1 DEATH By Lava Lamp, USA

A man who placed a lava lamp on a hot stovetop was killed when it exploded and sent a shard of glass into his heart.

Philip Quinn, 24, of Kent, Washington, was found dead in his trailer home on a Sunday night by his parents.

A lava lamp features blobs of wax in liquid that rise and fall in a container when heated by a bulb at the base of the lamp.

The hippy-era psychedelic light exploded while Quinn was experimenting with it on his stove, closely observing it from only a few feet away when a flying shard of glass struck him in the heart and killed him.

“Why on earth he was heating a lava lamp on the stove, we don’t know,” Kent Police spokesman Paul Petersen said.

The heat from the stove built up pressure in the lamp until it exploded, spraying shards of glass with enough force to pierce his chest, with one shard piercing his heart and causing fatal injuries.  After the lamp exploded, Quinn apparently stumbled into his bedroom, where he died that afternoon, authorities said.

Police found no evidence of drug or alcohol use.

The circumstances of his death were later repeated and confirmed in a 2006 episode of the popular science television series MythBusters. The show also proved that even if shards of glass are not thrown with lethal velocity during such an attempt, the resulting spray of hot liquid from the lamp could easily cause severe burns to anyone nearby. The show also noted that the safety instructions clearly state that lava lamps should not be heated by any source other than the specifically rated bulbs and purpose-designed bases that are provided.  Homebrew lava lamp recipes can be found over internet, however some of them rely on combinations of highly flammable components like alcohol. Such lamps could represent a serious fire hazard in the case of rupture when heated over a light bulb.




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0 DEATH Due To Lawnmower Freak Accident, AUSTRALIA

An Australian woman walking to work was killed in a freak accident when she was hit by a flying piece of a steel pipe thrown up by a mower.
Muraka Jenny Vearncombe, 42, a mother of three from Townsville, Queensland, died instantly.

It appeared the slasher had run over a piece of steel pipe hidden in long grass, which was flung in the woman’s direction.

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Detective Sergeant Darren Randall. “She just happened to be in the exact trajectory of the pipe.”

The pipe ricocheted off the grass cutter with such force it travelled a further 50 meters (165 feet) after inflicting the fatal injuries.
The male tractor driver, an unnamed 48 year-old private contractor, is in hospital suffering shock.

The incident occurred across the road from Townsville Central State School, a primary school, but no children witnessed the woman’s death. The school closed for the day.
Local business owner Geoff Eales said his staff had been traumatized by the accident.

“The policewoman said it was the worst thing she had seen in 15 years,” Eales said.
“At the end of the day there is no other explanation than that it was bad luck. It was a one-in-a-million situation. If she had been one second later, or one second earlier, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Vearncombe was born in Papua New Guinea but moved to Australia 14 years ago. She met her fiancé Peter Pyne four years ago while living in Rockhampton.
She had three children from a previous marriage, Wayne, 18, Kevin, 23, and Tara-Lee who lives in Nanango and celebrates her 21st birthday in two weeks.

Vearncombe had been on her way to work at the African Bazaar in Flinders Mall but only made it 100 meters (328 feet) down the street when the accident occurred.
African Bazaar owner Harry Martin said he was devastated to lose Jenny as an employee and a friend.

“It’s such a tragic bolt out of the blue,” he told the Townsville Bulletin. “She was a wonderfully cheerful person and she also proved herself to be very reliable.”



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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.

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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.





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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.

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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.





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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.


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0 DEATH by Orange Peel - Bobby Leach, UK

Bobby Leach and his barrel after his trip over Niagara Falls, 1911

Bobby Leach, (1858 in Cornwall, England – April 26, 1926), wasn't afraid at tempting death.  He was the second person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, after Annie Taylor, and the first male to ever do so, accomplishing the feat on July 25, 1911. He spent six months in the hospital recovering from injuries he sustained during the fall, which included two broken knee caps and a fractured jaw.   Leach had been a performer with the Barnum and Bailey Circus and was no stranger to stunting. Prior to his trip over the falls he owned a restaurant on Bridge Street and would boast to customers that anything Annie could do…he could do better.

Unlike Annie Taylor before him, Bobby Leach attained some success from his endeavour. For several years he toured Canada, the United States and England, recounting his harrowing journey at vaudeville shows and lecture halls, exhibiting his barrel and posing for pictures.

Leach returned to Niagara Falls, New York in 1920 and operated a pool hall. While in his sixties he attempted to swim the whirlpool rapids but failed after several attempts. During these aborted attempts, Bobby Leach was rescued by William "Red" Hill Sr., a riverman, who knew the Falls well and became well known in the area for later rescues.

In 1926 while on a publicity tour in New Zealand, Leach injured his leg when he slipped on an orange peel (according to some reports, it was a banana peel). The leg became infected, and eventually gangrene necessitated the amputation of the leg. Despite this extreme procedure, Bobby Leach died two months later.




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0 The Siberian Mad Monk Who Wouldn't DIE, RUSSIA

Born in a small village in Siberia in 1869, Grigori Rasputin first came to the attention of the Russian aristocracy in 1903 when he arrived in the imperial capital St. Petersburg and set himself up as a holy man who claimed to be blessed with supernatural healing powers.

When the Tsarina, Alexandra, became desperate to find a cure for her haemophiliac son Alexei she turned to Rasputin.

In the years that followed, the heavily bearded monk won her confidence and that of her husband Tsar Nicholas II.

His alleged success at easing Alexei's suffering led the royal couple to give him an official position at court and he became an influential adviser.

Though he professed to be deeply religious, he was famously promiscuous and a big drinker.

His Early Life
Not much is known about his childhood and what is known was most likely passed down through his family members. He had two known siblings, a sister called Maria and an older brother named Dmitri. His sister Maria, said to have been epileptic, drowned in a river. One day, when Rasputin was playing with his brother, Dmitri fell into a pond and Rasputin jumped in to save him. They were both pulled out of the water by a passer-by but Dmitri eventually died of pneumonia. Both fatalities affected Rasputin and he subsequently named two of his children Maria and Dmitri.

The myths surrounding Rasputin portray him as showing indications of supernatural powers throughout his childhood. One ostensible example of these reputed powers was when Efim Rasputin, Grigori's father, had one of his horses stolen and it was claimed that Rasputin was able to identify the man who had committed the theft.

When he was around the age of eighteen, Rasputin spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery, possibly as a penance for theft. His experience there, combined with a reported vision of the Virgin Mary on his return, turned him towards the life of a religious mystic and wanderer. It also appears that he came into contact with the banned Christian sect known as the khlysty (flagellants) whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, led to rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals. Suspicions (which have not generally been accepted by historians) that Rasputin was one of the Khlysts threatened his reputation right to the end of his life.
Shortly after leaving the monastery, Rasputin visited a holy man named Makariy whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, and he modelled himself after Makariy. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889 and they had three children: Dmitri, Varvara and Maria. Rasputin also had another child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik (or pilgrim) and, during the time of his journeying, travelled to Greece and Jerusalem. In 1903 he arrived in Saint Petersburg where he gradually gained a reputation as a starets (or holy man) with healing and prophetic powers.


Attempted Murder and Eventual Death
A previous attempt on Rasputin's life had failed: Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in Pokrovskoye, his hometown along the Tura River in Siberia. On June 29, 1914, after either just receiving a telegram or exiting church, he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor. Iliodor, who once was a friend of Rasputin but had grown disgusted with his behaviour and disrespectful talk about the royal family, had appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin to form a mutual support group. Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"

After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. It was said of his survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His daughter, Maria, observed in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain relief.

The Moika Palace,
along the Moika River,
where Rasputin was supposedly lured and murdered
Pic by Wiki user BotCat

On December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a threat to the empire, a group of nobles led him down to the cellar, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men. Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because after the attack by Guseva he suffered from hyperacidity and avoided anything with sugar. In fact, she expresses doubt that he was poisoned at all. It has been suggested, on the other hand, that Rasputin had developed an immunity to poison due to mithridatism.

Determined to finish the job, Prince Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, leaving the conspirators no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to get one, and while at the palace, he went to check on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Yusupov. He grabbed Yusupov and attempted to strangle him. At that moment, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at Rasputin. After being hit three times in the back, he fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission. Some accounts say that his killers also severed his penis (subsequently resulting in urban legends and claims that certain third parties were in possession of the organ). After binding his body and wrapping him in a carpet, they threw him into the icy Neva River. He broke out of his bonds and the carpet wrapping him, but drowned in the river.

Three days later, Rasputin's body, poisoned, shot four times, badly beaten, and drowned, was recovered from the river. An autopsy established that the cause of death was drowning. It was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him. There is a report that after his body was recovered, water was found in the lungs, supporting the idea that he was still alive before submersion into the partially frozen river
Subsequently, the Tsaritsa Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, but after the February Revolution, a group of workers from Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into the nearby woods, and burned them. As the body was being burned, Rasputin appeared to sit up in the fire. His apparent attempts to move and get up thoroughly horrified bystanders. The effect can probably be attributed to improper cremation; since the body was in inexperienced hands, the tendons were probably not cut before burning. Consequently, when the body was heated, the tendons shrank, forcing the legs to bend and the body to bend at the waist, resulting in its appearing to sit up. This final happenstance only further fueled the legends and mysteries surrounding Rasputin, which continue to live on long after his death. The official report of his autopsy disappeared during the Joseph Stalin era, as did several research assistants who had seen it.

In a ghoulish and tasteless twist, a museum in St. Petersburg has displayed what it claims to be Rasputin's severed penis in a glass jar. Experts doubt it is the real thing however.
The "mad monk" was 47 when he finally breathed his last breath.

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1 The Brew To Die For, UK

1814: London Beer Flood, 9 people were killed (some drowned, some died from injuries, and one succumbed to alcohol poisoning) when 323,000 imperial gallons (1,468,000L) of beer in the Meux and Company Brewery burst out of their vats and gushed into the streets.

Meux's Brewery Co Ltd, established in 1764, was a London brewery owned by Sir Henry Meux. Meux, like many modern brewers, bought out smaller breweries - one such being the Horse Shoe Brewery (founded by a Mr Blackburn, and famous for its 'black beer'), located on the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, London.   Atop the Horse Shoe stood several large vats of beer. The largest was the porter vat - a 22-foot-high monstrosity that held over 600,000 litres of beer, in turn held together by a total of 29 large iron hoops.

The London Beer Flood occurred on 17 October 1814 in the parish of St. Giles, London, England.  The  huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons (610,000 L) of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons (1,470,000 L) of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The resulting noise was apparently heard as far away as five miles!  The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenaged employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble.

The brewery was located among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer.

Back at the brewery, one man managed to save his brother from going under the vast wave, but as the tide receded the true damage could be discovered. The beer tsunami left nine people dead; many had drowned (like Mary Mulvey and her 3-year-old son Thomas), others were swept away in the flood and died of the injuries they sustained (two young children: Hannah Banfield, 4, and Sarah Bates, 3), and the final victim actually succumbed some days later of alcohol poisoning - such was his heroic attempt to stem the tide by drinking as much beer as he humanly could.

Because of the poverty of the area, relatives of the drowned took to exhibiting their families' corpses in their homes and charging a fee for viewing. In one house, though, too many people crowded in and the floor gave out, plunging them all into a cellar half full of beer. This morbid exhibition moved locations, attracting more customers - and eventually the police, who closed the doors on the horrible circus. Later, the funerals of the dead were paid for by the St Giles population, coins left on their coffins. The stench of the beer apparently lasted for months, and after the initial excitement, many found both their homes and livelihoods swept away with the flood.

The brewery was eventually taken to court over the accident, but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God by the judge and jury, leaving no one responsible. The company found it difficult to cope with the financial implications of the disaster, with a significant loss of sales made worse because they had already paid duty on the beer. They made a successful application to Parliament reclaiming the duty which allowed them to continue trading.

The brewery was demolished in 1922, and today, the Dominion Theatre occupies a part of the site of the former brewery.


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