Morbid as it may seem but eventually all of us will come to pass yet there are some who did go the unique or bizarre way. These are just some of these unique or extremely rare circumstances of Death recorded throughout history and noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
Ancient Times
Menes
Menes, Egyptian pharaoh and unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt was carried off and then killed by a hippopotamus.
Date of Death: c. 3200 BC
Empedocles of Akragas
Empedocles of Akragas was a Pre-Socratic philosopher from the island of Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declares himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal". According to Diogenes Laërtius, he tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano. This legend is also alluded to by the Roman poet Horace.
Date of Death: c. 430 BC
Sophocles
A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of Sophocles, another of the three great Athenian tragedians, are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape. Another says that he Died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful. A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation
Date of Death: c. 406 BC
Mithridates
Mithridates, a Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days.
Date of Death: 401 BC
Democritus of Abdera
According to Diogenes Laërtius, the Greek Atomist philosopher Democritus of Abdera died at the age of 109; as he was on his deathbed, his sister was greatly worried because she needed to fulfill her religious obligations to the goddess Artemis in the approaching three-day Thesmophoria festival. Democritus told her to place a loaf of warm bread under his nose and was able to survive for the three days of the festival by sniffing it. He died immediately after the festival was over.
Date of Death: c 370 BC
Antiphanes
Antiphanes was a renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy. The Suda claims he died after being struck by a pear.
Date of Death: c. 310 BC
Agathocles of Syracuse
Agathocles, a Greek tyrant of Syracuse, was murdered with a poisoned toothpick.
Date of Death: 289 BC
Philitas of Cos
Philitas of Cos, a Greek intellectual, is said by Athenaeus to have studied arguments and erroneous word usage so intensely, that he wasted away and starved to death.[39] British classicist Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.
Date of Death: c 270 BC
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher from Citium (Kition), Cyprus. As he was leaving the school, he tripped and fell, breaking his toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" He died on the spot while holding his breath.
Date of Death: c. 262 BC
Qin Shi Huang
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, whose artifacts and treasures include the Terracotta Army, died after ingesting several pills of mercury, in the belief that it would grant him eternal life.
Date of Death: August 210 BC
Chrysippus of Soli
One ancient account of the death of Chrysippus, a third-century BC Greek Stoic philosopher, tells that he died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).
Date of Death: c. 206 BC
Middle Ages
John II Komnenos
Cut himself with a poisoned arrow during a boar hunt, and subsequently died from an infection.
Date of Death: April 1, 1143
Victims of the Erfurt Latrine disaster
While Henry VI, the King of Germany, was holding an informal assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second-story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement.
Date of Death: July 26, 1184
Henry I of Castile
Henry I, king of Castile, was killed by a tile that fell from a roof.
Date of Death: June 6, 1217
Al-Musta'sim
Al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.
Date of Death: February 20, 1258
Edward II of England
Edward II of England was rumored to have been murdered, after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body. However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II's death, and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda.
Date of Death: September 21, 1327
John of Bohemia
John of Bohemia, after being blind for 10 years, died in the Battle of Crécy when—at his command—his companions tied their horses' reins to his own and charged. He was slaughtered in the ensuing fight.
Date of Death: August 26, 1346
Charles II of Navarre
The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that King Charles II of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad", suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire, and Charles later died of his injuries. Froissart considered the horrific death to be God's judgment upon the king.
Date of Death: January 1, 1387
