50 Unluckiest People Who Died In the Strangest Way – Part 2

In 1881, an English conservative MP named Sir William Payne-Gallwey died as the result of severe internal injuries sustained after falling upon a turnip while out shooting in the parish of Bagby.

2. In 20 AD, Tiberius Claudius Drusus, the eldest son of the future Roman Emperor Claudius, died while playing. Having tossed a pear high in the air, when it came back, he caught it in his mouth but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.

3. In 1927, an American dancer named Isadora Duncan died in France when her silk scarf became entangled in the rear axle of the car in which she was a passenger, breaking her neck.

4. In 1983, an American playwright named Tennessee Williams died after accidentally choking on a plastic bottle cap which he was using to ingest barbiturates. Reports at the time of his death indicated he had died applying eye drops while holding the cap between his teeth, but this was corrected in the official medical examiner's report six months later.

5. In 1687, a French composer named Jean-Baptiste Lully died from gangrene having struck his conducting stick on his foot during a rehearsal of a piece he would play for king Louis XIV's remission. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance. Gangrene then spread through his whole body.

In 2018, a 24-year-old man named Ateef Rafiq died from cardiac arrest in a cinema in Birmingham, England whilst looking for his dropped mobile phone. His head became wedged under the electronic footrest of a seat.

7. In 1994, a 16-year-old teenager named Jeremy Brenno was killed on a golf course when, frustrated, he struck a bench with a 3-wood golf club. The shaft broke, bounced back at him, and pierced his heart.

8. In 1999, a 67-year-old woman named Betty Stobbs died after delivering a bale of hay to her sheep. The starving sheep rushed Stobbs, who was on her motorcycle. In the ensuing scuffle, Stobbs was knocked down into a deep ravine near Durham, England, and died when her motorcycle landed on her.

9. In 2008, a woman named Judy Kay Zagorski was killed when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leapt out of the water and knocked her over. The ray also died.

10. In 2005, two sisters named Mildred Bowman (62) and Alice Wardle (68) were killed in Benidorm, Spain after becoming trapped for 4 days when their fold-up bed collapsed.

In 1854, a 13-year-old teenager named William Snyder died in San Francisco, California, when a circus clown swung him around by his heels.

12. In early 1903, a person was beaten to death with a Bible during a healing ceremony gone wrong in Honolulu. The victim was being treated for malaria when his family summoned a Kahuna who decided he was possessed by devils and tried to exorcise the demons; the Kahuna was brought up on a charge of manslaughter.

13. In 1135, King Henry I of England died of diarrhea because his doctor advised him to take a laxative after he ate too many eels.

14. In 1346, a blind king named John of Bohemia fought and eventually died in a battle where he apparently just flailed his sword around like a mad man. When his advisors objected to the idea, he just replied: "take me to the place where the noise of the battle is the loudest."

15. In 2013, a 23-year-old man named Takuya Nagaya from Japan started to slither on the floor and claimed he had become a snake. Takuya died after his father spent the next two days head-butting and biting him “to drive [out] the snake that had possessed him.”

In 1258, Al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.

17. In 2013, a man named Roger Mirro was crushed by a trash compactor after he went looking through a dumpster for his phone.

18. In 2009, a 25-year-old supermarket employee named Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada from Council Bluffs, Iowa fell into the 18-inch gap between a cooler and a wall and become trapped. His body was not discovered for almost 10 years until the cooler was finally moved.

19. A Greek lawgiver named Charondas from Sicily issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death. One day, he arrived at the Assembly after hunting in the countryside with a knife still attached to his belt. In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide.

20. In 1941, an American writer named Sherwood Anderson died after an accidentally swallowed toothpick had damaged his gastrointestinal tract, causing an infection that led to peritonitis.

In 1867, Archduchess Mathilda of Austria, daughter of Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, died at the age of 18 in Schloss Hetzendorf. She had put on a gauze dress to go to the theatre. Before leaving for the theatre, she wanted to smoke a cigarette but shortly thereafter her father, who had forbidden smoking, approached her, and she hid the cigarette behind her dress, immediately setting light to its very flammable material and giving her second and third-degree burns.

22. In 2016, a 55-year-old woman named Lottie Michelle Belk was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind. Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour.

23. In 2007, a 24-year-old Oakland resident named Humberto Hernandez was killed after being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant and the water pressure shot the hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.

24. In 2014, an Indian association football player named Peter Biaksangzuala died after sustaining spinal cord injuries while awkwardly landing a somersault celebrating a goal.

25. In 2015, a 50-year-old man named Stephen Whinfrey became trapped and asphyxiated when rabbiting near Doncaster, England, after his head became stuck down a rabbit hole.