Bizarre Deaths in History

8/8/2019 Bizarre Deaths in History

1/8

Bizarre Deaths in History

Steve Irwin (1962 2006)

Stephen Robert Irwin, known simply as Steve Irwin and

nicknamed The Crocodile Hunter, was an iconic Australian television personality,

wildlife expert, and conservationist. He achieved world-wide fame from the television

program The Crocodile Hunter, an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series

co-hosted with his wife Terri Irwin. Together, they also co-owned and operated

Australia Zoo, founded by his parents in Beerwah, Queensland. He died in 2006 after

his chest was fatally pierced by a stingray barb whilst filming in Australias Great

Barrier Reef. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship MV Steve Irwin was named

in his honour, christened by his wife Terri, who said If Steve were alive, hed be

aboard with them!

Death

On 4 September 2006, Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray spine while

snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, at Batt Reef, which is located off the coast of Port

Douglas in Queensland. Irwin was in the area filming his own documentary, Oceans

Deadliest, but weather had stalled filming. Irwin decided to take the opportunity to film

some shallow water shots for a segment in the television program his daughter Bindi

Irwin was hosting, when, according to his friend and colleague, John Stainton, he swam

too close to one of the stingrays. He came on top of the stingray and the stingrays barb

went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart, said Stainton, who was onboard Irwins boat the Croc One. The events were caught on camera, and a copy of the

footage was handed to the Queensland Police. After reviewing the footage of the

incident and speaking to the cameraman who recorded it, marine documentary

filmmaker and former spearfisherman Ben Cropp speculated that the stingray felt

threatened because Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead. In such a

case, the stingray responds to danger by automatically flexing the serrated spine on its

tail in an upward motion. Cropp said Irwin had accidentally boxed the animal in. It

stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest.

Its a defensive thing. Its like being stabbed with a dirty dagger. The stinging of Irwin

by the bull ray was a one-in-a-million thing, Cropp told Time magazine. I have

swum with many rays, and I have only had one do that to me


2/8

Francis Bacon (1561 1626)

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban KC was an English

philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney

General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in

disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as

philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his

dedication may have brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were

killed by their own experiments. His most celebrated works include The New Atlantis.

His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry,

often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a

planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical

and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of

proper methodology today. Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in

1618, and Viscount St Alban in 1621. Without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon

his death.

Death

In April 1626, Sir Francis Bacon came to Highgate near London, and died at the empty

Arundel mansion. A famous and influential account of the circumstances of his death

was given by John Aubrey in his Brief Lives. Aubrey has been criticized for his evident

credulousness in this and other works; on the other hand, he knew Thomas Hobbes, the

philosopher and friend of Bacon. Aubreys vivid account, which portrays Bacon as a

martyr to experimental scientific method, has him journeying to Highgate through the

snow with the Kings physician when he is suddenly inspired by the possibility of using

the snow to preserve meat. They were resolved they would try the experiment

presently. They alighted out of the coach and went into a poor womans house at thebottom of Highgate hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it. After

stuffing the fowl with snow, he happened to contract a fatal case of pneumonia. He then

attempted to extend his fading lifespan by consuming the fowl that had caused his

illness. Some people, including Aubrey, consider these two contiguous, possibly

coincidental events as related and causative of his death: The Snow so chilled him that

he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging but went

to the Earle of Arundels house at Highgate, where they put him into a damp bed that

had not been layn-in which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember

Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation.

Gregori Rasputin (1869 1916)


3/8

Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of

Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya in Siberia. The date of his

birth remained in doubt for some time and was estimated sometime between 1863 and

1873. Recently, new documents surfaced revealing Rasputins birth date as January 10,

1869 O.S. When he was around the age of eighteen, he spent three months in theVerkhoturye Monastery, possibly a penance for theft. His experience there, combined

with a reported vision of the Mother of God on his return, turned him towards the life of

a religious mystic and wanderer. It also appears that he came into contact with the

banned Christian sect known as the khlysty, whose impassioned services, ending in

physical exhaustion, led to rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in

these rituals. Suspicions that Rasputin was one of the Khlysts threatened his reputation

right to the end of his life. Indeed, Alexander Guchkov charged him with being a

member of this illegal and orgiastic sect. The Tsar perceived the very real threat of a

scandal and ordered his own investigations, but he did not, in the end, remove Rasputin

from his position of influence; quite the contrary, he fired his minister of the interior for

a lack of control over the press. He pronounced the affair to be a private one closed todebate. Shortly after leaving the monastery, Rasputin visited a holy man named

Makariy, whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, who

would model himself after him. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in

1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and Maria. Rasputin also had

another child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a

strannik and, during the time of his journeying, travelled to Greece and Jerusalem. In

1903, Rasputin arrived in Saint Petersburg, where he gradually gained a reputation as a

starets with healing and prophetic powers.

Murder

The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than his

strange life. According to Greg Kings 1996 book The Man Who Killed Rasputin, a

previous attempt on Rasputins life had been made and had failed: Rasputin was visiting

his wife and children in his hometown, Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River, in Siberia.

On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church,

when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had

become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once a friend of Rasputins but now absolutely

disgusted with his behavior and disrespectful talk about the royal family. Iliodor had

appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin, and together they formed a

survivors support group. The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of itinvented by the very men who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern


4/8


5/8

the Comedie-Ballet. Louis XIVs interest in ballet waned as he aged, and his dancing

ability declined and so Lully pursued opera. He bought the privilege for opera from

Pierre Perrin and, with the backing of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the king, created a new

privilege which essentially gave Lully complete control of all music performed in

France until his death.

Sherwood Anderson (1876 1941)

Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio, the third of seven

children of Erwin M. and Emma S. Anderson. After Erwins business failed, the family

was forced to move frequently, finally settling down at Clyde, Ohio, in 1884. Family

difficulties led Erwin to begin drinking heavily; he died in 1895. Partly as a result of

these misfortunes, young Sherwood found various odd jobs to help his family, which

earned him the nickname Jobby. He left school at age 14. Anderson moved to

Chicago near his brother Karls home and worked as a manual laborer until near the

turn of the century, when he enlisted in the United States Army. He was called up butdid not see action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After the war, in 1900, he

enrolled at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Eventually he secured a job as a

copywriter in Chicago and became more successful. In 1904, he married Cornelia Lane,

the daughter of a wealthy Ohio family. He fathered three children while living in

Cleveland, Ohio, and later Elyria, Ohio, where he managed a mail-order business and

paint manufacturing firms. In November 1912 he suffered a mental breakdown and

disappeared for four days. Soon after, he left his position as president of the Anderson

Manufacturing Co. in Elyria, Ohio, and left his wife and three small children to pursue

the writers life of creativity. Anderson described the entire episode as escaping from

his materialistic existence, which garnered praise from many young writers, who used

his courage as an example.Anderson moved back to Chicago, working again for a

publishing and advertising company. In 1916, he divorced Lane and married Tennessee

Mitchell.

Death

Anderson died in Panama at the age of 64. The cause of death was peritonitis after he

accidentally swallowed a piece of a toothpick embedded in a martini olive at a party. He

was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, Life, Not

Death, is the Great Adventure. Andersons final home, known as Ripshin, still stands

in Troutdale, Virginia, and may be toured by appointment.


6/8

George Allen (1918 1990)

Allen was an American Football coach, who was showered by

some of his Long Beach State players with an ice cold bucket of Gatorade in celebration

of their season-ending win over the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on November 17,

1990. Afterwards, he even granted media interviews for some time under the cold

weather with a piercing wind and boarded the bus back to Long Beach State still in his

drenched clothing. Since then, he acknowledged that he had not been feeling completely

well. He finally succumbed to pneumonia on December 31, 1990. Allen was born in

Detroit, Michigan, where his father, Earl Raymond Allen, was recorded in the 1920 and

1930 U.S. census records for Wayne County, Michigan as working as a chauffeur to a

private family. He earned varsity letters in football, track and basketball at Lake Shore

High School in St. Clair Shores. Allen went to Alma College and later at Marquette

University, where he was sent as an officer trainee in the U.S. Navys World War II V-

12 program. He graduated with a B.S. in education from Eastern Michigan

University.He attended the University of Michigan where he earned his M.S. inPhysical Education in 1947.

Death

Allenss death may have been indirectly caused by a Gatorade shower. Allen died on

December 31, 1990 from ventricular fibrillation in his home in Palos Verdes Estates,

California at the age of 72. Shortly before his death, Allen noted that he had not been

completely healthy since some of his Long Beach State players dumped a Gatorade

bucket on him following a season-ending victory over the University of Nevada, Las

Vegas on November 17, 1990. The sports editor of the Long Beach States newspaper,

the Daily Forty-Niner, was on the field that day and remembers that the temperaturewas in the fifties with a biting wind. Coach Allen stayed on the field for media

interviews for quite a while in his drenched clothing, and boarded the bus back to Long

Beach State soaking wet. However, he had promised a winning season to a football

program on the verge of collapse, and in his final game delivered on his promise. His

players gleefully hoisted him on their shoulders as photographers snapped away, and

Allen went out a winner. Allen said his season at Long Beach State was the most

rewarding of his entire career. After his death, the soccer and multipurpose field area on

the lower end of campus was dedicated in his honor, George Allen Field. A youth

baseball field in Palos Verdes Estates is also named after him.

Alexander Litvinenko (1962 2006)


7/8

Alexander Litvinenko was born the son of physician

Walter Litvinenko in the Russian city of Voronezh. He graduated from secondary

school in 1980 in Nalchik and was then drafted into the Internal Troops of the Ministry

of Internal Affairs as a Private. After a year of service, he matriculated in the Kirov

Higher Command School in Vladikavkaz. After graduation in 1985, Litvinenko became

a platoon commander in an Internal Troops regiment that guarded valuables in transit

and in 1988 moved to the KGB. Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian State

Security Services, who fled his country to the United Kingdom where he was granted

political asylum in 2000. Litvinenko was hospitalized on November 1, 2001 when his

health unexpectedly deteriorated. It was later discovered that he had been poisoned withsignificant amounts of the rare and extremely toxic radioactive element polonium-210.

He died three weeks later, thus becoming the first known casualty of deliberate

radiation poisoning. His murder marked the start of a new era of nuclear terrorism.

Jack Daniel (1850 1911)

Jack Daniels grandfather was among the first of those whosailed from the tiny harbor in Cardigan, Ceredigion, Wales to the New World in the

United States in approximately 1807. Daniel was born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, to

Calaway Daniel and wife Lucinda Cook, daughter of James Watson Cook and wife

Mary Riddle. He was born in September, although seemingly no one knows the exact

date. If the 1850 date is correct,then there is a contradiction with his mothers year of

death and he may have become a licensed distiller at the age of 16, as the distillery

claims a founding date of 1866. Other records list his birth date as September 5, 1846,

and in his 2004 biography Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel author

Peter Krass maintains that land and deed records show the distillery was actually not

founded until 1875. Daniel was one of thirteen children of Welsh descent. His paternal

grandfather Joseph Daniel, born in England in 1756 and died at Franklin County,Tennessee in 1814, was originally from Wales; he came to America and married


8/8

Elizabeth Callaway, who was born in Scotland in 1762 and also came to America,

having died at Ridgeville, Moore County, Tennessee, in 1853. Since Jack Daniel never

married and did not have any children, he took his favorite nephew, Lem Motlow, under

his wing. Motlow had a head for numbers and was soon doing all the distillerys

bookkeeping. In 1907, due to failing health, Jack Daniel gave the distillery to his

nephew. Jack later died from blood poisoning at Lynchburg in 1911.

Documents

Bizarre Deaths in History