| Lists of unusual deaths | ||
|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | ||
| Middle Ages | Renaissance | Early modern period |
| 19th century | 20th century | 21st century |
| Animal deaths | ||
This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 19th century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
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| 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.[1][2] |
| 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 reportedly died from alcohol poisoning as a result of drinking the flooded liquor.[3][4][5] |
| 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.[6][7] |
| 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.[7][8][9] 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.[8][9] |
| 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.[10][11] | |
| 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.[12][13] |
| Jim Creighton |  |
18 October 1862 | The 21-year-old American baseball player from Manhattan died from abdominal pain, possibly caused by pitching or swinging at the ball, which likely gave him a ruptured bladder or a ruptured hernia.[14][15] |
| Julius Peter Garesché | .jpg) |
31 December 1862 | The Cuban-born professional soldier was killed on the first day of the Battle of Stones River when a cannonball decapitated him.[16][17] |
| 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.[18][verification needed][19] |
| Unknown woman | 1869 | A woman in Gayton le Marsh, Lincolnshire, England, became severely ill and later died after consuming her own hair for 12 years.[20][21] | |
| 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.[22][23][24] |
| James "Jim" Cullen | 6 November 1873 | The 25-year-old Irish man became the only man ever lynched in Mapleton, Maine,[25] after he committed a robbery and beat two deputy sheriffs to death with an axe.[26] | |
| 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".[21][27] | |
| 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.[28][29][30] |
| James A. Moon |  |
10 June 1876 | The 37-year-old blacksmith, self-proclaimed inventor, and American Civil War veteran killed himself with a makeshift guillotine.[31][32][33] |
| 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.[34] 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 demonstrating how Hague died.[35][failed verification] | |
| 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.[36][failed verification][37][failed verification] | |
| 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.[21][38][39] | |
| 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".[40][41][42] | |
| Caroline Yates | 16 March 1887 | According to an autopsy during her inquest, the 25-year-old woman, living in Redfern, New South Wales at the time, died from peritonitis due to an internal injury inflicted by Dr. Sabowiski with the intent of "procuring abortion".[43][44] | |
| Unknown Iraqi male | 22 August 1888 | At around 8:30 pm, a shower of meteorites fell "like rain" on a village in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (then part of the Ottoman Empire). One man was paralyzed and another died. His death is considered the only credible case of death-by-meteorite.[45][46][47] | |
| Isaack Rabbanovitch | August 1891 | A bear walked into the barkeep's inn in Vilna, Russia (now part of Lithuania) and picked up a keg of vodka. When he tried to take it back, he was hugged to death by the intoxicated bear along with his two sons and daughter. Villagers shot and killed the bear.[21][48] | |
| Unknown sailor | 1892 | A sailor in Bermuda was arguing with other sailors, but the argument turned into a fight and the sailor was pushed into the water. A marine began undressing for a rescue attempt, but an officer ordered him to stop because there was a boat nearby that had ladies on it. As the sailor continued struggling in the water, five men volunteered to save him, but he had already drowned.[21][49] | |
| Mary Agnes Lapish | April 1893 | The Australian woman stumbled into a barbed-wire fence, possibly while intoxicated, and was strangled by her fur collar.[50][51] | |
| 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.[52][53] |
| 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,[54] 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.[55] |
| Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg | .jpg) |
October 1897 | The group of men died of exhaustion on the island Kvitøya after trying to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon.[56][57][58] |
| Empress Elisabeth of Austria |  |
10 September 1898 | The Empress of Austria was 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. As her extremely tight corset held the wound closed, she did not realize what had happened (instead believing a passerby had struck her) and walked on for some time before collapsing.[59][verification needed][60][verification needed] |
The ongoing spate of Internet reports of unusual deaths, both real and fictional, might lead some to believe extraordinary modes of demise are a recent phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth — the Grim Reaper has always found incredible methods of ending human life.
It is 200 years since a tidal wave of beer tore through London, England. And while that may sound like a drinker's dream, beer historian Martyn Cornell tells Carol that this was a "real tsunami of black beer running through the streets."
A bizarre industrial accident resulted in the release of a beer tsunami onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road... This unique disaster was responsible for the gradual phasing out of wooden fermentation casks to be replaced by lined concrete vats.
Since today is inauguration day, allow me to shed light on what has to be one of the most unusual inauguration stories: the death of William Henry Harrison.
Many of history's most important figures have suffered strange deaths that do not seem to befit their noble legacy.
We all learn about assassinations of presidents in history class but I was looking for something a bit more unusual, and I found it – the death of Zachary Taylor.
Then you have those remembered for their short stay in the White House and unusual cause of death. The 12th president, Zachary Taylor, belongs to the latter category.
However it transpired, it goes without saying that this death has arguably gone down as one of, if not the most, unusual reported manners in which someone rode the pale horse.
Yet, the historical literature reports only few isolated cases over the last 150 years...
But no single event is stranger to us or better demonstrated how very different the game was in its early years than what happened 150 years ago today.
Julius was killed in a bizarre mischance when his head was blown off by a stray cannon ball as he rode with General Rosecrans near Murfreesboro.
The Times gives the particulars of a death which took place a few days ago from a singular cause at Grayton-le-Marsh [sic]... "The occurrence of a similar case to the above is either so rare or so seldom detected, that several medical men of large experience never remember ever having heard of one like it.", cited in "11 unusual tales of terror from historical newspapers". Blog. The British Newspaper Archive. 27 October 2014. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
Here is a newspaper account of the unusual death of Clement Vallandigham, a leader of the Copperhead Democrats during the Civil War.
A lynching in Maine is an unusual thing. Throughout New England, lynching was extremely rare.
In 1875, we reported on a very unusual death.
Then followed a scene of the wildest horror and confusion. A vast crowd has, of course, collected, but they had to fly for their lives before the blazing stream of whiskey as they rushed hissing along
There were 13 deaths, but not one of them was caused by fire itself," Las says. "They were all to do with the madness that took hold. Some of the stories were very sad, but some of them were also bizarre.
Even as people were trying to escape the blaze, hundreds more flocked to the area to witness the unbelievable event and to help themselves to free whiskey.
The situation, as they found it, was bad enough, but the appliances which had been used to produce death were most wonderful, and will stand in the history of suicides without a parallel.
Then, in an absurd case of irony, the servant managed to duplicate Hague's fate.
A strange case which has recently come under the notice of the physicians, is the unhappy fate of the little boy who lived a few miles below Grand Falls... The above case is an actual fact, and so far as we can learn, it is unparalleled.
A short time ago the strange story of a snake being pulled out of the mouth of a boy who lived near Grand Falls, in Aroostook county, was telegraphed the papers. Since then the case, which is believed to be unparalleled, has attracted the attention of physicians, and the story is fully confirmed.
The almost incredible story recently printed about the death of a boy near Grand Falls from hemorrhage caused by pulling from his mouth a live snake which had grown to his flesh proves to be literally true.
The coroner's inquest on the body of Mrs. Caroline Yates, who died under suspicions circumstances at Redfern last week, was concluded to-day.
The odds of being struck and killed by a meteorite are said to be as low as one in 250,000.
One astronomer put the odds of death by space rock at 1 in 700,000 in a lifetime, while others say it's more like 1 in 1,600,000. Computing the probability for such an untimely death is difficult because this type of event is so rare.
If they can find related meteorites in the area, the victim will be the only confirmed human in history killed by a meteorite.
A strange and terrible accident has just occurred in the neighbourhood of Vilna, in Russia.
The Hampshire Telegraph, in its 'Naval Section', relates the following curious story from Bermuda.
The manner of death was bizarre...
But Driscoll's death was so unusual that the matter landed in Coroners Court for a full-blown inquest.
Melvyn Harrison, of historical group the Crystal Palace Foundation, says people would have been simply bemused at the sight of these "horseless carriages". "It was such a rare animal to be on the roads and, for her to be killed, people would have thought the story was made up," he says.
There was no reason at all why the explorers should have perished when and where they did..., cited in "Solomon August Andrée – Sweden: The First Attempt of a Flight to the North Pole". The Aviation History On-Line Museum. 2007. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
Here they perished one by one after an almost three month long exhausting march under strange and never clarified circumstances...[self-published source]
One of the more unusual attacks on the pole was made by Salomon August Andree, a Swedish engineer who in 1897 tried to fly over it in a hydrogen-filled balloon.
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