8 Unbelievable Ways to Die

Did you know that three people died as a result of a single falling dog? Or that a diet of lean meat can prove lethal?

This article looks at some unbelievable (but real) ways to die, including...

• Laughing to Death: At least he died happy
• Being Near History's Worst Amputation: A 300% mortality rate
• Killed by Conducting: Music can be a risky business
• Rabbit Starvation Syndrome: High protein and low fat can make a deadly diet
• Being Near a Falling Dog: How a plummeting poodle caused the death of three people
• Fatal Familial Insomnia: Genetics or mutation can cause a sleepless demise
• Drowning in a Molasses Flood: Cutting costs led to sticky ends
• Betrayed by a Beard: How a cartoonishly-long beard got its owner killed

Laughing to Death: Have you ever laughed so much you were left wheezing? It turns out that a chuckle can escalate to dangerous levels - or even death.

Sufferers of a laugh-induced syncope (or Seinfeld syndrome after the cause of the first recorded case) can be wracked with uncontrollable laughter and can even lose consciousness as a result.

A 2007 case occurred when a 29 year old male (in otherwise good health) witnessed a coworker trip and bash his head on a sink. He started to laugh uncontrollably (to the point that he was bent double) before feeling dizzy and losing consciousness for around three seconds. He was fine as soon as he regained consciousness,

The same can't be said for Alex Mitchell, who experienced heart failure while watching an episode of "The Goodies" in 1975. Mitchell had laughed for around half an hour at the fictional, black pudding based martial-art of "Ecky Thump" (it is... British humor.)

In 2012 Mitchell's granddaughter was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome, an inherited heart condition that can prove fatal under stress. It's possible that Mitchell had this condition and that the extended laughter became lethal as a result.

Being Near History's Worst Amputation: It's a sad thing when a patient doesn't survive an operation... but in this case, two other people died thanks to the vigor of the surgery.

Before we had such things as reliable anesthetics and blood transfusions, the best hope for surviving an amputation was the speed of the surgeon. A slow procedure could result in massive blood loss and shock - a recipe for a dead patient.

Robert Liston was a surgeon operating in the early 19th century. He came up with a number of innovations that revolutionized amputations (including specialist knives and cutting flaps of skin to heal over the wound) but he was also a bit of a showman - and an incredibly fast one at that. He would call for any spectators to time him, with his personal best being 28 seconds to amputate a leg.

Liston's speed may have been a boon, but it could also be a bane. He is infamous for an amputation in which the patient, an assistant and an observer died.

The patient developed gangrene after the operation and succumbed as a result - not uncommon in this situation. The assistant lost part of his hand to the blurred blade of Liston and also contracted a fatal case of gangrene. Finally, a spectator narrowly avoided being wounded by Liston's flourished knife - but the shock was too much for him and he dropped dead at the scene!

Killed by Conducting: Accidents on stage are an unfortunate reality of showbusiness - but it's pretty unusual for a conductor to orchestrate their own demise.

Jean-Baptiste Lully was an expert composer and violinist in the court of King Louis XIV of France. During a performance to celebrate the King's recovery from surgery, Lully accidentally struck his own foot with a heavy conducting staff.

The injury became infected and gangrene began spreading through Lully's leg... but the musician refused to let doctors amputate, fearing the loss of his ability to dance more than death.

Sadly the doctors proved correct, with Lully dying to the infection raging through his body.

Rabbit Starvation Syndrome: Did you know that you can starve to death with a belly full of meat?

Ok, it's a little bit more complicated than that. Rabbit starvation syndrome can occur when your diet has too much protein but too little carbohydrates or fat - a diet consisting of lean rabbit meat fits that description rather well. Keeping up this kind of diet can overwhelm your kidney's ability to remove protein waste products like ammonia and urea.

The end result is protein poisoning, with symptoms including nausea and headaches, weakness, hunger, diarrhea, low blood pressure and slow heart rate. It can also create a craving for fats - which can alleviate the condition!

Remaining on such a diet can lead to death - something well known to native Canadian subarctic and arctic hunters.

Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefánsson risked rabbit starvation syndrome as an experiment. He had come to believe that the met-rich Inuit diet was a healthy one and volunteered to be monitored while living on meat alone.

Within a few days of a lean meat diet in New York's Bellevue Hospital, symptoms of protein poisoning started to appear. Adding fatty meats to the meal plan swiftly reversed the symptoms - Stefánsson ate a meat and fat diet for the rest of the year with no ill effects.

Being Near a Falling Dog: While there are dangerous dogs out there, it's pretty rare for one to kill by falling on a victim.

In 1988 Buenos Ares, a poodle called Cachi plunged from a 13th floor balcony. It's not really clear how the dog fell, but apparently repairs had recently been made to the structure - perhaps it wasn't dog proof?

Either way, the poor poodle fell and landed directly on the head of 75 year old Marta Espina... killing them both.

Naturally this caused something of a scene and 46 year old Edith Sola paused in the road to observe... where she was run down by a bus.

Seeing all this happen would be pretty traumatic - it certainly proved so for an unidentified man who experienced a heart attack and died in the ambulance.

Fatal Familial Insomnia: Did you know that some people lose the ability to sleep... and die as a result?

Fatal familial insomnia is very rare (a few hundred cases have been reported worldwide) but it is invariably fatal. The condition is caused by a mutation of the prion protein (PRNP) gene and becomes active when enough of the mutated prions have been produced - on average at around 50 years old.

The disease lasts between seven and thirty-six months, marked by worsening insomnia and ending in death. There is no cure - though a long-running clinical trial looking at preventing the disease from taking hold is currently being held in Italy.

On a further cheery note, the condition is normally inherited... but on rare occasions the gene can mutate all by itself.

Drowning in a Molasses Flood: In 1919 a 2.3 million gallon wave of liquid sugar rushed through the streets of Boston.

The wave came from a rupturing 50ft molasses tank, spilling its contents into the unusually warm weather. The warm sticky fluid reached around 35 miles per hour, derailed a train, crushed buildings and ripped a firehouse from its foundations.

Twenty-one people were killed by the wave and a further hundred and fifty were injured. Many were trapped by the sticky fluid, with some thought to have literally suffocated beneath the sugar.

Perhaps the worst thing about this disaster is how preventable it was. The tank was known to be poorly made - it leaked enough that local children collected liquid sugar in buckets. The bulging seams also wept molasses, with the Purity Distilling Company responding to complaints by painting the tank brown to hide the problem. In the wake of the disaster, the owners attempted to blame an anarchist bomb plot... but the authorities found them unconvincing.

Betrayed by a Beard: Let's finish on a slightly lighter note - a man killed by his own beard.

Hans Steininger was the 16th century burgomaster of Braunau am Inn in Austria, but his real claim to fame was a beard of epic proportions. The heroic facial hair reached around four and a half feet in length, requiring him to tuck it in a pocket to avoid tripping.

Sadly he'd forgotten this precaution in 1567 when a fire ripped through the town. He stepped on his own beard and fell, snapping his neck on impact.

The inhabitants of Braunau am Inn still thought the deadly beard was an accomplishment worth celebrating. It was removed and treated as a town heirloom (or "hairloom") and can still be visited today in the District Museum Herzogsburg in Branau.

Thanks for reading - perhaps you'd also be interested in...

• Burke and Hare: Anatomy Murderers
• Can These 3 Giant Catfish Eat Humans?

Sources and Further Information:

• Laughter-Induced Syncope: No Laughing Matter
• Goodies' fan Alex Mitchell 1975 laughter death 'solved'
• Robert Liston and his Amputation Knives
• ArtiFacts: Built for Speed—Robert Liston’s Surgical Technique
• Jean-Baptiste Lully: the Baroque composer who died of gangrene after stabbing his foot with a conducting stick
• Rabbit starvation (protein poisoning)
• The Canadian Encyclopedia: Rabbit Starvation
• Three dead after dog falls 13 floors
• Fatal Familial Insomnia
• 100 years ago today: Molasses crashes through Boston's North End
• Visit a Beard That Killed Its Owner