Timothy Treadwell

Timothy Treadwell  was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, amateur naturalist, and documentary film maker, whose birthname was Timothy Dexter. He lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska, USA, for approximately 13 seasons. At the end of his 13th season in the park in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and devoured by one or possibly two grizzly bears.Treadwell’s life, work, and death were the subject of the 2005 documentary film by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man.An audio recording of the attack survived and part of it can be found on the internet.

In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, a physician assistant, Amie Huguenard, visited Katmai National Park in Alaska. Treadwell chose to set his campsite near a salmon stream where grizzlies commonly feed in the fall. Treadwell was in the park later in the year than usual at a time when bears fight to gain as much fat as possible before winter and limited food supplies cause them to be more aggressive than in other months. Food was scarce that fall, so the grizzly bears were even more aggressive than usual.
Treadwell was supposed to leave the park at his usual time of year, but he had a disagreement with the airline about his ticket and decided to stay longer in the park. The bears he’d been used to during the summer had already gone into hibernation, and bears that Treadwell did not know from other parts of the park were moving into the area. The very last footage that shows Treadwell alive also shows a bear behind him; the bear had been diving into the river over and over for a piece of dead salmon.

 

Lee Seung Seop

Lee Seung Seop was an industrial boiler repairman in Taego South Korea. He was fired for his job for missing work to play computer games.
On August 3, 2005, he achieved global notoriety when he visited a nearby Internet cafe and proceeded to play StarCraft for almost fifty consecutive hours. Ultimately, from both exhaustion and dehydration induced heart failure he went into cardiac arrest. He died shortly thereafter at a local hospital. A friend commented: “He was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn’t stop himself.” About six weeks before his death, his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, broke up with him, and he had been fired from his job for missing work to play computer games

 

Carol Gotbaum

New Yorker Carol Gotbaum died while in police custody at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in 2007. Authorities said she may have strangled herself while attempting to get out of handcuffs.

 

 

Jennifer Lea Strange

Jennifer Lea Strange was a 28-year-old woman who died of water intoxication on January 12, 2007 after taking part in a Sacramento, California, radio station’s water-drinking contest. Strange, along with twenty other participants, took part in a contest held by KDND-FM’s “Morning Rave” show called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” where the winner would win a Wii, a popular and at that time difficult-to-obtain Nintendo video game console. The winner was the one who could consume the most water without urinating. Strange came in second place; it was not immediately known how much water Strange consumed, but other contestants speculate that Strange drank up to two gallons of water .

 

Cheryl Sarate

Cheryl Sarate was a college freshman in the Philippines who burned to death when her costume caught fire during a college beauty pageant. The tragedy dominated headlines for many months in the Philippines media and engendered much discussion and controversy over issues of safety, responsibility, and liability.

A few days after Sarate’s death, TV network ABS-CBN obtained and broadcasted part of an amateur video (available for viewing on YouTube) of the incident. Although mitigated by the camera angle (which never shows a totally unobstructed view of Sarate on fire due to spectators in the field of view), it nevertheless horrified viewers, both for the horrendous nature of the accident, as well as the seeming indifference and neglect of those present. It showed that most bystanders did not attempt to come to her aid, many simply standing and staring at what was happening, while others moved away from Sarate for their own safety. There is even some laughter heard on the soundtrack. Additionally, the emcee is heard announcing that the pageant would resume in 20 minutes, apparently unaware of or indifferent to the severity of Sarate’s injuries.

 

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko  was a former officer of the Russian State security service, and later a Russian dissident and writer.

Litvinenko worked in the Military Counter Intelligence. He was promoted to the Central Staff, and specialised in counter-terrorism and infiltration of organised crime. Six years later, he was promoted to senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section of the FSB.

On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised. His illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body. In interviews, Litvinenko stated that he met with two former KGB agents early on the day he fell ill – Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, though they deny any wrongdoing. The men also introduced Litvinenko to a tall, thin man of central Asian appearance called ‘Vladislav Sokolenko’ who Lugovoi said was a business partner. Lugovoi is also a former bodyguard of Russian ex-prime minister Yegor Gaidar (who also suffered from a mysterious illness in November 2006). Later, he had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Soho in London, with an Italian acquaintance and nuclear waste expert, Mario Scaramella, to whom he made the allegations regarding Italy’s Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Scaramella, attached to the Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics, claimed to have information on the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006.

 

 

Stephen Robert Irwin

Stephen Robert Irwin known simply as Steve Irwin and nicknamed “The Crocodile Hunter”, was an iconic Australian television personality, wildlife expert, and conservationist. He achieved world-wide fame from the television program The Crocodile Hunter, an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series co-hosted with his wife Terri Irwin.

On 4 September 2006, Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray spine while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, at Batt Reef, which is located off the coast of Port Douglas in Queensland.

 

 

Brian Douglas Wells

Brian Douglas Wells was an American pizza delivery man who was killed by a time bomb fastened to his neck, purportedly under duress from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb exploded. The bizarre affair was subject to much attention in the mass media.

In a July 2007 indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that Wells had been involved in the planning of the botched crime. Two of his co-conspirators, Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of bank robbery, conspiracy, and weapons charges. A third co-conspirator, William Stockton, was given immunity in exchange for his testimony.Kenneth Barnes subsequently pleaded guilty in September 2008 and largely confirmed that Wells was indeed involved in planning the robbery but also revealed Wells was under the impression an actual bomb would not be used. When he discovered the bomb was real, Barnes said a pistol was fired, and witnesses confirmed hearing a gunshot, in order to force Wells’ compliance.

 

 

Kenneth Pinyan

Kenneth Pinyan  was a Gig Harbor,Washington resident who engaged in receptive anal sex with full-size stallions at a farm near the city of Enumclaw. He videotaped those sex acts and distributed them informally under the name Mr. Hands.
During a July 2005 sex act, which was being videotaped by a friend of his, he suffered a perforated colon, and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in the The Seattle Times and was one of that paper’s most read stories of 2005.
Pinyan’s death prompted the passing of a bill in Washington State some months later prohibiting both sex with animals, and the videotaping of the same. However, the video seen by many others was before the accident.
A documentary of the life and death of Pinyan, and the life led by those who came to the farm near Enumclaw as he did, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 under the title Zoo. It was one of 16 winners out of 856 candidates for the festival, and played at numerous regional festivals in the USA thereafter.[4] Following Sundance, it was also selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the prestigious Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
The media outlets that reported the story withheld Pinyan’s name. His name was revealed on national radio by talk show host Tom Leykis in the summer of 2005.

 

 

Owen James Hart

Owen James Hart was a Canadian professional wrestler who was widely known for his time in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Hart was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada the youngest of 12 children to wrestling promoter Stu Hart and Helen Hart. He was the younger brother of professional wrestler Bret Hart.

On May 23, 1999, Hart fell to his death in Kansas City, Missouri during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event. Hart was in the process of being lowered via harness and rappel line into the ring from the rafters of Kemper Arena for a booked Intercontinental Championship match against The Godfather. In keeping with the Blazer’s new “buffoonish superhero” character, he was to begin a dramatic entrance, being lowered to just above ring level, at which time he would act “entangled”, then release himself from the safety harness and fall flat on his face for comedic effect – this necessitated the use of a quick release mechanism. It was an elaboration on a Blue Blazer stunt done previously on the Sunday Night Heat before Survivor Series 1998. This time, something went wrong with the stunt harness, apparently triggering the release mechanism early as he was being lowered. Hart fell 78 feet (24 m) into the ring, landing chest-first on the top rope, approximately a foot from the nearest turnbuckle, throwing him into the ring. In Mick Foley’s autobiography Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, he claims that following the fall, Hart attempted to sit up and did so before falling back.

Hart had performed the stunt only a few times before and was worried about performing the stunt at the Kemper Arena due to the height involved. Hart’s wife Martha has suggested that, by moving around to get comfortable with both the harness and his cape on, Hart unintentionally triggered an early release. TV viewers at home did not see the incident or its aftermath – at the moment of the fall, a pre-taped vignette was being shown on the pay-per-view broadcast as well as on the monitors in the darkened arena. After, while Hart was being worked on by medical personnel inside the ring, the live event’s broadcast showed only the audience. Meanwhile, WWF television announcer Jim Ross repeatedly told those watching live on pay-per-view that what had just transpired was not a wrestling angle or storyline and that Hart was hurt badly, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. Hart was transported to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. (Hart had actually died while still being tended to in the ring.) The cause was later revealed to be internal bleeding from blunt chest trauma.

 

 

Salvatore Phillip Bono

Salvatore Phillip “Sonny” Bono was an American record producer, singer, actor, and politician whose career spanned over three decades.
On January 5, 1998, Bono died of injuries after striking a tree while skiing on the Nevada side of the Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California.
Bono’s death came just days after Michael Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a similar skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. Bono’s widow, Mary, was elected to fill the remainder of the Congressional term. Over 10 years after his death, she continues to champion many of Sonny’s causes, including the ongoing fight to save the Salton Sea.

After Sonny’s death, Mary told an interviewer from TV Guide that Sonny was addicted to and seriously abusing prescription drugs, mainly Vicodin and Valium. Even though Mary claimed that Sonny’s drug use caused the accident, the autopsy showed no narcotics and only a very small amount of Valium, not enough to cause impairment according to the Washoe County Coroner’s report.

After being asked by Mary Bono, Sonny’s ex-wife, Cher, gave a eulogy at Bono’s funeral. His final resting place is Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California. The epitaph on Bono’s headstone reads: “And The Beat Goes On.”

 

 

Garry Hoy

Garry Hoy  was a lawyer for the law firm of Holden Day Wilson in Toronto. He is best known for the circumstances of his death; in an attempt to prove to a group of summer interns that the glass in the Toronto-Dominion Centre was unbreakable, he threw himself through a glass wall on the 24th story and fell to his death after the window frame gave way.  He had apparently attempted this stunt many times in the past, having previously bounced harmlessly off the glass.

 

Robert  Dwyer

Robert “Budd” Dwyer  was an American politician who, on the morning of January 22, 1987, committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a revolver during a televised press conference.

 

 

Thomas Lanier Williams

Williams died on February 24, 1983, after he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye.His brother Dakin and some friends believed he was murdered. The police report, however, suggested his use of drugs and alcohol contributed to his death. Many toxic drugs were found in the room. Williams’ response may have been diminished by the effects of drugs and alcohol.

Williams’ funeral took place on Saturday March 3, 1983 at St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in New York City. Williams’ body was interred in the Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. Williams had long told his friends he wanted to be buried at sea at approximately the same place as the poet Hart Crane, as he considered Crane to be one of his most significant influences.

Williams left his literary rights to The University of the South in honor of his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university. It is located in Sewanee, Tennessee. The funds support a creative writing program. When his sister Rose died after many years in a mental institution, she bequeathed over 50 million dollars from her part of the Williams estate to The University of the South as well.

In 1989, the City of St. Louis inducted Tennessee Williams into its St. Louis Walk of Fame.

 

 

Christine Chubbuck

Christine Chubbuck was an American television news reporter who committed suicide during a live television broadcast

 

George S. Patton

U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton survived battles with Pancho Villa’s forces, survived World War I and then survived World War II, only to break his neck in a car crash in Germany in December 1945. He died of complications from that injury less than two weeks later.

 

Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson  was an American writer, mainly of short stories, most notably the collection Winesburg, Ohio. That work’s influence on American fiction was profound, and its literary voice can be heard in Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell and others.Anderson died in Panama at the age of 64. The cause of death was peritonitis after he accidentally swallowed a piece of a toothpick embedded in a martini olive at a party. He was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, “Life, Not Death, is the Great Adventure.”

 

 

Isadora Duncan

 

Isadora Duncan  was an American dancer. She was born  in San Francisco, California. Isadora Duncan is considered by many to be the mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe.

Duncan’s fondness for flowing scarves which trailed behind her was the cause of her death in a freak 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 young Italian mechanic, Benoît Falchetto, whom she had ironically nicknamed ‘Buggatti’ . (The marque of the automobile is open to dispute but the informed opinion is that it was an Amilcar, a 1924 GS model. It was regularly described and filmed as a more glamorous Bugatti.) Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti (mother of 1940′s Hollywood writer-director Preston Sturges), and some companions, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!” (“Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!”); however, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan’s body in the morgue (his diaries are in the collection of the Beineke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan’s last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, “Je vais à l’amour” (“I am off to love”), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend’s final utterance, especially since it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation. Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan’s immense handpainted silk scarf, which was a gift from Desti and was large enough to be wrapped around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle’s open-spoked wheels and rear axle. As The New York Times noted in its obituary of the dancer on September 15, 1927, “The automobile was going at full speed when the scarf of strong silk began winding around the wheel and with terrific force dragged Miss Duncan, around whom it was securely wrapped, bodily over the side of the car, precipitating her with violence against the cobblestone street. She was dragged for several yards before the chauffeur halted, attracted by her cries in the street. Medical aid was summoned, but it was stated that she had been strangled and killed instantly.

Isadora Duncan was cremated and her ashes were placed next to those of her beloved children in the columbarium of Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. At her death she was a Soviet citizen, and her will was the first of a Soviet citizen probated in the USA.

 

 

McLean Stevenson

 

McLean Stevenson  was an American actor most recognized for his role as Lt. Colonel Henry Blake on the TV series M*A*S*H.Stevenson was a character on the tv show and Roger Bowen played the same role in the movie. They both died within a day of one another of cardiac arrest.

 

 

Frank Hayes

 

Frank Hayes was a jockey who, in 1923, suffered a fatal heart attack in the midst of a race at Belmont Park in New York. His horse, Sweet Kiss, finished and won the race with his lifeless body still atop, making him the first, and thus far, only, jockey to win a race after death.

 

Raymond  Chapman

Raymond Johnson Chapman  was an American baseball player, spending his entire career as a shortstop for Cleveland.

He is the second of only two Major League Baseball players to have died as a result of an injury received in a game (the first was Mike “Doc” Powers in 1909)Chapman was hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays. His death led Major League Baseball to establish a rule requiring umpires to replace the ball whenever it became dirty. His death was also one of the examples used to emphasize the need for wearing batting helmets (although the rule was not adopted until over thirty years later). His death was partially the reason MLB banned the spitball after the season.

 

 

French president Felix Faure

Faure died suddenly from apoplexy on 16 February 1899, at a critical juncture whilst engaging in sexual activities in his office with 30-year-old Marguerite Steinheil. It has been widely reported that those activities were oral sex, but their exact nature is in fact unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various jeux de mots (puns) made up afterward by his political opponents. One such pun was to nickname Mme Steinheil “la pompe funèbre” (wordplay in French: could mean both “funeral pomp” and “funeral pump”). George Clemenceau’s epitaph of Faure, in the same trend, was “Il voulait être César, il ne fut que Pompée” (another wordplay in French; could mean both “he wished to be Caesar, but ended up as Pompey”, or “he wished to be Caesar and ended up being pumped”); Clemenceau, who was also editor of the newspaper l’Aurore, wrote that “upon entering the void, he [Faure] must have felt home”.After his death, some alleged extracts from his private journals, dealing with French policy, were published in the Paris press.

 

 

William Henry Harrison

William Henry Harrison was an American military leader, politician, the ninth President of the United States, and the first President to die in office. The oldest President elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, Harrison had served 30 days in office, still the shortest tenure in United States presidential history, before his death in April 1841. His death created a brief constitutional crisis, but ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment,died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, exactly one month after taking office. Harrison had delivered his two-hour inaugural address outdoors, in the cold, with no overcoat