| Lists of unusual deaths | ||
|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | ||
| Middle Ages | Renaissance | Early modern period |
| 19th century | 20th century | 21st century |
| Animal deaths | ||
This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the early modern period, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
| Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sir Francis Bacon |  | 9 April 1626 | The English philosopher and statesman died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken carcass with snow to learn whether it could preserve meat. [1] [2] [ unreliable source? ] |
| Jörg Jenatsch |  | 24 January 1639 | The Swiss political leader was assassinated by a person dressed in a bear costume wielding an axe. Legend states that the axe was the same one that Jenatsch had once used to kill a rival. [3] [4] |
| Sir Arthur Aston | September 1649 | During the Siege of Drogheda, the Cavalier commander from Reading, England, was beaten to death by Oliver Cromwell's army with his own wooden leg because they suspected gold coins were concealed inside. [5] [ failed verification ] [6] | |
| Thomas Urquhart |  | 1660 | The Scottish aristocrat, polymath, and first translator of François Rabelais's writings into English is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne. [2] [ unreliable source? ] [7] [8] |
| François Vatel |  | 24 April 1671 | The majordomo of Prince Louis II de Bourbon-Condè was responsible for a banquet for 2,000 people hosted in honour of King Louis XIV at the Château de Chantilly, where he died. According to a letter by Madame de Sévigné, Vatel was so distraught about the lateness of the seafood delivery and about other mishaps, that he committed suicide with his sword, and his body was discovered when someone came to tell him of the arrival of the fish. [9] [10] |
| Molière |  | 17 February 1673 | The French playwright suffered a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by tuberculosis while playing the part of a hypochondriac in his own play Le malade imaginaire . He disguised his convulsion as part of his performance and finished out the show, which ends with his character dead in a chair. After the show, he was carried in the chair to his house, where he died. [2] [ unreliable source? ] [11] [12] |
| Jean-Baptiste Lully |  | 22 March 1687 | The French composer died of a gangrenous abscess after accidentally piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum . It was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance. [13] [14] |
| William III of England |  | 8 March 1702 | The king of England was riding his horse when it stumbled on a molehill. William fell and broke his collarbone, then contracted pneumonia and died several days later. After he died, Jacobites were said to have toasted in the mole's honour, calling it "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat". [15] [16] |
| Hannah Twynnoy |  | 23 October 1703 | The 33-year-old barmaid at the White Lion Inn was mauled to death by a tiger in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. She was the first person to be killed by a tiger in British history. [17] [18] [19] |
| Frederick, Prince of Wales |  | 31 March 1751 | The son of George II of Great Britain and father of George III died of a pulmonary embolism, but was commonly claimed to have been killed by being struck by a cricket ball. [20] : 105 [21] |
| Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann |  | 6 August 1753 | The Russian physicist was killed when a globe of ball lightning which he created in his laboratory struck him in the forehead. [22] [23] |
| Henry Hall | 8 December 1755 | The 94-year-old British lighthouse keeper died several days after fighting a fire at Rudyerd's Tower, during which molten lead from the roof fell down his throat. His autopsy revealed that "the diaphragmatic upper mouth of the stomach greatly inflamed and ulcerated, and the tuncia in the lower part of the stomach burnt; and from the great cavity of it took out a great piece of lead ... which weighed exactly seven ounces, five drachms and eighteen grains". The piece of lead is currently in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland. [24] [25] [26] | |
| John Day | 20 June 1774 | The English carpenter and wheelwright was the first human known to have died in an accident with a submarine. Day submerged himself in Plymouth Sound in a wooden diving chamber attached to a sloop named the Maria and never resurfaced. [27] [28] | |
| Frantisek Kotzwara |  | 2 September 1791 | While in London, the 31-year-old Czech violinist visited a prostitute named Susannah Hill and requested his neck be tied with a noose around a door knob. He died after the sexual intercourse of erotic asphyxiation. [29] [30] |
| Samuel Spencer | 20 March 1793 | The North Carolina lawyer and former colonel was sleeping on a porch in Anson County while wearing a red cap. Spencer's bobbling head drew the attention of a turkey, which viewed Spencer as another turkey and fatally wounded the 59-year-old with its talons. [31] [32] [note 1] | |
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today. His influence is such that the French language is often referred to as the "language of Molière".
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1673.
These are a series of incomplete lists of unusual deaths, unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
The Paris Opera Ballet is a French ballet company that is an integral part of the Paris Opera. It is the oldest national ballet company, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it. It is still regarded as one of the four most prominent ballet companies in the world, together with the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, the Mariinsky Ballet in Saint Petersburg and the Royal Ballet in London.
The Imaginary Invalid, The Hypochondriac, or The Would-Be Invalid is a three-act comédie-ballet by the French playwright Molière with dance sequences and musical interludes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. It premiered on 10 February 1673 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris and was originally choreographed by Pierre Beauchamp.
Pierre Beauchamp or Beauchamps was a French choreographer, dancer and composer, and the probable inventor of Beauchamp–Feuillet notation. His grand-father was called Christophe and his father, a violinist of the king's chamber, was simply called Louis. Following a custom of the time, Pierre Beauchamp was named Pierre after his godfather Pierre Vacherot, tailor of the queen's pages and a relative of the Beauchamps family.
Hannah Twynnoy is believed to have been the first person to have been killed by a tiger in Britain. Twynnoy was an early 18th-century barmaid working in The White Lion public house in the centre of the English market town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire.
Events from the year 1703 in England.
Jean-Baptiste Lully was a French composer, dancer and instrumentalist of Italian birth, who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas, he spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France and became a French subject in 1661. He was a close friend of the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on numerous comédie-ballets, including L'Amour médecin, George Dandin ou le Mari confondu, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Psyché and his best known work, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac is a three-act comédie-ballet—a ballet interrupted by spoken dialogue—by Molière, first presented on 6 October 1669 before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord by Molière's troupe of actors. Subsequent public performances were given at the theatre of the Palais-Royal beginning on 18 November 1669. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the choreography was by Pierre Beauchamp, the sets were by Carlo Vigarani, and the costumes were created by the chevalier d’Arvieux.
Armande-Grésinde-Claire-Élisabeth Béjart was a French stage actress, also known under her stage name Mademoiselle Molière. She was married to Molière, and was one of the most famous actresses in the 17th-century.
Les Musiciens du Louvre is a French period instrument ensemble, formed in 1982. Originally based in Paris, since 1996 it has been based in the Couvent des Minimes in Grenoble. The Guardian considers it one of the best orchestras in the world.
John Day was an English carpenter and wheelwright. He is the first recorded death in an accident with a submarine. With the financial support of Christopher Blake, an English gambler, Day built a wooden "diving chamber" without an engine. He attached his invention to the deck of a 50-ton sloop named the Maria, which Blake had purchased for £340. The sloop's hold contained 10 tons of ballast, and two 10-ton weights were attached beneath the keel which could be released from inside the diving chamber. An additional 20 tons of ballast would be loaded on the Maria after Day had been locked inside the diving chamber.
Events from the year 1673 in France
Bernard Deletré is a French operatic bass-baritone.
Many of history's most important figures have suffered strange deaths that do not seem to befit their noble legacy.
John's book details a host of weird assassination methods. Another strange one is the story of a Swiss leader Jörg Jenatsch...
...In a cruel ending, he was beaten to death with his own wooden leg.
Sir Thomas Urquhart, another poet, is said to have expired in a paroxysm of laughter, on hearing of the restoration of Charles the Second; a statement which is rendered sufficiently probable by the record of similar cases, and by the eccentric character of the individual.
There is a curious tradition that Sir Thomas Urquhart died of an inordinate fit of laughter on hearing of the restoration of Charles II.
Alors que le côté spectaculaire du geste de Vatel le transformait, à partir du XIXe siècle, en une sorte de fait d'arme de l'histoire culinaire de la France, son côté disproportionné en faisait parallèlement un objet d'étonnement et même de mystère.[While the spectacular side of Vatel's gesture transformed it, from the 19th century onwards, into a sort of feat of arms in the culinary history of France, its disproportionate side at the same time made it an object of astonishment and even mystery.]
Among the considerable number of men dedicated to the task of keeping Louis XIV entertained, several met bizarre ends... Nothing, however, quite equals the death of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the self-styled sieur de Molière...
Ironically Molière collapsed on stage while playing the hypochondriac in Le malade imaginaire.
Oddball deaths? Perhaps the only really freakish one concerning a composer involved Jean‐Baptiste Lully, the favorite of the Sun King.
...I do wonder whether this is in reference to the ultimately fatal bâton / baston, that is the long conducting stick of the orchestra director, which, in the dominant current version regarding historical fact, would ultimately, years later, turn out to be responsible for Lully's death, in a notorious tragic freak accident...
His death was a little unusual: his horse threw him when it stumbled in a mole's burrow and the king broke his collarbone.
Almost as strange as Mrs Johnston's gravestone is the story of Hannah Twynnoy, whom [sic] historians believe was probably the first person in Britain to be killed by a tiger.
Hannah Twynnoy holds the bizarre title of England's first tiger fatality.
Three centuries have passed since the shocking death of a young woman in Malmesbury, yet Hannah Twynnoy is remembered here in Malmesbury each day.
To some of the most distinguished of our race death has come in the strangest possible way, and so grotesquely as to subtract greatly from the dignity of the sorrow it must certainly have occasioned.
But the strangest death must be that of Frederick, Prince of Wales who died, some sources claim, after being hit with a cricket-ball.
Sokolow was destined to become the only witness to that day's bizarre events.
...Baltic physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann attempted a similar trial but was killed when he was struck by ball lightning (a rare weather phenomenon).
The reality of this assertion seemed, however, then incredible to Dr. Spry, who could scarcely suppose it possible that any human being could exist after receiving melted lead into the stomach...
Of the other two light-keepers, one, named Henry Hall, met his death in an extraordinary manner.
The story of Henry Hall became even more bizarre.
Until the wreck is located, the story remains a curious anecdote in the annals of submarine losses.
Knud R. Joergensen wrote in 1995 about the 1791 case of composer Franz Kotzwara who enlisted the help of a London prostitute, Susannah Hill, to assist him with his bizarre wish... It was the first documented case of death by sexual strangulation.
More notable is the manner of his death, which was quite shocking for the time and hints at some very dark fetishes indeed.
Spencer's death came as the result of an unusual accident.
Spencer had a most unusual death, by turkey.
