This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the 20th century, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
1900s Name of personImageDate of deathCountryDetailsVictims of the 1900 English beer poisoningIn the English Midlands and North West England, over 6,000 were poisoned and 70 people died after drinking beer which used non-purified sulfuric acid laced with arsenic as an ingredient. Most survivors were paralysed.Jesse William LazearThe 34-year-old American physician was convinced that mosquitoes were carriers for yellow fever. He allowed himself to be bitten by multiple mosquitoes and died days later from the disease.Victims of the Thanksgiving Day DisasterDuring the 1900 Big Game between the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinal American football teams, a large crowd of people who did not want to pay the $1 () admission fee gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof then collapsed, severing fuel pipes and causing at least 100 people to fall four stories to the factory floor. 60 to 100 more people fell directly on top of a furnace, the surface temperature of which was estimated to be around 500 °F (260 °C). 23 people were killed, and over 100 more were injured. The disaster remains the deadliest accident at a sporting event in U.S. history.James Doyle Jr.The lineworker in Smartsville, California, was killed by an electric shock through a telephone receiver after a broken power line came in contact with the telephone wire.R. Stanton WalkerThe 20-year-old was watching an amateur baseball game in Morristown, Ohio when a foul ball struck him in the hand, driving a knife he was passing to one of his friends into his chest. His friends asked if he was hurt and he said "not much", but the wound soon began to bleed heavily and he died within minutes.Ed DelahantyThe 35-year-old American baseball player for the Phillies died after being removed from a train due to drunken horseplay, falling off International Bridge above Niagara Falls. Sam Kingston, a local night watchman, was the last to see him alive, reportedly scuffling with him. Kingston's account of the incident was spotty and inconsistent; it is unclear whether Delahanty was intentionally pushed, accidentally fell, or decided to jump.Mary Ellen RumbleThe daughter of a farmer in Watervale near Murrumburrah in New South Wales was killed when one of a group of horses attempting to escape from a paddock knocked her down, causing her neck to snap.Archibald AndersonThe 19-year-old was bathing in the Yarra River when a tooth plate fell out and got lodged in his throat, choking him to death.Thomas SelfridgeThomas Selfridge and Orville Wright were presenting the 1908 Wright Military Flyer to the US Army Signal Corps Division at Fort Myer. The plane made 41⁄2 rounds around the Fort before running into problems and crashing. Selfridge fractured his skull and died three hours later, becoming the first person to die in the crash of a powered aircraft.Dietrich von Hülsen-HaeselerThe Chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet suffered a heart attack and died aged 56 after giving a ballet performance, crossdressing in a tutu, to Kaiser Wilhelm II and other members of a hunting party staying at Donaueschingen Palace. Shortly after ending his recital with a bow, he collapsed and was pronounced dead at the scene. The circumstances of his death were covered up by military officials so as not to further inflame public outrage over the Eulenburg affair, a government scandal dealing with accusations of homosexual behavior against members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage.Doc PowersThe 38-year-old American Major League Baseball player ran into a wall while chasing a foul ball during a Boston Red Sox-Philadelphia Athletics game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park, on 12 April 1909. He died from internal injuries and gangrene two weeks later.
1910s Name of personImageDate of deathCountryDetailsAda GregoryThe 52-year-old widow in Bentleigh, Victoria, who had been suffering from "fits of melancholia", began convulsing after rubbing powder on her teeth and asking her two children to take some medicine, which they did not do. She was believed to have taken strychnine.Sigmund Neuberger The 40-year-old German magician, better known as "The Great Lafayette", was so devastated by the death of his pet dog Beauty that he arranged burial for her with the Edinburgh City Council at Piershill Cemetery, under the condition that he would also be buried next to her when he died. Lafayette reportedly proclaimed that he would not live much longer after Beauty's death. Four days later, he was performing at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland, when a fire broke out and engulfed the stage within minutes. The audience, thinking that this was all part of the illusion, did not evacuate until the theatre manager signaled for the orchestra to play God Save the King. Two days after the fire, Lafayette's body double was misidentified as Lafayette himself until his real body was identified a day later and was buried per his wishes. Other than Lafayette, ten other people also died in the disaster.Franz ReicheltThe 33-year-old tailor and inventor leaped from the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute made from cloth, his own invention, and fell to his death. He was asked by friends and authorities to use a dummy for the feat, but declined, saying "I intend to prove the worth of my invention". His impact crater was deep.Mr. & Mrs. Emile Froment-MeuriceThe famed French goldsmith and his wife were killed when their house, in an aristocratic quarter of Paris, collapsed on them., cited in Emily DavisonOn 4 June 1913, the 40-year-old suffragette from London was mortally injured at the Epsom Derby when she ran onto the racetrack wearing a suffragette flag and was run over by Anmer, George V's horse, which jockey Herbert Jones was riding. She suffered a fractured skull, a concussion, and internal injuries and died in the Epsom Cottage Hospital 4 days later.Victims of the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916Between 1 and 12 July 1916, four people were killed and one critically injured by a shark attack at Jersey Shore, New Jersey. Before 1916, American scholars and scientific community doubted that sharks would fatally wound a living person in the temperate waters of the northeastern United States without provocation. The attack led to a wave of panic that led to shark hunts aimed at eradicating the population of "man-eating" sharks, and entered into American popular culture, serving as an inspiration of the novel Jaws and its film adaptation.Grigori Rasputin 30 December [O.S.17 December] 1916The 47-year-old Russian mystic died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation. According to his murderer himself, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grigori Rasputin consumed tea, cakes, and wine which had been laced with cyanide but he did not appear to be affected by it. He was then shot once in the chest and believed to be dead but, after a while, he leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who freed himself and fled. Rasputin followed and made it into the courtyard before being shot again, and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped his body and dropped it into the Malaya Nevka River.Gustav KobbéThe 61-year-old author and music critic was sailing in Great South Bay, New York, when he noticed a low-flying seaplane heading toward him. Kobbé attempted to get into the water, but the plane crashed into the mast of Kobbé's boat, splitting his head open.Victims of the Great Molasses Flood21 people were killed and 150 injured after a large tank of molasses burst in Boston's North End.
1920s