It doesn’t matter how famous you might be because Death comes for us all, but it seems it has a weird sense of humor with some people.
Bobby Leach
The thing with Bobby Leach was that he’d already done the impossible part. In July 1911, he went over Niagara Falls inside an eight-foot steel barrel and came out alive. That’s pretty impressive on its own, although he did face some injuries afterward. They’re not what killed him.
His death came 15 years later, following something completely simple. He slipped on an orange peel. Yes, he slipped on the peel while working and broke his leg. Leach developed an infection, and doctors tried amputating his leg, but he died during surgery on April 28, 1926.
Jimi Heselden
It’s not like Jimi Heselden was trying to do some crazy publicity stunt or anything. He was simply near his home in West Yorkshire, England, while riding a Segway beside the River Wharfe and walking his dog. Reports say that Heselden moved backward to make room on the path.Â
The Segway, however, had other ideas, and he went over the bank. Heselden fell about 42 feet and died in the river below. But what makes it so weird is the fact that, at the time of his death, Heselden actually owned the Segway company. He was killed by his own product.
Charles VIII
King Charles VIII of France was really into tennis, perhaps too much. He walked through a low doorway at the Château d’Amboise on April 7, 1498, and was rushing to see a match. But then tragedy struck. Charles hit his head on the stone lintel really hard.
Not one to seem weak, he kept going and seemed fine for a while, until he eventually collapsed. He never woke up and died that same evening. Historians and doctors aren’t sure what exactly killed him, maybe a brain hemorrhage or stroke, but it was the door that set it off.
Francis Bacon
Snow. It’s something so pretty, and if you’re Francis Bacon, something that gives you ideas. He was on a trip in 1626 when he decided to stop his carriage and buy a chicken. Then, he packed the bird with snow to test whether freezing meat could help preserve it.
Essentially, it was an early experiment in refrigeration, although not a good one. Bacon became seriously ill after spending so much time in the cold. He died several days later, without having eaten the chicken or even finishing his experiment.
Richard Versalle
Richard Versalle’s death was probably one of the most ironic ones out there. He was an opera tenor and, on January 5, 1996, he was in the middle of the premiere of The Makropulos Case. He sang the line ‘You can only live so long.’ Seconds later, he had a heart attack.
Versalle was standing on a ladder as part of the scene and fell roughly 15 feet onto the stage. He was rushed to the hospital, but sadly, doctors pronounced him dead shortly after, and his performance at Lincoln Center was canceled.
Mike Edwards
A hay bale hardly seems like the most dangerous of things, but that’s exactly what killed Mike Edwards. The former Electric Light Orchestra cellist was driving in Devon, England, when a stray round bale rolled down a steep field.Â
It broke through a fence and struck his van. Edwards was 62 years old at the time and died instantly due to the serious fractures to his skull and spine. The inquest said his cause of death was ‘accidental’ because, really, there’s not much else they could’ve done.
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris, a man who’d contributed to the U.S. Constitution, was having severe trouble urinating in 1816, and it was likely because his urethra had narrowed. He wasn’t going to wait for a solution, though. No, the American statesman decided to clear the blockage himself.
He made a catheter using a thin piece of whalebone, but not a very good one, because the whole procedure went awfully. Morris cut the passage and caused heavy inflammation. This led to tissue death, and then Morris’s own death on November 6, 1816.
Margaret Wise Brown
Margaret Wise Brown was the writer of Goodnight Moon, and on November 13, 1952, she was almost ready to leave the hospital. She’d just been through emergency surgery and wanted the staff to see just how well she felt. So, she decided to give them a quick can-can kick. Bad idea.
The kick dislodged a blood clot in her leg, and Brown collapsed almost immediately. She died before she made it to her friend’s home to recover. Brown might’ve survived had she not been so keen to celebrate her ‘wellness.’
Leslie Harvey
On May 3, 1972, guitarist Leslie Harvey was performing with his band, Stone the Crows, although he didn’t know it would be his last performance. He told the audience how the stage equipment was acting up. Then came the fatal moment.
With a guitar in one hand and a microphone in the other, an electric current passed through Harvey’s body, and he was electrocuted. The 27-year-old guitarist collapsed. His bandmates did try to help by breaking the connection, but it was too late. He was dead.
Steve Peregrin Took
You’d think that most rock musicians would go out in a blaze of glory. Not Steve Peregrin Took of the rock band T. Rex, though. He inhaled a cocktail cherry while he was at his home on October 27, 1980, and then choked to death.
Took was 31 at the time and had been part of Tyrannosaurus Rex for several years. He also worked with Shagrat and the Pink Fairies. That is, until one cherry put his dreams to an end, right there and then.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
