30 Freaky Facts Related to Weird Deaths – Part 2

Famous French philosopher René Descartes died in Stockholm, Sweden after contracting pneumonia at the cold and draughty castle of Queen Christina where he agreed to teach her 3 times a week at 5 am.

2. 87 men died on the Potomac after two ships collided while searching for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

3. As many as three US Presidents, and also Abraham Lincoln's son (William Wallace Lincoln), may have died as a result of a contaminated water supply to the White House. Until 1850 there was no sewage system and a field of human excrement called "night soil" flowed freely into the water supply.

4. “Starvation Doctor” Linda Burfield Hazzard, who wrote the book, “Fasting for the Cure of Disease,” was convicted of manslaughter in 1912 for a patient’s death by starvation. At least 15 deaths are attributed to her “care.” While doing a fasting cure on herself in 1938 she died of starvation.

5. In 1975, a Japanese kabuki actor named Bandō Mitsugorō VIII claimed he was immune to the poison and ordered and ate 4 fugu pufferfish livers in one sitting. He died 8 hours later.

The Unfinished Portrait is a watercolor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was in progress at the time of his collapse and subsequent death. This portrait was never finished.

7. When former president Teddy Roosevelt died in his sleep in 1919, Thomas R. Marshall, the sitting vice-president, said "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."

8. Despite the widespread success of his song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," Solomon Linda never received a cent of its royalties and died poor in 1962. He didn't even get a gravestone until 18 years after his death.

9. In 2004, 200 women in India, armed with vegetable knives, stormed into a courtroom and hacked to death a serial rapist named Akku Yadav whose trial was underway. Then every woman claimed responsibility for the murder.

10. In 1814, in London, the brewing vats in a brewery burst, releasing 580,000 to 1.4 million liters of beer onto slum dwellings. Eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake of a 2-year-old boy. The brewery almost went bankrupt but was saved when they received a rebate for the lost beer.

Ted Cassidy, best known as Lurch on the original Addams Family series, was 6 feet and 9 inches tall. He died from botched surgery to remove a tumor on his heart, which resulted from the condition of acromegaly that caused his iconic voice, facial structure, and height.

12. The Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, were two American brothers who were compulsive hoarders. They had filled their house with over 100 tons of random objects. Langley constructed a maze of tunnels, complete with deadly booby traps, to protect his brother, who never left his room. Langley was killed by his own traps, and Homer starved to death.

13. A man named Walter Summerford was struck by lightning 3 times in his life. After his death, his gravestone was also struck.

14. The reason drinking is so prevalent on Saint Patrick's Day is because St. Patrick died during lent and to celebrate his life properly, restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day.

15. After his son tragically died in a road accident caused by a pothole, Dadarao Bilhore took it upon himself to fill potholes in and around Mumbai to prevent more accidents. Using sand, gravel, and cement gathered from building sites, he has filled 600 potholes since 2015 and is still on it.

Saitō Musashibō Benkei was a Japanese warrior who is said to have killed in excess of 300 trained soldiers by himself while defending a bridge. He was so fierce in close quarters that his enemies were forced to kill him with a volley of arrows. He died standing upright.

17. The dead body of Xin Zhui, a Chinese noblewoman who died in 163 B.C., is mysteriously well preserved. Her body was preserved in an unknown fluid, with skin soft and moist. Her muscles still allowed for arms and legs to flex at the joints, with all organs and blood vessels intact.

18. In 1980, Monica Meyer, the mayor of Betterton, Maryland, died while checking her town's sewage tanks. She fell in and drowned in 15 feet of human waste.

19. During the 1970s Cambodian genocide by the Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, people in Cambodia were killed for being academics or for merely wearing eyeglasses.

20. After John Scott Harrison (son of President William Henry Harrison) died, his body was stolen from his grave. His body was later found hanging naked from a rope in a chute located in the Ohio Medical College by his son.

A total of 62 extras and crew members died after a fire broke out while filming the Indian historical drama “The Sword of Tipu Sultan (1989).” It is the largest number of on-set deaths in film history.

22. Botanist David Douglas, after whom the Douglas fir was named, died by falling into a bull pit under mysterious circumstances at the age of 35. Prior to that he identified over 200 important plant species and is still a hero to botanists today.

23. In 2004, a Taiwanese woman died of alcohol intoxication after immersion for twelve hours in a bathtub filled with 40% ethanol. Her blood alcohol content was 1.35%. It was believed that she had immersed herself in response to the SARS epidemic.

24. French actor and playwright Molière collapsed on stage while performing in the last play he had written. He recovered, insisted on completing his performance, before collapsing again and dying hours afterward.

25. As of May 2021, three people have been killed playing tug of war, fifteen fingers and thumbs have been amputated, and two arms have been severed below the shoulder. Two of those lives and six of those digits were lost by children attempting to get into the Guinness Book of Records.