In the past, we have examined a lot of bizarre historical deaths. A lot of them… so this time, we are flipping the script. We all know that humans can find tons of unique and strange ways to meet their maker, but what about animals?
10. The Fastball Dove
On March 21, 2001, future baseball Hall of Famer Randy Johnson walked up to the mound for the Arizona Diamondbacks, getting ready to pitch in a spring training game against the San Francisco Giants. Little did he know he was about to create one of baseball’s most infamous bloopers.
Johnson threw a fastball that almost reached 100 miles-per-hour. He wasn’t nicknamed “The Big Unit” for nothing. But as the ball bolted toward the hitter, a mourning dove had the misfortune of flying right in front of its path. The ball hit the bird and the bird was killed instantly as it left behind a cloud of feathers and a lot of curious onlookers confused over what the hell just happened.
The dove was removed, the feathers were cleaned up, and the umpires had to confer over the call since there wasn’t a rule regarding an animal interfering with the pitch.
9. Murderous Mary
In September 1916, the Sparks World Famous Shows circus came to Sullivan County, Tennessee. On the 12th, the show was parading through the city of Kingsport. At the front of the line was the star attraction – a 30-year-old female Asian elephant named Mary being ridden by her handler, Red Eldridge.
Despite its fancy name, the Sparks circus was a two-bit operation and it didn’t have money for a proper handler. In fact, Eldridge had been working as a hotel bellhop just a few days earlier. He’d been hired by the circus that same day without any training or experience dealing with large, dangerous animals. Who could have guessed that anything would go wrong?
Anyway, during the parade, something happened. We’re not sure what. Some said Red pulled Mary’s ear with a hook; others that he poked an infected tooth; or maybe she just didn’t like the guy. The end result was the same – Mary went ballistic, threw Eldridge off her, and then killed him. Again, the exact method of execution is unclear.
Now, Charlie Sparks had a problem. Mary was his “cash cow” elephant, but all the locals wanted her dead. No city would allow his circus with “Murderous Mary” still on the loose so, reluctantly, he agreed to have her executed, but the question was – how?
They traveled to the nearby town of Erwin, which had a thriving railroad repair industry. The decision was made to hang Mary using a heavy-duty industrial derrick they had, and because Sparks wasn’t the kind of guy to let the opportunity pass him by, he invited the whole town to attend, at no additional charge.
8. The Devil’s Cock of Basel
Every now and then, you might read about roosters laying eggs. But can a male chicken actually lay eggs? The simple answer is no; the more complicated answer is not really, but it looks like it can…What has actually happened there is that a hen experienced a spontaneous sex reversal caused by a dysfunctional left ovary, which causes the right ovary to release testosterone. Consequently, the bird gets larger, grows male plumage, and may even start crowing. In other words, she looks and acts like a cock, but is actually a hen in disguise.
Nowadays, we understand the process and simply look at it as a quirk of nature. But back in medieval times, such abnormalities were clearly the work of the devil. Even worse than that, cocks’ eggs were considered very powerful ingredients in witchcraft. Some even wrote that such eggs could be used to hatch the two-legged serpent-like creature known as a cockatrice.
It was under those circumstances that one unfortunate chicken was mistaken for a rooster in Basel in 1474 and, when it laid an egg, all hell broke loose. Both bird and egg were taken into custody, and the animal was put on trial “for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg.” The fowl was found guilty and was burned at the stake alongside its egg for taking part in sorcery.
7. The Woolly Jumpers
Calling a person a “sheep” is a derogatory way of insinuating that they can’t think for themselves and are easily influenced by others. Some might argue that this portrayal is a tad unfair to the sheep, but they might change their mind after they learn about a strange event that happened in Turkey back in 2005.
A giant herd of sheep was grazing outside the town of Gevas, near the shore of Lake Van. There were around 1,500 sheep altogether, belonging to dozens of families in town. At one point, one sheep approached a cliffside and, for reasons known only to itself, jumped off the cliff to its death.
All the other sheep thought this looked like a good idea, so they followed. The shepherds could only look on in stunned horror as 1,500 sheep plummeted off the cliff. Around 450 animals died. The others only survived because the layer of dead sheep got so high that it started to cushion the fall of the ones that jumped later.
6. The Atomic Cow
A “broken arrow” is a term used by the US military to refer to an accident that involved nuclear weapons or nuclear components, but that did not pose a risk of causing nuclear war. Since 1950, the Department of Defense has reported 32 such incidents, and the most notorious of all occurred on May 22, 1957, when a Convair B-36 bomber accidentally dropped a Mark 17 hydrogen bomb just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The aircraft was headed for the Kirtland Air Force Base, transporting the 42,000-pound thermonuclear device from Biggs Airfield in El Paso, Texas. What exactly caused the failure has never been made clear, but the h-bomb was released from its trappings, fell through the closed bomb bay doors, and plummeted toward the earth.
Just to be clear, as a safety feature, the nuclear components were not inside the bomb. There was never any chance of the Mark 17 going nuclear, but the conventional explosives detonated on impact, leaving behind a 25-foot-wide crater. Fortunately, the area where it landed was uninhabited, but there was one unlucky victim – a single cow that happened to be grazing nearby.
5. The Cocaine Bear
The newly-released movie Cocaine Bear pretty much does what it says on the tin: it shows a bear that does a lot of cocaine and then goes on a rampage. That sounds like a ludicrous idea plucked from the strangest corners of Hollywood fancy but, in fact, it is based on a true story.
Back in 1985, notorious drug smuggler Andrew Thornton crashed his plane while carrying a shipment of cocaine from Colombia to the US. Prior to the crash, Thornton jettisoned his cargo in a last-ditch attempt to correct the aircraft. It didn’t work, but the drugs did land safely in a forest outside Knoxville, Tennessee.
Enter our furry protagonist. A few days later, a curious bear came across the goods, and, intrigued with his new discovery, he ripped open the duffel bag. He told himself he would get a taste, just a taste, but ended up dunking his whole face in the white stuff Tony Montana-style. Before he knew it, the bear consumed over 70 pounds of cocaine.
What happened next is where the movie differs from real life. While the cinematic critter went on a reign of terror, the real bear simply died of an overdose because, well, he ate 70 pounds of cocaine. But what a way to go!
4. The Sow of Falaise
We’re dealing with another medieval animal trial here, but this one was notorious enough to garner its own moniker – the sow of Falaise. And truth be told, assuming the accusations are correct, this one actually deserved to be executed. In fact, this is, by far, the grisliest crime that any of the animals on this list has committed. In 1386, a sow from the French town of Falaise munched on a three-month-old infant who later died of his injuries.
The pig was put to death on January 9, 1386. The execution was quite a big deal in its day and several legends sprung up surrounding the Sow of Falaise. Some said that the animal was dressed in human clothes on the day of its demise, and others that local pigs were brought in to witness what happened to farm animals that tried to eat humans. Allegedly, the scene of the execution was even represented in a fresco inside the local church, but no such depictions survive.
3. Fabio’s Fowl Folly
There are certain moments that are not only immortalized in pop culture, but end up defining an entire generation – the Moon landing, for example, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. For ’90s kids, however, that moment came when Fabio killed a goose with his face.
It was March 30, 1999. Fabio was a successful male model who first rose to fame by posing for book covers for romance novels. On that fateful day, he was at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, helping to promote the opening of a new rollercoaster. As the guest of honor, Fabio was seated front and center for the inaugural ride. When the coaster started, Fabio was all smiles, but by the time it ended, his face was a bloody mess.
During the ride, a goose flew straight into the model’s face. The impact was powerful enough to kill the bird, although Fabio only needed a few stitches. At least, that’s the story we were led to believe. It wasn’t until two decades later that Fabio revealed what really happened. In a plot twist worthy of Agatha Christie, the bird never touched him. In fact, the goose died by smashing into the video camera that had been mounted to the rollercoaster. A piece of camera shrapnel hit Fabio and cut his nose, but the people at Busch Gardens eagerly promoted the initial version of the story in order to avoid liability.
2. Topsy the Elephant
We arrive at, arguably, the most notorious animal execution in history, that of Topsy the elephant. Topsy was killed on January 4, 1903, at Coney Island’s Luna Park via electrocution, and the whole thing was caught on camera for the short film Electrocuting an Elephant made by Thomas Edison’s film company.
Edison’s role in the whole affair was another point that helped the event gain infamy. For years, he took the brunt of the blame for Topsy’s death, being accused of engineering the whole stunt to show the world how dangerous alternating current could be. After all, would anyone want something in their homes that was powerful enough to instantly kill an elephant, especially when Edison’s direct current was supposed to be much safer?
It sounded like something Edison would do. He had a reputation for being ruthless and manipulative in business, and Topsy became an unfortunate victim of the so-called War of the Currents. This time, however, Edison was innocent. The War of the Currents ended in the early 1890s with a resounding victory for alternating current. Topsy was killed a decade later. On this particular occasion, his company was just there to capture a peculiar moment on film, and the true villains of the story were Topsy’s owners, who decided to kill the elephant for publicity.
1. A Cow, Two Heifers, Three Sheep, and Two Sows (oh, my)
Cotton Mather was a 17th-century New England Puritan clergyman and writer. As a member of the Royal Society of London, he was regarded as one of the premiere intellectuals of colonial America and later gained infamy for his role in the Salem witch trials. None of that interests us, however, as we are here to talk about the guy he reported for having sex with animals.
His name was William Potter and he was in his 60s. Even though Potter was described as being devout, pious, and “zealous in reforming the sins of other people,” he confessed that he started sodomizing animals when he was only 10 years old and had never looked back. His wife even caught him in the act once with the family dog, but he persuaded her to keep quiet. At the time of his arrest, Potter had a farmyard brothel consisting of a cow, two heifers, three sheep, and two sows.
Because bestiality was considered a form of Satanic possession, Potter was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, but before he was killed, all of his bestial “paramours” were put to death in front of him, one by one, causing him to collapse in tears by the time he reached the noose.