Some very unusual ways to meet your maker. Some just seem like very poor judgment calls though. In no particular order.
1979: Robert Williams, a
worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known human to be killed
by a robot, after the arm of a one-ton factory robot hit him in the
head.
2005: Lee Seung Seop, a
28-year-old South Korean, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing
the videogame StarCraft online for almost 50 consecutive hours in an
Internet cafe.
2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man, committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an Internet chat session. 17 More after the break...
1998: Tom and Eileen
Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The group’s boat accidentally abandoned
them owing to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their
bodies were never recovered. The incident inspired the film Open Water
and an episode of 20/20.
1996: Sharon Lopatka, an
Internet entrepreneur from Maryland, allegedly solicited a man via the
Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual
gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of
voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
2009: Taylor Mitchell, a
Canadian folk singer, was attacked and killed by two coyotes[159], only
the second recorded human fatality from a coyote attack.
1986: Over 1,700 people
were killed almost instantly near Lake Nyos in Cameroon when a mass of
approximately 100 million cubic metres of carbon dioxide that had
collected at the bottom of the lake due to seepage from geothermal
sources was suddenly released on August 21, 1986. The gas cloud
immediately settled (carbon dioxide is heavier than air) and covered an
area of up to 12 miles (20 km) from the lake, killing all
oxygen-breathing life almost instantly – although the nearby vegetation,
which consumes carbon dioxide and releases oxygen, flourished
afterwards.
1993: Actor Brandon Lee,
son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by Michael Massee using a prop gun
while filming the movie The Crow. A cartridge with only a primer and a
bullet was fired in the pistol before the fatal scene; this caused a
squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet
out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it
became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same
gun was used again later to shoot the death scene. His death was not
instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was
still acting
1999: Owen Hart, a
Canadian-born professional wrestler for WWF, died during a pay-per-view
event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down
from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope
to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen
dropped 78 feet (24 m), bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting
in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.
2007: Jennifer Strange, a
28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while
trying to win a Nintendo Wii console in a KDND 107.9 “The End” radio
station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which involved drinking
large quantities of water without urinating
2009: Vladimir Likhonos, a
Ukrainian student, died after accidentally dipping a piece of homemade
chewing gum into explosives he was using on another project. He mistook
the jar of explosive for citric acid, which was also on his desk. The
gum exploded, blowing off his jaw and most of the lower part of his face
2008: Isaiah Otieno, 20, a
Kenyan student living in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, was
crushed when a single-engine Bell 206 helicopter crashed on top of him
and burst into flames when he was walking to mail home a letter. Otieno
did not hear the helicopter because he was wearing headphones at the
time.
2004: Phillip Quinn, a
24-year-old from Kent, Washington was killed during an attempt to heat
up a lava lamp bulb on his kitchen stove while observing it from a few
feet away. The heat built up pressure in the bulb until it exploded,
spraying shards of glass. One pierced his heart, killing him. The
circumstances of his death were later repeated and confirmed in a 2006
episode of the popular science television series
2001: Bernd-Jürgen
Brandes from Germany was voluntarily stabbed repeatedly and then partly
eaten by Armin Meiwes (who was later called the Cannibal of Rothenburg).
Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for
someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he
wished to be killed and eaten
1998: Every player on the
Basanga soccer team at a game in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
between Bena Tshadi and visitors Basanga was struck by a fork bolt of
lightning, killing them all instantly
1993: Michael A.
Shingledecker Jr. was killed almost instantly when he and a friend were
struck by a pickup truck while lying flat on the yellow dividing line of
a two-lane highway in Polk, Pennsylvania. They were copying a daredevil
stunt from the movie The Program. Marco Birkhimer died of a similar
accident while performing the same stunt in Route 206 of Bordentown, New
Jersey
2006: Steve Irwin, an
Australian television personality and naturalist known as the Crocodile
Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb
while filming a documentary entitled “Ocean’s Deadliest” in Queensland‘s
Great Barrier Ree
1993: Garry Hoy, a
38-year old lawyer and a senior partner at the Holden Day Wilson Law
firm in Toronto, Canada, fell to his death on July 9, 1993, after he
threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of theToronto-Dominion
Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visiting Law Students that
the glass was “unbreakable.” His first attempt failed to damage the
glass at all. On his second attempt the glass still didn’t break but
instead actually popped out of the window frame, and he fell over 300
feet to his death
2003: Timothy Treadwell,
an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears
for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, and his girlfriend
Amie Huguenard were killed and partially consumed by a bear. An audio
recording of their deaths was captured on a video camera which had been
turned on at the beginning of the incident. Werner Herzog‘s documentary
film, Grizzly Man, discusses Treadwell and his death.
2008: Gerald Mellin, a
U.K. businessman, committed suicide by tying one end of a rope around
his neck and the other to a tree. He then hopped into his Aston Martin
DB7 and drove down a main road in Swansea until the rope decapitated
him. He supposedly did this as an act of revenge against his ex-wife for
leaving him
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