List of unusual deaths

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

The death of Aeschylus, killed by a turtle dropped onto his head by a falcon, illustrated in the 15th-century Florentine Picture-Chronicle by Baccio Baldini

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

Antiquity

Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal.

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Menes		c. 3200 BC	According to Manetho, the Egyptian pharaoh and unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt was carried off and then killed by a hippopotamus.
Teti		c. 2323 BC	According to Manetho, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt was mysteriously killed when he was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards. Other sources say he was killed by Userkare, who would then succeed him. His odd death is the earliest-known assassination but is still the subject of speculation.
Sisera		1200 or 1235 BC	According to Judges 4-5, Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite Army for King Jabin of Hazor, was killed in his sleep when the Kenite woman Jael stabbed him in the temple with a tent peg.
Abimelech Ben Gideon		1126 BC	The king of Shechem and son of Gideon was killed in the city of Thebez by a woman who threw a millstone on his head which crushed his skull or mortally wounded him.
Tiberinus Silvius		c. 914 BC	It is said that the legendary king of Alba Longa drowned while crossing the Albula river, which became known as the Tiber. This is usually known as the earliest case of someone drowning.
Terpander		7th century BC	The Greek poet and citharode, considered the father of Greek music and lyric poetry, reportedly choked to death on a fig thrown at him during one of his performances.
Draco of Athens		c. 620 BC	The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre in Aegina, Greece.
Charondas		c. 612 BC	According to Diodorus Siculus, the Greek lawgiver from Sicily issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death. One day, he arrived at the Assembly seeking help to defeat some brigands in the countryside, but with a knife still attached to his belt. In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide.
Duke Jing of Jin		581 BC	In 581 BC a shaman warned the ruler that he would not live to see the new wheat harvest. The ruler dismissed him and had the shaman murdered. However, when the Duke was about to eat the wheat, he felt the need to visit the bathroom. Upon arriving in the bathroom, the Duke fell through the hole and drowned.
Arrhichion of Phigalia		564 BC	The Greek pankratiast caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrhichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot/ankle injury that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time Arrhichion suffered a fatally broken neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrhichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously.
Sisamnes		525 BC	A corrupt Persian judge was killed and flayed alive for accepting a bribe.
Milo of Croton		6th century BC	The Olympic champion wrestler's hands reportedly became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart; he was then devoured by wolves (or, in later versions, lions).
Zeuxis		5th century BC	The Greek painter died of laughter while painting an elderly woman.
Pythagoras of Samos		c. 495 BC	Ancient sources disagree on how the Greek philosopher died, but one late and probably apocryphal legend reported by both Diogenes Laërtius, a third-century AD biographer of famous philosophers, and Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist philosopher, states that Pythagoras was murdered by his political enemies. Supposedly, he almost managed to outrun them, but he came to a bean field and refused to run through it, as he had prohibited beans as ritually unclean. Since cutting through the field would violate his own teachings, Pythagoras simply stopped running and was killed. This story may have been fabricated by Neanthes of Cyzicus, on whom both Diogenes and Iamblichus rely as a source.
Anacreon		c. 485 BC	The poet, known for works in celebration of wine, choked to death on a grape stone according to Pliny the Elder. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that "the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits".
Heraclitus of Ephesus		c. 475 BC	According to one account given by Diogenes Laertius, the Greek philosopher was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy.
Themistocles		c. 459 BC	The Athenian general who won the Battle of Salamis actually died of natural causes in exile, but was widely rumored to have committed suicide by drinking a solution of crushed minerals known as bull's blood. The legend is widely retold in classical sources. The early twentieth-century English classicist Percy Gardner proposed that the story about him drinking bull's blood may have been based on an ignorant misunderstanding of a statue showing Themistocles in a heroic pose, holding a cup as an offering to the gods. The comedic playwright Aristophanes references Themistocles drinking bull's blood in his comedy The Knights (performed in 424 BC) as the most heroic way for a man to die.
Aeschylus		c. 455 BC	According to Valerius Maximus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed that day "by the fall of a house".
Empedocles of Akragas		c. 430 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, the Pre-Socratic philosopher from Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declared himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal", tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano. The Roman poet Horace also alludes to this legend.
Sogdianus		423 BC	The ruler of the Achaemenid Empire was captured by his half-brother Ochus, who had him executed by being suffocated by ash.
Polydamas of Skotoussa		5th century BC	The Thessalian pankratiast, and victor in the 93rd Olympiad (408 BC), was in a cave with friends when the roof began to crumble. Believing his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, he tried to support the roof with his shoulders as the rocks crashed down around him, but was crushed to death.
Sophocles		c. 406 BC	A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of another of the three great Athenian tragedians are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape. Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful. A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation.
Mithridates		401 BC	The Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days.
Democritus of Abdera		c. 370 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, the Greek Atomist philosopher died aged 109; as he was on his deathbed, his sister was greatly worried because she needed to fulfill her religious obligations to the goddess Artemis in the approaching three-day Thesmophoria festival. Democritus told her to place a loaf of warm bread under his nose and was able to survive for the three days of the festival by sniffing it. He died immediately after the festival was over.
Diogenes of Sinope		c. 323 BC	According to 3rd century biographer, Diogenes Laërtius, he died by consuming raw octopus. His contemporaries, however, claimed he died by holding his breath.
Anaxarchus		320 BC	According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxarchus gained the enmity of the tyrannical ruler of Cyprus, Nicocreon, for an inappropriate joke he made about tyrants at a banquet in 331 BC. When Anaxarchus visited Cyprus, Nicocreon ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar. During the torture Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon, "Just pound the bag of Anaxarchus, you do not pound Anaxarchus." Nicocreon then threatened to cut his tongue out; Anaxarchus bit it off and spat it at the ruler's face.
Antiphanes		c. 310 BC	According to the Suda, the renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy died after being struck by a pear.
King Wu of Qin		307 BC	The king and member of the Qin dynasty reportedly challenged his friend Meng Yue to a lifting contest. When Wu tried to lift a giant bronze pot believed to have been cast for Yu the Great, it crushed his leg, inflicting fatal injuries. Meng Yue and his family were sentenced to death.
Susima		3rd century BC	The crown prince of the Maurya Empire died when he fell into a pit of "hot embers". The trap had been made by Ashoka when he found out his rival was en route.
Agathocles of Syracuse		289 BC	The Greek tyrant of Syracuse was murdered with a poisoned toothpick.
Pyrrhus of Epirus		272 BC	During the Battle of Argos, Pyrrhus was fighting a Macedonian soldier in the street when the elderly mother of the soldier dropped a roof tile onto Pyrrhus' head, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed. According to a soldier named Zopyrus, they then proceeded to decapitate the king.
Philitas of Cos		c. 270 BC	The Greek intellectual is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death. British classicist Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.
Zeno of Citium		c. 262 BC	The Greek philosopher from Citium (Kition), Cyprus, tripped and fell as he was leaving the school, breaking his toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" He died on the spot through holding his breath.
Qin Shi Huang		August 210 BC	The first emperor of China, whose artifacts and treasures include the Terracotta Army, died after ingesting several pills of mercury, in the belief that it would grant him immortality.
Chrysippus of Soli		c. 206 BC	One ancient account of the death of the third-century BC Greek Stoic philosopher tells that he died laughing at his own joke after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).
Eleazar Avaran		c. 163 BC	The brother of Judas Maccabeus; according to 1 Maccabees 6:46, during the Battle of Beth Zechariah, Eleazar spied an armored war elephant which he believed to be carrying the Seleucid emperor Antiochus V Eupator. After thrusting his spear in battle into its belly, it collapsed and fell on top of Eleazar, killing him instantly.
Manius Aquillius and Marcus Licinius Crassus		1st century BC	The late Roman Republic-era consul was sent as ambassador to Asia Minor in 90 BC to restore Nicomedes IV of Bithynia to his kingdom after the latter was expelled by Mithridates VI of Pontus. But Aquillius encouraged Nicomedes to raid part of Mithridates' territory, which started the First Mithridatic War. Aquillius was captured and brought to Mithridates, who in 88 BC had him executed by pouring molten gold down his throat. According to one story, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman general and statesman, who was very greedy despite being called "the richest man in Rome," was executed in the same manner by the Parthians after they defeated him in the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, in symbolic mockery of his thirst for wealth. However, it has been disputed as to whether this is how Crassus met his end.
Quintus Lutatius Catulus		87 BC	After his former comrade-in-arms Gaius Marius took control of Rome and had him prosecuted for a capital offence, the Roman Republic consul shut himself inside his house, which was heated to a high temperature and daubed with lime, thus suffocating himself.
Licinius Macer		66 BC	At the end of his trial by Cicero for extortion, the Roman annalist and politician suffocated himself with a handkerchief, thus nullifying his conviction.
Porcia Catonis		June 43 BC to October 42 BC	The daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis and second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, according to ancient historians such as Cassius Dio and Appian, killed herself by swallowing hot coals. Modern historians find this tale implausible.
Cleopatra and two handmaidens		August 30 BC	The 39-year-old last queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom killed herself with an asp (a viper). Two of her handmaidens were also bitten by the asp.
Tiberius Claudius Drusus		c. 20 AD	According to Suetonius, the eldest son of the future Roman emperor Claudius died while playing with a pear. Having tossed the pear high in the air, he caught it in his mouth when it came back, but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.
Tiberius		16 March 37	The Roman emperor died in Misenum aged 78. According to Tacitus, the emperor appeared to have died and Caligula, who was at Tiberius' villa, was being congratulated on his succession to the empire, when news arrived that the emperor had revived and was recovering his faculties. Those who had moments before recognized Caligula as Augustus fled in fear of the emperor's wrath, while Macro, a prefect of the Praetorian Guard, took advantage of the chaos to have Tiberius smothered with his own bedclothes, definitively killing him.
Saint Peter		Between 64 and 68 AD	The apostle of Jesus was crucified upside-down in Rome, based on his claim of being unworthy to die in the same way as his Saviour.
Bartholomew the Apostle		69 or 71 AD	St. Bartholomew, an apostle of Jesus Christ, died after either being knocked out and thrown into the sea or being skinned alive and beheaded in Armenia.
Antipas of Pergamum		68 or 92 AD	Antipas was burned alive inside the brazen bull for supposedly casting out demons who were worshipped in Pergamum.
Simon the Zealot		1st century AD	According to an ancient tradition, the apostle of Jesus was sawn in half in Persia.
Saint Lawrence		258	The deacon was roasted alive on a giant grill during the persecution of Valerian. Prudentius tells that he joked with his tormentors, "Turn me over—I'm done on this side". He is now the patron saint of cooks, chefs, and comedians.
Marcus of Arethusa		362	The Christian bishop and martyr was hung up in a honey-smeared basket for bees to sting him to death.
Cassian of Imola		13 August 363	Cassian of Imola was sentenced to death by Julian the Apostate and was handed over to his pupils to carry out the deed, which they did by binding him to a stake and stabbing him with a poisoned stylus.
Valentinian I		17 November 375	The Roman emperor suffered a stroke which was provoked by yelling at foreign envoys in anger.
Attila		c. 453	Attila the Hun reportedly died on his wedding night by choking on his own blood, which flowed into his mouth from a nosebleed.

Middle Ages

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Constans II		15 July 668	The Byzantine Emperor was assassinated with a bucket according to Theophilus of Edessa.
Li Bai		30 November 762	The famous Chinese poet of the 8th century died drunk after embracing the Moon. While riding his boat along the Yangtze River, he saw the reflection of the Moon in the water. When he tried to hug it, he fell off his boat and later drowned.
Popiel		830	According to legend, after the wife of the dissolute Polish ruler poisoned his uncles to prevent them from deposing him, a horde of rats and mice swarmed out of the uncles' bodies, which had been cast into lake Gopło, pursued Popiel and his wife to a tower in which they had taken refuge and ate them alive.
Ragnar Lodbrok		c. 865	The semi-legendary Viking leader whose exploits are narrated in the Ragnars saga loðbrókar, a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga, is said to have been captured by Ælla of Northumbria, who had him executed by throwing him into a pit of snakes.
Louis III of France		5 August 882	The king of West Francia died aged around 18 at Saint-Denis. Whilst mounting his horse to pursue a girl who was running to seek refuge in her father's house, he hit his head on the lintel of a low door and fell, fracturing his skull.
Basil I		29 August 886	The Byzantine emperor's belt was entangled between antlers of a deer during a hunt and the animal subsequently dragged him for 16 miles (26 km) through the woods. Because of this accident, Basil contracted fever and he died shortly afterwards.
Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney		892	The second Earl of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe Máel Brigte to his horse's saddle. Brigte's teeth rubbed against Sigurd's leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection, according to the Old Norse Heimskringla and Orkneyinga sagas.
Hatto II		18 January 970	The archbishop of Mainz, like the Polish ruler Popiel, is claimed in legend to have been eaten alive by rodents.
Abu Nasr al-Jawhari		1003 or 1010	The Kazakh Turkic scholar from Farab died after a failed aviation test. It is said he used two wooden wings and rope. He leaped off the roof of the Nisābūr Mosque and then died on impact. His death was most likely caused after he had delusions of being a bird. al-Jawhari is said to be the first person killed by an aviation invention.
Edmund Ironside		30 November 1016	The English king was allegedly stabbed whilst on a toilet by an assassin hiding underneath.
Béla I of Hungary		11 September 1063	After the Holy Roman Empire decided to launch a military expedition against Hungary to restore young Solomon to the throne, the Hungarian king was seriously injured when "his throne broke beneath him" in his manor at Dömös. The king—who was "half-dead", according to the Illuminated Chronicle—was taken to the western borders of his kingdom, where he died at the creek Kanizsa on 11 September 1063.
Victims of the White Ship wreck		25 November 1120	While carrying intoxicated nobles across the English Channel, the ship was crashed into a rock by the also-intoxicated helmsman and began sinking. A lifeboat was launched, but William Adelin jumped into and capsized it. All aboard died.
Crown Prince Philip of France		13 October 1131	Died while riding through Paris when his horse tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap.
Henry I of England		1 December 1135	While visiting relatives, he supposedly ate too many lampreys against his physician's advice, causing a pain in his gut, and ultimately his death.
John II Komnenos		1 April 1143	Cut himself with a poisoned arrow during a boar hunt, and subsequently died from an infection.
Pope Adrian IV		1 September 1159	The only Englishman to serve as Pope reportedly died after choking on a fly while drinking spring water.
Victims of the Erfurt latrine disaster		26 July 1184	While Henry VI, the King of Germany, was holding an informal assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.
Frederick Barbarossa		10 June 1190	While leading the German army on the Third Crusade, the Holy Roman Emperor unexpectedly drowned while bathing in the Saleph River.
Henry I of Castile		6 June 1217	The 13-year-old king of Castile was killed by a tile that fell from a roof.
Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ap Iorwerth		1 March 1244	The first-born son of Llywelyn the Great died while attempting to lower himself from the Tower of London in an escape attempt. The rope, made out of sheets and other fabrics, snapped, and his neck was broken in the fall, according to English monk and chronicler, Matthew Paris.
Al-Musta'sim		20 February 1258	The last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.
Edward II of England		21 September 1327	The English king was rumoured to have been murdered after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body. However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II's death, and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda.
John of Bohemia		26 August 1346	After being blind for 10 years, the Bohemian king died in the Battle of Crécy when—at his command—his companions tied their horses' reins to his own and charged. He was slaughtered in the ensuing fight.
Charles II of Navarre		1 January 1387	The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that the king of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad", suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire, and Charles later died of his injuries. Froissart considered the horrific death to be God's judgment upon the king.
Martin of Aragon		31 May 1410	The Aragonese king died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to legend, Martin was suffering from indigestion, caused by eating an entire goose, when his favorite jester, Borra, entered the king's bedroom. When Martin asked Borra where he had been, the jester replied with: "Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs." This joke caused the king to die from laughter.

Renaissance

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence		18 February 1478	The 1st Duke of Clarence was allegedly executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine, apparently his own choice once he accepted he was to be killed.
Charles VIII of France		7 April 1498	The French king died as the result of striking his head on the lintel of a door while on his way to watch a game of real tennis.
Victims of the 1518 dancing plague		July 1518	Several people died of either heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion during a dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (Holy Roman Empire).
Robert Pakington		13 November 1536	The 47-year-old merchant was killed in London by a wheellock pistol, making his death the first political assassination performed by a firearm.
Pietro Aretino		21 October 1556	The influential Italian author and libertine is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much at an obscene joke during a meal in Venice. Another version states that he fell from a chair from too much laughter, fracturing his skull.
Henry II of France		10 July 1559	On 30 June 1559, a tournament was held near Place des Vosges to celebrate the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with the French king's longtime enemies, the Habsburgs of Austria, and to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Elisabeth of Valois to King Philip II of Spain. During a jousting match, Henry, wearing the colors of his mistress Diane de Poitiers, was wounded in the eye by a fragment of the splintered lance of Gabriel Montgomery, captain of the King's Scottish Guard. Despite the efforts of royal surgeons Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, the court doctors ultimately "advocated a wait-and-see strategy"; as a result, the king's untreated eye and brain damage led to his death by sepsis ten days later. His death played a significant role in the decline of jousting as a sport, particularly in France.
Amy Robsart		8 September 1560	The 28-year-old wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was found dead by a staircase with two wounds on her head and a broken neck. Theories suggest she threw herself down the stairs.
Hans Staininger		1567	The burgomaster of Braunau (then Bavaria, now Austria), died when he broke his neck by tripping over his own beard. The beard, which was 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long at the time, was usually kept rolled up in a leather pouch.
Marco Antonio Bragadin		17 August 1571	The Venetian Captain-General of Famagusta in Cyprus, was gruesomely killed after the Ottomans took over the city. He was dragged around the walls with sacks of earth and stone on his back; next, he was tied to a chair and hoisted to the yardarm of the Turkish flagship, where he was exposed to the taunts of the sailors. Finally, he was taken to his place of execution in the main square, tied naked to a column, and flayed alive. Bragadin's skin was stuffed with straw and sewn, reinvested with his military insignia, and exhibited riding an ox in a mocking procession along the streets of Famagusta. The macabre trophy was hoisted upon the masthead pennant of the personal galley of the Ottoman commander, Amir al-bahr Mustafa Pasha, to be taken to Constantinople as a gift for Sultan Selim II. Bragadin's skin was stolen in 1580 by a Venetian seaman and brought back to Venice, where it was received as a returning hero.
Victims of the Black Assize of Oxford 1577		July 1577	In Oxford, England, at least 300 people, including Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer Sir Robert Bell and Serjeant Nicholas Barham, died in the aftermath of the trial of Rowland Jenkes, a Catholic bookseller convicted of distributing pamphlets defaming Queen Elizabeth I, at the assize at Oxford. The dead reportedly included no women or children.
Mary, Queen of Scots		8 February 1587	The 44-year-old queen of Scotland was told that she was to be executed for plotting the assassination of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. However, when the executioner, only known as Bull, prepared to chop off her head with an axe, the first blow did not kill Mary. It only hit her head. The second blow severed her neck, but the tendon was still left. The executioner later pulled off Mary's head only to reveal that her hair was a wig.
Andrew Perne		26 April 1589	The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and Dean of Ely was known for his frequent religious conversions to match the established faith of the time in England. He reportedly died due to having heard the jester of Queen Elizabeth I make a joke about his uncertain spiritual state, referring to him as "one that is neither heaven nor earth, but hangs betwixt both".
Tycho Brahe		24 October 1601	The astronomer contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague and died eleven days later. According to Johannes Kepler's first-hand account, Brahe had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself, because it would have been a breach of etiquette. After he had returned home, he was no longer able to urinate, except eventually in very small quantities and with excruciating pain. Though initially ascribed to a kidney stone, and later still to potential mercury poisoning, modern analyses indicate Brahe's death resulted from a fatal case of uremia caused by an inflamed prostate.

Early modern period

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Sir Francis Bacon		9 April 1626	The English philosopher and statesman died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken carcass with snow to learn whether it could preserve meat.
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke		30 September 1628	A disgruntled servant stabbed the English poet, dramatist and statesman in the stomach after he used the toilet. Physicians treated the wounds with animal fat, which rotted, causing a fatal case of gangrene.
Jörg Jenatsch		24 January 1639	The Swiss political leader was assassinated by a person who dressed in a bear costume so he could assassinate him with an axe. Other stories say that the axe was the same one that Jenatsch had used to kill a rival.
Safi of Persia		12 May 1642	The Safavid ruler of Iran allegedly died due to alcohol intoxication in a drinking contest against a Georgian nobleman, Scedan Chiladze, invited from Mingrelia.
Thomas Granger		8 September 1642	Granger was executed for buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. Granger was one of the first people to be executed in the Plymouth Colony and the first Caucasian juvenile to be sentenced to death and executed in the territory of what is now the United States. The mare, the cow and the calves were also executed.
Arthur Aston		1649	During the Siege of Drogheda, Arthur Aston was beaten to death by Oliver Cromwell's army with his own wooden leg because they suspected gold coins were concealed inside.
Thomas Urquhart		1660	The Scottish aristocrat, polymath, and first translator of François Rabelais's writings into English is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.
James Betts		1667	Died from asphyxiation after being sealed in a cupboard by Elizabeth Spencer, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in an attempt to hide him from her father, John Spencer.
François Vatel		24 April 1671	The majordomo of Prince Louis II de Bourbon-Condè was responsible for a banquet for 2,000 people hosted in honour of King Louis XIV at the Château de Chantilly, where he died. According to a letter by Madame de Sévigné, Vatel was so distraught about the lateness of the seafood delivery and about other mishaps, that he committed suicide with his sword, and his body was discovered when someone came to tell him of the arrival of the fish.
Molière		17 February 1673	The French playwright suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the part of a hypochondriac in his own play Le malade imaginaire. He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show, which ends with his character dead in a chair. After the show, he was carried in the chair to his house, where he died.
Thomas Otway		14 April 1685	The English dramatist fell on hard times and was suffering from poverty in his later years, and was driven by starvation to beg for food. A gentleman who recognized him gave him a guinea, with which he hastened to a baker's shop, purchased a roll, and choked to death on the first mouthful.
Jean-Baptiste Lully		22 March 1687	The French composer died of a gangrenous abscess after accidentally piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum. It was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.
William III of England		8 March 1702	The king of England was riding his horse when it stumbled on a molehill. William fell and broke his collarbone, then contracted pneumonia and died several days later. After he died, Jacobites were said to have toasted in the mole's honour, calling it "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat".
Hannah Twynnoy		October 1703	The 33-year-old barmaid of The White Lion was mauled to death by a tiger in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. She was the first person to be killed by a tiger in British history.
Edward Teach		22 November 1718	The famous English pirate was shot five times and slashed ~20 times with swords by Robert Maynard and his men. He was still alive, but died a day later on the 22nd.
Sarah Grosvenor		14 September 1742	The 19-year-old woman was getting an abortion from Dr. John Hallowell. However, on the 14th, she died from the complications of the surgery. Grosvenor was the first case of a surgical abortion.
Frederick, Prince of Wales		31 March 1751	The son of George II of Great Britain and father of George III died of a pulmonary embolism, but was commonly claimed to have been killed by being struck by a cricket ball.
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann		6 August 1753	The Russian physicist was killed when a globe of ball lightning which he created in his laboratory struck him in the forehead.
Henry Hall		8 December 1755	The 94-year-old British lighthouse keeper died several days after fighting a fire at Rudyerd's Tower, during which molten lead from the roof fell down his throat. His autopsy revealed that "the diaphragmatic upper mouth of the stomach greatly inflamed and ulcerated, and the tuncia in the lower part of the stomach burnt; and from the great cavity of it took out a great piece of lead ... which weighed exactly seven ounces, five drachms and eighteen grains". The piece of lead is currently in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland.
John Day		22 June 1774	The English carpenter and wheelwright was the first human known to have died in an accident with a submarine. Day submerged himself in Plymouth Sound in a wooden diving chamber attached to a sloop named the Maria and never resurfaced.
Unknown concubine of King Tetui of Mangaia		1777	In approximately 1777, a concubine of King Tetui was killed by a falling coconut on the island Mangaia in the Cook Islands.
Col. Francis Barber		2 February 1783	The 32-year-old colonel was killed when a tree fell on top of him as he was riding his horse to dine with George Washington in Newburgh, New York.
James Otis Jr.		23 May 1783	The 58-year-old son of famed lawyer James Otis was killed by a lightning strike in Andover, Massachusetts.
Frantisek Kotzwara		2 September 1791	While in London, the 31-year-old Czech violinist visited a prostitute named Susannah Hill and requested his neck be tied with a noose around a door knob. He died after the sexual intercourse of erotic asphyxiation.
Samuel Spencer		20 March 1793	A former colonel from North Carolina was sleeping on a porch in Anson County while wearing a red cap. Spencer's bobbling head drew the attention of a turkey, which viewed Spencer as another turkey and fatally wounded the 59-year-old with its talons.

19th century

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Thomas Millwood		3 January 1804	The 32-year-old plasterer was shot and killed by excise officer Francis Smith, who mistook him for the Hammersmith ghost due to his white uniform. Smith was later sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to one year's imprisonment with hard labor, and he received a full pardon later in the year.
Victims of the London Beer Flood		17 October 1814	At Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vat of fermenting porter burst, causing chain reactions and destroying several large beer barrels. The beer subsequently flooded the nearby slum and killed eight people. Several people also subsequently died from alcohol poisoning as a result of vaporized liquor.
William Henry Harrison		4 April 1841	The 9th President of the United States died a month after his inauguration from an illness (possibly pneumonia or enteric fever) that developed after he stood in the rain to deliver his 2-hour-long inaugural address, the longest by any U.S. President. Medical treatments Harrison received in the last week of his life included opium, castor oil and leeches. Harrison remains the U.S. President to have served the shortest term in office and was the first President to die in office.
Zachary Taylor		9 July 1850	The 12th President of the United States died of diarrhea and dysentry 5 days after consuming raw cherries and iced milk at a 4th of July event at the site of the Washington Monument. Persistent speculation that Taylor was poisoned would lead to the exhumation of some of his remains in 1991, but scientific testing found no evidence of poison.
William Snyder		11 January 1854	The 13-year-old died in San Francisco, California, reportedly after a circus clown named Manuel Rays swung him around by his heels.
Victims of the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning		1858	In Bradford, England, a batch of sweets accidentally poisoned with arsenic trioxide were sold by William Hardaker, colloquially referred to as "Humbug Billy". Around five boxes of sweets were delivered and sold. Around 20 people died and 200 people suffered from the effects of the poison.
Julius Peter Garesché		31 December 1862	The Cuban-born professional soldier was killed on the first day of the Battle of Stones River when a cannon ball decapitated him.
Archduchess Mathilda of Austria		6 June 1867	The daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen set her dress on fire while trying to hide a cigarette from her father, who had forbidden her to smoke.
Mary Ward		31 August 1869	The 42-year-old Irish scientist, naturalist, microscopist, author, and artist was killed by a steam-powered car built by William Parsons' sons. While Ward was riding in the car, it hit a bend, causing Ward to fall out of the car. One of the car's wheels ran over her and broke her neck. She is the first person known to have been killed by a motor vehicle.
Clement Vallandigham		17 June 1871	The American politician and lawyer, who was defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself while demonstrating how the victim might have done so. His client was acquitted.
James "Jim" Cullen		6 November 1873	The 25-year-old Irish man became the only man ever lynched in Mapleton, Maine, after he committed a robbery and beat two deputy sheriffs to death with an axe.
Unknown man		1875	A factory worker in Manchester found a mouse on her table and screamed. A man rushed over to her and tried to shoo it away, but it tried to hide in his clothes, and when he gasped in surprise the mouse dove into his mouth and he swallowed it. The mouse tore and bit the man's throat and chest, and he later died "in horrible agony".
Victims of the Dublin Whiskey Fire		18 June 1875	At The Liberties, Dublin, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), a fire broke out at Laurence Malone's bonded storehouse on the corner of Ardee Street, where 5,000 hogsheads (262,500 imperial gallons or 1,193,000 litres or 315,200 US gallons) of whiskey were being stored. The heat caused the barrels in the storehouse to explode, sending a stream of whiskey flowing through the doors and windows of the burning building. The burning whiskey then flowed along the streets where it quickly demolished a row of small houses. Despite the damage from the fire, all of the resulting 13 fatalities were caused by alcohol poisoning after drinking the undiluted flooded whiskey.
Queen Sunanda Kumariratana		31 May 1880	The 19-year-old queen consort of King Rama V of Siam died when her boat flipped over. A large crowd formed but none of them could help because touching the queen was a capital offense.
Hague and another female servant		October 1881	A British servant of one Mr. Birchall was instructed by his master to retrieve a four-chambered pistol. Hague did so, but while examining the gun he shot himself in the jaw which caused instant death. He was discovered by another servant who also shot herself.
Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet		19 December 1881	The former British MP died after sustaining severe internal injuries when he fell on a turnip while hunting.
Samuel Wardell		31 December 1885	The lamplighter in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, had attached a 10-pound (4.5 kg) rock to his alarm clock, which would crash to the floor and awaken him. On Christmas Eve, he rearranged his furniture for a party, but forgot to change his room back afterwards. When the alarm mechanism went off the next morning, the rock fell on his head and killed him.
George Murichson		13 May 1886	The 8-year-old boy from Aroostook County, Maine, died from a hemorrhage after having a live snake pulled out of his mouth. The snake was speculated to have gone down his throat after he had "gone to sleep in some field".
Mary Agnes Lapish		April 1893	The Australian woman stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, possibly while intoxicated, and was strangled by her fur collar.
Jeremiah Haralson		1895	The former United States Congressman from Alabama disappears from the historical record after his 1895 imprisonment for pension fraud in Albany, New York. He was reportedly killed by an unknown animal while coal mining near Denver, Colorado, c. 1916, but there is little or no historical evidence for this.
Bridget Driscoll		17 August 1896	The 44-year-old, the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in Great Britain, was struck on the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London, by a car belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company while giving demonstration rides.
Empress Elisabeth of Austria		10 September 1898	Stabbed with a thin file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni while strolling through Geneva with her lady-in-waiting Irma Sztáray. The wound pierced her pericardium and a lung. Her extremely tight corset held the wound closed, so she did not realize what had happened (believing a passerby had struck her), and walked on for some time before collapsing.

20th century

1900–1960

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Victims of the 1900 English beer poisoning		1900	In the English Midlands, North West England, and Manchester, doctors saw that avid drinkers had numbness in the hands or feet. However, around 41 people succumbed to peripheral neuritis, and people decided to investigate. They discovered the cause to be alcoholic neuropathy caused by non-purified sulphuric acid laced with arsenic. Over 6,000 people died from the poison and most of the victims were paralyzed from the effects.
Jesse William Lazear		25 September 1900	The 34-year-old American physician was convinced that mosquitoes were carriers for yellow fever. He allowed himself to be bitten by multiple mosquitoes and died days later from the disease.
Victims of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster		29 November 1900	During the 1900 The Big Game American football match between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal in San Francisco, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 (equivalent to $37 in 2023) admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof collapsed, spilling many spectators onto a furnace. Of the hundreds of people on the roof, at least 100 people fell four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of the furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). Fuel pipes were severed as a result of the roof collapse, spraying many victims with scalding hot oil. The fuel also ignited, setting many bodies on fire. Twenty-three people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.
James Doyle Jr.		30 January 1901	The lineworker in Smartsville, California, was killed by an electric shock through a telephone receiver after a broken power line came in contact with the telephone wire.
Adelbert S. Hay		23 June 1901	The 24-year-old American consul and politician died after falling 60 feet (18 m) from a window in the New Haven House in New Haven, Connecticut. The San Francisco Call speculated that Hay had been sitting on the window for air and eventually fell asleep, causing him to fall to his death.
Mary Franks		12 July 1902	The woman died from suffocation caused by "matter from her tongue" which went into her throat after a tooth extraction.
Jessie Smith		August 1902	The elderly woman in Te Aroha was found dead behind her house in a tank. She had come out of an asylum before her disappearance.
R. Stanton Walker		25 October 1902	The 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio, with a friend on either side of him. One of the friends borrowed a knife from the other to sharpen his pencil as he was keeping score, and when he was finished passed the knife to Walker to pass to the other friend. As Walker was holding the knife, a foul ball struck him in the hand and drove the knife into his chest next to his heart. His friends asked if he was hurt and he said "not much", but the wound soon began to bleed heavily and he died within minutes.
Unknown Hawaiian male		May 1903	An unidentified person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu, Hawai'i. He was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna, who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons; the Kahuna was charged with manslaughter.
Romaine Romania and John Banks		26 May 1903	Romania, a 45-year-old native of Belgium, died in Norfolk, Virginia, after taking a large amount of calomel, eating several oranges, and drinking a considerable amount of beer. Romania's head swelled to twice normal size. That same day, barge worker John Banks was electrocuted when the rigging of his vessel came in contact with the wires crossing a bridge belonging to the Norfolk Railway and Light Company.
Ed Delahanty		2 July 1903	The American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train while drunk, falling off International Bridge, and going over Niagara Falls. Delahanty reportedly downed five shots of whiskey, broke into a fire axe case, attempted to shove over a partition, and allegedly grabbed a woman's ankles and tried to pull her out of her berth. He may also have threatened other passengers with razor blades. The conductor removed him from the train and asked him to calm down because he was still in Canada, to which he allegedly shouted, "I don't care if I'm in Canada or dead!" He later encountered and may have scuffled with Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, after which he went into the river and over the Falls. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.
Benjamin Taylor A Bell		1 March 1904	On 18 February 1904, while taking his habitual shortcut to the Canadian Mining Review offices through an adjacent store, the Canadian journalist walked through the wrong door in the store and fell 10 feet (3.0 m) down an elevator shaft. He died of his injuries 12 days later.
John Mortensen		1 May 1904	The 19-year-old duck hunter from Wairoa, New Zealand, drowned in about 6 inches (15 cm) of water on the Whare-o-Maraenui reserve in Napier, New Zealand, apparently having fallen while having a seizure.
Benjamin and Edwin Coshkey		24 June 1904	Two brothers picking cherries near Wabank, Lancaster Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, were electrocuted when they made contact with an exposed wire in the branches.
John Ericsen		4 July 1904	The 11-year-old boy from Butte, Montana, went missing on 4 July and was found dead 4 days later under a pile of coal in a bin near the North Pacific roundhouse.
Melissa M. Tiemann		7 July 1904	The 50-year-old resident of Los Angeles fell from a streetcar and struck the back of her head on the ground, driving the teeth of an aluminum comb she was wearing into her skull.
Clarence Madison Dally		2 October 1904	The 39-year-old American glassblower died from radiation on his hands while using a handmade X-ray. Dally is the first person known to have died from X-ray exposure.
Jane Stanford		28 February 1905	The founder of Stanford University died mysteriously from strychnine poisoning. The case of her death was rumored as poisoning, but later changed into "natural causes," according to David Starr Jordan. Who or what killed Stanford is still a mystery.
Charles Persich		March 1905	The baby from Sydney died from intussusception, meaning that his bowels had "telescoped".
Thomas Melia		9 December 1905	An employee of a brewery in Brooklyn died when he was caught in "an avalanche of shifting malt and barley and was suffocated."
Mary Ellen Rumble		19 December 1905	The daughter of a farmer in Watervale near Murrumburrah in New South Wales was killed when one of a group of horses attempting to escape from a paddock knocked her down, causing her neck to snap.
L. R. Davis		1906	The 76-year-old inmate of the state insane asylum in Norfolk, Nebraska, was granted a parole. Upon seeing his grandson, who had come to take him home, "he was so filled with joy that he suddenly expired."
Archibald Anderson		4 March 1907	The 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when he choked on a tooth plate.
Jane Hewitt		1 September 1908	The woman residing in South Melbourne was found dead on the floor in her nighttime attire, having been unconscious for several days. She died from erysipelas and blood loss caused by a wound to her temple.
Thomas Selfridge		17 September 1908	Thomas Selfridge and Orville Wright were presenting the 1908 Wright Military Flyer to the US Army Signal Corps Division at Fort Myer. The plane made 41⁄2 rounds around the Fort before running into problems and crashing. Selfridge fractured his skull and died three hours later.<ref name=obit>{{cite news|title=Fatal Fall of Wright Airship; Lieut. Selfridge Killed and Orville Wright Hurt by Breaking of Propeller. Machine a Total Wreck. Increased Length of New Blade and Added Weight of a Passenger Probable Causes. Cavalry Ride Down Crowd Rumor That the Machine Had Been Tampered with Denied by Army Officers—Not Well Guarded.|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1908/09/18/104755152.pdf%7Cquote=Falling from a height of 75 feet, Orville Wright and Lieut. Thomas E. Selfridge of the Signal Corps were buried in the wreckage of Wright's aeroplane shortly after 5 o'clock this afternoon. The young army officer died at 8:10 o'clock to-night. Wright is badly hurt, although he p