Comedy is supposed to be hilarious. However, it has become deadly at times and led to the loss of lives. People have perished while watching comedic acts, or the entertainers themselves have died during their performances. Sometimes, the comedians have been murdered for wisecracking in ways that were offensive to certain individuals or groups.

Comedians have been killed by criminal gangs and terrorist organizations over their quips. At other times, the humorists were interrogated or threatened with jail time over jokes that the government considered a threat.

10 The Great Yarmouth Suspension Bridge Disaster

On May 2, 1845, hundreds of people gathered along the banks of River Bure in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, to watch a clown sitting in a barrel as it was drawn by four geese across the river. Nelson the Clown worked for William Cooke’s Circus.

Around 300–400 people had climbed onto the Great Yarmouth suspension bridge to get a better view of the clown as he sailed past. This quickly proved disastrous as the structure could not support the massive weight. Its cables snapped, throwing everybody on the bridge into the water.

A massive rescue operation began, and survivors were taken to Vauxhall Gardens. Every medical person in town was summoned to the garden to treat the survivors.

Rescuers soon started to retrieve the bodies of the dead from the river. Some had simply drowned. The rest had become stuck underwater after being smashed by the bodies of other victims or the parts of the bridge that had fallen on them.

In all, 79 people died. The youngest were two years old, and the oldest was 64. Fifty-eight of the dead were 16 years old or younger.^[1]

9 An Audience Laughed As A Comedian Died Mid-Performance

In April 2019, comedian Paul Barbieri (stage name Ian Cognito) died during a live performance at The Atic bar, Bicester, UK. At first, the audience did not realize what was happening and continued laughing, thinking that Ian was only pretending to be dead.

Curiously, Ian had joked about dying in front of the audience that night. He said, “Imagine if I died in front of you lot here.” He also wisecracked about recovering from a stroke and discovering that he only spoke Welsh. Ten minutes later, he sat on a stool on the stage and appeared to faint. The audience laughed, thinking it was part of the performance.

Ian’s body remained on the stool until compere Andrew Bird approached. Bird expected Ian to awake from his pretentious coma with a joke but was surprised to find the comedian unresponsive. First aid was administered, and an ambulance was called. However, the medics declared Ian dead at the scene.^[2]

8 Mexican Comedian Murdered After Insulting Crime Boss

Seventeen-year-old Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales, who was also known as El Pirata de Culiacan (“The Pirate of Culiacan”), was a popular comedian in Mexico until he was murdered by a Mexican cartel boss whom Rosales had insulted.

The cartel boss was 51-year-old Ruben Oseguera Cervantes (aka El Mencho), the leader of the local but dangerous Jalisco Nueva Generacion (“Jalisco New Generation”) crime cartel. El Mencho is a feared and ruthless crime boss famous for murdering people over unconfirmed rumors.

Rosales had posted a comedy video in which he said, “El Mencho, peel my c—ck.” The joke didn’t go over well with El Mencho, and he ordered Rosales’s death. Rosales was drinking at a bar in Jalisco (El Mencho’s turf) when he was murdered.^[3]

Before his death, Rosales had posted on his Facebook and Instagram pages and asked his fans to come over for a drink. Some heavily armed non-fans soon arrived and shot at Rosales 15 times. The bar manager was also hit by a stray bullet.

7 The Nazis Forced A Jewish Comedian To Tell Jokes At Gunpoint

Max Ehrlich was a Jewish actor, author, director, screenwriter, composer, and comedian who lived in Germany before World War II. Unfortunately, his fame could not save him when the Nazis clamped down on Jews during World War II. In fact, it almost got him killed.

Ehrlich was captured and transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. A Nazi officer recognized him and ordered him to tell funny jokes or he would be shot to death by an SS firing squad.

Ehrlich probably made the Nazis laugh and was spared the bullet. However, his jokes could not save him from the gas chamber. He was gassed to death on October 1, 1944.^[4]

6 Iraqi Comedian Murdered Over His TV Show

Iraq turned into a chaotic wasteland after Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Murders, bombings, assassinations, and similar terrorist acts quickly became the norm. Journalists were a major target of these attacks.

In November 2006, actor, producer, and comedian Walid Hassan became a victim of these murders. Before his death, he hosted a comedy show called Caricatures on Iraq’s Al Sharkiya television. On his show, Hassan often mocked the US military, Iraqi politicians, and the Sunni and Shia insurgents.^[5]

One of the groups became angry enough to order his kidnapping. On November 21, 2006 (some sources say November 20), some men cornered and attempted to kidnap Hassan on the streets of Baghdad. Hassan was shot and killed as he tried to escape.

5 Al-Shabab Murders Somali Comedian For Mocking Their Activities

In 2012, Somali comedian Abdi Jeylani Marshale was murdered by Al-Shabab terrorists in Mogadishu, Somalia. Before his death, Marshale often mocked Al-Shabab on radio and television for using child soldiers and suicide bombers and killing defenseless civilians.

Eventually, Al-Shabab issued a death threat to Marshale. He fled to neighboring Somaliland but returned when he thought the dust had settled. He was leaving the radio station where he worked when he was cornered by two Al-Shabab henchmen armed with pistols. They shot Marshale in the head and chest several times.^[6]

4 Comedian Murdered For Mocking Mexican Drug Lord And Not Repaying A Debt

Francisco “Paco” Stanley was a popular Mexican comedy show host until he was murdered in June 1999. He was waiting for a friend outside a restaurant when two men sprayed him with heavy gunfire. Stanley received four shots to the head. A colleague and bystander were also killed while two more bystanders were injured.

Police later discovered cocaine in Stanley’s pocket and in his blood. Eventually, his death revealed a large conspiracy and the involvement of drug cartels in entertainment. Apparently, Stanley’s murder was ordered by crime boss Luis Ignacio Amezcua Contreras over some debts owed by Stanley.

In 1996, Amezcua Contreras had loaned $65,000 to Stanley to launch a television and music production studio. The drug kingpin also frequently sold cocaine to Stanley, who used part of it and sold the rest to other top show hosts. However, Stanley often made jokes on his comedy show that the drug lord considered to be insulting.

The displeased Amezcua Contreras later recruited Mario Rodriguez Bezares (aka Mayito), Stanley’s cohost, to help with the murder. Bezares was mad at Stanley because he often directed insulting jokes at Bezares during the show. Besides, Amezcua Contreras had promised Bezares the production company and was willing to forgo the debts.^[7]

Bezares was the reason that Stanley was waiting outside the restaurant where he was murdered. They had gone for a meal and were about to leave when Bezares delayed them. Bezares engaged in a series of ridiculous schemes, including pretending to have a limp, just to keep Stanley waiting. Bezares was in the lavatory at the time that the killers arrived.

3 Writer Interrogated By The Secret Service Over Joke About Kidnapping The US President’s Daughter

in 2009, Daniel O’Brien, the head writer at a humor website, wrote a piece about kidnapping the daughter of a US president. It was titled “6 Helpful Tips for Kidnapping the President’s Daughters.”

O’Brien soon received a phone call from Special Agent Mike Powell of the Secret Service. The agent had a friendly chat and directed O’Brien to speak with some other agents. O’Brien met with the other agents and was interrogated about his satirical article for two hours. At that time, he was asked if he was involved with terrorist groups.^[8]

O’Brien later had the article deleted from the website. However, it appeared to be too late as he was secretly put under surveillance. As of 2014, he was often asked to step aside for a search at US airports.

2 Johnny Depp In Soup Over Joke About Assassinating President Trump

In 2017, Johnny Depp came under heavy public backlash after he jokingly asked, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” (The last time was in 1865 when John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.)

Public outrage soon followed the inappropriate joke. Later, the Trump White House also issued a statement condemning Depp’s remarks and requesting that other Hollywood stars denounce it, too.

However, Johnny Depp is not the only actor that has come under fire for making jokes suggesting the assassination of a US president. A month earlier, Kathy Griffin had to apologize after posing for a photograph with a bloodied prop head of President Trump.^[9]

1 Venezuelan Comedian Flees Country After Receiving Death Threats

Nacho Redondo is a radical Venezuelan comedian. He is famous for making highly controversial political jokes that are often considered insulting. His offensive jokes have caused public backlash, online outrage, boycotts, and extensive criticism.

The Venezuelan government had enough of Nacho after he made a political joke about a race between a man with one leg, a man with no legs, and a communist. The government sued him over the joke. He also received lots of death threats. Nacho escaped to Mexico right before his trial started.

Nacho is just one of the many comedians from Venezuela who have found themselves under attack from the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuelan comedians generally avoided making political jokes before 2014. However, they changed their minds as the country went into a decline.

The government clamped down on these comedians, forcing other humorists to make political jokes as a form of protest. These days, comedians consider their quips as part of a rebellion against the government. The authorities have also stepped up their campaign against humorists making political jokes, forcing several comedians to flee the country.^[10]

In 2014, a comedy show hosted by Luis Chataing was suspended from television because it mocked the government. Luis accused the government of threatening and blackmailing the television station to suspend his show. However, the government denied issuing any threats.

Kids and playing go hand in hand—sometimes literally. Most of the time, when they do play a game, it usually involves kids running, chasing, and hiding. They all tire themselves out, laugh themselves silly, and maybe the worst thing that happens is someone skins a knee or breaks a window. It’s all innocent fun.

However, there are rare instances when a kid’s game gets way out of hand, and the lawsuits start flying, the cops show up, or something even worse happens.

Here are 8 examples of kid’s games that got way out of hand.

See Also: 10 Bizarre Things People Have Done Over Video Games

8 British Bulldog Game Leads to Girl’s Death

British Bulldog is a rough and tumble game popular among elementary-aged school children. In it, one or two “bulldogs” stand alone in the middle of a large field. A line of runners face them and stand at one end of the field. The runners try to get to the other side without being caught by a “bulldog.” If they get caught, they turn into a “bulldog” and join the other “bulldogs” to try and stop the remaining runners. The game goes on until there is only one runner left—he or she is the winner.

In February of 2013, a group of children played British Bulldog outside Trafalgar Junior School in Twickenham, England. An 8-year-old girl named Freya James played a different game close by when she was accidentally struck by one of the boys playing British Bulldog. She fell, stomach down, onto a recycled wooden railway sleeper. The fall caused a laceration of her liver which lead to internal bleeding. She was taken to the hospital, where she later died.

Freya’s parents, Anekke and Nick James, talked of what a good-hearted girl she was, “Freya was an angel and was loved by everyone who had contact with her.” They added, “She was so strong and determined in everything she did and always tried to help those that struggled.”

Sometime later, Freya’s parents called for a ban of the game that took their daughter’s life, “I hope our daughter’s death will lead to a more widespread ban.”^[1]

7 Snowball Fight Turns Into Race Brawl

Cole Harbour District High School is located in the province of Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Back in the winter of 1989, what started as a playful snowball fight between groups of grade 10 boys turned ugly as white students ended up fighting black students in a vicious brawl.

Apparently, the brawl was triggered when a, “…particularly large snowball showered one group with snow…”

Christa Webber, a grade 10 student at the time, who witnessed the brawl, said she saw a student’s face “…split open” from a punch and students getting kicked when they fell to the ground.

In the aftermath, 14 were charged, and the brawl led directly to the government of Nova Scotia creating the Black Learners Advocacy Committee. The committee, “…highlighted inequities in education for the African-Nova Scotian learner.” As well, “The BLAC report resulted in the hiring of cross-cultural understanding co-ordinators and African-Nova Scotian support workers in the province’s schools.”

30 years later, the brawl still haunts former Cole Harbour District High School student Corey Beals. Though he didn’t witness the brawl triggering snowball, Beals remains sad about the incident and feels it has had a lasting impact on the community, “Unfortunately, Cole Harbour has been scarred. Ever since. Thirty years later. And whenever there is an incident that takes place at that school, everyone reflects back to 1989.”^[2]

6 Dodgeball Leads to Felony

Dodgeball is a gym class staple. Use a ball to eliminate players on the opposing team by hitting them with it. The first team to hit all of the players on the other side with the game ball wins.

For Jacob Sigler and one other student of Ellsworth High School, that simple game turned into something much more ugly and much more complicated. The result was a facial fracture and a criminal complaint against Sigler.

According to the victim, who was 16 at the time, “When Jacob ran out of balls, Jacob closed his fist and punched (him) the face.”

When interviewed by police, Sigler, 18, said that he thought the other boy was going to tackle him. “Then, I punched him,” he told the police.

Months later, Sigler ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery. He was sentenced to 1 year probation and ordered to pay more than $1,300 in fines.^[3]

5 Hide-and-Seek Leads to Dead Body

Who hasn’t played hide-and-seek? A classic kid’s game that may go all the way back to the Greeks of the 2nd-century, hide-and-seek consists of one kid seeking and many kids hiding. After counting up from 1 to anywhere from 10 to 100, the seeker then goes out and tries to find the kids that hid. If found, that kid then becomes another seeker. The last kid left hiding is the winner. Simple and straightforward. Most of the time, yes, but every once-in-a-while, a kid seeking another kid, instead, finds something that turns the game into a crime scene.

Back in October of 2017, two kids were playing hide-and-seek in the wooded area of a park in Indianapolis, Indiana. There, in the midst of their bit of fun, one of them came across the dead body of 30-year-old Christopher Bradley. The kids immediately told an adult, who then alerted the police.

Detectives working the case believe that the death was suspicious.^[4]

4 Salt and Ice Challenge Burns

Most childhood games (including some on this list) have long histories and countless hours of enjoyment—like jumping rope, hide-and-seek, dodge ball, and kickball. While these are mostly harmless activities, kids and teens today have a new source for things to do to pass the time: TikTok. Unfortunately. TikTok, created in 2016, has recently become synonymous with something far more sinister: viral internet challenges.

Some of these idiotic—and sometimes dangerous and deadly—challenges include the cinnamon challenge, the Tide Pod challenge, and the salt and ice challenge. An Iowa woman learned about the last challenge the hard way after a horrific late-night phone call. Her daughter and several friends had tried an internet challenge that involved putting snow and table salt on their arms to see who could stand it the longest. The ice and salt formed a chemical reaction that induced frostbite, giving the girl and her friends second- and third-degree burns. They were taken to the hospital for treatment, where the doctor noted that he had seen several of these types of injuries in recent months.^[5]

3 Choking Game Claims Life of 12-Year-Old Boy

According to the Center For Disease Control and Prevention, from 1995 to 2007, at least 82 kids have died playing the Choking Game. 87% of them were boys aged 11 to 16. The average age was 13.

The point of the game is to go just far enough to get the “high” that follows after briefly squeezing off the supply of oxygen and blood to the brain. The game has a long history and also goes by the names “Pass-Out Challenge,” “Flatliner,” and “Space Monkey.”

One boy who went too far was Erik Robinson of Santa Monica, California. One day in April of 2010, he put a rope around his neck and hung himself from a pull up bar. He was only 12 years old.

His devastated mother, Judy Rogg, found her son collapsed in the kitchen doorway. “I missed him by a few minutes,” she said. Rogg tried to undo the complicated slipknots her son had tied but couldn’t. By the time she got help, it was too late.

In the wake of the tragedy, Rogg founded the non-profit “Erik’s Cause” to help educate other kids about the dangers of the game. She and her co-founder Stephanie Small spent years designing an 8-minute video and PowerPoint presentation now shown to kids in the Iron County School District in Utah. Iron County adopted the training program after 4 kids died in its district playing the Choking Game.

Rogg keeps the memory of her son close—some of his ashes are locked inside of a necklace she wears. She works tirelessly for “Erik’s Cause” and has travelled to speak in Pennsylvania, California, and Maryland. Rogg even flew all the way to New Jersey to help a family get through their own tragic loss from the Choking Game.

“This is the best way for me to preserve his legacy…I have to keep busy.”^[6]

2 Sack Tapping Game Leads to Testicle Removal

One night, a 14-year-old boy named David Gibbons woke his mother up at 1 am complaining of groin pain. Apparently, he had been playing a game called “Sack Tapping” with other boys at school that day. One boy punched him in the testicles so hard that it was still hurting badly.

His mother took him to the hospital, where doctors removed the boy’s right testicle. “This may be called a game, but it’s not a game,” the mom said. “It’s dangerous, and it needs to stop.”

Urologist Dr. Scott Wheeler told a Minneapolis TV station that he thought the problem had gotten “…way out of control.”

Dr. Charles Raison, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, believes he knows why boys play the game, “Games like this are to see how tough you are…It’s a way of establishing dominance, and because it’s hard to withstand being hit in the groin, it becomes a good measure of toughness.”^[7]

1 Hot Dog Eating Contest Turns Fatal

Jason Easterly/Special to the Daily News
Owen Houston, 7, of Naples starts the kids “Neat Eat” during the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog qualifying circuit for their annual hot dog eating contest held at the Mercato on Saturday, May 12, 2012.

In January of 2010, the Boys & Girls Club of San Pedro in California held a fundraiser for Haiti relief—a devastating earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. One of the activities was a hot dog eating game. Unfortunately, the fun turned deadly when one of the participants, 13-year-old Noah Thomas Akers started choking.

A male staff member performed the Heimlich maneuver, but it didn’t help. Paramedics arrived soon and tried to remove the obstructing piece of food using an extended pair of forceps. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful, and Noah later died in hospital.

Apparently, a staff member of the Boys & Girls Club did tell each child participating in the hot dog eating game to take their time and that it was not a game based on speed.

Lt. David McGill, of the Los Angeles Police Department, indicated that the initial investigation suggested that the children were appropriately supervised.^[8]

As the old saying goes, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Most of us hope to live long, healthy, and happy lives before succumbing to the inevitable. In a perfect world, there would be no illnesses or accidents. We’d just close our eyes one night and simply not wake up.

Unfortunately, it is not a perfect world—far from it actually. Terrible illnesses and accidents do occur every day. Below is small example of some horribly unconventional ways that real people have died.

10 Death By Dog Food

Sometimes, our love of and obsession with animals can come back to bite us in the rear. In the end, these two ladies would have been far better off just saying no to pet ownership.

Melany Paula Campos’s sister came home one day and immediately knew that something was amiss. The neighbors met her upon her return to complain that her dogs had been barking wildly for hours and just wouldn’t shut up.

After investigating to see what was wrong, she found her sister buried beneath four large bags of dog food. Apparently, when her sister was attempting to feed the 40 dogs that they had taken in, the bags fell on her and she suffocated under their weight.

In another sad tale of dog feeding gone wrong, Carol Williams tried to feed her pet dog after having too many cocktails. While leaning down to fill Fido’s bowl, she apparently was overcome from her intoxication and fell face-first into the dog’s bowl.

As if smothering in dog food wasn’t bad enough, the edge of the bowl dug into her neck and she eventually passed away. Once she was discovered, she was found to be three times over the legal limit.^[1]

9 Death By Pecking

In another disturbing story of people “done wrong” by their own animals, a farmer by the name of Frans Jaumotte was found dead on his farm. Police were anxious to discover the reason behind his apparent mutilation and death.

During their investigation, they found that there was no chicken feed anywhere on the farm. His 200 chickens apparently didn’t take this very well.

Since the will to live is great in all living beings, they did what they had to do to survive. They descended upon Jaumotte and pecked out his eyes and heart. All in the name of survival. It was him or them, and he was vastly outnumbered.^[2]

8 Death By Boiling

David Allen Kirwan and his friend Ronald Ratliff set out to enjoy a beautiful day of nature in Yellowstone National Park. After parking their vehicle to take a quick look at one of the springs, Ratliff’s dog decided to join them and escaped from the car.

Inexplicably, in his excitement, the pooch proceeded to dive into the spring that they were viewing. The water temperature would later be determined to be 94 degrees Celsius (202 °F).

The poor dog quickly began to yelp as the pain set in. Ignoring the pleas of other visitors to stay out of the hot spring, Kirwan acted without thought and dove in headfirst to save the dog. He was able to grab the dog and tried his best to save him. But ultimately, Kirwan had to release the animal and try to pull himself out of the spring.

His friend Ratliff pulled him from the spring while sustaining second-degree burns on the bottom of his feet by doing so. Another visitor helped Kirwan to the sidewalk.

He reportedly said, “That was stupid. How bad am I?” Then he added, “That was a stupid thing I did.”

He was so badly burned all over his body that he was blinded and most of his skin was coming off. Another well-meaning visitor tried to comfort him by removing his shoes but had to stop when his skin was coming off with it. Rangers reported that they found two large pieces of skin by the spring in the shape of hands.

Kirwan was rushed to a clinic and attended to by a burn specialist. Although Kirwan was conscious and seemingly in no pain, he eventually succumbed to his injuries. The burns were just too severe. Ironically, there were pamphlets in their vehicle warning about the dangers of the park. They had not read them.

The dog was never able to be rescued and died in the spring.^[3]

7 Death By Consumption

Humans arrogantly claim to be at the top of the food chain, but sometimes, nature has a way of correcting that assumption for us.

In 1984, a young woman named Brigitta Claudia Fredenhagen would learn that the hard way. Despite being warned about bears and the dangers of hiking and camping alone in Yellowstone National Park, she still chose to set out on her adventure. When she failed to meet her brother at the designated time and day, he reported her missing to the local rangers.

Upon finding her campsite, they made some grisly discoveries. The tent was ripped, and they found pieces of hair, scalp, muscle, bone, and tissue. As the search continued, they found a piece of her lip, more tissue, and bloody clothing. Upon locating her body, they discovered that quite a lot of her body had been consumed by a bear.

They theorized that the bear had ripped the tent and pulled her out either by the side of her neck or the top of her head while she was sleeping. There didn’t appear to be a struggle, so they believe that she died quickly.

Eerily, she had written in a journal at her campsite that she had taken “all precautions” to be safe.^[4]

6 Death By Radio Contest

Determined to win a contest for her kids, Jennifer Strange participated in “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” at a local radio station. While it should have been a funny and lighthearted event, it inexplicably ended in disaster.

The goal was to see who could drink the most water without going to the bathroom. The victor would take home a Wii game system. Sounds simple enough, right?

After the contest, Jennifer called her office in tears to let them know that she wouldn’t be back to work and was going home with a horrible headache. Hours later, her mother discovered Jennifer dead at her home.

The coroner found that her death was likely caused by “water intoxication” or hyponatremia that is defined by the body’s sodium level falling below normal, causing the brain to swell and push against the skull. As you can imagine, this would be brutally painful and cause nausea, vomiting, and weakness. In more severe cases, it results in seizures, coma, and even death.^[5]

5 Death By Flying Lawnmower

Probably one of the last things you would expect to happen at a New York Jets football game would be having a flying lawnmower crash into your head. Unfortunately for John Bowen, this oddity became a reality in 1979.

During the game’s halftime show, model plane enthusiasts were putting on a show for the crowd. It was said to have included aerial dogfights featuring planes made in “novel” shapes. This particular model plane was called the “Flying Lawnmower.” It was described as 0.61 meters (2 ft) long and made mostly from metal.

Tragically, the plane crashed into the stands, striking John Bowen and Kevin Rourke in their heads. Bowen underwent surgery on a terrible gash and later died from his injuries. Rourke suffered a concussion, but fortunately, he recovered.

Ironically, the halftime show was being put on by the Electronic Eagles of the Radio Controlled Association of Greater New York to promote the safety of the sport.^[6]

4 Death By Baseball

Generally speaking, you would think that baseball is less of a “contact sport” and less violent than a lot of other sports. But that is not entirely true.

There have been a large number of fatalities connected to the game over the years—whether it is a player being beaned in the head by a ball or getting hit in the chest over the heart. Some fans have also been injured or killed by falling from the stands.

In one sad story, the Goldblooms, an elderly couple who regularly attended Dodgers games, went to the stadium to simultaneously celebrate her 79th birthday and the couple’s 59th wedding anniversary. As they were enjoying the game from the stands, a ball flew just above the protective netting and tragically hit Linda Goldbloom in the head.

Ushers immediately raced to her side to see if she was okay. When she indicated that she was not, she was placed in an ambulance, where she began to vomit, and rushed to the hospital.

After undergoing emergency surgery, she was placed on a ventilator. Mrs. Goldbloom remained unresponsive for three days before she died from her injuries. She was buried about 16 kilometers (10 mi) from the stadium and team that she had loved so much.^[7]

3 Death By Toilet

Convicted murderer Michael Anderson Godwin unwittingly saved taxpayers a great deal of money at a Columbia, South Carolina, correctional facility in 1989.

After having his death sentence overturned on appeal, he settled into his new reality as a “lifer.” As he was only 28 at the time, he would more than likely have been there for many years to come.

One fateful day, he attempted to repair a set of earphones that was connected to his television. He bit down on one of the earphone’s wires while sitting on the steel toilet in his prison cell. This turned out to be a deadly combination.

The same prisoner who initially escaped the electric chair unintentionally carried out his own death sentence by electrocution. How ironic.^[8]

2 Death By Explosion

It is usually not a good idea to cross a rival motorcycle gang. Depending upon the severity of the issue, it is likely that retaliation will soon come your way. Two gang members were on their way to do just that when their carelessness cost them their lives.

Apparently, the homemade bomb that they were going to use to kill the rival gang member was stored in the car’s center console. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but the bomb exploded in transit and they were both killed.

The blast was so strong that it ripped open the roof and blew out the front doors of the car. The driver’s body was blown into the gutter of an elderly woman’s house, and debris was scattered over a 35-meter (115 ft) radius. Somehow, the other member was found slumped over and still strapped into his seat inside the vehicle.^[9]

1 Death By Wood Chipper

One of the most horrifying and gruesome ways to die has to be by falling into a wood chipper while fully conscious and aware of what is about to happen to you.

There have been numerous reports of this happening. Some individuals were severely injured, and some were killed. In one instance, a landscaper somehow fell into the teeth of the wood chipper that he had been using at work that day. It was reported that his entire body was pulled through, leaving a gory scene.

Rescue workers had to “delicately clean the scene” to reclaim all of the victim’s remains. As you can imagine, bearing witness to something like this would tend to stay with you forever.^[10]

The moment before death is often one of truth. Some dying people use that time to correct their errors (at least the ones they can correct), appreciate their loved ones, and cherish their best moments. They may also reveal their deepest secrets and greatest regrets and align their beliefs.

We have seen dying people do all these things. However, some admissions have turned controversial—especially when it involves the revelation of a secret—after the person survived. Imagine confessing to a murder in front of the cops when you think you are dying but you end up surviving.

Other confessions have become contentious after the dying individuals supposedly took on new faiths. They did die, but the supposed deathbed conversions often caused controversies that lingered on long after they were gone.

10 James Washington

In July 1995, firefighters discovered the charred remains of a woman in an empty home in Nashville, Tennessee. Police later identified the woman as 35-year-old Joyce Goodener, who had been stabbed and beaten to death. Afterward, the murderer had placed her body in a rug before setting it on fire.

Police arrested James Washington for the murder. He knew Joyce and even admitted that he saw her on the day she died. However, police could not pin the murder on him as there was no DNA evidence at the crime scene.

Things changed in 2009 when James Washington suffered a heart attack while serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder. Fearing that he was going to die, Washington called a nearby guard, James Tomlinson, and confessed to the 1995 murder.

Things went south for Washington when the heart attack didn’t prove fatal. Tomlinson informed authorities about the confession, and Washington was charged with murder. Washington recanted the confession and claimed that he was hallucinating at the time. Unfortunately, it was too late. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[1]

9 Tony Wakeford

In 2006, Tony Wakeford suffered a life-threatening illness caused by Parkinson’s disease. Thinking he was going to die, he called his wife, Patricia, and confessed to having an affair with her best friend. Patricia did not complain and patiently listened to all he had to say. Death was near anyway, she probably thought.

They were wrong! Tony survived.

However, Patricia could not contain the pain of betrayal by her husband. This came to a head on September 4, 2010, when she murdered him in their Effingham, Surrey, home. Afterward, she called 999 and claimed that her husband had attacked her during a fight. Police arrived to find Tony’s remains. He had multiple stab wounds on his arms, hands, and legs.

However, the one that proved fatal was delivered straight into his heart. Patricia insisted that Tony had attacked her first even though investigators believed that she had murdered Tony in a fit of jealousy. A neighbor also told investigators that he had heard Patricia repeat the words “I hate you” for about 10 minutes on the day before the murder.^[2]

Patricia was arrested for murder. However, she got lucky after the court reduced the charge to manslaughter. She received a 582-day sentence but was freed because she had already spent 291 days in prison.

8 James Brewer

In 2009, “Michael Anderson” suffered a stroke that he believed was going to kill him. At the hospital, he revealed that he was actually 58-year-old James Brewer. He had changed his name around 30 years earlier after he was declared “wanted” in Tennessee for the murder of his neighbor Jimmy Carroll.

James shot Carroll to death outside a gas station over suspicions that Carroll was trying to have an affair with James’s wife, who later changed her name to Dorothy Anderson. James Brewer was arrested for the murder but fled with his wife right after he was released on bail. They went to Oklahoma, where they changed their names and started to live a new life.

James told the police that he had decided to confess because he wanted to “cleanse his soul” before dying. James was so sure that his time was up that he even told his wife to stop interfering when she tried to halt his confession. Fortunately for justice, James survived the stroke and was charged with murder.^[3]

7 Unidentified 91-Year-Old Man

In 2015, a 91-year-old British man living in Canada confessed to murdering a woman outside a nightclub on Carnaby Street, Soho, UK, in 1946. This is considered the longest period between a crime and confession in British criminal history.

The unidentified man offered the confession at a Canadian police station right after he was diagnosed with cancer. Canadian officers informed the British police, who promptly sent investigators to interrogate the man. The victim was a prostitute whose name the British man could not recall. However, he remembered that he had shot her to death with a pistol.

When British officers showed him pictures of several women, the man identified his victim. She had been a 26-year-old prostitute called Margaret Cook. Police had never arrested a suspect in Cook’s murder even though the man had remained in Britain for five years before relocating to Canada.

Canadian police offered to extradite the man to the UK. However, Canadian judges refused to honor the extradition because the man was too old. They also thought that a trial was unnecessary because the murder would have remained unsolved if the man had not confessed.^[4]

6 Jeffrey Gafoor

In 1988, British police found the remains of a gruesomely murdered woman in a flat in Cardiff, UK. The woman had over 50 stab wounds on her body. She was later identified as a 20-year-old prostitute called Lynette White.

In 1990, Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi, and Stephen Miller received life sentences for the murder. However, they were released two years later after advancements in DNA technology proved they were innocent. A few years later, police turned their radar on a man called Jeffrey Gafoor. DNA tests soon proved that Gafoor was the real murderer.

In 2003, the 38-year-old Gafoor somehow realized that he was under police surveillance. He visited several stores where he purchased large amounts of paracetamol tablets. He swallowed the tablets when he returned home that night. Police broke into his home at that moment and arrested him.

Gafoor confessed to the murder as an ambulance transported him to a hospital. He added that he had been awaiting capture for 15 years and really wanted to die. Gafoor was already convulsing when he arrived at the hospital, and for once, it seemed like he was really going to die. That never happened, and he went on to make a full recovery.

Gafoor did not recant his confession. However, he said he was no longer interested in dying and was prepared to face the consequences for his action. He added that he had previously considered death to discover if God and the devil really existed.

Gafoor confessed that he had murdered White during an argument over £30. He received a life sentence and had to spend 13 years in prison before he could be considered for parole. However, he is still in prison as his parole requests were rejected in 2016 and 2018. He is eligible to file a third parole request in 2020.^[5]

5 Shaun

In 2018, a cancer patient at Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand informed a doctor that he had some confessions to make. He added that he would only disclose the information on the condition that the doctor promise never to tell anyone else. The doctor agreed.

The man—identified only with the pseudonym “Shaun”—claimed that he had been a gun for hire who was responsible for several murders across New Zealand in the 1960s. The unidentified doctor later encouraged Shaun to write a confession for the police in case he died. It is unclear if Shaun wrote that letter.

The doctor kept the secret anyway. However, police learned about Shaun after several medical and law researchers published a paper discussing the moral and legal consequences of keeping such secrets. The paper generated a controversy that split medical practitioners into two groups. One supported the doctor who kept the secret, while the other wanted the doctor to reveal it.

The supportive group noted that secrets should never be revealed because they are considered a sort of bond between doctors and their patients. The group also mentioned that Shaun’s condition improved after the confession. He was able to walk and eat—two things he could not do before the confession. His health also improved significantly, and doctors even had to reduce the amounts of painkillers he received.

In fact, Shaun was discharged and sent to a nursing home for palliative care, which is reserved for dying people. Doctors consider patients in palliative care to be terminally ill. Their care is focused on making their deaths less painful. Shaun later died.^[6]

4 Bjorn Ironside

Bjorn Ironside is a legendary figure, although his existence remains in doubt. He was supposedly a Viking king who ruled what is now Sweden sometime in the ninth century. He also doubled as a raider and frequently organized surprise attacks into cities that would now be located in Europe and North Africa.

One of his most infamous raids occurred when he partnered with another Viking called Hastein to attack the Italian city of Luni, which they mistook for Rome. The raid started with a siege. However, the duo quickly realized that the city was well defended against assault. So they decided to trick their way in.

Sources say that either Bjorn or Hastein sent a message to the local bishop in Luni, claiming that Bjorn was on his deathbed and wanted to convert to Christianity. Other sources say that Bjorn actually feigned death and had requested a Christian burial earlier.

Whichever is true, the bishop of Luni agreed and allowed some Viking pallbearers to carry Bjorn’s body into Luni. Once there, Bjorn leapt out of his coffin and fought his way to the city gates alongside the Viking soldiers disguised as pallbearers. However, they soon realized that they had attacked the wrong city.^[7]

3 Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin died in April 1882. Soon after, there were rumors that he had converted to Christianity just before his death. The first such claims were made during a sermon delivered by one Mr. Huntingdon.

Darwin’s deathbed conversion is a big deal because he proposed the theory of evolution. The theory pitched him against religionists who believed that God had created the world and everything within. This is the creationist theory. The creationist and evolutionist theories cannot both be true—at least not totally. One has to be false or only partially true for the other to be true.

Elizabeth Reid Cotton (aka Lady Hope) reignited the rumor in 1915 when she declared that Darwin had really converted. Cotton claimed that Darwin was reading a Bible when she visited him at his home. Darwin was gravely ill at the time and bedridden. Cotton added that he had told her to return to share a sermon with the servants in his home.

Darwin’s family continued to deny every story that Darwin converted on his deathbed. His daughter Henrietta was with him at the time of his death and never saw him convert. His wife, Emma, added that he would have never converted. While they agreed that Cotton did visit Darwin, they said that it was seven months before his death. Darwin was not bedridden at the time.^[8]

2 King Louis XV

King Louis XV was one French king with great taste in women. He became king at age five and married his wife, Queen Marie Leszczynska, when he was just 15. He soon got tired of the queen and found several mistresses to satisfy his sexual urges.

King Louis XV had his mistresses live in the same palace that he shared with his wife. The mistresses resided in different apartments that were linked to the king’s bedroom by a secret staircase. The mistresses used that staircase whenever the king requested their services.

The king’s philandering ways almost came to an end after he was stabbed by Robert-Francois Damiens on January 5, 1757. Thinking he was dying, King Louis XV was rushed to his palace where he confessed his infidelity to Queen Marie and promised to reveal more details if he ever recovered. He did get better, but there is no mention that he made more confessions or dumped his mistresses.^[9]

1 Sir Allan Napier MacNab

Sir Allan Napier MacNab was a controversial politician in early Canadian history. He was a jack-of-all-trades as he dabbled in business, acting, carpentry, land speculation, and law during his eventful life. He also briefly worked as a soldier and even fought in the War of 1812.

MacNab’s life was filled with controversies, which continued after his death. He owed lots of debt, leaving his creditors to fight over the few properties he had left. However, the greatest dispute involved his faith. MacNab was a renowned Anglican even though his wife and daughters were sworn Catholics. The controversy began after Sophia Stuart, his sister-in-law, declared that he had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.

The Anglicans refuted the claims and insisted that MacNab had died and must be buried an Anglican. They added that the supposed conversion was impossible because MacNab was unconscious at the time of his death. The Catholics won, and MacNab received a Catholic burial. However, the disagreement left the family divided.^[10]

Clinical trials are the most important step in getting a drug approved by the FDA. Without them, no one would know if their medicines were safe. The vast majority of the time, these trials go well, and the medicine is approved for general use. But every once in a while, a clinical trial goes horribly wrong. Keep reading to learn about 10 of these famous incidents that medical companies try desperately to hide.

READ MORE: 10 Terrible Ideas In Medicine From The Past 100 Years

10The University of Minnesota Seroquel Experiment

“My son Dan died almost five years ago in a clinical study at the University of Minnesota, a study he lacked any diagnosis for, and a study that I tried unsuccessfully to get him out of for five months.” Ever since her son’s untimely death, Mary Weiss has been trying to spread this message to the world.

In 2003, her delusional son, Dan Markingson, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Fairview. Shortly after, he was put into a clinical trial testing three different types of schizophrenia medications: Seroquel, Risperdal, and Zyprexa. Very quickly, his daily 800mg doses of Seroquel started to worsen his delusions.

In response, his mother frantically sent letters, emails, and called the study coordinators to try and take her son out of the program. But the administration banned Dan from leaving the study, threatening to put him into a mental facility if he tried to drop out. Weiss was shocked by this until she learned a key fact about the program: her son’s participation was worth $15,000 to the school.^[1]

Unable to leave the program, Markingson’s delusions became worse until he eventually committed suicide by stabbing himself to death in the shower. A suicide note read, “I went through this experience smiling!” Devastated, his mother sued the school, which refused to take responsibility for its actions. Markingson was one of five trial subjects to attempt suicide, and one of two who succeeded in taking their own lives.

9French Biotrial Tragedy

In January 2016, the French company Biotrial recruited 128 healthy volunteers to take part in a clinical trial of a new drug designed to combat anxiety related to cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Under the influence of small doses of the drug, the patients reported no side effects. But when the doses began to escalate after the first week, problems started to surface. In particular, six of the participants became sick and were immediately sent to the ER.

One of these patients, a healthy man in his late 20s, was declared brain dead just one week after being admitted to the hospital and two weeks after starting the trial. The five other patients remained in a stable condition, but doctors predict that many will have suffered irreversible brain damage and mental handicaps.

Even though this was the first time the drug had been tested on humans, the trial administrators knew that there were serious issues with the drug. One French news source uncovered a pre-trial that had similar effects on dogs, killing several and leaving others with brain damage.^[2] Yet the trial was still conducted on humans, and with horrible results.

8The Thalidomide Trials

The drug Thalidomide was first manufactured in Germany, primarily for the purpose of treating respiratory infections. Today, many people know about this drug because of its adverse effects on pregnancy. Over 10,000 children born during the 1960s suffered serious impairments, such as missing limbs and cleft palates, as a result of this drug.

Unlike the other trials on the list, the eerie part of the thalidomide clinical trial was that everything went horribly right. During the patenting and approval phase, researchers tested the drug on animals but neglected to observe the effects on their offspring. Since it was impossible to die from an overdose of the medicine, it was deemed safe, and it hit the shelves in 1956.^[3]

It was not until 1961 that Australian doctor William McBride discovered the link between Thalidomide and the deformities. Until then, every clinical trial came to the conclusion that thalidomide was a safe over-the-counter medicine although10,000 people paid the price.

7Gene Therapy Clinical Trial

Jesse Gelsinger was 18 when he entered a study that tested the safety of gene therapy in kids with severe genetic mutations in the liver. Like the other children in the study, he had been born with a condition called OTC that prevented his liver from eliminating enough ammonia, which the researchers tried to fight by injecting him with a cold virus. But one high dose of the medicine would be Gelsinger’s last. On September 17, 1999, his symptoms quickly spiraled from jaundice, to organ failure, to brain death.^[4]

The FDA dug into this death and found a few eerily irresponsible actions on the part of the administrators. First, Gelsinger was in the final group of patients, and every group before him had suffered severe reactions to the drug. Yet the study continued. Secondly, Gelsinger’s levels of ammonia were so high that they should have disqualified him from the trial in the first place. He was originally intended as an alternate, but a patient dropped out, and he was hastily included in the study.

6Anil Potti’s Miracle Cancer Drug

Throughout the 2000s, Anil Potti was an up-and-coming medical star. He promised cancer treatments with an 80-percent cure rate, and medical professionals believed that his discoveries could save 10,000 lives a year, but in 2015, this all changed. Potti was found guilty of including false data in a manuscript, nine papers, and a grant application, so the results of his studies were voided.

One woman who was particularly affected by this fraudulence was Joyce Shoffner,^[5] patient No. 1 in a July 2008 trial done by Potti. Under the guarantee that Potti’s therapy cured 80 percent of cancers, Shoffner eagerly signed up to join the study to help cure her breast cancer. She underwent a painful biopsy, in which doctors took tissue samples by inserting a long needle from under her arm and up into her neck. She then went through a regimen of Adriamycin-Cytoxan (AC) chemotherapy, only to be told two years later that the study’s results had been voided due to Potti’s involvement. Today, Shoffner does not have breast cancer, but she lives with the blood clots and diabetes caused by the AC regimen, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from the trial itself.

READ MORE: 10 People With Shocking and Extreme Deformities

5Stem Cell Vision Treatment

In January 2017, three women entered a study with their vision and left without it. Their ages ranging from 72 to 88, all three of these women suffered from macular degeneration, an eye disease closely related to old age. The patients each paid $5,000 to have both eyes treated with stem cell therapy, a process that was “both atypical and unsafe” according to several ophthalmology experts.^[6]

Just days after the procedure, all three women reported severe side effects, including bleeding and retinal detachment. One patient entirely lost her eyesight, while the other two lost most. None of the patients are expected to recover their sight. But scientists knew that this trial had flaws from the beginning. First and foremost, the patients were required to pay for their own procedures, which is a flagrant sign of illegitimate research. Additionally, medical professionals have tried to erase the history of the trial; when you visit government records of the trial online, it only says that the study was “withdrawn prior to enrollment,” which clearly was not the case.

4Leukemia CAR-T Trial

In July 2016, three adult leukemia patients died in a trial of a new cellular-level medicine by Juno Therapeutics. Nicknamed CAR-T, Juno’s new treatment option was supposed to attack the malignant cells until they appeared to have vanished.^[7] The technology was an up-and-coming phenomenon that many researchers called the “fifth pillar” of cancer treatment, but hopes were soon dashed by the results of the 2016 study.

The cause of death for the three patients was swelling in the brain, medically known as cerebral edema. Representatives from the sponsoring medical company Juno admit that cerebral edema is rather common in patients who have been given CAR-T treatments, as are immune system reactions and increased neurological toxicity.

After the news of the deaths had been released, Juno’s stock fell 27 percent. Their practices are under FDA review, and it is unclear whether they will be allowed to continue their studies.

3New York Lidocaine Disaster

In 1996, Hoi Yan “Nicole” Wan, a healthy sophomore at the University of Rochester needed some pocket money. So she decided to sign up, without her parents’ permission, for a clinical trial that paid $150.^[8] The researchers inserted a tube down her throat and into her lungs to see the effects of pollution on her respiratory system, a common procedure called a bronchoscopy.

But what Nicole did not know was that they took far more cell samples than originally outlined in the proposal. And as they took more samples from her lungs, they increased the dose of her anesthetic, Lidocaine, far above the levels approved by the FDA. She was released feeling incredibly weak and in enormous amounts of pain, and two days later was found dead. An autopsy revealed that lethal levels of Lidocaine, due to malpractice in the study, had caused her heart to stop beating and the rest of her body to fail along with it.

2John Hopkins Asthma Trial

Ellen Roche, a technician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, volunteered to take part in an asthma trial for healthy individuals. The trial’s goal was to discover what mechanism kept healthy people from developing the symptoms of asthma, so the doctors induced a mild asthmatic reaction and then treated it with hexamethonium.

At first, inhaling this medicine simply caused Ms. Roche to develop a cough. But as time progressed, she was put on a ventilator as her lung tissue broke down and her kidneys began to fail. She died one month later, on June 2, 2001.^[9] Medical officials from the trial admit that the hexamethonium “was either solely responsible for the subject’s illness or played an important contributory role.” To make matters worse, participants learned after the trial that hexamethonium is not even an FDA-approved drug. This fact was not included in the consent form, so Johns Hopkins has been forced to take full responsibility for Roche’s death.

1The Elephant Man Trial

The most famous clinical trial of all time, The Elephant Man Trial took place in London in 2006. The trial, which was testing a new cancer treatment called TGN1412, seemed harmless to the eight men who took part in it; medical professionals had assured them that the worst symptoms would only include a headache and nausea.

But the results were much more gruesome than that. Shortly after they were given the doses, all of the patients began writhing in pain and vomiting.^[10] One of the participants lost his fingers and toes, while another had to have his foot partially amputated. The trial earned its nickname, The Elephant Man Trial because one participant’s head swelled up so large that his girlfriend teased him about looking like an elephant.

No one is completely sure what went wrong, but the patients have a few ideas. One suggests that the timing of the dosage made it dangerous; researchers spent 90 minutes slowly injecting animals with the drug, but took a mere six minutes to inject it into the human subjects. Another claims that the preliminary animal testing was inaccurate because instead of testing on a bonobo, whose DNA is a 98 percent match to humans, the agency cut costs and used a macaque, whose DNA is only a 94 percent match. These men may never know exactly what went wrong that fateful day, or how it will continue to affect their lives.

Sydney is a part-time content writer and a full-time student.

Professional wrestling might have predetermined results, but those results only matter if the wrestlers in the ring agree to actually follow the script. As you are about to learn, that isn’t always the case. Whether it ends up being a stiff shot to remind a rival wrestler about the behind the scenes pecking order, an overly enthusiastic chair shot to the head, or a downright attempt on another wrestler’s life. Anything can happen once the script goes out the window, and the results can be disastrous.

This list depicts some pretty extreme and graphic violence against both male and female wrestlers. If you are uncomfortable with that, now would be the time to look away.

10The Stardom Incident

Known as the ghastly match in Japan, Act Yasukawa vs. Yoshiko was supposed to be a main event title match for the Japanese women’s wrestling brand Stardom. Instead, it ended up making national news and costing one of the wrestler’s their career. Early on in the match the much smaller Act seemingly catches Yoshiko with a real punch to the face, to which Yoshiko then responds with a series of very serious punches to Act. Then it pretty much devolves into a horror show as Act gets her face smashed up.

When the fight was finally broken up, Act had suffered a broken cheekbone, fractured orbital bone, and a smashed nose which required immediate surgery. Her injuries ultimately forced her into retirement, and it became mandatory for medical personnel to be present at every match following it.^[1] For her role in the fight, Yoshiko was banned indefinitely from Stardom but has had virtually no issue getting work with the country’s other wrestling brands.

9Mick Foley Gets Hit in the Head with a Chair Eleven Times

In 2010 the WWE completely banned the use of direct chair shots to the head in an effort to lessen the chance of their performers receiving concussions and possible brain damage.^[2] Unfortunately for Mick Foley, he was about eleven years too early for this rule to affect him, which is kind of funny in a horrible way as that is the exact number of unprotected chair shots to the head he took in a row in a single match with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Foley had originally agreed to take five shots to the head while the two wrestlers went from one area of the arena to another, but it took eleven blows in total as the pair struggled to make it to the agreed upon spot. Mick Foley suffered a horrible gash on the top of his head that bled profusely, all while his wife and young children sat in the audience and watched on in horror. After the show, Mick Foley only needed stitches, but it was the beginning of the end for the hardcore wrestler as he started to have noticeable issues with his memory.

8Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle Nearly Gets Arm Broken

In an attempt to catch the reality TV audience that was so popular in the early 2000s, the WWE launched their Tough Enough project where a group of would-be wrestlers competed in different challenges live on TV in the hopes of getting a million dollar contract.^[3] One such challenge saw the contestants facing Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle in a shoot-style wrestling match. Unfortunately for Kurt, one of the contestants was Daniel Pruder, a trained MMA fighter.

Pruder got Kurt into a kimura lock, bending his arm painfully backward. Seeing that things clearly were not going the way they expected, and knowing they could not let their star lose on live television, WWE officials quickly called the match in Kurt’s favor, claiming he had pinned Pruder during the lock. Both wrestlers tell wildly different stories of what really happened that night, but even the official who called the pin claims that it was done to save Kurt Angle’s arm and pride.

7Big Van Vader Loses an Eye, Puts It Back In

Big Van Vader was a wrestler of massive proportions who had a tendency to strike his opponents with real punches every once in a while. It just so happened his opponent Stan Hansen was also a giant man who had a habit of doing the exact same thing. When they faced each other in 1990, the two men started out swinging at each other with all they had in them with Vader seemingly getting the upper hand until suddenly reeling back in shock and pulling off his mask, revealing to the horrified world that his eye had fallen out.

While you would assume the match would end there, Vader instead decided to push his own eye back into his head and went right back to swinging like a madman, only pausing every once in a while to push his eye back in as it kept popping out while he was being hit. This continued on for an agonizing twelve minutes until the match finally came to a natural finish. Vader required surgery to save his eye.^[4]

6Wrestler Pulls off His Mask, Nearly Gets His Neck Snapped

For some wrestlers, there is nothing more sacred than their mask. One such wrestler by the name of El Santo was so serious about his mask that he had to travel from country to country in secret and had special arraignments with different countries just to keep his coworkers from seeing his face when going through customs. Only once in his career did he remove his mask on television, and it happened just days before his death from a heart attack. With that in mind, let’s talk about Dirtbike Kid.

Facing the Great Sasuke in a loser takes off his mask match, the Dirtbike Kid decided to remove his main mask before the match even started, completely ruining any stakes the show had built up.^[5] He then refused to react to any of Sasuke’s fake attacks until finally, his already frustrated opponent began assaulting him for real. By the time Dirtbike Kid realized what was happening, Sasuke had locked him in a neck wrench choke that was so violent you can hear Dirtbike Kid screaming in pain as it was applied. Sasuke was quickly declared the winner as Dirtbike Kid faded into retirement.

5Audience Member Whips a Nine-Volt Battery at Shawn Michaels

Shawn Michaels may be an iconic name in wrestling nowadays, but back in the 90s he was considered a bit of a primadonna. It was the lead up to Wrestlemania 14, and Shawn Michaels was scheduled to lose the title belt to Steve Austin, a decision he did not like in the least. The showrunners were so worried that Shawn would refuse to work the match that the veteran wrestler The Undertaker was said to have been on call to “convince” him to do his job.^[6]

While Shawn did eventually agree to lose the title, it almost all came crashing down during the filming of a promotional video when a fan in the audience chucked a nine-volt battery into the ring, and it hit Shawn square on his forehead. Shawn, already upset about having to lose, simply got out of the ring and walked out of the arena leaving everyone to wonder if that was the end. When the time came to finally do the job, Shawn Michaels delivered, but a battery almost ruined a multi-million dollar budget show.

4Asuka Purposefully Has the Most Uncomfortable Match Ever

It was a mixed tag team match featuring Asuka and Naomichi going up against Meiko and Suzuki, and everything was seemingly going as planned until the female wrestler Asuka got into the ring with her longtime idol, the male wrestler Minoru Suzuki. Suzuki opened up with a horrible sounding headbutt and then immediately set to work punching and kicking Asuka in ways that did not look fake in any way. The other wrestlers in the match, including Suzuki’s partner, tried multiple times to get him to stop, but he just kept going until finally pinning Asuka to end the match.

While it all seemed pointlessly brutal and unprovoked, Asuka was actually the one who set up the beating with Suzuki in the first place. Suzuki was well known for working stiff with people, and Asuka loved his style, so much so that she incorporated his fighting style into her own when she was first starting out. Asuka personally asked him not to hold back in their match and to give it his all, no matter how bad it might have been. To Asuka’s delight, and to the horror of the viewers, he didn’t.^[7]

3Wendi Richter Gets Cheated by the Company

Wendi Richter might not be as well remembered as the likes of Hulk Hogan or the Fabulous Moolah, but back in the 1980s she was one of the top female wrestlers in the business, and as the women’s champion, she was practically assured a good pay increase during contract renewal negotiations. That was until she was booked to wrestle a match against a mysterious newcomer named the Spider Lady that she had never met or heard of previously.^[8]

Even the announcers were confused when the Spider Lady finally arrived as it was clearly the Fabulous Moolah just wearing a mask. Despite this odd scenario, Wendi Richter was told she would win the match and not to worry. To her surprise, Moolah rolled her up into a pin and was immediately declared the winner and new champion despite Wendi kicking out and trying to continue the match. Realizing what had happened, Wendi tried to keep the show going by taking the belt and refusing to hand it over. Wendi did not get her new contract. In fact, she never wrestled for the WWE again, only appearing decades later to be inducted into the WWE hall of fame.

2Katsuyori Shibata’s Life-Changing Headbutt

Nobody wins with a headbutt, and unfortunately, Katsuyori Shibata had to learn that the hard way. Like a lot of Japanese wrestlers, Shibata was a hard-hitting madman who performed his signature headbutt multiple times without issue, despite the horrible sound the hit made each time. All of that changed on the night he faced Kazuchika Okada for the NJPW promotion. As the two men hit each other with real blow after real blow, Shibata leaned back and cracked Okada with a headbutt, busting open his own head and unknowingly giving himself a subdural hematoma in the process.^[9]

As the minutes passed by and Shibata’s brain bled he slowly became paralyzed on his right side, losing the ability to walk. The match continued on as Shibata lost more motor functions and the ability to speak until Okada finally gave him one last huge hit and pinned him. Shibata, being ever the showman, attempted to walk out of the arena after his loss but collapsed before he could make it out. After multiple emergency surgeries and months of work to save his life, Shibata eventually learned to walk and speak again. He later appeared at an NJPW show to announce he was somehow still alive.

1Owen Hart Falls to His Death During Pay-Per-View

Considering the dangers that wrestlers put themselves through day in and day out for years on end, it is actually quite surprising that so few performers die while doing it. As rare as it is, unfortunately, it does happen though, and on the night of the WWE’s Over the Edge pay-per-view in 1999, Owen Hart paid the ultimate price for his career in a stunt that went horribly awry.^[10]

At the time of the incident, Owen Hart was playing a character known as the Blue Blazer, a superhero type character that was played up for laughs in his appearances. Owen was supposed to be lowered from the rafters in a harness that he would detach from so he could face plant into the ring, similar to a stunt he had pulled previously. But something went wrong, and Owen was prematurely detached from his safety equipment while still nearly 80 feet in the air.

He reportedly fell chest first into the ropes which launched him into the ring in front of everyone in attendance. He was quickly removed and rushed away by medical personnel as the show continued on without him as the audience looked on in shocked silence. It was announced shortly after to those watching that Owen had died from the fall. The Hart family sued the WWE for Owen’s death and settled out of court. The pay-per-view was not shown again until fifteen years later. It was heavily edited to remove the moments where Owen fell.

There are a couple of major life events that you want to get right. You want high school prom to be a teenage dream, you want graduation from college to be a groundbreaking moment, and you want your marriage ceremony to go off without a hitch. If you skip to the end of your “perfect moments in life” timeline, and we get to funerals. Of course, it’s a funeral.

You want everything to go smoothly. People are in mourning, and this isn’t a time for slip-ups. How we wish the world worked that way. Here are the top ten funerals that went horribly wrong.

10 That’s Not the Right Video

Back in 2016, Simon Lewis, 33, and his newborn son, also named Simon, died in a car accident in Cardiff, Wales. 

Simon’s wife was still pregnant at the time of the collision (she was in the passenger seat) and expressed concern that something was wrong with Simon Jr. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors performed a c-section. The baby didn’t survive.

The family had put together a memorial video for the father and son and expected to see it on the funeral day. Unfortunately, the memorial video was so far from what was actually played that they might as well have been on the moon. Yes, it is what you think: porn.

For four whole minutes, the funeral assembly sat through uncensored pornography while funeral home staff figured out how to turn it off. The Reverand at the ceremony said, “I remember looking up at the screen and seeing some type of video come on and a very loud noise.” What kind of noise was it, Rev?

Needless to say, people were livid. Funeral directors could not figure out how the video switch happened and launched an official investigation. The best explanation the funeral home could offer was that the screen, a new Smart tv screen, was accidentally connected to a pornography broadcast.

Yeah, okay.

9 Where’s the Body?

Julie Mott was 25 years old when she passed away from cystic fibrosis in 2015. A week after she passed, which would’ve been her 26th birthday, family and friends held a memorial service for her at Mission Park North in San Antonio, Texas. The memorial was a beautiful tribute to a vibrant young woman. Staff transported her casket to a holding room, where she was to be cremated the next day.

Except that never happened.

When the staff came to retrieve the casket and body the next morning, they discovered both were missing. With no evidence of a forced entry, people were left dumbfounded and incredibly angry — and I don’t blame them.

There were two prime suspects in the case, one being Mott’s ex-boyfriend, Bill Willburn. Willburn was, well, obsessed with Mott. And he suspiciously lingered about ten to fifteen minutes after the memorial service ended and everyone left. 

The other suspect was the subcontractor company the owners used, Beyer and Beitel. Beyer and Beitel did not have a good reputation and were even sued a few months before for accidentally mixing up two women’s bodies. The subcontractors had full, unsupervised, after-hours access to the location.

Now, because of the nature of the “burglary,” investigators concluded that the body had been taken in the three hours between the end of the memorial service and when Mission Park North closed. Either suspect could be the one investigators were looking for. But neither Willburn nor Beyer and Beitel were charged with the crime.

Sadly, Mott’s body remains missing to this day.

8 Somewhere Over the Rainbow…

Judy Garland, whom we know as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” and Esther Smith in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” died of a drug overdose in 1969. The country mourned her death as she had been since she hit the Silver Screen, a cinematic icon. She was also and still is a gay icon. 

There’s a lot of cultural analysis that goes into why we see her as such. Still, the general explanation — which tends to be a bit reductionist — is that Garland understood suffering and that suffering was entirely relatable to the majority of the gay population. Again, reductionist but popular. The full explanation is an entirely different article.

So what does this have to do with a funeral?

Coincidence or not, some historians, history buffs, and Judy Garland fanatics associate the famous New York City Stonewall Riots with Garland’s death. They say that the sorrow and mourning people felt triggered the response against the police that led to the rioting and kicked off the LGBTQAI+ movement.

Or it could’ve been that the gay community in NYC had enough of being discriminated against and abused by society.

Whatever the case, she died five days before the riots began, and ultimately, what went horribly wrong, started something terribly right.

7 Plagiarism is Wrong, Mmkay?

We’ve all been threatened with the consequences of plagiarism: you can lose your job, automatically have a failing grade, or even be suspended from school. And honestly, it’s a crappy way to navigate through life. But I guess if you’re a murderer, anything is on the table — even intellectual thievery.

In 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Christopher Panayioutou not only murdered his wife but also delivered a beautiful, touching eulogy — that was plagiarized. Of course, no one knew that he was a murderer at that point.

But once he was arrested, the truth of his deeds came to light. Panayioutou had lifted his eulogy from the tribute of another woman by the name of Jennifer Atkins. Atkins, no relation to the diet, had passed five years prior.

6 Fall Out

In 2021, Los Angeles resident Tina Morales buried her father, a respected patriarch of her family. Unfortunately, the bottom of the casket gave out during the funeral proceedings. As we expected there might be, Morales filed a lawsuit.

The lawsuit explains that they had expected a casket that would be reliable and sturdy and that the family expected Universal Caskets (the manufacturer) to handle her father’s body with care. That did not happen as he, well, fell out. 

The owner of Universal Caskets, Ariel Suarez, claimed that he knew nothing of the case and did not sell the casket to Morales. In fact, he blamed the possibility of a weight limit problem as the cause of the mishap. Regardless, Morales was understandably shaken up by the incident and it was not a respectful way to go into the grave.

5 Just Like the One-Wing Dove

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzdd1wOODn0&t=30s

You’ve probably seen this video already, and it’s actually one of the lighter things to happen at a funeral on this list — even though what happens still totally stinks.

In what was supposed to be a symbolic dove releasing ceremony to represent the freedom of the soul after death, funeral-goers witness one of those doves getting hit by a massive truck.

In the video, you can hear the funeral goers’ audible “oh!” as the truck drives by, hitting and instantly killed the bird. The ceremony is followed by an awkward silence and people looking at each other in disbelief. 

4 Drinking on the Job

In 2017, family and friends pulled up to the burial site for 33-year-old Christina Gilbert. When they arrived, they noticed that the grave attendants were still digging the grave. Even worse, there were beer bottle caps strewn about the plot.

Family and friends kicked the attendant out — mostly because he was drinking on the job — and finished digging the grave. They had wanted a simple burial for Gilbert, but instead, the incident turned the burial more morbid and frustrating than anything. Christina’s sister, Heidi Lawson, is visibly upset in the news report, noting how terrible it is to “watch your sister’s coffin sit there… it’s not right.” 

They were finally able to bury Christina hours later.

3 Runaway Casket

A traditional burial in China took a turn for the worse when the casket fell down a steep mountainside. The casket then crashed into several people below. Three people suffered minor to moderate injuries.

Why was the casket going up the mountainside in the first place, you ask?

According to Feng Shui practitioner Zhen Yi, graves in rural areas are chosen with Feng Shui in mind. The mountain just so happened to be a perfect site. Chinese culture also emphasizes respect for the deceased. So the coffin falling down the mountain was a very serious incident. To be fair, the coffin falling was not the fault of the funeral workers on-site. One of the pully ropes snapped.

2 Take Me With You!

As Hamlet did with Ophelia, so did countless heartbroken and sorrowful mourners jump into the graves of their deceased loved ones. This is not an uncommon occurrence. And it tends to spark humorous remarks. But believe me, for the people who did it, they weren’t in it for the laughs.

The difference with this jumping into the grave case is that it wasn’t just one person who decided to dive, but three. In Nakuru, Kenya, the wife and two of the deceased’s cousins jumped into the grave while the preacher was still giving his sermon.

But okay, hear me out. They didn’t do it because they were sad. They did it because they weren’t sure if they should bury the body or not.

Edwin, the deceased, was tragically murdered on December 3. Edwin’s body was discovered on a farm next to the suspected killer’s house the next day. The family was torn as to whether or not they should send the remains back to the morgue for further investigation into his murder. And I mean really torn. 

The video depicts absolute chaos, raw emotion, and protests. At one point, the coffin is already in the grave, and people are trying to pull it back out.

1 Still Alive

A wake is a chance for people to say their final goodbyes to the deceased, and, if you are like I was at my grandfather’s wake, a chance to make sure that the deceased is not actually alive. Oh, was that a nostril moving? No, okay.

It does happen, though. People are wrongly declared dead and then “come back to life” at the funeral home, no resuscitation efforts or anything. We know this as Lazarus syndrome. However, this usually happens while the body is still in the morgue, not in the coffin at a wake. 

Usually.

In 2014, a three-year-old Filipino girl was declared medically dead after suffering three days of high fever. But she woke up in her casket during her wake! The doctor who was present confirmed that she was still alive. She was able to go home with the parents that day, but sadly, the little girl passed not too long after.

We all love a good prank. As long as we’re not the ones on the end of it, of course. But sometimes, despite careful thought and meticulous planning, things can go awry. Perhaps the banana falls out of the exhaust pipe or the plastic wrap across the toilet snaps, or maybe you end up going to jail… uh, what? Here are ten practical jokes that resulted in everyone wishing they’d stuck with the good old fashioned whoopee cushion.

Prank: Man convinces ex-wife he’s hanged himself

Ex-wives. Let’s face it, their second role in life is being the punch line to pretty much every joke their former lover can come up with. But in 2004 there was one ex-wife who was certainly left with the last laugh. Randy Wood, embittered and angry and wanting to get one over his past ex, called her up and told her to come over to his place. He had ‘something’ to show her he said. When Wood’s ex-wife arrived she found her ‘late’ ex-husband hanging by a noose from a tree in the front garden. Rather than grab the nearest stick and beat him like the human piñata he really is, she immediately called 911, presumably in hysterics at what she had seen. Cue, firemen, policemen and paramedics showing up en masse. But when a fireman went to cut Wood down they found a concealed harness supporting his body weight and one sniggering ex-husband totally intact. It was a short lived victory however, as he was subsequently fined $1,000 and sent to jail for a year.

Prank: Husband’s cheating past revealed live on radio

We’d all do anything for a free concert ticket, wouldn’t we? Especially if the artist in question is one of our fav bands of all time. But would you do this? In 2008, to win tickets to a Kanye West’s concert one woman agreed to call her husband live on radio and tell him that their 9-year-old son wasn’t in fact his. What could possibly go wrong you ask? Hm, thinking they were trading confessions, the bewildered husband blurted out the immortal line: “I’ve been screwing your sister for the last year!” Whoops. What’s worse, she didn’t even get the tickets.

Prank: Dentist gets caught turning patient into pig

Nobody likes going to the dentist let alone a demented one who has a penchant for turning his patients into farm yard animals. Dr. Robert Woo is one such dentist. When doing a bit of dental work on one of his employees he thought it would be funny to install a pair of false tusks on to her teeth. This was no spur of the moment practical joke either, Woo deliberately choose boar tusks because the employee in question had grown up on a pig farm. Clearly not quite sure how the joke would go down, Woo photographed his little project whilst his patient was still anesthetized and then removed the tusks, replacing them with the usual caps. All good thus far. But then Woo decided to share his practical joke with the rest of the office—oh the wisdom! Miss Piggy-for-the-day obviously didn’t see the funny side. She sued her boss for $250,000. But the real joke was on Woo’s insurance company who were forced to fork out $750,000 when he sued them for not covering his practical joke. Come on though. Woo’s got a point. If most insurance companies cover for fire and theft, surely it’s not that hard to cover for ‘When turning one of your female employees into a pig doesn’t work out quite as you planned’.

Prank: Co-worker set alight for announcing wedding

When you learn that one of your best buds is going to get married you throw a little party for him, right? You might order a keg of his favorite beer perhaps, or call up all of his mates and get them together for a Friday night down-the-pub knees up. Not if you’re Australian Gianni Catanzaro. His co-workers decided something a bit more special was required to celebrate his last days on Earth as a bachelor. Firstly, Gianni was grabbed, punched in the testicles (which, as we all know fellas, is already a pretty bad ‘prank’ as it is); had his wrists and ankles duct taped to a fence; was striped to his underpants; and egged. Enough’s enough, right? Wrong. Gianni’s loving co-workers then thought it would be a good idea to pour gasoline on to the floor and set it alight. Fair play to the lad, Gianni actually managed to get himself free, only to fall, face first into the roaring flames. The outcome: a postponed wedding and a cancelled honeymoon. The kicker: Gianni was the one fired… because the burns to his face and exposed body weren’t punishment enough for the awful heinous act of announcing his marriage to his mates.

Prank: Hash cakes take out entire staff room

Joseph Tellini and Ian Walker are the sort of kids everyone would have wanted at their school. In their last year at senior high the two 18-year-old students thought it would be funny to repay their teachers for all their dedication to the boys’ educational needs by baking them a parting gift. But these were no run-of-the-mill brownies, these were brownies packed with marijuana. The teachers had clearly never encountered hash cakes before because within hours nineteen members of staff were taken ill and rushed to the nearest emergency room and the pair were ordered to do volunteer work. Worse still, the entire contents of the canteen were wiped out as wave after wave of teachers were hit with the munchies.

Prank: False deadline prompts near death experience

Life in the fast lane can be a stressful one. Deadline after deadline flies by without any cessation. This was Glenn Howlett’s mindset before his colleagues at London City Hall decided to wind him up. Poor old Glenn was happily working through his latest stress-inducing report when he received a memo informing him the report was actually due two weeks earlier than he had planned for. Receiving the memo whilst on holiday, Glenn quickly returned home, set his office to work and began the panic of a life time—presumably whilst still wearing his swimming trunks. Shortly afterwards, he collapsed with a suspected heart attack. Contrite and apologetic, from what could have quite possibly been his death bed, Glenn accepted that he would not be able to complete the report in time and decided to apply for an ignominious early retirement. It was at this point that one of the pranksters informed him of their hilarious joke. Great timing! Glenn, as anyone in their right mind would, saw the funny side, and promptly, and successfully, sued City Hall for damages. Some weeks later another memo was sent round, telling everyone not to pull pranks. The best bit, if only Glenn had clocked the date on the original memo: April 1st.

Prank: Dead dog on top of car alerts police

Paul Goobie. Remember the name because this guy pulled one of the sickest practical jokes of all time. Getting hold of a dead Chihuahua alone is pretty messed up but to then go and tie it on to the bumper of a co-worker, Kevin Meloy’s car is just plain twisted. Completely unaware of the deceased mutt flopping about at the rear-end of his automobile, Kevin drove for several miles without stopping—partly due to the fact Kev is a bit hard of hearing and couldn’t hear the numerous irate motorist’s honking their horns in disgust. Eventually, Kevin was alerted to his dead passenger and he in turn alerted the police, who wasted no time in charging Paul Goobie with the unlawful disposal of a dead animal. You’ve got to ask yourself, would he have got away with it if he’d have used a Doberman?

Prank: Fake press release sees shares plummet

It was a normal morning on the news wires on August 25, 2000 and then all of a sudden word reached financial journalists that Emulex Corp had announced revised earnings and that they were being investigated for accounting irregularities resulting in CEO, Paul Folino, stepping down. Not surprisingly, the company’s stocks sank from $113.06 to $43 within two hours. Shareholders, obviously, were in bits. Why had they not be consulted? Well, no one at Emulex had been consulted. The whole thing was a fake. Earnings were fine, the CEO wasn’t leaving and there was no impending investigation. The following week an arrest was made. Mark Jakoba, a 23-year-old college student who was working at the small internet news company that ‘leaked’ the information had made a cool quarter of a mill from the cheeky scheme. Not that he could spend a penny of that in jail of course.

Prank: Cross-Dressing Doll gets security officer the sack

Being a night watchman at Toy ‘R’ Us must be boring as hell. So why not partake in a little spot of doll play—or even dress up a male doll as a female one? Poor Ken didn’t know what hit him. And neither did Carina Guillot and her 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn when they walked into the store in Florida in July 1990. Believing they’d spotted a unique Mattel doll, and not dissuaded by the cashier in the shop, the mother and daughter left thinking they had a collector’s item in their midst. Shortly after they were offered $4,000 for their rare find. Once the story went national however, Ron Zero, the bored night watchman, ‘fessed up. His reward for his honesty? He was given the sack four days later.

Prank: High school joke results in potential epic jail term

It’s the last day of high school. You’re thinking of doing something radical to have one last dig at the place that has owned you for so many years of awfulness. You decide to play a practical joke: to sneak into the school through the girls changing room window and put a sex doll in the showers. Yes. A sex doll. But, oh no. Somebody sees you climbing through the window, hoodie and gloves and big black box and they think of all the logical things you could be doing and decide, yes, you’re planting a bomb. The school is evacuated and the Indiana State Police bomb squad clear the area costing the school over $8,000. The teenager in question, Tyell Morton was arrested and charged with institutional criminal mischief, which could have seen him spend up to eight years inside. Luckily, he only received a suspended sentence and a few weeks of community service. There’s one kid who’s learned his lesson: don’t climb through school windows brandishing a sex doll.

It is a truth universally ignored that a human on the toilet is at their most vulnerable. The worst that usually happens, though, is that there is a knock at the front door, your cat wanders in to look at you, or you run out of toilet paper. However, sometimes, something far worse than you can ever imagine happens while you are on the throne.

Here are ten catastrophic toilet events you should probably not think about if you are a nervous pooper.

Related: Top 10 Fascinating Facts About Toilet Paper

10 Python in the Pan

Many people have a fear of being watched when they are on the toilet. Usually, though, this is a fear of someone peeking through the ridiculously large gaps on the doors in American public restrooms. Sometimes, however, it is not a human eye that might be peeping at you. Instead, there have been cases of rats, squirrels, and frogs all emerging from the U-bend at the back of toilets. You might even find a spider clinging to the bottom of the seat. But one man in Thailand had perhaps the worst toilet guest.

While sitting on the toilet in 2016, Atthaporn Boonmakchuay reportedly felt a “sharp bite” on the end of his penis. Looking down between his legs, he spotted a 3.4-meter-long (11-foot-long) python that had just taken a bite out of his rather more modest python. Somehow managing to think clearly in what must have been a distressing situation, Atthaporn tied the snake’s head to the door with a rope before seeking help. Screaming for his wife, he collapsed from blood loss.

Atthaporn was rushed to hospital and made a full recovery. The snake was still wedged in the toilet when emergency services arrived. The toilet had to be smashed with hammers to get the snake out. It has since been released into the wild to look for fresh toilets to hunt in.^[1]

9 Murdered Monarchs

If you were a king in the Middle Ages, the chances of an assassin getting to you were rather limited. Commoners and strangers were excluded from the court, and you would likely have many strong knights around you sworn to protect you. So for an assassin to strike, they would have to get to you in one of the rare occasions you were alone.

Jaromir, Duke of Bohemia, had quite the exciting life. He rose up against one of his brothers who was king, and for his treachery, he was castrated and cast out of his domain. Later regaining his Dukedom, Jaromir was once again thrown out and blinded for his troubles. He did not suffer for long, however. While sitting on the toilet, an assassin with a spear stabbed him through the belly and left Jaromir to bleed out on the bathroom floor.

Other rulers like Godfrey the Hunchback and King Edmund Ironsides are also said to have met their maker in toilets. In one telling, Edmund was shot in the posterior by someone below while using the toilet. It struck him so hard that not even the feathers of the arrow showed.^[2]

8 Pop-up Toilet

Sometimes you don’t even have to be on the toilet for disaster to strike. You can be minding your own business when one pops up to ruin your day. For a man in Amsterdam in 2014, one literally popped up.

Like many European city centers, Amsterdam has a problem with late-night revelers with full bladders who do not have anywhere to relieve themselves. So to stop public urination and save space, toilets were installed that can retract into the ground and only emerge at night.

For one unfortunate man on a moped, however, one pop-up toilet popped up a bit precipitously. One witness described it as an explosion. The toilet launched the man and his moped into the air. Luckily, the man was only treated for minor injuries, though his moped was badly damaged. Whether the surprise of the sudden trip to the toilet made him wet himself was not recorded.^[3]

7 Erfurt Latrine Disaster

Surprise trips to the toilet can have disastrous outcomes. For example, in 1184, the king of Germany, Henry VI, invited his nobles to a meeting at a fortress in Erfurt. The meeting was designed to allow the king to settle a dispute on his lands, but several of the lords present would suffer a terrible landing.

The lords and nobles gathered before the king in the church of the fortress while the king sat in splendor before them. Just as the aristocratic guests took their seats, the wooden floor of the church gave way under their weight. They plummeted down into a latrine underneath them.

Suddenly plunged into a liquid slurry of human waste, the assembled lords and retainers were drowned or suffocated by fumes. Sixty people are said to have died in the disaster that is known in German as the Erfurter Latrinensturz—”Erfurt Latrine Fall.” King Henry survived because he was sitting on a section of the stone floor, and so escaped the fall.^[4]

6 Eglon

Today, going to the toilet is a fairly solitary activity. Unless something exciting is happening in a cubicle, we are likely alone on the throne. In the ancient world, this was not always the case. Roman toilets often featured long benches with holes cut in them. People using the facilities were likely packed in cheek to cheek—literally.

In the Book of Judges in the Bible, there is a story that shows how dangerous going to the toilet together could be. God has had one of his fits of pique and is angry with the Israelites, so he sets an evil king called Eglon to rule them. To free the Israelites from Eglon, a “left-handed” man named Ehud straps a sword to his thigh and hides it under his clothes before visiting the king.

Ehud tells Eglon that he has a secret message for the king, and the pair are left alone. Ehud then drives his sword through Eglon’s enormous stomach. Eglon is so corpulent that the “fat closed over” the sword, and he could not get it out. Eglon then discharges his bowels and dies. Ehud flees. Eglon’s servants do not check on the king for a long time because they assume he is just using the toilet for a long time, as was usual for him.^[5]

5 Collapsing Toilets

The Ig Nobel prizes are annual awards designed to celebrate the weirder aspects of science and culture, as opposed to the serious Nobel prizes. Previous winners have been “honored” for their work on levitating frogs with magnets, working out why toast always falls buttered side down, and calculating the mechanics of dipping a biscuit in tea.

In 2000, a team won the Public Health prize for a paper called “The Collapse of Toilets in Glasgow.” The amusing topic and title of the article apparently snared the winners their prize. The paper actually deals with the real danger that collapsing toilets can cause. Three cases of toilets shattering while being used and causing hospitalization were studied. The conclusion of the study was that old toilets were the most dangerous.

The winners of the Ig Nobel prize took their victory in good spirits. They were glad that their research was not just a “flash in the pan.”^[6]

4 Electric Throne

In 1978, Michael Anderson Godwin was sentenced to the electric chair for murder and sexual assault. Before he was executed, however, a review of the sentence was carried out that found him innocent of the assault. So Godwin avoided the electric chair—but found another electric seat waiting for him.

While in prison, he was watching his television while using headphones. He was also sitting on his metal toilet. It seems there must have been a problem with his headphones because Godwin began to bite on the cable that connected them to the TV. As soon as his teeth touched the wires within, he was electrocuted.

Godwin died of his injuries and the death was ruled a bizarre accident.^[7]

3 Explosions

If someone says there has been an explosion in the bathroom, they are usually speaking euphemistically. But it turns out that toilets can be surprisingly explosive. The Victorian press had a brief obsession with the gases in their sewers igniting and blowing up their lavatories.

Exploding toilets are more common than we might like to think. In one case, a lightning strike set fire to the methane below one and detonated it.

When it’s not fire that sets them off, it can be the water. In 2018, Flushmate, which makes high-pressure systems designed to reduce water use during flushing, recalled 1.5 million units. This was after a three-million-unit recall in 2012. The problem? The units could, and did, make some toilets explode.^[8]

2 Trapped in the Loo

Most people don’t need to be told not to climb into a toilet, but there are always some who require an explicit warning. In 2016, a Norwegian man dropped his phone into a toilet while urinating. His friend, Cato Berntsen Larsen, did not think twice before leaping into action. He jumped into the toilet feet first and became stuck.

Larsen is apparently a keen amateur diver, but he should perhaps have thought twice before diving this time. The public toilet was not connected to the sewer but rather had a tank that was emptied just once per year. He found himself up to his thighs in sewage. Larsen panicked due to the confined space and vomited. Firefighters were called, and they were able to rescue the unfortunate man by cutting open the toilet.^[9]

The phone was lost forever.

1 U-boat Sinks

Most toilet accidents are only embarrassing for the person involved, but sometimes they can cause international laughter. In 1945, a German U-boat was patrolling off the coast of Scotland. The Second World War was practically over, and the submarine and crew might have reached the end of the conflict without incident. Unfortunately, the captain just had to use the toilet.

U-1206 was one of the most modern vessels in the German navy [LINK 10]. Even its toilets were hi-tech. No more would a submarine have to carry around its own waste—this U-boat used high pressure to vent waste after a toilet was used. This system, however, was only designed to be used when the submarine was on the surface.

Captain Karl-Adolf Schlitt was unfamiliar with the toilet and had to ask an engineer to help flush it. The wrong knob was turned, and suddenly, high-pressure water and sewage flooded the cabin. When the seawater reached the submarine’s batteries, clouds of chlorine gas billowed out. The U-boat was forced to surface, was spotted and attacked by the RAF, and had to be abandoned. Four of the crew drowned, and the rest were taken as prisoners of war. Captain Schlitt had flushed his hopes of victory away.^[10]

With money tight all around, more people are *trying* to save by DIY’ing—doing it yourself. From construction to renovation to crafting to even piercings, people are trying everything themselves. But for every dollar it saves, it’s that much more likely to result in total calamity. From collapsed walls to scarred faces to exploded toilets, there is an infinite number of ways in which you can totally screw the pooch when doing it yourself. 

On a whole host of websites, users have taken to sharing their at-home horrors with the world, baring their failures so that we all might laugh and hopefully not repeat the mistake. 

With both those goals in mind, here are ten of the best—meaning worst— do-it-yourself projects gone horribly wrong.

10 Tiktok-Inspired Freckles 

We all know the type of person who would do anything to get famous. What if you were already scheduled to be on reality TV but still felt the urge to change up your look? Meet Australia’s “Big Brother” contestant Tilly Whitfield. A gorgeous gal for sure, who was inspired by a TikTok trend to give herself fake freckles. According to her Instagram post, she “…literally shoved needles deep into [her] skin… lol.” 

The pictures she shared are horrendous, but the description of her initial reaction is even worse: “I ended up in hospital with temporary loss of vision in my eye due to swelling and was very sick from the infection, not to mention my face was somewhat unrecognizable.” This is all after claiming at first: “It didn’t hurt at all, so I didn’t think I should stop.” During her time on the show, she swapped between wearing a face mask or makeup at all times to cover it up. Thankfully she learned her lesson with a reminder to always leave the needles-in-your-face kind of procedures up to your doctor.

9 Curtains Fail

If you don’t believe in such a thing as DIY karma, then this next story will convince you. Fully equipped with multiple DIY tutorials, Latasha James thought she might save herself a buck or two and set up some stylish curtains herself to match the rest of her apartment. She put them together and connected them to her concrete ceiling with some store-bought brackets, tape, and a curtain rod. She was so sure of her success she even documented it on her YouTube channel. We’re already cringing at the thought of her using tape above any other kind of permanent attachment. And sure enough, her experiment was a costly mistake.

Days passed, and she reveled in her success until things came crashing down. Literally. The entire setup fell, and the casualty was the bar cart beneath. She came home that day to her partner running wildly with paper towels in hand as red wine spilled absolutely everywhere. Hopefully, at least one of the bottles survived—they’ll definitely need that after the clean up.

8 100-Parter Bathroom Fail

Bad decisions tend to snowball. Say you nosh on a doughnut and coffee for breakfast—you’re more likely to grab something else fatty or sugary for lunch or, say, overeat at dinner. Grace O’Heeran, a 23-year-old Texan university graduate, went viral on TikTok for said snowball effect while renovating the bathroom in her new house.

Grace, in her DIY shame-fame, explained that a car crash and resultant brain injury “has a lot to do with [her] decision making and impulsiveness… I impulsively painted my bathroom floor black and knew it was game over from there and no turning back.” 

Said decisions included a hand-stenciled tile floor and green, sparkled, insect-infected-looking countertops. Commenters on her videos begged and pleaded with her at almost every step to stop and hire a professional. But after weeks of scrapped work and a total of $1,000 spent ($700 higher than her initial budget), she somehow ended up happy with the result—as ghastly as it is.

7 Good Deed Gone Wrong

The winter season is best for spreading some neighborly joy. But this submission from a user at familyhandyman.com shows that some good deeds are actually punishments in disguise. Equipped with a fancy new snowblower that cleaned off their driveway and walkway in no time, they thought to extend the same courtesy to their elderly neighbor. Well, things went fine until they accidentally ran over the garden hose, getting it “royally tangled.”

They then spent a frustrating hour removing bits and pieces of plastic hose from the snowblower, and after that, called it quits and returned home. Later that evening, the neighbor called, crying over a soaked basement. It turns out that running over the hose caused a leak inside the house behind the house bib—the perfect recipe for disaster in the middle of winter.

6 Shred-splosion

One user at Australia’s handyman.net writes about what should have been the simplest thing: spraying a bit of lubricant on his shredder. Nothing is as satisfying as a nice shred, and when your shredder is aging or clogged, a little lubricant in the gears will get it right back to satisfaction mode—in theory.

The user writes that they “sprayed the shredding mechanism liberally.” Liberally might be the most important word there as then the shredder, well, it exploded. Their hypothesis: “A spark had ignited the accumulated vapors in the enclosed area of the shredder.” Luckily they were unhurt aside from some visible souvenirs. “…a quick check in the mirror revealed my singed eyebrows and hair.”

5 Exploding Toilet

One “Reader’s Digest” reader sent in their story about their creative solution for fixing an especially clogged toilet. Their son’s plastic potty training attachment had fallen into the toilet and became irreversibly stuck. To their credit, the reader had a creative solution. They write, “I had a brilliant idea: I’d burn it out!”

They removed the toilet, brought it outside, and set it ablaze, feeling triumphant. “I poured charcoal lighter fluid down the trap and lit it up. Standing back, I basked in the glory of the geyser flames and my phenomenal ingenuity.” That is, until it exploded. Yup, another explosion. A toilet explosion. Their story ends with a simple, “I bought a new toilet.”

4 Sump Dump

A user at familyhandyman.com writes about their husband’s well-intentioned but shoddy attempt to prepare for 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. She and her husband were installing a backup system for their sump pump in case they lost power. The husband cut into a piece of PVC pipe the user was holding, and she was immediately blasted in the face with “nasty brown water.”

Like the good assistant she is, she held on to the pipe and didn’t say a word as the rancid spray kept coming out. Luckily, he eventually noticed. “It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening. He had forgotten to unplug the pump. After pulling the plug, he looked at me with a worried expression, but I began laughing hysterically.” It turns out the pump worked just fine, but I hope for her sake that the brown water really was just water.

3 Trapped in the Closet

Another “Reader’s Digest” reader was an experienced handyman, so he DIY’ed his entire house, building it almost entirely himself. A truly impressive feat, though not one that went perfectly. When it came time to install his closet door, one that swung outward, he managed to bungle the job enough to nail himself inside the room with no exit.

As he writes: “To keep the door frame square, I nailed blocks at a 45-degree angle to the outside of the jambs. (I then) started shooting nails into the jambs. When I finished, I tried to open the door. The blocks were nailed across the jambs on the other side.” He had nailed the door shut securely and “didn’t have a hammer or a pry bar.” Luckily, he had hope. He had his phone. His brother eventually freed him and though the brother hasn’t given him a hard time yet, “I know he’s just waiting for the right moment.”

2 Sun Dumb

Another entry at Family Handyman is a story best summarized as “think about Wile E. Coyote sitting on a limb of a tree and sawing it off!” The user is a construction worker who was foolish enough to be working alone in 100-degree weather, which caused him to make an almost deadly mistake.

He had to cut off “a 3-ft. piece of a rim joist.” He also, however, “stood on the rim joist without realizing I was standing on the very piece of wood I intended to cut off.” It is indeed a very Wile E. Coyote moment. Cutting through the very beam he was standing on, the user fell. Luckily, the saw he was using didn’t land on—or in—him, and he missed all other dangerous tools and wood pieces. He was hospitalized, though, for being dehydrated and experiencing sunstroke.

1 Gorilla Glue Girl

In January 2021, Jessica Brown became a viral sensation for a DIY trick of hers that went about as poorly as humanly possible. Brown liked to keep her long, braided ponytail in place with Got2b Glued Blasting Freeze spray but found herself unexpectedly out of the spray. She thought up an at-home hack and sprayed her hair—every inch of it—with Gorilla Glue. It did not go well.

Brown’s ponytail was stuck in the same position, unmovable (let alone unbridgeable or washable), for a month. On TikTok, she shared her story, tapping her hair as proof. It made a sound like plastic on a marble counter. Brown even visited the emergency room for help, but they could not dissolve the glue. It wasn’t until a plastic surgeon named Dr. Michael Obeng donated his time to her, giving her an experimental surgery of his own design to free her scalp from the polyurethane-based glue.