crow''. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene Brandon was in; this caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. However, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge's explosion out of the barrel and into Lee's body. Although the bullet was traveling much slower than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet's large size and the nearly point-blank firing distance made it powerful enough to severely wound Lee. It was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting.

★ 1993: Garry Hoy, a Toronto lawyer, fell to his death after he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was "unbreakable."

★ 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland who allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.

★ 1996: One person was killed by a tiger (named Shiva) in Alipore Zoological Gardens in Kolkata (Calcutta), India when he entered the enclosure of the tiger and tried to put a marigold garland around the tiger's neck.^[31]

★ 1997: Daniel Jones, a 21-year-old from Woodbridge, Virginia died when the 8-foot-deep hole he dug at a beach in Buxton, North Carolina, collapsed on him, burying him under five feet of sand.

★ 1998: Daniel V. Jones was a former hotel maintenance worker in Long Beach, California who shot himself through the chin on the Los Angeles expressway on live television. His suicide was apparently caused by his resentment against his HMO for inadequately treating him when he was diagnosed with cancer and HIV.

★ 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. The couple was left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident is depicted in the film ''Open Water''.

21st century

★ 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten. This is referred to in the song "Mein Teil" by German NDH band Rammstein.^[32]

★ 2002: Richard Sumner, a British artist suffering from schizophrenia, disappeared and was not located again until three years later when his skeleton was discovered handcuffed to a tree in a remote forest in Wales. Police investigators determined the death was a suicide, with Sumner securing himself in the handcuffs and throwing the keys out of reach.

★ 2003: Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him. In 2007, police alleged Wells was involved in the robbery plot along with two other conspirators.^[33]

★ 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.

★ 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by a bear, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in Werner Herzog's documentary film ''Grizzly Man''.^[34]

★ 2004: Bobbi McKennon, a 16 year old teenager from Maryland was killed while imitating a stunt from MTV's Jackass. McKennon was on a Merry-go-round while one of her friends wrapped a rope around it and had it attached to a pickup truck, causing it to spin rapidly but McKennon lost her grip and was thrown into the street, she later died from her injuries.

★ 2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Seattle died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion in the town of Enumclaw, Washington. Pinyan had done this before, and he delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance for official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington.^[35] His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film ''Zoo''.

★ 2005: 28-year-old South Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing Starcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.^[36]

★ 2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef. Ironically, the stingray was not the creature being filmed. It was deemed "not dangerous enough" to be featured in the documentary.^[37]

★ 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB operative and Russian expatriate who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was intentionally poisoned with polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid.^[38]

★ 2006: Cheryl Sarate, a 16 year old student in the Philippines, died of severe burns suffered when her costume caught fire during a college beauty pageant.

★ 2006: Mariesa Weber, a 5'3" Florida woman, fell behind a 6' tall bookcase in her family's home and suffocated. She was not discovered for 11 days; her family thought she had been kidnapped.^[39]

★ 2006: Ohtaj Humbat ohli Makhmudov a 45 year old Azerbaijani man lowered himself by a rope into a lion enclosure at the Kyiv zoo and shouted to horrified zoo visitors, "God will save me, if he exists!" Moments later a lioness pounced on him, severing his carotid artery, killing him instantly.^[40]

★ 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating. She placed second in the contest. ^{[41] [42]}

★ 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an internet chat session.

★ 2007: A naked man and woman in Columbia, South Carolina, died after falling off the roof of a local restaurant during, apparently, a sexual encounter. Their bodies were found by a cab driver. ^[43]

★ 2007: An Australian woman was killed after her pet camel attempted to have sex with her. ^[44]

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32. "German cannibal guilty of murder", ''BBC News'', May 9, 2006
33. [4] ''www.komotv.com''. Feb 16th 2007. Retrieved August 9th, 2007.
34. Medred, Craig.''Wildlife author killed, eaten by bears he loved''. ''Anchorage Daily News''. October 8, 2003. Retrieved September 4, 2006.
35. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002569751_horsesex19m.html
36. "Korean drops dead after 50-hour gaming marathon", ''Times Online'', August 10, 2005
37. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20355064-30417,00.html
38. Russian ex-spy dies in hospital
39. Bookcase 'trap' killed US woman
40. Lioness kills visitor at Kiev zoo[5]MacLean's, July 24, 2006, See also [6]
41. "Woman dies after being in water-drinking contest", ''The Los Angeles Times'', January 14, 2007
42. "Woman's Death After Water-Drinking Contest Investigated" ''KNBC.com'', January 16, 2007
43. "Naked Couple Die From S.C. Rooftop Fall"
44. "Pet camel kills Australian woman"

See also

★ Toilet-related injury

★ List of inventors killed by their own inventions

★ Darwin Awards

★ Multiple gunshot suicide