0 The Pancake-Eating Champion Who Choked to DEATH, RUSSIA

A Russian man had choked to death on a pancake shortly after winning a pancake eating competition.

The 48-year old Boris Isayev won the competition as part of celebrations for pancake week (Maslenitsa.) The festival celebrates the end of winter and beginning of spring.

As a part of the celebration, a competition was held to see who could eat a portion of pancakes, the traditional food of the festival, the fastest.

Isayev ate the generous portion offered faster than his competitors, but when he came on stage to get his prize, he collapsed.

Organisers of the festival tried to revive him, but failed. The emergency rescue team that arrived a few minutes later said that it was likely that one of the pancakes had blocked the man’s airways, causing death.

“I guess, you shouldn’t eat that much even for Maslenitsa,” Elena, a witness of the incident, told Komsomolskaya Pravda.



Source

0 DEATH By Smoker's Match - Martha Mansfield, USA

Photo credit

Martha Mansfield (July 14, 1899 – November 30, 1923) was an American actress in silent films and vaudeville stage plays.

Born Martha Ehrlich in New York City to Maurice and Harriett Gibson Ehrlich. Although many biographies state that Mansfield was born in Mansfield, Ohio, her birth record and death certificate both have New York City as her place of birth. In 1912, she was left in her mother's care after her father deserted the family. At the age of 18, she showed an aptitude for acting and began a stage career. Her advancement as a performer came quickly.

Her first Hollywood movie was Civilian Clothes (1920) directed by Hugh Ford. She gained prominence as Millicent Carew in the film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which starred John Barrymore. She appeared with Eugene O'Brien in The Perfect Lover (1919). The final completed features in her short film career were Potash and Permutter and The Leavenworth Case, both from 1923.

Scene from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde film

On November 30, 1923, while working on location in San Antonio, Texas on the film The Warrens of Virginia, Mansfield was severely burned when a match, tossed by a cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and flimsy ruffles. Mansfield was playing the role of Agatha Warren and had just finished her scenes and retired to a car when her clothing burst into flames. Her neck and face were saved when leading man Wilfred Lytell threw his heavy overcoat over her. The chauffeur of Mansfield's car was burned badly on his hands while trying to remove the burning clothing from the actress. The fire was put out, but she sustained substantial burns to her body.

She was rushed to a Physicians and Surgeons Hospital in San Antonio, where she died in less than twenty-four hours. Mansfield was 24 years old. Accompanied by actor Phillip Shorey, Mansfield's body was flown to her home in New York City. Her mother resided there at 142 West Fifty-seventh Street. She was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York, United States.

Source

2 DEATH of The 'IronKing' - Siegmund (Zishe) Breitbart, POLAND

Siegmund Breitbart (Yiddish: זיגמונד ברייטברט), (February 22, 1893 - October 12, 1925), also known popularly as Zishe or Sische Breitbart (Yiddish: זישה ברייטברט), was a Polish-born circus performer, vaudeville strongman and Jewish folklore hero. He was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" and Eisenkönig ("The Ironking") during the 1920s.

Breitbart was born into an Orthodox Jewish family of blacksmiths near Łódź. He traveled and performed extensively in Europe and America, touring with the Circus Busch, arguably the largest circus in the world at the time. He gained American citizenship in 1923.

His Acts of Strength
Breitbart's strength acts were themed to fit his background as a blacksmith. He bent iron bars around his arm in floral patterns, bit through iron chains or tore them apart. He could also break a horseshoe in half, hold back two horses who were whipped, pull a wagon-load of people with his teeth or support enormous weight, such as an automobile loaded with up to 10 passengers, while lying on his back. One of the popular feats among the strongmen of the era was called the Tomb of Hercules, and Breitbart made it a part of his act: a bridge was built across his chest and heavy animals (bulls, an elephant, etc.) paraded over it. He took it a step further, supporting a moto-dome in which two men chased each other on motorcycles on his chest. Three tombstones were placed on his chest while two men hammered away with sledgehammers. He lifted a baby elephant, and while holding on to the elephant, he climbed a ladder and held a locomotive wheel by rope in his teeth while three men were suspended from the wheel.

Death
Breitbart became a legend and took on the proportions of a national hero in Europe and America, only to die at the age of 42. In a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five 1-inch-thick (25 mm) oak boards resting on one of his knees using only his bare hands, his knee was accidentally pierced. The wound became infected, which led to fatal blood poisoning. Both legs were amputated in an effort to stem the infection, but the operation failed to help him. Breitbart succumbed after eight weeks. He is buried in a cemetery in Berlin. 

His life was fictionalized as Zishe Breitbart in Werner Herzog's 2001 film Invincible. Breitbart's part was played by legendary Finnish strongman Jouko Ahola.

His life was also the inspiration for the children's book Zishe the Strongman by Robert Rubenstein.

Source

0 The Pins of DEATH By The So-Called Accupuncturist, RUSSIA

A Russian woman died of pain-induced shock after a self-educated acupuncturist stuck a needle in the wrong spot on her back. The man has been sentenced to 18 months of prison, after which he plans to continue his healing career.

The 38-years-old policewoman came to the acupuncturist to relieve backache. Tamara Popova had suffered constant pain since a car accident several years ago, which had damaged her spine, Life.ru reports.

Doctors advised her to visit a local acupuncturist, one of the few in the city of Tomsk, Siberia.

In spite of the fact that Viktor Zubkov had neither a Medical diploma nor a license to practise acupuncture the woman signed up for a course of treatment.

After several sessions of acupuncture, Tamara complained to her family that instead of feeling better she seemed to be getting worse.

“I feel like I could die of pain on the doctor’s table,” she told her sister.

The relatives remembered her words as prophetic when they got a call from the distressed acupuncturist who said Tamara had just died.

The paramedics who arrived at the acupuncturist’s office found the woman dead on the massage table, and blamed pain induced shock as the most probable cause of death.

Tamara’s family took the case to court, and the acupuncturist was sentenced to one and a half years in a penal colony.

At the end of the term he plans to go back to his medical practice.


Source

0 Butt Enhancement - the Wrong Way, UK/USA

A 20-year-old British woman, Claudia Aderotimi, died following a hotel room cosmetic buttocks injection - perhaps yet another casualty of dangerous, corner-cutting enhancement procedures.

Police believe Aderotimi, who was visiting from the U.K. with three friends, received the injection at the Hampton Inn in Southwest Philadelphia, local ABC affiliate WPVI-TV reported.

Medics were called to the hotel in response to Aderotimi's reports of difficulty breathing and chest pains. She was rushed to Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Plastic surgeons renewed public warnings concerning non-approved facilities and non-certified cosmetic practitioners: Cutting corners in hopes of a cheaper nip-tuck is dangerous, and potentially life-threatening.

Aderotimi and one of the other women with her came to the U.S. specifically for injectable enhancement procedures, one for hip and buttocks and Aderotimi just for buttocks, police said. Aderotimi paid $1,800 for the procedure, which is only a fraction of what she would have paid for a similar procedure in the U.K.

Numerous other operations and/or botched surgery victims around the country have been reported in the past few years as the drive to surgically emulate curvaceous celebrities leads many women to sacrifice safety for affordability.

"We've heard of people having caulk or industrial grade silicone, neither of which is approved for use anywhere in the body, injected into their buttocks," said Dr. Felmont Eaves, a North Carolina-based plastic surgeon and president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.



Source

0 DEATH Due To Viagra Marathon, RUSSIA

A SEX-MAD Russian man died after guzzling a bottle of Viagra pills to keep him going for a 12-hour orgy with two women pals.

The women had bet mechanic Sergey Tuganov £3,000 ($4,300), that he wouldn't be able to satisfy them both non-stop for the half-day sex marathon.

But minutes after winning the wager, the randy 28-year-old dropped dead with a heart attack, revealed Moscow police.

The women told Moscow police that before starting the sex marathon, Tuganov swallowed a whole bottle of Viagra pills to ensure his victory.
One of the women, named only as Alina, said: "We called emergency services but it was too late, there was nothing they could do."

Medics said the man most likely died because of the quantity of stimulating pills he had ingested.



Source

0 DEATH by Hoarding - The Collyer Brothers, USA

Homer and Langley Collyer were compulsive hoarders. The two brothers had a fear of throwing anything away and obsessively collected newspapers and other junk in their house. They even set up booby-traps in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Langley Collyer, c. 1942

Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their bizarre nature and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely seen men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders. Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived, surrounded by over 130 tons of collected items that they had amassed over several decades.

The Collyer brothers were sons of Herman Livingston Collyer (1857–1923), a Manhattan gynecologist who worked at Bellevue Hospital, and Susie Gage Frost (1856–1929), a former opera singer. The parents were first cousins.

Dr. Herman Collyer, with his wife and two sons, moved into their residence in Harlem in 1909. Dr. Collyer was known to be eccentric himself, and was said to frequently paddle down the East River in a canoe to the City Hospital on Blackwell's Island, where he occasionally worked; and then carry the canoe back to his home in Harlem after he came ashore on Manhattan Island. He abandoned his family around 1919, a few years before he died. No one knows why Dr. Collyer abandoned his family, or whether his wife moved with him into his new home at 153 West 77th Street when he left behind his house in Harlem. Nevertheless, Homer and Langley Collyer stayed in the family house after their father left. Dr. Collyer died in 1923, and Mrs. Collyer died in 1929. After their parents died, the Collyer brothers inherited all of their possessions and moved those possessions into their house in Harlem.

This is the Brownstone House they Lived in, ladders were required by the authorities to enter.

During World War I, Harlem saw a major influx of black residents from the Southern United States, leading to the Harlem Renaissance which would emerge in the decade following the end of World War I. Even though the neighborhood's character changed to become a black American cultural center, the two white brothers, who by now were in their forties, remained in their family home, becoming an anachronistic curiosity which began to draw more attention from the residents of their neighborhood.

Deaths

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd Police Precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house.[5] A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a difficult time getting into the house at first, noting however that an awful odor was emanating from somewhere within the building. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. An emergency squad of seven men eventually had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press, and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman, William Barker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue and white bathrobe. Homer's matted, grey hair reached down to his shoulders, and his head was resting on his knees.

Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Arthur C. Allen confirmed Homer's identity and said that the elder brother had been dead for no more than ten hours; consequently, Homer could not have been the source of the stench wafting from the house. Foul play was ruled out: Homer had died from the combined effects of malnutrition, dehydration, and cardiac arrest. By this time, the mystery had attracted a crowd of about 600 onlookers, curious about the junk and the smell. But Langley was nowhere to be found.

In their quest to find Langley, the police began searching the house, an arduous task that required them to remove the large quantity of amassed junk. Most of it was deemed worthless and set out curbside for the sanitation department to haul away; a few items were put into storage. The ongoing search turned up a further assortment of guns and ammunition. There was no sign of Langley.

Crawling through a door, notice the lamp hanging down, that's how high the junk was, 12 - 15 foot ceilings in the house.

On March 30, false rumors circulated that Langley had been seen aboard a bus heading for Atlantic City. A manhunt along the New Jersey shore turned up nothing. Reports of Langley sightings led police to a total of nine states.[6] The police continued searching the house two days later, removing 3,000 books, several outdated phone books, a horse's jawbone, a Steinway piano, an early X-ray machine, and more bundles of newspapers. More than 19 tons of junk were removed from the ground floor of the three-story brownstone. The police continued to clear away the brothers' stockpile for another week, removing another 84 tons of rubbish from the house. Although a good deal of the junk came from their father's medical practice, a considerable portion was discarded items collected by Langley over the years.

Look how narrow the front staircase had become....

On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the body of Langley Collyer just 10 feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.

The body of a badly crushed and rat nibbled Langley, the younger brother can be seen in this picture...

Both brothers were buried with their parents at Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Source | Source

0 DEATH By Monkey and Its Mate - Alexander I, GREECE

Alexander I, King of the Hellenes, was taking a walk in the Royal Gardens, when his dog was attacked by a monkey. The King attempted to defend his dog, receiving bites from both the monkey and its mate. The diseased animals' bites caused sepsis and Alexander died three weeks later.

Alexander (Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος, Βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων, Aléxandros, Vasiléfs ton Ellínon; 1 August 1893 – 25 October 1920) ruled Greece as King of the Hellenes from 1917 to 1920 until his unusual death as the result of sepsis contracted by being bitten by two monkeys.

Alexander is unusual among monarchs as he ruled in exception to standard primogeniture tradition. He assumed the throne upon the abdication of his father, though his older brother George still lived. In addition, his older brother would later become King of the Hellenes in his own right, providing a rare case where an older brother would succeed a younger one to the throne (though in this case not directly).

In 1917, Constantine I insisted that Greece remain neutral in World War I, while Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos was determined to go to war in support of the Triple Entente. At Venizelos' invitation, French and British troops entered Greece and forced Constantine I and his first born son Crown Prince George into exile (see National Schism). Young Alexander, a proponent of the Megali Idea, was enthroned as King; in reality he had absolutely no power and was a rubber stamp for the Prime Minister, and his only real task was to visit the front frequently and rally the troops.

On one major issue, however, he did defy Venizelos: on 4 November 1919 he eloped with Aspasia Manos (1896–1972), a commoner, daughter of Colonel Petros Manos, causing a scandal and infuriating Venizelos. Aspasia was forced to flee Athens until the crisis was resolved and the wedding was legalized without Aspasia being recognised as Queen, but merely as "Madame Manos". Six months later, the young couple left for Paris, on condition that they neither travel nor appear at official functions together.

Soon after, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed in August 1920. The Treaty was extremely favourable to Greece, giving her large territories in Thrace and around Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. Alexander became King of a much-enlarged Greek state.
Although history has unfairly described King Alexander as a careless pet owner who died from a bite "from his pet monkey"; the 27-year-old monarch actually died after defending his pet dog from an attack during a walk through the Royal Gardens, and he suffered wounds from two of the monkeys. The attack occurred on 2 October 1920. In the report dispatched from Europe, it was stated that the King had been walking in the park with a pet dog, when the dog was attacked by a monkey. The King fended off the monkey with a stick but in the fight the monkey bit him on the hand slightly. "Another monkey rushed to the defense of his mate, and in fending it off, the King received another bite which severely lacerated a gland. The infection which set in following the bites gradually poisoned the King's entire system ..." Both animals were found to have been diseased after they were destroyed.  Within days, he developed a severe reaction to the infection, and after initial signs of improvement, became critically ill on 12 October. It is little reported but nonetheless extremely likely that the infection was caused by Monkey B virus which causes a fatal ascending myelitis in man and unremarkable oral lesions in a monkey. There is a relation to Herpes.

On 25 October 1920 King Alexander died at Athens, of sepsis.  His father Constantine I was permitted to return to Greece as King. Eventually, King Constantine would lead the Greeks to engage in the Greco-Turkish War which resulted in Greece's defeat, a quarter of a million military and civilian casualties and the end of the Megali Idea. Winston Churchill would later write that "it was a monkey bite that caused the death of those 250,000 people."  The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander’s reign was lost.




Source

2 Bed Bugs Related DEATH - Daniel Andersson, SWEDEN

Daniel "Dan" Andersson (born 6 April 1888 in Skattlösberg, Grangärde parish (in present-day Ludvika Municipality), Dalarna, Sweden, died 16 September 1920 in Stockholm) was a Swedish author and poet. He also set some of his own poems to music. Andersson married primary school teacher Olga Turesson, the sister of artist Gunnar Turesson, in 1918. A nom de plume he sometimes used was Black Jim. Andersson is counted among the Swedish proletarian authors, but his works are not limited to that genre. 

Andersson grew up under poor conditions in the village of Skattlösberg where his father, primary school teacher Adolf Andersson and his wife Augusta Scherp (herself previously a teacher), worked in the school. The village is located in the so-called "Finn Woods" of southern Dalarna, where Forest Finns immigrated to cultivate new land. On his father's side, Andersson descended from these Finnish settlers. Andersson took odd jobs during the first years of his life, for instance as a forestry worker and school teacher. It was difficult to make a living. The family had considered trying to find a better life in America, and Andersson was sent there as a 14-year old in 1902 to see if it would be possible for the family to join him. But in a letter from the U.S. he wrote that there were no better opportunities for the family there than in Sweden, upon which his father asked Andersson to return to Sweden. The family moved from Skattlösberg in 1905, but Andersson returned there to live with his parents and siblings 1911-1915. During this period, he wrote a number of stories and poems. Large parts of his Kolarhistorier and Kolvaktarens visor were probably created during this time.

Dan Andersson died in room 11 at Hotel Hellman in Stockholm on 16 September 1920, where he had gone to look for a job at the newspaper Social-Demokraten. The hotel staff had used hydrogen cyanide against bedbugs and hadn't cleared the room as prescribed. At 3 pm Andersson was found dead. At the same time, insurance inspector Elliott Eriksson from Bollnäs also died. The hotel was located at Bryggaregatan 5 in Stockholm, but was demolished in the 1960s.

Andersson is buried at Lyviken Cemetery in Ludvika.


Source

0 Choke to DEATH During An Inflight Meal, NEW ZEALAND

The distraught girlfriend of a New Zealand man sat next to his dead body for hours after he choked and died while eating an in-flight meal.

Robert Rippingale, 31, was flying from Singapore, where he worked, to his native New Zealand last week to celebrate his parents' 50th birthdays, the New Zealand Herald reported.

An hour-and-a-half into the Jetstar Airline flight, Rippingale choked on the beef and chicken dinner, the paper reported.

"One minute we were sitting next to each other kissing, holding hands and the next minute he was choking," said his girlfriend, Vanessa Preechakul,to the Herald.
"I thought he was laughing very hard; then I looked at his face and his eyes were rolling and he couldn't talk. His lips were turning purple," Preechakul said.

 A doctor and two nurses who were on-board the flight rushed to Rippingale's aid and performed CPR but couldn't save him.

Crew members covered the body and removed Rippingale to a crew rest area where Preechakul asked to sit next to his body for the flight's remaining nine hours, the paper reported.

"I had to cope -- I had no choice," she said.
The man, whose family said had an "infectious smile", was laid to rest, on his mother's birthday.



Source

0 Baseball's 'First' Superstar's Swing of DEATH - James Creighton, USA

Pioneer Baseball Player. Considered baseball's first star, he swung bat so hard one day he ruptured his bladder and died 4 days later.

James Creighton, Jr. (April 15, 1841 – October 18, 1862) was a pitcher in baseball's earliest era. Among his many accomplishments, he was in all likelihood the first professional ballplayer, threw the first fastball, completed the first recorded triple play, and is considered by baseball historians to be the game's first superstar.

James Creighton

A decade before the formation of organized baseball leagues, a career in the sport was a far different proposition than it is today. Amateur ballclubs spent much of their time practicing and playing intrasquad games, with occasional matches against other clubs.
Baseball prior to the Civil War was centered in New York. In 1857, at the age of sixteen, Creighton helped to form his first club, the Young America Base Ball Club in his Brooklyn neighborhood. It did not survive the year but two of them, Creighton and George Flanley, founded the Niagara Club to play in 1858.

In 1859, Creighton and the Niagaras were losing a match to the well-established Star Club when Creighton, who had to this point been used primarily in the infield, came into the game as a relief pitcher and proceeded to throw the ball unthinkably hard for the time; the Star batsmen claimed that he used a snap of the wrist to deliver the "speedball", as he called it.  (At the time, the rules of baseball stated that a pitcher must deliver the ball underhanded, locked straight at the elbow and the wrist.) Regardless of the legality of his pitch, the Stars immediately snapped Creighton and Flanley up, and the two finished the season with them.

The Stars were unable to keep Creighton, either, and before 1860 he joined one of the highest-profile clubs in the game at the time, Excelsior of Brooklyn, which considered themselves the champions of America. In 1860 and 1861, with Creighton fast becoming a national sensation, they backed up that claim by going on the first national tour, down the eastern coast of the United States. Creighton defeated the hometown teams wherever the Excelsiors went, and gained such popularity that many youth teams in the areas they played named themselves the Creightons in his honor. It was during this 1860 tour that he pitched baseball's first recorded shutout.

Such was his dominance that after he held the famed Brooklyn Atlantics to five runs, an extraordinarily low total for the era, the Brooklyn Eagle dispatched a reporter to determine whether or not his pitch was legal; in the end, it was determined he was throwing a "fair square pitch", rather than a "jerk" or an "underhand throw."

The year 1862 was business as usual for the 21-year-old Creighton, who had become the game's greatest player as a hitter and a pitcher. During that year, it is said that he was not put out a single time at the plate, and only four times overall. (At the time, players out on the basepaths were charged with the out, instead of the batter as today.) His pitching, which had also spawned the first changeup (he called it his 'dew-drop'), continued to be exceptional.

Photo credit - Matthew Fatale

However, in October 1862, in the midst of his greatest season, Creighton died suddenly. Such was his fame at the time of his death, and such was the grief of the baseball community, that a 12-foot marble obelisk, topped with a large baseball, was erected at his gravesite

There are several explanations for his death. The generally accepted explanation, which has existed from the time of his death, is that he fatally injured himself while playing baseball. At the time, players swung massive bats almost entirely with their upper body; it is said that a particularly hard swing from Creighton – some versions of the story have it as a home run swing – caused an internal injury.

Remarking to teammate George Flanley that he had perhaps snapped a belt, he continued playing but was in extreme pain hours later. A few days later, he died at his parents' house.






Source | Source

0 Stabbed to DEATH Over Garlic Bread, UK

A TEENAGER in Scotland admitted to stabbing his girlfriend to death because she had been "moaning at him" over his failure to make garlic bread for their dinner.

James Ellis, 18, stabbed Alami Gotip more than 30 times on May 25, 2011, as the woman's two young children, to a different father, slept upstairs.

The body of 22-year-old Gotip was later found in the living room of the home in Livingston, West Lothian, Sky News said.

Immediately after the murder, Ellis was seen standing in the front garden covered in blood and holding two knives.

He told police he thought his relationship with Ms Gotip was finishing and he could not imagine her with anyone else.

Detective Inspector Phil Gachagan, of Lothian and Border Police, said, "The brutal violence Alami Gotip was subjected to prior to her death is testament to the violent and remorseless character of James Ellis."

Source

0 The World's First Railway DEATH - William Huskisson, UK

William Huskisson PC  (11 March 1770 – 15 September 1830) was a British statesman, financier, and Member of Parliament for several constituencies, including Liverpool. He is best known today, however, as the world's first widely reported railway casualty as he was run over by George Stephenson's locomotive engine Rocket.

Huskisson is the first person in history whose death from a railway accident, in 1830, has been widely noted. (Earlier deaths due to being struck by a steam locomotive occurred in 1821 and 1827, and fatal boiler explosions in 1815 and 1828.) While attending the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Huskisson rode down the line in the same train as the Duke of Wellington.

A contemporary drawing of Rocket
Pic by wiki user Duncharrest

At Parkside Railway Station, close to Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, the train stopped to observe a cavalcade on the adjacent line. Several members of the duke's party stepped onto the trackside to observe more closely. Huskisson went forward to greet the duke. As Huskisson was exiting his car, the locomotive Rocket approached on the parallel track. As the train drew close he held on to the open carriage door, but the door was wider than the gap between the two trains and The Rocket struck it, forcing Huskisson off balance and under its wheels.  His leg was horrifically mangled. The wounded Huskisson was taken by a train (driven by George Stephenson himself) to Eccles. When he reached hospital he was given a massive dose of laudanum. After being told his death was imminent he made his will, and died a few hours later.



Source

1 Eaten Alive by Mother Bear and Cubs, RUSSIA

A distraught mother listened on a mobile 
phone as her teenage daughter was eaten alive by a brown bear and its three cubs.

The Daily Mail reports that Olga Moskalyova, 19, gave a chilling hour-long running commentary on her own death in three separate calls as the wild animals mauled her near a river in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, eastern Siberia, recently.

Olga's distraught mother Tatiana listened on a mobile phone as her teenage screamed: "Mum, the bear is eating me! Mum, it’s such agony. Mum, help."

"Mum, the bears are back. She came back and brought her three babies. They’re... eating me.

"Mum, it’s not hurting any more. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything, I love you so much."

Tatiana told London's Daily Mail that at first she thought her daughter was joking.

Killed: Olga Moskalyova (right) and her stepfather
Igor Tsyganenkov (left) were both eaten alive
by bears | DailyMail

"But then I heard the real horror and pain in Olga’s voice, and the sounds of a bear growling and chewing," she added. "I could have died then and there from shock."

Unknown to Tatiana, the bear had already killed her husband Igor Tsyganenkov, Olga’s stepfather, breaking his neck and smashing his skull, according to the Daily Mail.

Olga, a trainee psychologist, saw the attack on her stepfather in tall grass by the river. The bears chased her for about 70 metres before they grabbed her leg.

Tatiana alerted authorities and when they arrived half an hour later, the bears were still eating the pair, the Daily Mail reports.


Source

0 He Was DEAD, But He Still Won the Race,USA

Frank Hayes (1888–1923) was a jockey who, in 1923, suffered a fatal heart attack in the midst of a race at Belmont Park in New York. His horse, Sweet Kiss, finished and won the race with his lifeless body still atop, making him the first, and thus far, only, jockey to win a race after death

"In February 1923, thirty-five-year-old horse trainer and wanna-be jockey Frank Hayes nagged the owner of a 20–1 long shot named Sweet Kiss to let him ride the beast at Belmont Park racetrack in New York. To everyone's surprise, Sweet Kiss ran the race of its life and won... The horse's owner was stunned, too — especially when he went to congratulate Hayes and found him slumped in the saddle, quite dead. Doctors confirmed that a coronary had done him in."







Source

0 Marathon 'StarCraft' Online Game Led to DEATH, SOUTH KOREA

A 28-year-old, South Korean man died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours in which the only stops made were for the calls of nature and cat naps.He collapsed after playing the game Starcraft at an internet cafe in the city of Taegu.
The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session.
Multi-player gaming in South Korea is extremely popular thanks to its fast and widespread broadband network.

Games are televised and professional players are treated, as well as paid, like sports stars.
Professional gamers there attract huge sums in sponsorship and can make more than $100,000 a year.


The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep.

"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a Taegu provincial police official told the Reuters news agency.

He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.

They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.







Source

0 Choked to DEATH on a Bottle Cap - Tennessee Williams, USA

Tennessee Williams (age 54)
photographed by Orland Fernandez in 1965
for the twentieth anniversary of
The Glass Menagerie

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs. His professional career lasted from the mid 1930s until his death in 1983, and saw the creation of many plays that are regarded as classics of the American stage. Williams adapted much of his best known work for the cinema.

Williams remained close to his sister Rose, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young adult and later institutionalized following a lobotomy, visiting her at the facilities where she spent most of her adult life and paying for her care.  The devastating effects of Rose's illness may have contributed to his alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates.

After some early attempts at heterosexual relationships, by the late 1930s Williams had accepted his homosexuality.
In the fall of 1948, New York, he met and fell in love with Frank Phillip Merlo (1922–1963), an occasional actor of Sicilian heritage who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II.
As he had feared, in the years following Merlo's death Williams was plunged into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use resulting in several hospitalizations and commitments to mental health facilities. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson – known popularly as Dr. Feelgood – who used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome his depression and combined these with prescriptions for the sedative seconal to relieve his insomnia. Williams appeared several times in interviews in a nearly incoherent state, and his reputation both as a playwright and as a public personality suffered. He was never truly able to recoup his earlier success, or to entirely overcome his dependence on prescription drugs.

On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York at age 71. The medical examiner's report indicated that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eyedrops he frequently used, further indicating that his use of drugs and alcohol may have contributed to his death by suppressing his gag reflex. Prescription drugs, including barbiturates, were found in the room. Williams' body was found by director John Uecker who was identified as his secretary and who travelled with Williams, and was staying in a separate room in Williams' suite.





Source

0 DEATH by Molasses - The Boston Molasses Disaster, USA

Aftermath of the disaster;
photo by Globe Newspaper Co.
Boston Public Library

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood and the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. A large molasses storage tank burst, and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event has entered local folklore, and residents claim that on hot summer days, the area still smells of molasses.

Disaster

Cutting the tank with acetylene torch, Molasses Disaster
Photo by Boston Public Library 

The disaster occurred at the Purity Distilling Company facility on January 15, 1919, an unusually warm day for January (40˚ F, 4.4˚ C). At the time, molasses was the standard sweetener in the United States. Molasses can also be fermented to produce rum and ethyl alcohol, the active ingredient in other alcoholic beverages and a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time. The stored molasses was awaiting transfer to the Purity plant situated between Willow Street and what is now named Evereteze Way, in Cambridge.

Near Keany Square, at 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 ft (15 m) tall, 90 ft (27 m) in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound, like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.

The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 and 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h), and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft² (200 kPa). The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet (60 to 90 cm). As described by author Stephen Puleo:
 

Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.

The Boston Globe reported that people "were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet." Others had debris hurled at them from the rush of sweet-smelling air. A truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor. Approximately 150 were injured; 21 people and several horses were killed — some were crushed and drowned by the molasses. The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast.
 

Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn't answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his sisters staring at him.

The injured were so numerous that doctors and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers found it difficult to make their way through the syrup to help the victims. It took four days before they stopped searching for victims; many dead were so glazed over in molasses, they were hard to recognize.

It took over 87,000 man hours to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes.  The harbor was still brown with molasses until summer.

United States Industrial Alcohol did not rebuild the tank. The property became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), and is currently the site of a city-owned baseball field.

Source

0 DEATH by Jury Demonstration - Clement Vallandigham, USA

Clement Vallandigham
Member of the U.S. House
of Representatives
 from Ohio's 3rd district

After the Civil War, controversial Ohio politician Clement Vallandigham became a highly successful lawyer who rarely lost a case.

Vallandigham died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, at the age of 50, after accidentally shooting himself with a pistol. 

In 1871, he defended Thomas McGehan who was accused of shooting one Tom Myers during a barroom brawl. Vallandigham’s defense was that Myers had accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol from a kneeling position.

To convince the jury, Vallandigham decided to demonstrate his theory.  As Vallandigham conferred with fellow defense attorneys in his hotel room, he showed them how he would demonstrate this to the jury. Grabbing a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put it in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened, shooting himself in the process. Vallandigham proved his point, and the defendant, Thomas McGehan, was acquitted and released from custody. Clement Vallandigham, however, died of his wound. His last words expressed his faith in "that good old Presbyterian doctrine of predestination." Survived by his wife, Louisa Anna (McMahon) Vallandingham, and his son Charles Vallandigham, he was buried in Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio.





Source 

1 DEATH Dive Into the Hot Springs, USA

The hot springs found in abundance throughout Yellowstone National Park's thermal aras are bubbling cauldrons of steam and boiling water, most of them hotter than 150° F, and many of the in the 185° - 205° F range.  (Due to the elevation, water boils at about 198° in Yellowstone.)  Nineteen scalding deaths have been recorded in connection with Yellowstone's hot springs since 1870, all of them known or believed to have involved people who inadvertently fell into the springs through accident or carelessness - all except one.

On July 20 1981, 24-year-old David Allen Kirwan from La Canada, California, was driving through yellowstone's Fountain Paint Pot thermal area with his friend Ronald Ratliff and Ratliff's dog Moosie.  At about 1:00 pm they parked their truck to get out and take a closer look at the hot springs;  Mossie escaped from the truck, ran towards nearby Celestine Pool (a thermal spring whose water temperature has been measured at over 200° F),  jumped in, and began yelping.

Kirwan and Ratliff rushed over to the pool to aid the terrified dog, and Kirwan's attitude indicated he was about to go into the spring after it.  According to bystanders, several people tried to warn Kirwan off  by yelling at him not to jump in, but he shouted "Like hell I won't!" back at them, took two steps into the pool, and then dove head-first into the boiling spring. 

Kirwan swam out to the dog and attempted to take it to shore; he then disappeared underwater, let go of the dog, and tried to climb out of the pool.  Ratliff helped pull Kirwan out of the hot spring (resulting in second-degree burns to his own feet), and another visitor led Kirwan to the sidewalk as he reportedly muttered, "That was stupid.  How bad am I?  That was a stupid thing I did."

Kirwan was indeed in very bad shape.  He was blind, and when another park visitor tried to remove one of his shoes, his skin (which was already peeling everywhere) came off with it.  He sustained third-degree burns to 100! of his body, including his head, and died the following morning at a Salt Lake City hospital.  Moosie the dog, did not survive, either.



Source:  Los Angeles Times - "Man Scalded Trying to Save Dog from Pool." - 28 July 2001.

0 The Scarf Worth DYING For - Isadora Duncan, USA

Angela Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan (May 27, 1877 — September 14, 1927) was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life. She performed to acclaim throughout Europe.Duncan's fondness for flowing scarves was the cause of her death in an automobile accident in Nice, France, on the night of September 14, 1927, at the age of 50. The scarf was hand-painted silk from the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's mordant remark that "affectations can be dangerous."

Duncan was a passenger in the Amilcar automobile of a handsome French-Italian mechanic Benoît Falchetto, whom she had nicknamed "Buggatti" (sic). Before getting into the car, she reportedly said to her friend Mary Desti and some companions, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" (Goodbye, my friends, I go in glory!). However, according to American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan's body in the morgue, Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan's last words. Instead, she told Wescott, Duncan said, "Je vais à l'amour" (I am off to love). Desti considered this embarrassing, as it suggested that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation.

When Falchetto drove off, Duncan's large silk scarf, a gift from Desti, draped around her neck, became entangled around one of the vehicle's open-spoked wheels and rear axle. As The New York Times noted in its obituary: "Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, tonight met a tragic death at Nice on the Riviera. According to dispatches from Nice, Miss Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed by the force of her fall to the stone pavement."  Other sources described her death as resulting from strangulation, noting that she was almost decapitated by the sudden tightening of the scarf around her neck.

Isadora Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed next to those of her beloved children in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The headstone of her grave contains the inscription in French: "The Paris Opera Ballet School."

At her death, she was a Soviet citizen. Her will was the first of a Soviet citizen to be probated in the U.S.


Source

1 Belly-splashed to DEATH - Malcolm "King Kong" Kirk, UK

Malcolm (Mal) Kirk (18 December 1936 – 24 August 1987) was an English professional wrestler who went by the ring name King Kong Kirk.

His height was 1.86m (6' 1") and his weight ranged between 140 and 160 kg (approximately 22-25 stone, 309-352 lbs.)

Bald and fearsome looking, Kirk was usually cast as the "bad guy" and often tagged with the superheavyweight Giant Haystacks. Kirk's work rose to its prominence in the 1970s and 1980s due to the popularity of televised wrestling in the United Kingdom.

In August 1987, Kirk died after a tragic turn of events during the final moments of the match at the hippodrome circus in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk against British wrestling legend Shirley "Big Daddy" Crabtree. After Big Daddy had delivered his signature belly-splash, Kirk turned an unhealthy colour and was rushed to the James Paget hospital in Gorleston in Norfolk, but was pronounced dead on arrival. The inquest into Kirk's death found that he had a serious heart condition and cleared Crabtree of any responsibility.


Source