35 Strange Deaths Throughout History That Still Shock Today

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26Garry Hoy

Garry Hoy

In 1993, Garry Hoy, a lawyer in Toronto, Ontario, fell to his death from the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre while demonstrating to a group of visitors that the building's windows were "unbreakable". Hoy threw himself against the glass, which indeed did not break; rather, the window popped out of its frame.


27. In 832 A.D., Sigurd the Mighty, 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.


28. In 1660, Thomas Urquhart, a 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.


29. In 2013, Elisa Lam, from Vancouver, British Columbia, was missing for several weeks before being found dead in a large water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, after guests complained about the taste of the water.


30. Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe contracted a bladder or kidney ailment after attending a banquet in Prague and died 11 days later in 1601. According to 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.


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31Chrysippus

Chrysippus

One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, a third-century B.C. Greek Stoic philosopher, tells that he died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink to wash them down with, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died."


32. In 1903, Topsy the elephant was executed by poisoning, electrocution, and strangulation. A 74-second video of the electrocution was recorded and preserved. It may have been the first time death was ever captured in a motion picture film.


33. In 620 B.C., Draco of Athens, an Athenian lawmaker, was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.


34. In 1923, George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who financed Howard Carter's search for Tutankhamun, died after a mosquito bite, which he had cut while shaving, became infected. Some attributed his death to the so-called curse of the pharaohs.


35. On 17th June 1871, Clement Vallandigham, a lawyer and Ohio politician defending a man accused of murder, accidentally shot himself while demonstrating how the victim might have accidentally shot himself. His client was cleared.

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