You know the routine by now. Ten more people have left their mortal coils in strange and unexpected ways, and we're here to raise an eyebrow at their final moments.
10. The Last Sip
Let's start with the unique method of execution of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence. A member of the royal House of Plantagenet, George was the brother of two English kings, Edward IV and Richard III, and was caught up in a complex web of intrigue and conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. We don't have time to get into that whole mess. Suffice it to say that George was eventually convicted of treason against his brother Edward IV and sentenced to death.
His execution was private and there was no official record of it, so there is no definitive source for what happened, but rumours soon spread that George had drowned. This in itself was not particularly remarkable - after all, drowning was the method of execution used at the time. But instead of water, George Plantagenet was supposedly drowned in a large vat of malvasia .
Why? Well, there are two. versions of this story. One said it was George's own request, because it was his favorite wine. Another said it was the king's final insult to mock him for his drunkenness.
9. When carrots kill
You can have too much of a good thing. That’s one lesson that English scientist and health food advocate Basil Brown learned the hard way. Back in 1974, he was talking up the health benefits of carrots. They’re a great source of vitamin A, after all, and also contain antioxidants and minerals. To this day, they’re touted as a great food choice, but maybe Brown was overdoing it a bit.
He drank about a gallon of carrot juice a day. And although Brown was a 48-year-old man in good physical condition, it killed him in 10 days due to the gigantic intake of vitamin A, which destroyed his liver. At autopsy, he suffered carotenemia , which basically means his skin turned yellow, and the pathologist listed his cause of death as cirrhosis of the liver, citing the damage indistinguishable from alcohol poisoning.
8. Night swimming
We know that technically a person can't die from irony, but if that were the case, Jerome Moody might be the most powerful example. He drowned… during a party for lifeguards.
In 1985, the New Orleans Recreation Department threw a party where more than half of the 200 attendees were lifeguards, with four more lifeguards on duty. Despite this, no one noticed when 31-year-old Jerome Moody fell into the deep end of the pool and thrashed around in a fit of panic and despair while everyone around him continued to play.
Moody himself was not a lifeguard, but a guest. His body was not noticed until the end of the party, when people began to leave, but unsurprisingly, by then it was too late. And to add a twist to this ironic ice cream, a party was organized dedicated to first in the history of the swimming season in the city in which no one drowned.
7. Dead Olympian
As far as we know, Arrichion from Figalia has the honor of being the only athlete to win the Olympic Games… while being a corpse.
Back in the mid-6th century BC, Arrhichion was one of the most famous wrestlers of his time. At the Olympic Games of 564 BC, he competed in pankration, a brutal sport that allowed holds, chokes, and kicks to defeat an opponent, something of an ancient precursor to modern MMA.
Anyway, Arrichion had won this event in the past, so he was going in as a favorite, but during the match, his opponent got the upper hand when he put Arrichion in a chokehold, relentlessly squeezing the life out of him. At that point, everyone thought the match was a done deal.
According to the Greek writer Philostratus the Younger, Arrhichion's mentor shouted at him: "What a noble epitaph you will get if you do not submit - "He was never defeated at Olympia." Apparently the trainer expected a noble death at a loss for his wrestler, but he got more than he bargained for. Inspired by his words, Arrichion used a final burst of strength to deliver a powerful kick to his opponent's leg, then trapped his ankle in his knee, while Arrichion used his body weight to apply pressure.
This broke the opponent's ankle, and he immediately gave up in a spasm of pain. Arrichion won the match, but then fell dead. Some say he broke his neck during his final move; others that he simply choked to death in the choke. Either way, he was crowned the winner.
6. Deadly manure mayhem
We remain in Ancient Greece, but travel to the city of Ephesus to see how one of its most outstanding philosophers, Heraclitus, met his end.
We won't dwell on his works, but we will mention that Heraclitus was sometimes called the "dark philosopher" because he was always enigmatic and difficult to understand even by the standards of philosophy. He liked to speak in riddles, believing that if someone wasn't smart enough to decipher what he really meant, they probably weren't worth talking to.
This mentality came back to bite him around 475 BCE, when an aging Heraclitus began to suffer from dropsy, which is an old word for swelling. He sought help from doctors, but of course he couldn’t just ask them for something to cure the dropsy. Instead, he asked them if they could do drought from the rainy weather. When they had no idea what the hell he was talking about, Heraclitus decided he could come up with a cure himself.
And this is what he came up with - to bury it in cow dung manure , and then dried in the sun. Heraclitus thought that the extreme heat would cause the swelling to evaporate, but as a side effect he found himself trapped in hardened dung. Some reports say that this alone caused his death, but Neanthes of Cyzicus gave his tale an extra gory ending, claiming that a pack of wild dogs came and ate the helpless philosopher trapped under the dung heap.
5. The worst red carpet in the world
There was once a time when the Abbasid Caliphate was one of the most powerful empires on the planet, representing the height of the Islamic Golden Age. However, by the 13th century, that golden age had arrived, and the Abbasid dynasty was a shell of its former self, desperately trying to survive in the face of the greatest threat it had ever faced: the relentless wrath of the Mongol hordes.
The last Abbasid caliph, Al-Musta'sim, still acted as if he had great power in the region and rejected or ignored all demands coming from the Mongol leader Hulagu Khan. Big mistake! In 1258, the khan began a 13-day siege Baghdad, which resulted in the complete destruction of the city, which until that moment had been one of the greatest cultural and scientific centers of the world.
Buildings were razed to the ground and people put to the sword, but the fate of the last caliph of the Abbasid dynasty is little more uncertain . Several sources mention that the Mongols did not like to spill noble blood, so Al-Musta'sim could have been hanged or strangled, but the most popular version claims that the khan had something more terrible in mind for him. Therefore, the caliph was wrapped in a carpet and trampled to his death, having fallen under the Mongol cavalry.
4. The hunter becomes the prey
One of Britain's most famous explorers died by his own hand when he accidentally shot himself in the chest. John Hanning Speak was best known for his expeditions to find the source of the Nile. In the 19th century, he was one of many adventurers who risked life and limb to explore Africa, but his demise returned to England when he climbed over a small wall.
It was September 15, 1864, and Speke was at Neston Park in Wiltshire, having done a bit of shooting with his cousin and a gamekeeper. But we'll allow The Times give modern report :
"After about two hours of shooting it was found... that the unfortunate deceased was climbing over a low stone wall, when by some accident his gun exploded while the muzzle was pointed at his chest. The result was that the charge which entered his body passed completely through, severing the main artery of the chest, rupturing the lungs, and passing close to the heart... He breathed his last shortly after."
3. Fulfillment of desire
James Otis Jr. was an important figure in the early American Revolution and is best known for being credited with coining the phrase, taxation "Without representation, there is tyranny," which was later changed to "no taxation without representation" and became the slogan that best reflected the grievances of the colonists.
Otis would almost certainly have become one of the Founding Fathers had his career not been derailed by mental illness. But unfortunately, his behavior became increasingly erratic in the early 1770s, and his condition was probably exacerbated by a severe beating he received in 1769 from a British tax collector, which left him with a serious head injury.
None of this has anything to do with his death, however, because James Otis Jr. died suddenly on May 23, 1783, when he was struck by lightning. This in itself might not have been incredibly unusual, but the strangest thing was that Otis really, really wanted to be killed by lightning. By According to his sister and his friends, he mentioned to them several times how he hoped that this was how he would meet his end. One day, he got his wish by standing in the doorway of a friend's house, telling a story, and although there were several people around him, he was the only one who got there.
2. The bucket is mightier than the sword
If you were an assassin wanting to kill a king, what weapon would you choose – a dagger, poison, maybe a fall that looks like an accident? None of these? How about a silver bucket?
Yes, it was a weapon of death used to destroy life. Constant II, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire between 641 and 668 AD. This is how the murder took place, By in the words of the 8th century scholar Theophilus of Edessa:
"When Constans was in the bath, one of his maids took a bucket, mixed mallow and soap in it, and put it on Constans's head. While the latter's eyes were filled with mallow and soap, so that he could not open them, the attendant took the bucket and struck Constans on the head with it, killing him. He ran out of the bath to escape, and was never heard from again. The servants remained outside, waiting for the king to come out, but when they had been sitting for a long time and it was already late, and he still did not come out, they entered the bath and found him unconscious. He was brought out, and lived until that day, but then died, having reigned twenty-seven years."
1. Blood Eagle
We end with the most horrific fate on this list, but also the most controversial, as historians still debate whether this incredibly brutal method of execution was ever actually used. We are, of course, talking about the notorious Blood Eagle.
If this was real, it would represent the worst ritual murder the Vikings could have devised. Even for them, it was so extreme that there are only two known instances of the blood eagle in the Norse sagas, which are not, for one thing, irrefutable historical sources. The most detailed of these was the death of King Aella of Northumbria in 867 AD. He had defeated a Viking invader the previous year. Ragnar Hairy Briches and executed him by throwing him into a pit filled with vipers. This prompted Ragnar's sons to invade again at the head of the Great Heathen Army to take revenge... which they did, by subjecting King Aella to the terriblebloody eagle .
First, he was tied up and laid face down on the ground. Then his ribs were severed from his spine with an axe, one by one, and then the skin and bones on his back were pulled apart. Some accounts also say that salt was poured into the wounds during this process to add to the victim’s agony. As a final flourish, his lungs were pulled out of his body and spread so that the last gasps of air that entered and exited his lungs made them look like fluttering wings.
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