From the tragedy of Alec Baldwin’s prop gun firing to O.J. Simpson’s entire trial, plenty of famous people have cost others their lives. Sometimes, this happens decades before fame hits. Sometimes, it’s because of fame. And sometimes, it ruins careers.

But sometimes, it all sort of gets swept under the rug. Here are some famous people who have been involved in the deaths of others that you may not have heard about.

Related: Ten Eerie Unsolved Murders of Everyday Women

10 Laura Bush

Fourteen years before marrying soon-to-be President George W. Bush, 17-year-old Laura Welch ran a stop sign and crashed into another car. The driver, another teenager, was killed. Though she didn’t speak about the incident for many years, in 2010, she told the New York Times that she was “wracked by guilt for years after the crash, especially after not attending the funeral and for not reaching out to the parents of the dead teenager.”

If this sounds like an interesting premise for a comedy, you’re not alone! In 2018, Laura Bush Killed a Guy, a new comedy play by Ian Allen, made its debut off-off-Broadway. The show presented itself as a night with Laura (played by Lisa Hodsoll), where three alternate accounts of the crash are presented. Despite the… odd subject material, the New York Times praised the play, calling it “not a political satire but a romantic comedy.”^[1]

9 Phill Lewis

Born in Uganda to American parents in the Peace Corps, Phill Lewis started his film career in the 1988 black comedy Heathers. The movie centers around a slew of teen deaths—a topic that would become all too relevant to Lewis in just a few years.

In 1991, at the age of 23, Lewis was arrested after hitting and killing a woman with his car. His blood alcohol content was over three times the legal level, which even his own defense attorney called “extraordinarily high.” Lewis claimed he was unable to remember anything for nearly 10 hours leading up to the accident, which was deemed possible due to his extreme level of intoxication.

Lewis was sentenced to five years in prison, but it was reduced to just one after he spent much of his sentence working with a prison-based theater troupe that highlighted the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse. Despite these rough years as a young man, Lewis continued to land guest roles in shows such as Married… with Children and Boy Meets World before landing a lead role on the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.^[2]

8 Rebecca Gayheart

Former teen model and star of the 1999 hit Jawbreaker Rebecca Gayheart started her career by playing ax murderess Lizzie Borden in a school play. After becoming the spokesperson for Noxzema skin cream, Gayheart rose to fame in magazines and guest spots on TV shows like Beverly Hills 90210.

In 2001, Gayheart accidentally hit a nine-year-old boy with her car. The boy died the next day, and Gayheart made a public statement: “The pain of this tragedy will live with me forever. Despite the allegations in the lawsuit, the facts will establish that this was a most unfortunate accident.” She was charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to three years of probation and suspension of her license.^[3]

7 Matthew Broderick

The actor best known as the fast-driving, smooth-talking teen Ferris Bueller accidentally crossed into the wrong lane while driving a rental car in Northern Ireland. The car collided head-on with another, killing both riders instantly. Broderick and his passenger, actress Jennifer Grey, both sustained minor injuries.

Broderick claimed he couldn’t remember anything about the crash before ending up in the hospital. He was charged with careless driving. In the end, he only had to pay a $175 fine for taking the life of a mother and daughter duo.

In 2012, Broderick starred in a multi-million dollar Honda Super Bowl commercial. The brother/son of the victims remarked drily that “It wasn’t the greatest choice of drivers, knowing his past.”^[4]

6 Ryan Grantham

At just 21 years old, Ryan Grantham shot his mother to death while she innocently played the piano in her home. When asked why he did it, Grandham explained he had an entire plan, which culminated in the assassination of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a mass shooting in British Columbia. He killed his mother in order to shield her from the pain his crimes would bring her.

Luckily, Grantham was caught before he could carry out this scheme. Before attending college at Simon Fraser University, Grantham was known for his small but comedic role as a sixth grader in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and as a guest star on the teen drama Riverdale.^[5]

5 Brandy Norwood

Brandy Norwood shot to fame after starring in the 1996 sitcom Moesha. Her subsequent appearances as the titular princess in Cinderella and Grammy win for her 1998 album Never Say Never only made her a more prominent figure in American media.

Unfortunately, in 2006, Norwood struck a car on an L.A. freeway. This second car slammed into the highway divider and was hit by a third car, killing the driver. Norwood was charged with vehicular manslaughter but was found not guilty due to the absence of alcohol and drugs. Further investigation also did not find that Norwood was using her phone or was otherwise distracted. Norwood has never spoken publicly about the incident.^[6]

4 Don King

Years before promoting such historic boxing matches as the “Thrilla in Manilla” and “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Don King spent his youth working as a bookie out of a basement. During this time, King shot a man after watching him try to rob one of his gambling houses. It was ruled as justifiable homicide.

Thirteen years later, he was convicted for stomping one of his employees to death because he owed him $600. This wasn’t so justifiable, and King served just under four years in prison for his crime.^[7]

3 Caitlyn Jenner

In 2024, Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner came under intense scrutiny after posting on social media “Good riddance” in response to the death of accused murderer O.J. Simpson. Many users were quick to point out that Jenner herself had actually also killed someone in a 2015 car crash on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California.

Jenner was never charged with manslaughter or reckless driving, as investigators found that the only law she had broken was a “basic speeding violation.” There was public outrage, with some believing she had gotten off the hook due to her fame. Ultimately, Jenner paid $800,000 to the family of the deceased and expressed her condolences but did not serve jail time.^[8]

2 Phil Spector

You might not know Phil Spector by name, but you’ve almost certainly heard one of the songs he’s been involved in. Spector produced The Beatles’ Let It Be, as well as such acts as The Ronettes (famous for “Be My Baby”), The Crystals, and Ike & Tina Turner.

Unlike most others on this list, Spector’s crime was purposeful. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee invited actress Lana Clarkson back to his home in 2003 after meeting at a bar. By morning, she had been shot dead.

Spector claimed she killed herself, but several women came forward during the trial to reveal Spector had also threatened them with guns at some point. He was found guilty and sentenced to 19 years in prison, though he died in 2021 before serving them all.^[9]

1 Ted Kennedy

The Kennedy curse spares no man.

Senator Ted Kennedy, younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, was driving over a bridge with politician Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969 when the car leaped over the barrier and sank into the ocean. While Kennedy was able to swim to safety, Kopechne did not make it.

Once Kennedy made it back to his hotel on Chappaquiddick Island, he waited until morning to call the police and report the crash. It is thought that Kopechne could have survived if help had arrived sooner rather than the nine hours later in which Kennedy waited. Why would he do this? Many suspect that Kennedy was drunk and did not want to get in trouble with the law, so he waited until morning when he had sobered up.

Some even think that the entire incident was a deliberate attempt to kill Kopechne for unknown reasons. Kennedy’s defenses were murky and confused, leading to further speculation on why he handled the situation so badly. The Chappaquiddick incident, as it has come to be known, is primarily cited as the reason Kennedy did not run for president in future years.

Older Americans might remember this scandal, but for most young adults whose only knowledge of the Kennedys comes from JFK, the idea that a member of this all-American clan could have killed someone probably comes as a surprise.^[10]

Books, films, and all manner of popular culture can amuse, inspire, and enlighten. But sometimes pop culture has…darker consequences. Countless acts of lethal violence have been inspired by art, ranging from suicide epidemics and copycat killings to radio station riots and outright global war.

See Also: 10 Pop Culture Icons With Cleverly Hidden Insults

10 Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is undeniably the most influential American novel ever written. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, came from a deeply religious abolitionist family. The book’s title character is a slave in Kentucky owned by the Shelby family. After the family falls into debt, Tom ends up in the possession of the vicious Simon Legree. When he refuses to tell the location of two runaways, his overseers beat him to death. The book was a best-seller in America and overseas, with dozens of translations produced. It even helped inspire the abolition of serfdom in Russia.

But in America it galvanized the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery factions. More northerners were converted to abolitionism. Southerners produced a voluminous “Anti-Tom” literature that romanticized slavery. Though many factors were at work, within 9 years of publication the Civil War had begun. When Stowe met President Lincoln, he supposedly called her “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”^[1]

9 The Clansman and Birth of a Nation

Decades later when Southerner Thomas Dixon saw a play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin he was enraged. In response he wrote The Clansman, which depicted white Southerners as victims and the terrorist Ku Klux Klan as their courageous defenders in the turbulent post-Civil War period. The federal government had successfully suppressed the Klan and it seemed to be gone for good. But Dixon’s book was a success and inspired a film, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith. The movie was controversial from the beginning, even being banned in some cities.

Birth of a Nation’s deadly legacy was that it inspired a new incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan just months after release in 1915. After a cross-burning ceremony on Stone Mountain in Georgia the Klan was reborn. The original Klan had been secretive, calling itself “The Invisible Empire”. This new Klan used clever public relations to conceal their criminality. The organization went through many ups and downs and lingers on into the present day, murdering countless people along the way.^[2]

8 Nazi Propaganda Films

Leni Riefenstahl was a successful German actress and director between the world wars. For this reason she was chosen to film a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. The resultant “documentary” was Triumph of the Will. In aesthetic terms it was a masterpiece, in moral terms it was horrific. Later she directed a film glamorizing the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Olympia. The Nazis produced lesser known films as well, with other directors. They even commissioned a film about the sinking of the Titanic which blamed the tragedy on the greed of British businessmen.

The effect of this propaganda was to seduce the German public into supporting the regime. From the Nazi perspective it was a resounding success. In fact the most fanatical supporters of the regime, those who fought to the bitter end, were Germany’s young people. They had been raised on a diet of Nazi propaganda in print, radio, and film. And so they marched to their deaths, taking millions with them.

The video clip above is of the film “Olympia”. Of particular note is the Olympic salute performed from around the 16:00 mark. This salute is no longer used because it looks too much like the “Heil Hitler” salute, but it pre-dated Hitler by at least twenty years. It was discontinued from the Olympics from 1948.^[3]

7 The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent is a political thriller of the Victorian era, written by the Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. Conrad, famous today for his colonial novella Heart of Darkness, was deeply interested in the evil side of human nature. The Secret Agent novel focuses on a group of Russian anarchists plotting terrorist attacks in Britain. Decades later this book would wind up in the hands of a young Polish-American, Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomer. Kaczynski was a brilliant but warped man and he deeply identified with one of the terrorist characters in the book, “The professor”.

He shared this character’s disdain for the mainstream of society, and willingness to use violence to change it. Kaczynski conducted a campaign of bombings targeting those associated with modern technology, which he despised. During this period he used Joseph Conrad’s name as an alias to evade capture. He ultimately killed three people and wounded over a dozen from 1975 to 1998. The fact that Conrad wrote the book to satirize terrorist violence was apparently lost on Kaczynski.^[4]

6 The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sorrows of Young Werther was the first novel of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Published in 1774, the story is about a young man named Werther yearning for the love of his friend Charlotte. Werther is cultured, artistic man and they have a deep bond. But Charlotte eventually marries another man. He cannot handle the pain any longer and so he ends his own life.

The book was an instant bestseller across Europe. “Werther fever” spread across the continent with young men imitating the title character’s clothing. But more disturbing was that the novel helped triggered a wave of young people taking their own lives. Some used pistols identical to what Werther used in the novel and several bodies were found with copies. The term “Werther effect” today signifies media-inspired suicide.^[5]

5 War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds is one of the classics of early science fiction, by British writer, H.G. Wells. It describes an invasion of earth by hostile Martians. These aliens nearly succeed in conquering the planet but are stopped by earthly bacteria to which they have no immunity. In 1938 the American Orson Welles adapted it into a radio drama, changing the setting from England to New Jersey.

The broadcast was so realistic it convinced many frightened listeners that the planet was actually being invaded. Some years later a Spanish version was broadcast in Quito, Ecuador. While the American audience was surely angered after learning the truth, in Quito the fiasco lead to rioting outside the radio station. A fire broke out and several people died, including the narrator’s girlfriend.^[6]

4 A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange began life as a novel by the British author Anthony Burgess. After spending years teaching in Britain’s Asian colonies, Burgess returned to the mother country in 1961. He found a changed society, the youth counterculture was emerging. A Clockwork Orange showed the dark side of this subculture, focusing on a bizarre gang of young criminals. They take narcotics, enjoy classical music, and commit grisly crimes. But in the end, they too become victims. Alex, the main character, is brainwashed into passivity through brutal psychological experiments.

After weak sales a film adaption by Stanley Kubrick gave the story mainstream exposure. Although Kubrick actually toned down some of the worst crimes in the novel, the movie version was still extremely controversial. A number of horrific crimes in Britain were linked to the film. Some of the connections were tenuous but in at least one case a young murderer explicitly claimed A Clockwork Orange was his inspiration. After getting death threats Kubrick pulled the film from circulation.^[7]

3 Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers was a 1994 film directed by Oliver Stone. The movie stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a man and woman in love and on the run. They engage in a grisly multi-state killing spree as Robert Downey, Jr. plays the role of a low-life reporter who makes them famous. The film was controversial from the start for at least two reasons. One is the uninterrupted depiction of gratuitously gruesome violence.

The other reason was that it apparently played a role in inspiring multiple real life crimes. In one case a teen couple from Oklahoma murdered one businessman and paralyzed another. The previous night they had watched the film on loop while taking acid. A pair of French criminals killed three policeman and a cabbie. A poster from the film was found in their room. In one heartbreaking case a Texas boy said he decapitated his classmate to “be famous, like the natural born killers.”^[8]

2 Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a 1976 film by Martin Scorsese. It focuses on a Vietnam veteran played by Robert De Niro. He’s depressed, can’t sleep, and as the title indicates, working as a cab driver in New York. The movie shows him slowly descending into madness as he plans acts of violence against both a pimp and a presidential candidate. One moviegoer named John Hinckley, Jr. became entranced by the film, especially the performance of De Niro’s very young female co-star, Jodie Foster.

Hinckley became obsessed with Foster, sending her letters, and eventually convincing himself that to assassinate the president would win her affection. In 1981, Hinckley fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside a hotel in Washington. Reagan narrowly survived and his press secretary, James Brady was left permanently paralyzed. 33 years later Brady’s death was ruled a homicide by the D.C. medical examiner, his death having been caused by the gunshot wounds he sustained.^[9]

1 The Novels of Yukio Mishima

The strange life and stranger death of Yukio Mishima is a unique example of an author being seduced by his own artistic vision. Mishima grew up as a closeted gay man in Japan before and during the Second World War. He developed a deep sense of self-loathing due to his sexuality, his family’s abuse, and being declared unfit for service during the conflict. Mishima viewed post-war Japan as shallow, materialistic, and without culture. The central concern of his novels is Japan’s attempt to recover a lost identity.

He came to believe the solution to Japan’s identity crisis and his own was a return to the past. He devoted himself to the study of bushido, the warrior code of the long gone samurai. He gathered around himself a small group of like-minded followers. The day after finishing his last work, The Sea of Fertility, they entered Japan’s military headquarters in Tokyo. On the balcony he delivered a speech to the soldiers, calling for the end of Japan’s democratic constitution. He was met with ridicule. Mishima then went inside and stoically committed ritual suicide in the manner of the ancient samurai.^[10]

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About The Author: I am a simple man on a continuous journey of self-education, hopefully helping others do the same. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are, unless you stop and think.”

Have you ever dreamed of owning an exotic pet? Some people have lived that fantasy, keeping wild animals as companions. We’ve already told you some uncomfortably odd stories involving some of the strangest pets on the planet.

But the weird and wacky can give way to nightmares in the waking world. Unfortunately for you, if you have ever dreamed of riding around on the back of an unusual creature, this list reveals 10 times when those cherished companions have turned deadly.

10 Cassowary

The world’s most dangerous bird is the cassowary, edging out both the emu and the ostrich for the win. Although a cassowary is as tall as a person, the real threat is closer to the ground.

The bird has 10-centimeter (4 in) swords for claws on the end of its ridiculously powerful legs. A kick from a cassowary can kill you both by blunt force trauma and blood loss. So naturally, they are sometimes sought out by exotic animal collectors as pets.

In Florida, a 75-year-old man was a breeder of these birds until one of them attacked him in 2019. According to officials, he fell to the ground by accident and then the bird struck. The man was probably doomed from the moment he hit the ground as a cassowary can run up to 50 kilometers per hour (31 mph) and jump 2.1 meters (7 ft) into the air despite being flightless.^[1]

This isn’t the first time that a cassowary attack has made headlines. In 2012, a man was chased by a cassowary and cornered on a cliff above a pool of water in Australia. The bird then kicked him in the back, sending him rolling down the embankment into the water below.

He survived but with bruises and a ripped shirt. He hadn’t done anything to upset the cassowary other than being nearby, but it decided to attack anyway.

9 A Red Deer And Elk Hybrid

On his farm in Australia, Paul McDonald was killed by a hybrid of a red deer and an elk (aka a wapiti). His family had kept the normally docile animal for years before it attacked Paul in 2019.

The deciding factor in the sudden mood shift appeared to be mating season. The animal’s hormones were acting up. Red deer stags live as social animals for 10 months of the year, but for two months, they enter a period of “rutting” in which they display more aggression and other sexual behaviors.

According to research on wild populations of deer, violence is connected to changes in testosterone. So, both castration and social isolation are useful in preventing dangerous outbursts in the animals during mating season. Unfortunately, this animal became unexpectedly violent despite its relative isolation from other deer.

One morning, Paul had gone to feed the hybrid breakfast when his wife and son heard a commotion coming from the animal’s area as the beast attacked. His wife attempted to intervene, but she was injured by the animal.

Their son went to get help. After paramedics and police arrived, they treated the injuries and shot the hybrid. Paul died from his injuries, but his wife survived. She was moved to a hospital where she eventually recovered after several operations.^[2]

8 Hippo

In 2011, headlines were made when a South African man named Marius Els was killed by his pet hippopotamus, which he called Humphrey. The death was notable because Els and Humphrey had appeared in media and videos together demonstrating their seemingly friendly bond.

A video called “My Pet Hippo: I Love Humphrey” was uploaded to YouTube earlier in the year that Els was killed. He had rescued Humphrey as a calf from a flood. Around six years later, Humphrey killed Els by repeatedly biting and gouging him.

It was not the first time that Humphrey, the 1,179-kilogram (2,600 lb) mammal, had killed. He had previously destroyed multiple cows that had been owned by a business partner of Els.^[3]

Friends of Els reportedly knew that it was only a matter of time before the deadliest animal in Africa would off a person. Hippos kill more people each year than several more dangerous-sounding species combined, including elephants, lions, leopards, and rhinos.

Els was known for performing dangerous stunts with Humphrey, especially posing for photographs while riding on the animal’s back. At one point before Els’s death, Humphrey had attacked two canoers who passed too close to him on the river, forcing them to climb a tree for safety and remain there for hours.

7 Southern Pig-Tailed Macaque Monkey

Monkeys may not sound like the most dangerous animals in the world. We often associate them with funny behaviors like eating bananas and throwing feces. But the bites of monkeys can be deadly—especially in this case from Malaysia in 2019 when the monkey bit through a major artery.

A 72-year-old man and his son were both attacked by their pet monkey as they were attempting to get it to climb trees and retrieve fruit. It was the older man who died, although the son received an injury to his neck.

The monkey had been trained to gather coconuts from palm trees by going to something called a monkey school. In Malaysia, monkey schools teach a species called the southern pig-tailed macaque to retrieve these fruits to assist the local economy.

The monkeys have been trained this way for at least 100 years, and each one is typically taught at a school for 2–3 weeks before getting a job as a coconut picker. The training begins by creating an interest in coconuts by encouraging the monkey to play with them. Then it proceeds in stages during which the monkey is taught movements and command words.^[4]

The murdering monkey in question was older than the ideal age for these animals to begin their training, which may be why the schooling did not turn out so well for this monkey. The son discovered that his father was lying in their coconut grove and so went to investigate when he was attacked by the monkey as well.

A neighbor heard the screaming, and the son was rescued. But it was too late for the father. It is unknown whether the monkey mistook their heads for coconuts in need of harvest or if it was in a neck-biting mood for some other reason.

6 Black Bear

In 2009, a pet black bear named Teddy killed one of its owners. Despite the animal’s soft-sounding name, this was not a particularly cuddly murder. Kelly Ann and Michael Walz lived in Pennsylvania, and Michael had previously held a license as an exotic pet dealer. That license had expired by the time that his bear killed his wife.

Earlier, the Walzes had kept various animals in cages on their property. These included a lion, a tiger, a jaguar, a leopard, some relatively small savanna cats called servals, and the bear.

But even though Michael had received the animal permit, it was Kelly Ann who was cleaning the black bear cage one Sunday night when the accident occurred. To keep the bear occupied, she tossed a shovelful of dog food to one side of the cage while she cleaned the other side. The bear attacked her while she was cleaning.^[5]

Kelly Ann had been raising the bear for nine years—ever since it was a cub. Bear cubs are relatively easy to handle. But according to experts, any relationships that may be formed with a cub are destroyed when the bear reaches about four years old and reveals violent outbursts of behavior.

Bears have never been successfully domesticated despite attempts (especially in Russia). They are considered wild and unpredictable animals even if they have lived among humans for long periods of time.

5 Camel

Hypothetically, what would you give your wife for her 60th birthday? Jewelry? Flowers? How about a baby camel?

That was the birthday present that Pam Weaver’s husband gave her in 2007. Living in Australia, Weaver was an animal lover who had previously raised goats, kangaroos, emus, and rabbits.

Having a camel in Australia is not as strange as it may sound. Many wild camels have lived on the continent since they were brought there in the 1800s as pack animals. In fact, there are well over a million feral single-humped camels roaming the wilds of Australia as an unusual invasive species. They cause millions in damages to property each year and are a general nuisance.

The pet camel is believed to have knocked Pam Weaver to the ground and then straddled her body, killing her. Pam had raised the camel almost from birth, and it was just 10 months old when the tragedy happened. Reportedly, the camel had displayed erratic behavior before—such as straddling Weaver’s pet goat.^[6]

One expert stated that the strange behaviors were undoubtedly sexual in nature and that the young camel was attempting to engage in some type of mating behavior. Of course, the headlines wasted no time with their insensitive puns, declaring that the woman had been humped to death.

4 Crocodile

In January 2019, an Indonesian woman fell into an outdoor enclosure containing an illegally kept crocodile named Merry. The woman’s name was Deasy Tuwo, and she was the head of a pearl farm laboratory that produced beauty products. It was unknown what a crocodile was doing on the laboratory property because these creatures are not known for their beauty. But apparently, it was being fed like a pet.

It is believed that Tuwo fell into the enclosure by accident or the crocodile was able to leap far enough up the 2.4-meter (8 ft) concrete wall of the enclosure to snatch her. Crocodiles make powerful leaps using their tails to propel them almost entirely out of the water in which they are swimming.

In some places, taunting crocodiles by holding meat above the water and forcing them to jump to grab it is a popular tourist attraction called a “jumping crocodile cruise.”^[7]

By the time that Tuwo’s body was found, Merry had eaten one of her hands and most of her abdomen. To remove the dangerous and illegal reptile from the property, the police, the army, and conservation officials all pitched in.

It took dozens of people to organize and complete the three-hour operation to evict Merry the crocodile. She was then strapped to a flatbed truck and driven away to a wildlife rescue center.

3 Elephant

A man named Ram Lakhan Verma was a politician affiliated with a political party in India called the Bahujan Samaj Party. The official symbol of the party is the elephant. As a gimmick of sorts, Verma kept an elephant as a pet that he would use during political campaigns.

In 2003, the elephant began behaving wildly. So Verma brought him to the outskirts of the village and tried to calm him down. At first, it seemed to be working, but then the elephant became enraged again.

At that point, Verma lashed out and tried to strike the animal on the forehead with a sharp iron rod. Eyewitnesses reported that the weapon ended up lodged in the elephant’s ear. Verma then lost his balance and fell to the ground.

The panicked elephant crushed him to death and then ran back toward the village. Unfortunately for the skittish animal, the villagers were ready. They opened fire on the elephant with their guns and shot him over 200 times in total.^[8]

Did the massacre of their mascot hurt the chances of the political party?

Not so much. In the next countrywide election held in India after the death of the elephant and its owner, the Bahujan Samaj Party won the state assembly election with a non-coalition majority, the likes of which had not been seen in well over a decade.

2 Wildebeest

The gnu, a species of African antelope often called a wildebeest, weighs hundreds of pounds, and both the males and females grow large and intimidating horns. This did not deter one man in Indiana from keeping three wildebeests as pets: an adult male, an adult female, and a calf born to the adults.^[9]

In 2004, Klaus “Dick” Radandt was trampled to death by one of his wildebeests behind his home. The animal had been made safer to handle by cutting off most of its horns, but that turned out not to matter in the end. The coroner declared that the wildebeest had inflicted blunt force trauma to its owner’s head and chest, probably first by ramming him and then by trampling him.

What most likely set the wildebeest off on its murderous rampage? It was the beginning of the mating season. He may have been extra aggressive to prevent Radandt from being around his mate. Radandt and his wife also kept emus, reindeer, and other exotic animals on the farm where he was killed.

His wife discovered Radandt’s body after realizing that he had not come back from the barnyard for quite some time. Presumably, she did not react well when she discovered his body among their implausibility of gnus. Yes, a herd of gnus is called an implausibility. At least you got that fun fact out of this sad story!

1 Black Mamba Snake

In Putnam, New York, a couple was keeping around 75 snakes, including a black mamba, in their home. The black mamba is considered the second-deadliest snake in the world based on its venom’s neurotoxin power.

The snakes were not just roaming free among the cabinets and furniture, of course. They were contained in various glass aquariums and acrylic snake pens. Unfortunately, the locks on the black mamba’s enclosure were mysteriously open one day.

In 2011, the 1.5-meter (5 ft) venomous reptile bit owner Aleta Stacey on her forearm. The snake is known for its venom because nearly 100 percent of bite victims will die within 20 minutes if not treated.

Stacey died from the bite, and it appeared that she had not tried to call for help of any kind. There was some discussion that the death may have been intentional, but proof of this was not found. Her boyfriend discovered her body and then found that the snake’s cage was unlocked.^[10]

The possession of some of the snakes was illegal, especially because over half of them had venom known to be harmful to people (such as the cobra they also owned). In the end, the pile of snakes, including the black mamba, were turned over to the Bronx Zoo.

Alexander R. Toftness runs a science and history channel at https://www.youtube.com/artexplains and can be found on Twitter @ARTexplains for more strange facts.

We’ve always heard great things about vegetables. They tend to be low in fat and calories and high in dietary fiber and vitamins. Our parents made us finish our broccoli before we could have dessert, and opting for a salad with your meal is a much healthier choice than ordering a side of fried cheese curds.

The USDA recommends filling more than one-quarter of your plate with green goodness to maintain a healthy diet. However, not all vegetables have the squeaky-clean records suggested by their reputations. Here are 10 vegetables that have caused human deaths.

10 Zucchini

Home gardeners who grow this popular summer squash often end up with an abundance of extra zucchini, leading them to share their harvest with friends and family. In 2015, an elderly German couple received some homegrown zucchini from their neighbor. Ludwig and Inge used the squash to prepare a stew for dinner, though it ended up tasting quite bitter.

The couple fell ill that night, suffering from severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Ludwig’s face turned a sickly shade of yellow before they were both rushed to the hospital.^[1]

At the hospital, Inge and Ludwig were diagnosed with severe poisoning. It resulted from cucurbitacin, a toxic substance that can occur in plants of the Cucurbitaceae family, which includes pumpkins, melons, and squash.

The bitter taste of the stew was an indicator that the toxin was present. Inge had eaten less of the stew because of the taste and was therefore able to recover. Ludwig had cleared his plate and ingested much more of the toxin, so medics were unable to save him.

9 Red Chilies

Aspiring chef Andrew Lee from Edlington, England, died after eating a large helping of red chilies. In 2008, Lee challenged his girlfriend’s brother to see who could stand to eat the spiciest sauce. Lee prepared a tomato sauce made with red chilies grown in his father’s garden. It seems that Lee should have won the contest because he downed an entire plateful of the peppery concoction. But his victory came at a cost.

That night, Lee complained of intense discomfort and itching before falling asleep. The following morning, he was discovered lying unresponsive on the floor. It appeared that he had suffered a heart attack. When paramedics were unable to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Lee, who worked as a forklift driver, had recently passed a medical examination at work and was in perfect health before the incident. The postmortem showed that he had no preexisting heart problems.^[2]

Scientists suspect that Lee had an overwhelming allergic reaction based on the itching he experienced. Even if Lee had eaten chilies before with no ill effects, ingesting such a large amount could have triggered an allergic reaction that smaller amounts did not.

Chilies contain capsaicin, an active chemical that has a range of toxic effects in high doses and has been proven to cause damage to the stomach lining in animals. Damage to Lee’s stomach lining would have exposed his bloodstream directly to the chemical, possibly prompting an allergic reaction.

A severe allergic reaction can lead to anaphylactic shock, an extremely dangerous condition that requires immediate treatment. When left untreated, anaphylactic shock can result in fatal complications, including brain damage and heart failure.

8 Spinach

Spinach was one of the earliest superfoods of our time, way before kale or goji berries came into the spotlight. Famously the source of Popeye’s bulging muscles, spinach has long been recommended as a nutritional powerhouse. But spinach is also to blame for the deadliest foodborne disease outbreak from leafy vegetables that has ever been reported.

In 2006, an outbreak of E. coli led to almost 200 laboratory-confirmed illnesses, half of which resulted in hospitalization. Thirty-one people developed kidney failure, and at least three cases linked to the outbreak resulted in death.

Among the victims were an elderly woman from Wisconsin, a toddler from Idaho, and an elderly woman from Nebraska. A woman in Maryland also died after consuming raw spinach, but there was not enough evidence to link her death to the outbreak.^[3]

The source of the outbreak was identified as fresh bagged spinach, so Popeye’s canned greens were not affected.

7 Peas

Edward and Delphine Hein hosted an annual winter dinner party for friends and family at their farmstead near Grafton, North Dakota. In 1931, they held their event on the night of January 29. Delphine served a salad sprinkled with peas that she had canned herself. Within days, 12 people fell ill and died. Edward and Delphine, as well as three of their six children, were among the victims.

Authorities determined that the deaths were caused by the home-canned peas. They were contaminated by toxins that cause botulism poisoning. Symptoms include blurry vision and difficulty swallowing or speaking. Without treatment, botulism can lead to death.

All 12 people who died shortly after the dinner party had consumed the legume-laden salad. Another guest who had removed the peas before eating the salad fell ill and died a week later, bringing the total death count to 13.^[4]

The three children who survived—Richard, Marvin, and Wilfred—were too young to attend the party and spent the evening in their rooms, saving them from exposure to the fatal peas.

6 Corn

For most of us, the word “corn” brings to mind a side dish of soft, sweet kernels slathered in butter. But field corn is very different. It is left to dry completely before being harvested and is used in corn-based food products, in fuel ethanol, or as livestock feed.

After being harvested, the rock-hard kernels are often stored in grain bins, which is where things can become dangerous. Corn avalanches inside grain bins have caused numerous deaths. The most hazardous year on record for grain bin engulfments, with 26 fatalities, was 2010. More than half of grain bin incidents occur in stored corn, while the rest happen in soybeans, wheat, and other crops.

Two of the deaths in 2010 happened at a commercial grain-elevator complex in Mount Carroll, Illinois. Fourteen-year-old Wyatt Whitebread was sent into a storage tower to loosen up crusted corn kernels. When the corn inside a grain bin becomes damp, it gets coated along the sides of the interior walls. Workers are often required to walk along the top of the corn as they use a steel rod to dislodge the caked pieces from the walls.

Wyatt was inside the grain bin when another worker opened two floor holes that are designed to speed the flow of the corn. This resulted in a sudden cascade that dragged Wyatt under a mountain of kernels. He screamed as he went down, prompting 19-year-old Alejandro Pacas to rush over and try to help him. Alejandro was also engulfed by the corn, and both teenagers died within seconds.^[5]

A third worker, 20-year-old Will Piper (who was Alejandro’s best friend), attempted to help and also became trapped. Luckily, Will was able to keep his head above the corn. It took nearly 12 hours for 300 rescue workers to free him.

Being buried in corn creates an enormous amount of pressure on a person’s rib cage and diaphragm, making it impossible to inhale or exhale. In addition, the kernels fill the nostrils and mouth, causing suffocation.

5 Cucumbers

Salmonella is often associated with warnings about consuming raw or undercooked eggs and chicken. But the dangerous bacteria are not confined to poultry and poultry products. A 2015 outbreak of Salmonella in cucumbers infected a total of 907 people in 40 states across the country. Over 200 people were hospitalized, and four deaths were attributed to the outbreak.

“Slicer” cucumbers imported from Baja, Mexico, and distributed by Andrew and Williamson Fresh Produce of San Diego, California, were identified as the source of the contamination. Andrew and Williamson supplied the tainted cucumbers to retail and wholesale companies in 22 states, which explains why the outbreak was so widespread.^[6]

Salmonella is estimated to cause one million foodborne illnesses in the United States every year. People infected with Salmonella typically develop fever, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps shortly after exposure to the bacteria. Symptoms usually last four to seven days, and most people recover without treatment.

However, in severe cases of diarrhea, the Salmonella infection can spread from the intestines to the bloodstream. These cases require hospitalization and prompt treatment with antibiotics to avoid death.

4 Potatoes

Like many members of the nightshade family, potatoes contain highly toxic alkaloids that can cause solanine poisoning when ingested. People are warned against eating any potatoes that appear green. This indicates the presence of toxins that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms ranging from moderate to severe when ingested. In some cases, solanine poisoning can result in coma or death.

But you don’t even need to eat potatoes for them to kill you.

In 2013, rotting potatoes caused the deaths of nearly an entire Russian family. A 42-year-old university professor had gone down to the basement under the garage one afternoon. When he failed to reappear, his wife went to check on him, unaware that he had fainted due to the poisonous fumes emanating from a bag of rotting potatoes. She, too, was overwhelmed by the toxic environment and never returned.

In a lethal procession, their son and his grandmother followed in their footsteps, meeting the same fate.^[7] The elderly woman had grown concerned and called a neighbor for help before descending into the garage basement. By the time help arrived, all four family members had been poisoned by the toxic fumes and died, leaving an eight-year-old girl as the sole survivor.

3 Lettuce

In early 2007, an Oklahoma couple made a routine trip in their semitrailer to pick up supplies from a Dole plant in Yuma, Arizona. Sheila Kay Ross exited the truck to get some paperwork but never returned. When her husband failed to locate her on his own, he contacted police. The Yuma police searched the area but found no sign of Ross.

Three days later, her body was discovered in a trailer that was making a lettuce delivery to a Hy-Vee grocery store in Chariton, Iowa. The semitrailer had been at the same Dole plant in Yuma where Ross had gone missing. It appeared that she had become pinned inside the trailer when it was being loaded. The lettuce crushed her to death.

Authorities couldn’t determine how Ross ended up in the trailer in the first place, but the incident was ruled an accident. There were no indications of foul play by anyone or anything other than the lettuce.^[8]

2 Frozen Vegetables

Make sure you pay attention to the label the next time you dig a bag of frozen peas out of the back of your freezer. Frozen vegetables produced by CRF Frozen Foods of Pasco, Washington, were identified as the likely source of a Listeria outbreak that occurred across four different states.

Although the number of people infected was much lower than other outbreaks, all nine identified cases resulted in hospitalization. Of those, one Connecticut resident died from listeriosis. Two other patients died in Maryland and Washington as well, but their deaths were not attributed to the bacterial infection.

The long-term storage of frozen foods allowed the Listeria outbreak to span over a number of years. The earliest case was reported in 2013, but recalls of the products thought to be contaminated didn’t occur until 2016. Named in the recalls were more than 350 products, including frozen green beans, broccoli, and peas that had been sold under various brands at popular grocery stores such as Safeway, Costco, and Trader Joe’s.

Listeria is much less common than Salmonella or E. coli, but it is the most lethal foodborne pathogen. A healthy immune system can typically fight off an infection from Listeria. But if the bacteria goes into the bloodstream and causes listeriosis, one in five cases results in death.^[9]

1 Canned Vegetables

In summer 2015, Linda Clarene Jackson of Lake Los Angeles, California, was arrested for murder and faced allegations that she used canned foods as a deadly weapon. Jackson was accused of fatally beating her boyfriend, David Ruiz, with cans of peas, carrots, and chicken broth.

Police had been called on reports of a man who was injured and bleeding. They found Ruiz unresponsive, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities said Jackson’s motive was unclear.

If convicted, she faced life in prison for her canned food killing. But her sentence has already been completed. On June 8, 2017, she died of natural causes behind bars while awaiting trial.^[10]

If you drink caffeinated beverages, you may have experienced your heart racing from drinking far too much. This is the first sign of a caffeine overdose. Maybe you have experienced a massive headache and irritability when you go without your morning cup of coffee. This is caffeine withdrawal.

Few people stop to recognize that caffeine is an addictive and dangerous drug that we pump into our bodies every time we need a boost of energy to meet a deadline. Our society has normalized this as part of a daily routine.

By downplaying the potency of caffeine, people do not realize that it’s possible to die from consuming too much. Here are 10 stories of people who have died from a caffeine overdose.

10 Latte, Mountain Dew, Energy Drink

A 16-year-old named Davis Cripe was a lot like many kids in high school in South Carolina. He was a healthy and happy guy who played the drums and stayed out of trouble.

His school allowed the kids to leave during their lunch break, and he owned his own car. So he drove to McDonald’s and bought a cafe latte. He downed a Mountain Dew while he ate his food and chugged an energy drink in a few gulps before he walked into art class.

The high levels of caffeine increased his heart rate so much that Cripe had a heart attack and collapsed on the floor of the classroom. The teacher called 911, but it was already too late. A representative from the FDA spoke about Cripe’s death, saying that the issue was too much caffeine in such a short period of time. This could happen to almost anyone, even without a preexisting heart condition.^[1]

9 5-Hour Energy

People who don’t want the excess calories from drinking a sugary energy drink or coffee may think that chugging an energy shot mixed with vitamins and caffeine is the solution for staying awake at work or school. However, these products are so small that people underestimate just how powerful they truly are.

From 2009 to 2012, 5-hour Energy drinks may have killed 13 people and sent an additional 33 to the hospital. Dr. Sean Patrick Nord, USC director of the Section of Toxicology, has compared drinking several energy shots per day to consuming 30–40 cups of coffee. If a person has more than one in a short period of time, it’s really not surprising if the energy drinks kill him.^[2]

The company that makes 5-hour Energy shots dismisses these stories as just “claims” that their drinks caused people’s caffeine overdoses and has refused to change the formulas of their products. Manoj Bhargava, the founder and CEO, said that people should use these products as directed. Comparing energy shots to water, Bhargava said, “If you have too much [water], you drown.”

8 FCKD UP And Four Loko

In the United States, mixing caffeine and alcohol in the drink Four Loko caused several young people to begin acting crazy. Some of them even died. These drinks are high in alcohol content. But they come in different fruity flavors, so they are easy to drink quickly. The addition of caffeine makes someone drunk more quickly and can trigger personality changes.

Even for someone with a high alcohol tolerance, just one Four Loko is enough to get someone very drunk. For young people who have no idea what they are doing, it’s easy to get carried away.

In 2010, Four Loko came under investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration. As a result, Phusion Projects, which makes Four Loko, removed the caffeine from their alcoholic beverages.

This was prompted by the death of 20-year-old Jason Keiran, who was drinking at a college party. He had three Four Lokos, which is like drinking 18 light beers and several cups of coffee. The caffeine-alcohol combo caused him to fall into a manic state, and he shot himself. Keiran’s family sued the company.^[3]

Maybe the Canadian drink company Geloso Group, makers of the drink FCKED UP, didn’t get the memo about what happened with Four Loko because a young girl from Quebec died in 2018 from the caffeine-alcohol mix in FCKED UP. Athena Gervais was just 14 years old.

She had gone to an outdoor party in the woods behind her school and consumed some FCKED UP. The drink caused her to act strangely, and she went missing shortly afterward. Her body was found in a stream a few days later.

After Gervais’s death, Geloso Group stopped making FCKED UP.

7 No Doze

Nineteen-year-old James Stone was determined to get a job in 2007. He felt that he needed caffeine to stay awake and power through sending out as many online applications as possible. He began taking No-Doz caffeine tablets at his parents’ home to help him stay awake. There was no warning label on the product about limiting consumption of the pills. It just said that it was like drinking a cup of coffee.

So, when one pill did not feel like it was giving him the results he wanted, Stone took 25–30 tablets in a short period of time. After a little while, he didn’t feel well. He got up to use the bathroom and collapsed on the floor from a heart attack.

A spokeswoman for Novartis, the maker of No-Doz, said that James Stone’s was the first recorded death from taking their product and that No-Doz is FDA approved and safe. After some digging, Stone’s doctor found that at least one other young adult had died from consuming an entire bottle of No-Doz on a dare in 1998.^[4]

6 Monster Energy

As caffeine increases your heart rate, it’s not a good idea to do any exercise right after consuming it. However, Monster Energy drinks often advertises with pro skaters and other athletes who appear to drink these products and immediately engage in physical activity afterward. Not only is this giving teenagers the message that this is okay, but it even encourages the same behavior, as if the drinks will enhance athletic performance.

In 2015, 19-year-old Dustin Hood drank three-and-a-half cans of Monster Energy drinks in a 24-hour period and then went to play a basketball game.^[5] When combined with the exercise, the amount of caffeine that he consumed was enough to give him cardiac arrhythmia according to a lawsuit filed by his father. Dustin collapsed during the game and died in the hospital.

This is not the only time that Monster Energy has come under fire for marketing to teenagers. In 2012, they were sued for the death of a 14-year-old girl who consumed only two cans.

The company has also been the subject of a class action lawsuit for promoting their drinks as regular soft drinks or beverages even though the products are classified as dietary supplements with the FDA. This classification allows the company to avoid listing ingredients on the product and complying with other consumer safety regulations as required by the FDA for standard beverages.

5 Coffee Cancer Risk

Most defenders of caffeine will say that the drug is only an issue when someone consumes energy drinks because coffee is so much safer, right? Not so much.

In reality, one 12-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee is like drinking three cans of Red Bull. The frightening part is that 12 ounces is Starbucks size “tall,” which is synonymous with a small. It goes all the way up to trenta, which is 31 ounces. Don’t worry. It gets worse.^[6]

In March 2018, a California court found that a chemical called acrylamide is formed when coffee beans are roasted and that acrylamide has been linked to a risk of getting cancer. The nonprofit Council for Education and Research on Toxics had filed a lawsuit to get a warning label added to coffee cups by California retailers like Starbucks.

Of course, the companies are continuing to fight this in court because they are afraid it will hurt their bottom line. Not all experts agree with the judge’s decision.

4 An Experiment Gone Awry

As previously mentioned, mixing caffeine and exercise is dangerous. In 2015, researchers at Northumbria University wanted to conduct an experiment to see just how much caffeine a human body can take while working out.

Sports science majors Luke Parkin and Alex Rossetta were administered caffeine powder that was the equivalent of 300 cups of coffee. Then they worked out while hooked up to a heart monitor. Considering how many people have died after consuming much smaller amounts, it’s not surprising that the students began to show signs of a serious overdose.

They were rushed to the hospital. Thankfully, Parkin made a full recovery. But Rossetta’s brain was damaged after the experiment, and he now suffers from short-term memory loss.

The school made a formal apology in the media, and they were fined £400,000 for their mistake. It was concluded that the researchers who conducted the experiment had absolutely no idea what they were doing and should have never been running that test in the first place.^[7]

3 Mystery Energy Drink

Even when sitting still, riding a motorcycle can make your heart race. A 28-year-old amateur motocross racer had consumed 7–8 cans of an unnamed energy drink in 2007 just before he got on his bike.

He won some of the races. After his second race, however, he developed a dull ache in his chest. Since he was so young, he didn’t realize that he was having a heart attack. He continued to race and eventually collapsed.

At the hospital, the doctors concluded that there was no discernible reason for his heart attack except for the energy drinks. They performed a cardiac catheterization and released him six days later. The medical report did not specify which energy drink was to blame for the heart attack, but he came very close to dying from the excess caffeine.^[8]

Yes, we know this one didn’t die. But we thought it was important to let you know how easily you can miss the signs of a heart attack from too much caffeine when you think you’re too young or too healthy to die.

2 Bullet Energy Drink

You may not have heard of the energy drink called “Bullet,” but it is a cheap and popular caffeinated beverage in several countries, including Nigeria. In 2014, a man named Elijah Nwankwo, who was living in the state of Ebonyi, accepted a $100 bet from one of his friends that Elijah could not consume eight Bullet energy drinks by himself.

Nwankwo took on the challenge and began chugging them one after another. He collapsed and slipped into a coma. His friends rushed him to the hospital, but it was too late. He lost the bet—and his life.^[9]

There is very little information on Bullet online, and there doesn’t seem to be requirements to disclose just how much caffeine is in these drinks. Just like everywhere else in the world, the company has paid athletes to pose holding cans of their products and pushes consumers to buy multipacks.

1 Unnamed Man In Japan

In 2015, a man in his twenties was working at a 24-hour gas station in Japan. His shift was from midnight until 6:00 AM. He needed to stay awake during the day and go back into work that night. He figured that he could pull this off if he drank enough caffeine. Unfortunately, he died of an overdose.

Researchers at Fukuoka University performed an autopsy. This was the first case of a caffeine overdose death in Japan, so it came as a shock to many Japanese medical researchers. Many were not aware that it was possible to die of a caffeine overdose. They have no idea just how many drinks the victim consumed.^[10]

After this news came out, one Japanese energy drink company voluntarily warned people not to consume too many in a short time and not to mix energy drinks with alcohol.

Shannon Quinn is a writer from the Philadelphia area. You can check out her website or find her on Twitter.

Cyanide, in its various forms, is a fast-acting poison that has taken millions of lives, most notably claiming the lives of 909 of Jim Jones’s followers at Jonestown. Even worse, cyanide was employed in the Nazi death chambers during World War II through the use of Zyklon-B, a cyanide-based pesticide.^[1] The gas would claim countless lives.

In an ironic twist of fate, many notable Nazis would later die by the very poison they so heavily utilized, administering the agent themselves as the war unraveled and their lives fell apart. Staring down the barrel of the Allied invasion, these Nazis knew their time was up and opted to take their own lives.

Twisted irony? The easy way out? Or did they finally get a rightfully deserved taste of their own medicine? Either way, the Nazis handed these cyanide capsules out like candy, leaving many to die from a taste of their own medicine. Here are ten notable Nazis who died by cyanide poisoning.

10 Hermann Goering

Herman Goering was a Nazi leader and was very active in many of the most horrible, fascist events which took place over the decades between the time the Nazis first began to gain early traction until the climax of World War II. He even survived to see the Nuremberg trials. Goering famously created the Gestapo, which enforced the party’s domination.

In 1934, Hitler had feared that there were too many political figures who had gained too much power among his ranks. From June 30 to July 2, a purge of those he felt were political threats, called the Night of the Long Knives, was carried out. This purge was, of course, done in part by none other than Goering’s Gestapo secret police. In all, at least 85 people who posed a threat Hitler’s power were assassinated. Goering would also go on to help plan and invent the Nazi concentration camps, where Zyklon-B would take so many lives.

Goering lived to see the end of the war and the Nuremberg trials, where figures of the Nazi party were to be held accountable for war crimes. He was convicted and sentenced to hang for his actions. He begged the court for a bullet to the head, but they steadfastly refused. On October 15, 1946, the night before he was to be hanged, Goering took a cyanide capsule in his cell. He was found dead, having been poisoned by the substance.^[2]

9 Odilo Globocnik

One of the lesser-known, though equally terrifying, figures of the Nazi Party was a man by the name of Odilo Globocnik, an Austrian Nazi who had a hand in coming up with the plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Keeping it a secret, the Nazis named this project Aktion Reinhardt, and this monster was involved every step of the way.

Before the Nazis took hold of his native Austria, Globocnik was very active in building local support for the movement—that is to say, Globocnik was a Nazi by choice, not through force, without a doubt. His responsibility for the deaths of millions of people, especially in Poland, is undeniable, but eventually fate would have its way with him.

Captured in Austria by the Allies in a 4:00 AM raid on May 31, 1945, Globicnik chose to end his own life than face justice. He placed a cyanide suicide capsule under his tongue that he would hold there, allegedly for several hours, before ingesting it around 11:25 AM. He died within minutes.^[3]

8 Joseph Goebbels’s Children

The date was May 1, 1945, and Hitler and Eva Braun had already taken their own lives as the Soviet war machine moved in on Berlin. The Nazi empire they had dreamed of was falling apart into literal rubble, buildings collapsing everywhere, with major party members trembling in fear at the thought of facing the Soviets. Those with enough status were able to hide in bunkers, including the propaganda minister himself, Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels had six young children at the time, and rather than see them have a chance at life under the Allies, he chose to administer poison to them in the final days of the Nazis.^[4]

Initially, they had called upon a Nazi doctor, a dentist originally from the Panzer division called Death’s Head named Helmut Kunz, but he was unable to bring himself to carry out the murder of six innocent children. Another physician, Ludwig Stumpfegger, would end up carrying out the deed by rendering the children unconscious and placing a 0.5-cc cyanide capsule between each of their teeth and crushing it.

7 Richard Glucks

The Allied invasion, as it toppled the Nazi war machine, resulted in many cowardly Nazi suicides, as they knew that their trials for war crimes would not treat them kindly. Was it possible that actual guilt drove them to suicide? Or was it shame and primal fear? We may never know. Another among the Nazis to do so in the end was a man named Richard Glucks.

Glucks was a soldier before the rise of the Nazi Party, like many others, and would quickly move up the ranks to concentration camp inspector. He inspected the death camps and was the man who would often make the sickening decision of how many people would be executed and how many would stay alive.^[5] This man even made a joint decision with Himmler that the hair of the victims of the concentration camps would be used for yarn for the Nazi soldiers. He deserved every bit of fate he received.

After being shell-shocked in an Allied bombing, Glucks was laid up in a hospital, when he, too, swallowed a suicide capsule filled with cyanide. (There has been some speculation that he was killed by Jews as revenge for his role in the Holocaust.)

6 Hans-Georg Von Friedeburg

A navy admiral during the Nazis’ reign of terror, Hans-Georg von Friedeburg was a high-ranking military official who oversaw U-boat operations and commanded the Kriegsmarine. A decorated war leader, Friedeburg would move his way up through the ranks throughout the life of the Nazi Party and would cause Hell on Earth for the Allied forces at sea.^[6]

Unlike the others on this list, its unlikely that Hans was actually a war criminal. In fact, he aided the Allies in drafting the papers of German surrender, though he had heard, true or not, that he would still likely stand trial, probably due to his rank. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg would commit suicide on May 23, 1945, by the administration of cyanide.

5 Martin Bormann

Martin Bormann was a dark, shadowy figure, even as the head of the chancellery of the Nazi Party, who worked most often directly with Hitler himself. Bormann, with his closeness to Hitler and depth within the party, had a far-reaching influence on decisions throughout the party and the entire country. He pushed hard for the creation of concentration camps and the subsequent use of slaves. Martin Bormann was undoubtedly a monster and nefarious Nazi from the early days of the party’s inception.

Bormann went through great lengths to cover his tracks and flee Germany to escape to South America, where he would hide from the Allies for the rest of his days. For half a century, this was believed to have possibly been Bormann’s fate. However, in 1998, a DNA test confirmed that a postal worker who had claimed to have found the bodies of Martin Bormann and Ludwig Stumpfegger (the man who had killed the Goebbels children) had not been lying. Both men died of cyanide poisoning on May 2, 1945.^[7]

4 Robert Ritter Von Greim

One of the masterminds behind the aerial attacks on England, including the famous Battle of Britain, Robert Ritter von Greim was an airman for the Luftwaffe. He would later move up the ranks to field marshal, where he would continue the German terror from the air upon Allied forces. He was also a major figure in planning Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.

On May 8, 1945, von Greim was captured in Austria by American soldiers. On May 24, he killed himself while in custody in Salzburg by crushing a cyanide capsule in his mouth.^[8]

3 Heinrich Himmler

One of the most notorious and nefarious figures in Nazi history was Heinrich Himmler. Beginning his tenure with the party in 1923, Himmler was a longtime party loyalist who quickly shot up in the ranks. Himmler would go on to be a leading figure in the Gestapo and various other Nazi-supporting police forces and was the twisted mind from which the infamous SS was born. While other men on this list made their contributions to the Holocaust, Himmler himself planned the extermination of the Jewish people under Nazi Germany. There is no doubt of this man’s long history as a terrifying war criminal.

Himmler became minister of the interior in 1943, and surprisingly, he was actually expelled from the Nazi Party that year, though he wasn’t killed. As the war unraveled and things spiraled out of control for Germany, Himmler knew he would be brought up on war crimes charges. He attempted to flee but was captured by the Allies. On May 23, 1945, to avoid having to stand trial for war crimes at Nuremberg, he took his own life.^[9] His method of choice, of course, was a cyanide suicide capsule.

2 Eva Braun

Any list about notable Nazi suicides would be incomplete without a mention of Eva Braun, Hitler’s longtime mistress and eventual wife. Braun lived a life of quiet desperation, tucked into the underbelly of the Nazi charade while Hitler championed his strange and bizarre visions of the world through the unrelenting force of the Nazi war machine. Braun attempted suicide twice while she was with Hitler. Lonely and despondent, she was definitely dissatisfied with life.

While not part of the war machine itself, Eva Braun was right there at Hitler’s side all the way until the end of both of their lives, when they would die together as the Nazi German world collapsed around them. The Soviets were closing in on Berlin, and Hitler went with Braun into a secret bunker, where she would ingest a glass vial filled with the same cyanide poison that so many Nazis used to die by their own hands.^[10]

1 Adolf Hitler

While it’s no secret that Hitler went out with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, this list must be closed with the man whose face lives on in infamy and terror, the man who had used the cyanide-based Zyklon-B to kill so many people throughout Europe during the Holocaust. Scores had been poisoned by cyanide in the gas chambers of the Nazi death camps, tricked into supposed showers or locked into rooms, only to die from a canister of gas which seeped through the wall. And according to some, Hitler, too, would have a date with cyanide.

In 1968, a Soviet intelligence officer published a book claiming that the USSR had recovered Hitler’s body, identified it, performed an autopsy on it, and found that Hitler had been poisoned with cyanide.^[11] Today, some accounts of Hitler’s suicide only mention the gunshot; others say he took cyanide along with Eva Braun and then shot himself. In a bunker beneath the rubble of the fall of the Third Reich, there will forever be doubt as to what happened on that fateful day of April 30, 1945, but it’s very much within the realm of possibility, considering everyone else on this list, that to absolutely ensure his death, Hitler added in the method of suicide the Nazis favored the most: cyanide.

I like dark stuff, horror, history, the macabre, and philosophy.

You can’t measure luck — it simply isn’t quantifiable, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who are luckier or unluckier than others. That person who always seems to hit their numbers at bingo or the one who never catches a break probably comes to mind.

Then there are those people who somehow find themselves on both sides of the scale. Someone who is both lucky and unlucky at the same time sounds strange, but there are a few who’ve managed it. These ten are the luckiest unlucky people, and each had a fascinating tale to tell.

Top 10 Luckiest People In The World

10 Robert Evans

Robert Evans was already having a difficult time living without a home in an encampment outside of Boulder, Colorado, in 2008. While riding his bike along the road, Evans became the unlucky victim of a hit-and-run car accident, which earned him an ambulance ride to the local hospital.

Fortunately, the accident wasn’t severe, and he was discharged with minor injuries. Walking his way back to his encampment, along a narrow railroad bridge, the man who had survived a car accident only hours earlier, was hit by a train. The passing train, which knocked him from the bridge into a creek, would have killed most people, Evans’ strange luck — if you want to call it that — saw him taken to the same hospital seven hours after he first landed there following the car accident.

Jim MacPherson of the Boulder Police Department summed up Evans’ evening, saying, “He got two ambulance rides last night,” MacPherson said. “It’s an extreme oddity that someone is hit by a car and a train on the same night. I can’t imagine that this has ever happened before in Boulder.”

9 Violet Jessup

Three White Star sister ships were involved in severe accidents and disasters, including the RMS Titanic, Olympic, and Britannic. The Titanic is the best-known, but it was only one of three similar Olympic-class ocean liners.

Serving aboard all three ships was Violet Jessup, a seriously lucky, unlucky woman. She survived Tuberculosis at an early age, and by 1908, she began working as a stewardess for the White Star line, finding her way aboard the Olympic in 1910.

That vessel collided with the HMS Hawke in 1911 and nearly sank. She walked away and joined the crew of the Titanic, which she survived by caring for an infant on a lifeboat. When war broke out, she served aboard the Britannic as a nurse, and you know what happened next.

The Britannic hit a mine, but Jessup wasn’t lucky enough to jump into a lifeboat. Instead, she leaped overboard and was sucked under the keel, where she hit her head. She survived (with a skull fracture). Despite her naval experiences, she continued to work aboard various ships, retiring at 61.

8 Matthew

On 9/11, a man named Matthew was walking along the street under the shadow of the World Trade Center when it was struck. He was on his way to a meeting when an aircraft slammed into one of the Twin Towers, and he was fortunately uninjured by any of the falling debris.

Following the attack, he “sprinted across half of Manhattan” and survived to tell the story. Having a close call with one terrorist attack is rare enough, but for Matthew, it was just the beginning of his interaction with terrorists.

On November 13th, 2015, Matthew was attending an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan in Paris, France, when it was attacked by terrorists armed with automatic rifles, grenades, and suicide vests. The Bataclan attack resulted in the deaths of 89 people, but Matthew wasn’t one of them.

He was shot in the leg, but he made his own luck after that. He played dead, and when the terrorists began to reload, he dragged himself to safety. “I inched forward centimeter by centimeter….I saw the ledge of the exit at arm’s reach. I was able to grip it with one finger, then the other.”

7 Arthur John Priest

Arthur John Priest worked as a stoker, or “fireman,” whose job was to keep the boilers of a ship steaming by constantly shovelling coal. While serving aboard the Olympic, he survived when the vessel was struck and holed below the waterline in 1911.

The following year, he got a job on the Olympic’s sister ship, the Titanic. A massive layoff saw many of his peers lose work, but he made it into the bowels of the ship. When it sank, he survived, but it wasn’t the last time he nearly died in a shipwreck.

His WWI service saw him aboard the armed merchant ship Alcantara. A battle saw the vessel sink, and he survived that as well. He later served aboard the Britannic, the other sister ship to the Olympic and Titanic, and you can guess what happened. The Britannic hit a mine and sank in November 1916, and Priest survived.

The following year, the luckiest unlucky sailor in history was serving aboard the Donegal when it was hit by a torpedo and sank in the English Channel. He survived, but it was the last vessel he called home, ending his military career in 1917 due to a head injury.

6 Roy Cleveland Sullivan

Typically, people don’t survive being struck by lightning. A single bolt carries up to 100 million volts, peaking at around 20,000 amps, which is more than enough to kill any living thing on the planet.

Still, people survive, but none have survived being struck by lightning as much as Roy Cleveland Sullivan. Sullivan worked as a park ranger in Shenandoah National Park, where he began his career in 1936. By 1942, he was on his way to becoming known as the “Human Lightning Rod.”

He was first struck outside a fire lookout tower when a bolt burned a half-inch strip along his right leg, ultimately blowing off his toenail. He was hit again in 1969 while inside his truck, resulting in the loss of his eyebrows and eyelashes. In 1970, he was struck in his front yard.

Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was struck seven times, and he survived each instance, though, with injury. He was lucky for surviving so many unlucky events, but it took its toll. Later in life, people avoided him out of fear of lightning, and in 1983, he took his own life at the age of 71.

5 Austin Hatch

It’s rare enough to survive a single plane crash, but Austin Hatch’s string of horrible luck involving airplanes saw him survive two. In 2003, Hatch was aboard a plane his father was flying when it went down, claiming the lives of his mother and two siblings. He wasn’t horribly injured, but the loss was difficult for the young boy.

Hatch managed to survive the wreck and grow up reasonably well, considering what he went through. Unfortunately, tragedy wasn’t going to strike his family only once, and eight years after the first crash, he was involved in another.

In June of 2011, Austin Hatch was a passenger in a small plane his father was flying when tragedy struck once more. The plane crashed, resulting in the death of his father and stepmother. The young man walked away, though he did so with a traumatic brain injury, punctured lung, and a broken collarbone, leading to a two-month-long coma.

Surviving the loss of his entire family and injuries that nearly killed him didn’t destroy the 23-year-old. He recovered and went on to play college basketball, thanks to a scholarship he received at the University of Michigan. He also works as a public speaker, sharing his experiences with the world.

4 Mason Wells

In 2013, Mason Wells was one block from the Boston Marathon bombing, which he survived unscathed. Despite being so close to the detonation, Wells was impacted by the event, but it wouldn’t be the only time he came into contact with terrorism, as he found himself near another attack across the ocean.

A few years after Boston, Wells was in Calais, France, when three Americans on a Thalys train subdued a terrorist. The incident was close to home, as he used the trains weekly to get from one city to another. He wasn’t a victim of that attack, but not long after, he was in Brussels when the airport was bombed in 2016.

While working as a Mormon missionary, Wells was in the airport when three terrorist members of ISIS attacked, using suicide bombs and other explosive devices. He was caught in a blast, which ruptured his Achilles tendon, inflicted 2nd and 3rd-degree burns on his hands and face, and peppered his body with shrapnel.

His father explained that Wells survived partly due to his experience at the Boston bombing years earlier. He said it helped him remain calm, and “despite being on the ground and bleeding, [he] actually had a sense of humor and remained calm through the situation.”

3 Anna & Helen

As everyone now knows all too well, surviving a pandemic isn’t easy, but it’s possible. Most people never contract the disease if they take precautions. Still, getting infected can be deadly, especially if the pathogen is particularly nasty, like the Influenza strain A/H1N1 that devastated the world between 1918 and 1920.

The Spanish Flu claimed some 20-100 million people, thanks to the fast spread and speed at which the virus killed infected people. Two women who were infected and managed to survive the virus were Anna Del Priore and her sister, Helen, who were small children during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

While they weren’t the only people to survive the pandemic, they are among a small community of people to survive two worldwide pandemics set more than a century apart. Anna & Helen were 105 & 107-years-old respectively, when they were infected by COVID-19.

Despite their age at the time of infection, they both managed to beat the odds and survive. Anna explained how others might succeed in living as long as she and her sister, saying, “Be good to others, keep good friends, be honest, love God — and I eat lots of hot peppers!”

2 Tsutomu Yamaguchi

On August 6, 1945, the United States of America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing around 140,000 people in the blast and subsequent radiation. One man who survived, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, was spending his final day in the city after a Summer spent designing a new oil tanker.

When the bomb detonated, he managed to jump into a ditch, but the shock wave pulled him into the air, spinning and hurtling him into a nearby potato patch. He was less than two miles from Ground Zero. He nearly ruptured his eardrums, and his face and forearms were severely burned, but he survived.

He made his way to a train and left for his hometown, which was unfortunately Nagasaki. Upon arriving, he made his way to a hospital. On August 9th, he was recounting his experience to the Mitsubishi company director when a flash of light outside had him leaping to the ground one more.

Miraculously, while still injured from the first blast, Yamaguchi survived the second, and thus far, only two atomic bombs used in war. He later recalled the Nagasaki blast, saying, I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima.”

1 Frane Selak

Frane Selak has survived more fatal accidents than anyone, earning him the title of being the “World’s Most Unlucky Luckiest Man.” In 1962, Selak’s first brush with death came when he survived a train crash that killed 17 other passengers.

In 1963, he took his first ride in a plane, which ended when the door opened and sucked him out. He landed in a haystack while the plane crashed, killing 19 people. In ‘66, he survived a bus crash that killed four people, and in 1970, his car caught fire and exploded, but he managed to walk away.

Three years later, a similar car accident managed to burn off all of his hair, but he was otherwise unharmed. In 1995, he was hit by a bus, and the following year, he nearly hit a car in a head-on collision but survived by slamming into a guardrail.

For whatever reason, death was always coming for Selak, but he managed to avoid it at every turn. His luck changed a bit when, two days after he turned 73, he won €900,000 in the lottery. He bought some houses and a boat but gave most of his winnings away in 2010.

10 Good Luck Charms And Their Origins

People from the 19th and early 20th centuries were fascinating, to say the least. Inspired by the Industrial Revolution and groundbreaking scientific discoveries, the average householder developed an interest in inventions, “improving” their lives by using cutting-edge (untested) science and technology in every aspect of their social and domestic lives.

Unfortunately, their enthusiasm often ran away with them, and their disregard for health and safety often led to disaster. Here, we look at some of the ways the average person from the Victorian era through the early 20th century may have killed himself while enjoying the benefits of scientific and technological progress.

10 Going To The Bathroom

Visiting the bathroom shouldn’t be a dangerous undertaking. However, the Victorians had a number of perils to contend with. First was the water heater, which was gas-powered and often exploded, possibly because of the candles and oil lamps which were often used by residents who were caught short in the night.^[1]

And then there were the toilets themselves. Prior to the Great Stink of 1858, when London was practically uninhabitable due to the hot weather and sewage smells, toilets with the s-bend design that we know today were rare. Toilets dropped their contents straight into the sewers below, and the smells from sewer rose through the unimpeded pipes and, shall we say, lingered.

And the sewers didn’t only contain eliminations but other sorts of human waste, too. The cemeteries of the period were not well-regulated, and human remains frequently contaminated drinking water or flowed directly into the sewers. And decomposing matter produces methane and carbon dioxide. Methane, particularly when combined with a flame from a candle or water heater, causes explosions.

Straight up through the toilet.

In order to control the methane problem, a number of sewer gas lamps were installed. In a surprisingly green fashion, engineers attempted to power the city’s streetlights using methane gas in order to reduce the dangerous buildups. The lamps were only partially successful, but the widespread introduction of s-bend toilets after the Great Stink made using the facilities a little safer.

9 Eating A Sandwich

A lot of foodstuffs in Victorian England were made with contaminated ingredients. One report in 1877 showed that ten percent of butter, eight percent of bread, and 50 percent of gin had copper added to it, while red lead was added to cheese to give it a “healthy” color. Other adulterants included strychnine in beer, copper in pickles and jams, lead in mustard, iron in tea, and mercury in chocolate.^[2]

Bread, however, was a particular problem. Very few poor people at that time had the facilities to bake their own bread and therefore bought their daily loaves from street vendors. Bread was cheap, so it was a staple food for many, and almost the only food for some. However, the majority of this bread was adulterated with alum. Though it was not poisonous in itself, alum acted to prevent the absorption of nutrients in food.

The alum bulked out the bread, making loaves appear larger for their weight and thus more attractive to poor families with many mouths to feed. Those who survived the sandwich fillings would have developed rickets or other diseases because of their inability to absorb nutrients efficiently.

8 Walking Down The Stairs

Though anyone can fall downstairs, the Victorians were more vulnerable than most to severe injury and even death.

There were very few building regulations at that time and none at all when it came to the construction of modest homes. Stairs were very narrow, often with several steep turns, which made navigation tricky. Also, the builders did not have a standard measurement when constructing their staircases, so steps within a single staircase were often of different height and width.

Not only that, but no one thought it necessary to install a handrail. Some staircases were nothing more than glorified ladders, up which women were expected to climb while wearing long dresses, often while toting a child or two on their hip.

Unsurprisingly, deaths from falling down stairs were common.^[3]

7 Playing Billiards

Snooker and billiards were once considered games for gentlemen only. The balls were made from ivory and were therefore very expensive. However, when celluloid was developed as an ivory replacement, the possibility of billiards for the masses seemed a very real one.

There was a big disadvantage of using celluloid over ivory, though: It was volatile and flammable—very flammable, in fact. That was unfortunate, because one billiard ball striking against another was sometimes enough to cause an explosion. Players complained that the noise sounded like a gun going off.^[4]

Which is enough to put you off your shot.

6 Wearing Makeup

Usually, when you tell a woman that they have a certain glow about them, it is a compliment. For the Radium Girls, however, it was more a sign of impending death.

During the early 20th century, radium was considered to be something of a miracle element. Cosmetics manufacturers claimed (without any evidence) that small amounts of radium were beneficial to health. Customers were sold face creams and soaps laced with radium that were guaranteed to make their skin glow. Other manufacturers added radium to energy tablets, butter, and even chocolate.

Radium was also added to paint, which was used to decorate clock faces with luminous dials. And during the 1910s and 1920s, women who painted them were told to lick their brushes after dipping them in the radium-laced paint in order to point the end of the brush.^[5]

The radium was extremely dangerous, and those who were in regular contact with it often died painful deaths. The clock painters, known as the Radium Girls, suffered terribly. When the body of one was exhumed five years after her death, it was still said to be “glowing.”

5 Cleaning Out The Gutters

The Victorians loved their scientific discoveries and inventions, but they weren’t always careful about testing them before they went into full-scale production.

So when they discovered asbestos, a cheap, nonflammable material, they used it for everything. Its use in guttering was common, but it was also found all over the Victorian and Edwardian home in insulation, floor tiles, and heaters. It was also used in some more unlikely and disturbing products, such as children’s toys. The attractiveness of a nonflammable material in such products is obvious.

Unfortunately, though asbestos is wonderfully flame-retardant, it causes severe respiratory diseases and cancer.^[6]

4 Waking Up To A Nice Cup Of Tea

Ever inventive, the Victorians and Edwardians were always looking for ways to save labor for even the simplest things. Some of their inventions were brilliant, but others fell into the wacky and useless category. And some of them were just plain dangerous.

They tried to develop bottles that babies could feed themselves with, to save parents the trouble of having to pick them up, and made a pump-action vacuum cleaner that such needed vigorous bellow-pumping that it would have given Charles Atlas a tough workout. But right at the top of the list of the inventive, ridiculous, and dangerous was Albert E. Richardson’s patented Automatic Tea Making Machine. He combined an alarm clock with a kettle set over a spirit burner.

The burner used methylated spirits, which were lit by the automatic striking of a match when the alarm went off. Another alarm rang when the kettle was boiled, and a spring mechanism tipped the water into the waiting cup. However, if the match failed to ignite, or if it ignited at the wrong time, the teasmade was potentially lethal.^[7]

3 Setting The Table

The ingenuity, or stupidity, of Mr. Henry Cooper knew no bounds when, in 1902, he invented the self-illuminating table cloth. Why go to the trouble of putting a cloth over a table and then placing a lamp on top of it, he reasoned, when you can accomplish both at once with his patented electric tablecloth?

The cloth consisted of two layers of felt with an electrical circuit sandwiched in between them and six electric light bulb sockets poking out through the cloth. When plugged in, the cloth would give a lovely, intimate feel to his dinner party, without all the extra (two seconds) effort of using separate lamps.

Lovely. Unless, of course, a guest spilled their wine, in which case the whole thing would have gone up like a box of firecrackers. Back to the drawing board, I think, Mr Cooper.^[8]

2 Stocking The Fridge

Keeping food fresh has always been a big domestic problem. Various nonmechanical methods had been developed, such as meat safes, but for the inventive Victorians, that wasn’t good enough. They wanted to produce a mechanical or electrical refrigerator that would keep food cool.

In 1834, American inventor Jacob Perkins unveiled the first-ever refrigeration unit. The fridge was billed as a vapor compression refrigeration unit and as an “apparatus and means for producing ice, and in cooling fluids.”^[9] However, the fridge was not particularly reliable and very expensive and never caught on.

By the 1890s, however, the cooling process had been “improved” by the addition of methyl chloride gas. This cooled the fridge but was, unfortunately, extremely toxic. Manufacturing ceased when a fridge leaked while still in the factory, causing several deaths.

Though the Victorians were innovative and farseeing in developing fridge technology, less than two percent of the population of Britain owned a fridge before the outbreak of World War II. Later, safer, innovations, of course, demonstrated just how right the Victorians were about the usefulness of a fridge.

1 Doing A Bit Of Light Ironing

Being a laundry maid in the Victorian era was a tough job. Irons were made of (surprise, surprise) iron, which was heavy, and a set of irons were needed in different shapes and sizes to tackle different jobs. They were placed in a fire to heat and then cooled to the correct temperature. Steam was created by covering the garment with a damp cloth before ironing. It was hot, sweaty work.

So it was only to be expected that someone would try to make an electric iron to make the job easier. In 1882, Henry W. Seely of New York was the first person to patent a workable electric iron. The iron was wired, permanently, into a circuit.^[10] However, it was not possible to regulate the temperature of the iron, which made it difficult to iron clothes without burning them. And it was a fire risk, which rather defeats the point.

Nevertheless, like many of these inventions, these early electric irons were the forerunners of something really useful and exciting (electric tablecloths excepted), which shows that perseverance can be the mother of success. Or dangerous table dressings.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

The magic of movies can help us escape reality and get lost in the story portrayed on screen. But some of the risks taken in creating these scenes are very real and have resulted in serious injuries or even death. The most infamous example of this is the tragic tale of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow. While filming a scene where his character got shot by thugs, an error from the production crew resulted in Lee getting shot for real and losing his life at the age of just 28.

Thankfully, these kinds of accidents are a rarity in Hollywood, particularly nowadays with all the experts and health and safety measures required on sets. However, there are still multiple examples of movie shoots that only narrowly avoided disaster and included stunts that almost killed famous actors. Here is a list of just 10 of these almost-tragic stunts.

Related: 10 Movie Scenes That Predicted Tragic Moments In Actors’ Lives

10 Eli Wallach
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

During the production of The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, Eli Wallach, who played the role of Tuco, narrowly avoided possible death not once, not twice, but an incredible three times!

As revealed in Wallach’s 2005 memoir, The Good, the Bad, And Me, the actor had numerous close calls on set, which began when he accidentally drank some acid. Unbeknownst to Wallach, a crew member had poured some acid into a soda bottle and carelessly left it near Wallach’s drink. After consuming the acid, the actor was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors were able to pump the poison out of his stomach and prevent disaster.

Another scene called for Wallach to be sat on a horse with his hands tied behind his back. During the shoot, a gunshot spooked the horse that Wallach sat on, and it took off running, dragging the actor with it for almost a mile before members of the production were able to stop the horse.

If that wasn’t enough of a scare for Wallach, a third scary incident occurred when director Sergio Leone insisted that he perform a stunt that involved him laying next to a train track as a train sped by and cut him free from his handcuffs. The film crew failed to realize that the train had low-hanging steps protruding from the carriages. These steps missed Wallach’s head by a few inches, and if he had lifted his head at any point, he would have likely been decapitated.^[1]

9 Johnny Depp
The Lone Ranger

One of the most recognizable names in Hollywood barely avoided a catastrophic accident on the set of the 2013 film The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp was thrown from his horse while shooting a scene.

Footage of the accident shows just how close Depp came to suffering a serious injury. In the clip, you can see Depp begin to slide down the side of the horse as it is galloping at full speed. The actor eventually falls to the ground and miraculously avoids getting trampled as the horse leaps over him.

Incredibly, Depp only suffered minor injuries during the incident and was able to continue shooting the movie after being checked over by medics.^[2]

8 Michael J. Fox
Back to the Future, Part III

In the mid-to-late ‘80s, the Back to the Future movies catapulted Michael J. Fox into the mainstream and made him a household name in Hollywood. However, a stunt went awry during the production of the third film that almost cost the actor his life.

In his rather aptly titled memoir Lucky Man, Fox described how when shooting the scene where Marty McFly is getting hanged by Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen and his gang, the drama got all too real. Although the scene had been rehearsed with the stunt coordinators many times, when it came to shooting the scene, the rope around Fox’s neck tightened too much, and he genuinely couldn’t breathe.

The scary thing was that the whole crew believed that he was simply acting and didn’t immediately realize they were watching a man fighting for his life. Luckily, the filmmakers recognized something was wrong in time to save him, although Fox did lose consciousness during the ordeal.^[3]

7 Isla Fisher
Now You See Me

Like Michael J. Fox, a real-life tragedy almost occurred on the first Now You See Me film set when the crew mistook a genuine struggle for a convincing piece of acting.

Fisher plays an escapologist in the movie and is shackled inside a tank of water in one particular scene. During the shooting of this stunt, the chains became entangled, and she was legitimately struggling to free herself.

But since the scene called for Fisher to bang on the glass in panic, the crew didn’t initially think anything was wrong. Fisher had to try and free herself from the danger but could not reach a safety button, which would have drained the water, and a safety diver with a canister of oxygen wasn’t close enough to help her.

The stunt coordinator eventually realized something was wrong and helped the Australian actress free herself. Fisher told the Daily Mail: “Luckily, I managed to get free and stay level-headed and got out before it went even more horribly wrong.”^[4]

6 Kate Winslet
Titanic

Although Titanic is the film that launched Kate Winslet’s career, she has often spoken about the difficulties she faced on set, particularly with director James Cameron.

Winslet genuinely feared for her life while shooting one scene when the coat she was wearing snagged on a gate, and she became briefly stuck and submerged underwater. The actress told the Los Angeles Times about the incident and spoke of Cameron’s unsympathetic nature, saying: “I had no breath left. I thought I’d burst. And Jim just said, ‘OK, let’s go again.’ That was his attitude.”

This isn’t the only time Cameron has almost had one of his actors drown on his set. Ed Harris also nearly drowned while shooting Cameron’s 1989 movie The Abyss. Perhaps actors should think twice before agreeing to a film with James Cameron involving scenes in and around water.^[5]

5 Viggo Mortensen
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The character of Aragorn is no stranger to a battle, but the actor behind the character also found himself in some dangerous situations while shooting the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn, performed all his own stunts on set and also insisted on using real knives and swords where possible. Unfortunately, this almost came back to bite him while filming The Fellowship of the Ring when a real knife was inadvertently thrown directly at him, and he had to deflect it away with his sword—an incident that made it into the final cut of the movie.

Then, during the production of The Two Towers, Mortensen not only broke two of his toes after kicking a helmet, but he also nearly drowned while shooting the scene where Aragorn’s unconscious body floats down a river. The weight of the armor that the actor wore dragged him underwater, and he was caught in an undertow that could have put him in real danger.^[6]

4 Dylan O’Brien
Maze Runner: The Death Cure

The Maze Runner movies are a series of sci-fi films based on the novels of author James Dashner. So far, three movies have been made, and it was during the production of the third installment that lead actor, Dylan O’Brien, was involved in a terrifying accident.

On the set of Maze Runner: The Death Cure, O’Brien was shooting a stunt when he was pulled from one vehicle and collided with another. The incident left the young actor with multiple serious injuries, including a concussion, a facial fracture, and brain trauma.

Production of the movie was shut down for almost a year while O’Brien spent time in the hospital, requiring reconstructive surgery. Thankfully, O’Brien was able to recover from his injuries and resume his acting career.^[7]

3 Jim Caviezel
The Passion of the Christ

There are not many bigger roles for an actor than that of Jesus Christ. So when Jim Caviezel was cast in the iconic role for Mel Gibson’s 2004 epic The Passion of the Christ, it must have felt like a blessing.

But the actor’s experience on set sounded like anything but a blessing, with Caviezel suffering multiple injuries during the shoot. Caviezel was left with multiple bruises and scars, as well as a dislocated shoulder; therefore, he may have been forgiven for believing he was somehow cursed by this role, particularly when he was struck by lightning!

While shooting the “Sermon on the Mount” scene, Caviezel was hit by a lightning bolt that reportedly saw him “lit up like a Christmas tree.” Incredibly, he was unharmed in the incident.^[8]

2 Sylvester Stallone
Rocky IV

The Rocky movie franchise is one of the most iconic in cinema history. The fourth installment is a firm favorite among fans of the series, as Rocky comes up against Russian boxer Ivan Drago.

During production, the writer, director, and star of the movie, Sylvester Stallone, had the bright idea to let the nearly 6’5” powerhouse Dolph Lundgren, who played Drago in the film, punch him for real. Stallone told Lundgren: “Just go out there and try to clock me.”

Shockingly, this didn’t go too well for the Rocky actor, and he ended up spending nine days in the hospital due to his heart being knocked against his breastbone, which cut off the blood and oxygen supply to the heart and caused it to swell.^[9]

1 Jackie Chan
Armour of God

Jackie Chan has had more than enough on-set injuries to make up a list like this all by himself. Chan is notorious for doing his own stunts in his movies and has broken almost every bone in his body throughout his career.

Some of his more infamous stunts include his terrifying fall on the set of Project A, when he drops from a clock tower through two cloth rooftops and lands on his head, almost breaking his neck. Or his incredible leap in Police Story, when he dives from a balcony in a mall, sliding down a pole of lights and smashing through a glass roof.

However, Chan’s closest brush with death came when shooting the 1987 film Armour of God. While leaping from a cliffside to a tree, one of the branches on the tree snapped, which sent Chan plummeting to the ground, landing on his back and smashing his head on a rock.

The collision with the rock fractured his skull and pushed a piece of bone into the actor’s brain. Chan admitted that he “almost died” after this accident, but that didn’t stop him from making more action movies and continuing to do his own stunts.^[10]

Damn, Jackie Chan, you scary.

Booby traps are a common movie trope. However, as we are about to find out, they do not only exist in movies. People have created these things in real life to keep criminals and, at times, law enforcement out of their homes and businesses.

However, it appears that booby traps do not always catch the bad guys or the good ones in the case of law enforcement. Many people have ended up becoming victims of their own booby traps. Many have died while others managed to escape with devastating and sometimes life-threatening injuries in a few other instances.

Related: 10 True Stories Of People Killed By Household Objects

10 Louis Dethy

In 2002, Belgian police responded to a suspected suicide in a home in Charleroi, Belgium. The victim was 79-year-old Louis Dethy, who police believed had shot himself in the neck. Dethy bled to death, but as police would later find out, it was not a suicide. Dethy had actually fallen victim to one of the many booby traps he set inside his home.

Scarily, Dethy set the trap to kill his family. He was pissed with his wife for divorcing him and their 14 children and 37 grandchildren for abandoning him. He hit his breaking point when his mother willed his home to one of his estranged daughters. Dethy owned the house, but his mother owned the land.

In revenge, he rigged his three-story home with several shotguns, a pile of plates, and an explosive crate of beer.

A police officer was almost killed after a shotgun went off when he opened a wooden chest. The shot missed him by a few centimeters. Military engineers spent three weeks finding and disarming all 19 traps. Dethy left a clue suggesting there was a 20th trap in the building. However, military engineers never found it.^[1]

9 Julius Jackson

In November 1986, several police officers responded to a shooting at a home in Houston, Texas. Outside, they found the homeowner, Julius Jackson, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his left leg. Jackson told officers not to go into his home. As the officers later found out, the house was booby-trapped, and Jackson himself was a victim of one of the traps.

In a twist of fate, Jackson had set those booby traps himself. Apparently, burglars frequently raided his home. In fact, he was robbed ten times within five years. This made him set up a few shotguns to fire at the knee of whoever triggered it.

Jackson was transported to a hospital, where he was reported to be in critical condition. A police bomb squad later arrived to disarm the remaining guns. While police did not provide information about the number of booby traps in the home, his ex-wife said he told her he had a shotgun in every room in the house.^[2]

8 Ernest Michelberger

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In 2015, Ernest Gaylord Michelberger was cut in half by a chainsaw inside his home in Savannah, Georgia. The scene looked like a murder straight out of a horror movie, except it was not. Instead, Michelberger had fallen victim to a booby trap he set inside his own home.

According to his son, Gunner, his father had booby-trapped his home with two chainsaws and a few guns over concerns that the minorities moving into the area may try burgling him. However, that did not happen before the older Michelberger mistakenly triggered one of the chainsaws, which cut him into two along the waist.^[3]

7 Edwin Smith

In October 2018, 68-year-old Edwin Cleve called 911 after a booby trap went off in his home in Cleveland County, North Carolina. He told the dispatcher, “I just blew my arm off,” before explaining how a booby-trapped shotgun he set inside his home fired and injured him in the arm.

Smith was feeding squirrels through his back door at the time of the shooting. He was saved from bleeding to death after a man suspected to be a Cleveland County Sheriff’s deputy used a tourniquet to cover his wounds. The dispatcher heard Smith tell the officer, “F**king squirrels did me in, buddy.”^[4]

6 Daniel Ricketts

In 2013, 50-year-old Daniel R. Ricketts was decapitated when he drove his quad bike into an almost invincible piano string tied to two marijuana plants on an illegal marijuana farm in Albany County, New York.

Piano wires may appear harmless, but they are extremely strong and sharp. Add the fact that Ricketts was probably speeding at the time of the accident, and you have a deadly weapon in your hands, one as sharp as a sword.

Ironically, Ricketts owned the illegal marijuana farm and installed the piano wires to protect his stash from opportunists, like-minded criminals, and maybe, law enforcement officers. That thing was supposed to cut their heads off.

However, he became his own victim when he rode into it. The wire caught his neck, throwing him off his bike and almost separating his head from the rest of his body. He died at the scene. Police said he was drunk at the time. Police also found several leg traps and barbwires around the farm.^[5]

5 Ronald Cyr

On the evening of Thanksgiving 2019, 65-year-old Ronald Cyr called 911 after he was shot inside his home in Van Buren, Maine. Police and paramedics arrived to administer first aid and transport him to a hospital, but Cyr eventually succumbed to his injuries.

The Van Buren Police Department later established that Cyr was actually the victim of a gun he had fixed to his front door. In a comment posted on Facebook, the department said Cyr had set the gun to shoot at suspected intruders that may try entering his home through the door. However, they did not explain how he ended up being a victim of his handwork.^[6]

4 Langley Collyer

The Collyer brothers lived in Harlem, New York. The older, Homer, was blind and bedridden, while the younger, called Langley, was his caregiver. The brothers lived alone, spent their time alone, and refused to interact with anyone. The only company they had was the many booby traps and 120 tons of trash inside their home.

The men lived a rather public life in the years preceding Homer’s blindness. However, they became reclusive and retreated to their home after Homer went blind. Langley boarded up the windows and only left the house at night to buy food and collect random items he found along the way. He stored those items in their house until it was no different from a landfill.

Langley set many booby traps in the house to keep curious neighbors and people moving into the area out. He also fed Homer with a hundred oranges a week, hoping it would restore his sight. He had so much faith in Homer regaining his sight that he even saved every newspaper he found so Homer would be able to read them when he could see again.

However, that never happened as Langley was crushed to death after a booby-trapped tunnel collapsed on him while taking dinner to Homer. The blind and hungry Homer later starved to death.

Police found out about their death in March 1947 when someone called to complain about the stench of a decomposing body from the home. Police found Homer’s body, but Langley was missing, raising suspicions that he had fled. A manhunt began but turned up nothing. Police later found his half-decomposed body in the tunnel, 10 feet from where Homer had died.^[7]

3 Unnamed Man

On September 17, 2017, firefighters from Tubac Fire Department responded to an explosion in an unoccupied home in Amado, Arizona. Inside, they found an unnamed man who they evacuated to a local hospital for treatment.

Investigations revealed the man was the owner of the building and was building a pipe bomb with a friend at the time of the explosion. Investigators determined both men were building the bomb to protect the property. However, the police did not know who they were protecting it from and why. However, they know the bomb went off prematurely, injuring the man.^[8]

2 Another Unnamed Man

Sometime in 2018, several residents in a neighborhood in Tomball, Texas, called 911 after hearing gunshots from a home in the area. Residents suspected the shooter had barricaded himself inside his house.

Deputies from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office arrived to find a 73-year-old man outside the house with several wounds to the right side of his stomach. The unnamed man, who also owned the home, told officers, “There’s danger in the home.” A deputy attempted to enter the home but quickly retreated after hearing a gunshot from inside.

SWAT officers later arrived to confront the barricaded shooter but found none. Apparently, the supposed shooter was a booby-trapped explosive set up by the elderly homeowner. The explosive included some small metal fragments and shotgun shells that exploded when triggered. A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s department said the man set the explosives to prevent burglars.^[9]

1 Jos Potvin

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In October 2010, police officers found the remains of 75-year-old Jos Lawrence Potvin inside his home in Levis, Quebec City, Canada. Potvin lived alone and had been killed by a gunshot, leading police to suspect suicide. However, police later established he was the victim of an accidental death.

Before his death, Potvin had informed police that some burglars were trying to steal from his home. Police investigated but found no evidence that anyone was trying to rob him.

Undaunted, the already paranoid Potvin fixed a shotgun to his bedroom door to fire the moment someone stepped on a string that ran across the floor. For some unclear reasons, Potvin stepped on that string, killing himself. He died on the spot.^[10]