Curious and Unusual Deaths

Curious and Unusual Deaths
Genre	Documentary Historical Mystery Anthology
Created by	Andrew Kaufman Marlo Miazga
Written by	Carl Knutson
Directed by	John Paizs (season 1) David Weaver (season 1) Aaron Woodley (season 2)
Narrated by	Steve Herringer
Music by	Greg Johnston
Country of origin	Canada
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	19
Production
Producer	Marlo Miazga
Production locations	Toronto, Ontario, Canada Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Running time	30 minutes
Production companies	Lamport-Sheppard Entertainment New Road Media (season 2) ROGERS Telefund Passion Distribution
Original release
Network	Discovery Channel Canada Investigation Discovery
Release	October 31, 2009 (2009-10-31) – June 8, 2012 (2012-06-08)

Curious and Unusual Deaths is a Canadian historical documentary anthology television series aired on Discovery Channel Canada and Investigation Discovery from October 31, 2009 to June 8, 2012. ^[1] The show features real cause of strangest deaths based on events and incidents around the world. This show was similar to the American television series 1000 Ways to Die that was premiered on Spike in 2008.

True events featured

• A 28-year-old American actor Brandon Lee died on a set of The Crow on March 31, 1993 in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was posthumously cast when the movie was released in 1994 after his death.
• A 50-year-old American dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan died of strangulation by her scarf on September 14, 1927 in Nice, France.
• A 24-year-old American physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. died of radiation poisoning in a critical mass experiment on September 15, 1945 in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• A 40-year-old bookseller named Hailu Kidane Marian in Miami, Florida got fatally struck by lightning and died on July 8, 2007. He later died in the hospital.
• A 41-year-old man named Paul Gauci died using a butterfly bomb as a mallet as he welded in Rabat, Malta on October 1, 1981.
• A 61-year-old American distiller Jack Daniel died of sepsis infection or blood poisoning in his right foot at Lynchburg, Tennessee on October 9, 1911.
• A 39-year-old Canadian lawyer Garry Hoy who fell from the 24th floor of his office building of the "unbreakable" window at the Toronto-Dominion Centre, died on July 9, 1993.
• A 43-year-old inmate named Charles Justice at the Ohio State Penitentiary when he was executed by electric chair improves the prison's electric chair only to be put to death in the same chair on October 27, 1911. His criminal career reportedly began at age 22, when he was found guilty of burglary and theft in Greene County. He was arrested for robbery and murder.
• A 28-year-old South Korean unidentified gamer (whose last name is identified as Lee) who played a non-stop online game for nearly 50 hours, died of starvation, dehydration and heart failure on August 9, 2005.
• In New York, The Gramercy Park asbestos steam exploded and fatally killed a con ed worker in the 3rd floor and injured 24 people including a 28-year-old mother on August 19, 1989.
• A concrete slab falling and killing 33-year-old Lea Guilbeault at a Montreal restaurant on July 16, 2009.
• A 17-year-old man named Jason Findley died of electrocution of cause of a lightning strike using the telephone in his grandparents' house in Scotch Plains, New Jersey on May 21, 1985.
• An accident at the Byford Dolphin oil rig, located in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, cost five people their lives in a particularly horrifying way. The five fatalities identified as Edwin Arthur Coward, Roy P. Lucas, Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, William Crammond, and Truls Hellevik. One who survived at the accident was Martin Saunders, The incident shocked the public and led to more stringent safety regulations for those diving at inhospitable depths of the controversy on November 5, 1983.
• A 43-year-old city worker named Archie Tyler died after going down the drain in The Bronx, New York on March 2, 2001.
• A 30-year-old architect and pedestrian named Jodie Lane got electrocuted while walking through New York's East Village with her two dogs. Her dogs were shocked first; when she tried to help them, she stepped onto the electrified metal cover of a utility box on January 16, 2004.
• A 26-year-old man named John Edward Jones died when stuck for more than 24 hours at Nutty Putty Cave in Utah County, Utah on November 24, 2009.
• A 31-year-old man named Jeff Reese died of rapid overweight loss, heart malfunction, and kidney failure on December 9, 1997.
• A 16-year-old woman named Tanya Nickens died by drowning in the hot tub at a prom party at Wall Township, New Jersey on May 25, 1996.
• A 66-year-old Polish-French physicist and chemist named Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia on July 4, 1934.
• A 33-year-old Austrian-French inventor Franz Reichelt died falling off the Eiffel Tower, "flying," at Paris, France on February 4, 1912.
• A 29-year-old baseball player named Ray Chapman died from blunt-force trauma from a baseball at Polo Grounds, New York on August 17, 1920.
• A 37-year-old beach visitor and a fisherman named John Raymond Wilson died trapped in quicksand at Crystal Beach, Galveston, Texas on May 23, 2005.
• A 40-year-old Lithuanian-American professional tennis player named Vitas Gerulaitis died by carbon monoxide gas poisoning from an improperly installed heater, causing it to seep into the guesthouse until the maid discovered the body at Southampton, New York on September 17, 1994.
• A 16-year-old golfer named Jeremy T. Brenno died from hitting a bench with his golf club out of frustration and piercing his heart, killing him instantly at the Kingsboro Golf Club in Grovesville, New York on July 9, 1994.
• A 48-year-old English scientist named Basil Brown died drinking 10 gallons of carrot juice which caused his skin to be orange-colored at Croydon, England on February 17, 1974.
• A 51-year-old man at Cambridgeshire, England named Ronald McClagish died trapped inside his bedroom cupboard for a week, and he succumbed to bronchitis before he was found. The paramedics pronounced McClagish dead on February 15, 2004.
• A 45-year-old woman named Patsy Campbell from Portage, Indiana, died of sepsis and suffered second-degree burns covering 70% of her body at the tanning bed on May 24, 1989.
• A 68-year-old Japanese kabuki actor named Bandō Mitsugorō VIII visited a restaurant in Kyoto with his friends, He ordered four portions of puffer fish liver (Japanese: フグの肝/Hepburn: Fugu no Kimo); the liver of the puffer fish is mostly toxic and the sale is prohibited by local ordinaries and banned nationally in 1984. He ate one puffer fish liver and he initially survived the fish's poison; he ate the livers of the remaining puffer fish and he died following 8 hours of gradual paralysis and breathing difficulties at Kyoto, Japan on January 16, 1975.
• An 18-year-old man named Ricardo Alberto Martinez died in a car wash entangled by wires and automatic brushes at Wyoming, Michigan on August 31, 2007.
• A 30-year-old kite launching director named Steve Edeiken (or Ivan Lester McGuire) died of multiple injuries when his ankle got entangled in the lines of the Jalbert parafoil kite. He plunged 100 feet to the ground, dying at Long Beach, Washington on September 24, 1983.
• A 24-year-old man named Philip Quinn died when a lava lamp exploded in a stove penetrating his heart at Kent, Washington on November 28, 2004.
• A 65-year-old man named Clarence Aarons got electrocuted by a microwave at his home at Nicholas County, Kentucky and died tragically on January 5, 1998.
• A 28-year-old man named Peter John Robinson from Reefton, New Zealand died after he fell on ice and drowned in his cat's water bowl on August 15, 2001.
• A 50-year-old man named Alex Mitchell from King's Lynn at Norfolk, England died of over 25 minutes of non-stop laughing, causing heart failure on March 24, 1975.
• A 20-year-old unidentified man died after falling off a sixth-floor balcony during a party at Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on February 21, 2004.
• A 56-year-old unidentified woman died of the cooking pot explosion at Winslow, Indiana on July 29, 2008.
• In Paris, France located at Air France Flight 112/Boeing 777, Two unidentified men died of hypothermia and one fell on approach to Pudong International Airport on January 23, 2003.
• A 28-year-old woman named Jennifer Strange died of apparent water intoxication after participating in a contest by local radio station KDND 107.9 on January 12, 2007.
• A 58-year-old man named Charles Stephens died while attempting to go over Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, in a barrel on July 11, 1920.
• A 55-year-old Michigan woman named Judy Kay Zagorski died of blunt force injury when an eagle ray jumped out of the water at Vaca Keys, Florida on March 20, 2008.
• The Collyer brothers such as their names 65-year-old Homer and 61-year-old Langley Collyer, ultimately died inside their cluttered home of hoarded items at Harlem, New York on March 21, 1947.
• A 24-year-old Soviet fighter pilot named Valentin Bondarenko died in a fire burning by an oxygen-rich atmosphere by an accidental death at Moscow, USSR on March 23, 1961.

Seasons

Season	Episodes	Premiere date	Finale date
1	6	October 31, 2009 (2009-10-31)	December 5, 2009 (2009-12-05)
2	13	March 16, 2012 (2012-03-16)	June 8, 2012 (2012-06-08)

Series overview

Season	Episodes		Originally released
			First released	Last released
1	6		October 31, 2009 (2009-10-31)	December 5, 2009 (2009-12-05)
2	13		March 16, 2012 (2012-03-16)	June 8, 2012 (2012-06-08)

Season 1 (2009)

The first season of Curious and Unusual Deaths aired from October 31 to December 5, 2009 by Discovery Channel Canada and Investigation Discovery.

No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date

• Episode 1: At Work aired on October 31, 2009
• Episode 2: At Home aired on November 7, 2009
• Episode 3: In a Contest aired on November 14, 2009
• Episode 4: From the Deep aired on November 21, 2009
• Episode 5: Against the Clock aired on November 28, 2009
• Episode 6: By Their Own Invention aired on December 5, 2009

Season 2 (2012)

The first season of Curious and Unusual Deaths aired from March 16 to June 8, 2012 by Discovery Channel Canada and Investigation Discovery.

No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date

• Episode 1: Deaths in New York aired on March 16, 2012
• Episode 2: Rich and Famous Deaths aired on March 23, 2012
• Episode 3: Death by Sport aired on March 30, 2012
• Episode 4: Death by Handiwork aired April 6, 2012
• Episode 5: Death by Security Measures aired on April 13, 2012
• Episode 6: Death Under Pressure aired on April 20, 2012
• Episode 7: Death by Innocent Pastimes aired on April 27, 2012
• Episode 8: Death by Remedy aired on May 4, 2012
• Episode 9: Death by the Great Outdoors aired on May 11, 2012
• Episode 10: Trapped in Death aired on May 18, 2012
• Episode 11: Death by Routine Maintenance aired on May 25, 2012
• Episode 12: Death by Hardware aired on June 1, 2012
• Episode 13: Death by Mechanical Breakdown aired on June 8, 2012

Foreign names

• Morts insolites (Translated: Unusual deaths) - Canadian French version
• Morts subites (Translated: Sudden deaths) - European French version
• Extrañas formas de morir (Translated: Strange ways to die) - Latin American Spanish version
• As Mais Estranhas Formas de Morrer (Translated: The Strangest Ways to Die) - Brazilian Portuguese version
• Strani Modi Per Morire (Translated: Strange Ways to Die) - Italian version
• 奇异死亡 (Pinyin: Qíyì Sǐwáng / Translated: Strange Death) - Mandarin version
• 奇異死亡 (Jyutping: kei4ji6 sei2mong4 / Translated: Bizarre death) - Cantonese version

See also

• 1000 Ways to Die

Further reading

• Genzlinger, Neil (February 16, 2012). "Spoiler Alert: You're Going to Die at the End". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved February 15, 2025.

• Gorman, Brian (March 10, 2012). "People who met their ends with a twist". The Toronto Star. p. 202. Retrieved February 15, 2025.

• "Death By Lava Lamp ... And Other Strange Ways To Go". HuffPost. February 17, 2012.

References

1. "Discovery Fit & Health Premieres CURIOUS AND UNUSUAL DEATHS, 2/17". BroadwayWorld.com.

External links

• Curious and Unusual Deaths at IMDb