The strange ways people have supposedly died across history

Australian Riley Knight’s podcast Half-Arsed History, where he recounts some absurd and entertaining stories of our past, has amassed a following from around the world since its inception in 2018.

Now he's used his knowledge to write a book, History's Strangest Deaths, describing some of the most unusual ways people have met their ends over the centuries, including a classical Greek playwright killed by a tortoise, a Viking raider scratched by a severed head, two French kings killed by door frames and an Aussie PM who disappears of the coast.

For many stories, single-handedly pointing to a cause of death can be hard, especially when myth and legend are woven into the truth, Knight says.

For example, Rasputin has had a myriad of stories and folklore surrounding him.

“He was fed poisoned cakes, which apparently did nothing. He just wolfed them down, licked his chops and asked for a second helping.”

He was then shot several times and thrown into a cold river, Knight says.

“We may never know exactly what happened. I mean, some of the story that we have now has been told to us by the bloke who apparently shot him.”

Arrhichion, a celebrated ancient Greek pankration wrestler, set a record that has remained untouched in the thousands of years since, Knight says.

While stuck in an opponent’s headlock, Arrhichion managed to manoeuvre and cause the wrestling opponent enough pain to tap out.

“[The opponent] threw his body back and signalled to the referee that he tapped out, except he had him in a headlock, so when he threw himself back and surrendered, he actually snapped Aurelion's neck.

“Aurelion died on the spot, but he had won the bout, because his opponent had surrendered. The referees were forced to award this corpse with the equivalent of the gold medal, which back then was just a wreath of olive branches.”

There's a popular and legendary tale about the death of ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus, often described as the father of the tragedy genre for his literary work. It's factuality has been called into question over time.

“He went out in a way that was, well, I guess it was tragic to him, but it was more of something you'd expect from a comedy, because he had a golden eagle drop a tortoise on his head.

“[Golden eagles] learned this trick, where they will pick up a tortoise and drop them from a great height, and sort of smash them to bits on rocks below.

“The story goes that Aeschylus had a shiny bald head, which an eagle may have mistaken for a rock or maybe just dropped it at the wrong place at the wrong time, but it hit old Aeschylus on the noggin and that was the end of him.

“The eagle got a two-for-one deal, took out a tortoise and one of history's greatest playwrights.”

Greek king Pyrrhus, who you may know from the phrase ‘Pyrrhic victory’, died a rather strange way in battle.

“He was out there fighting shoulder to shoulder with his troops, when he approached this enemy soldier and looked like [Pyrrhus] was going to cut him down, another soldier fallen to the great Pyrrhus of Epirus.

“Then he died when the soldier's mum, looking from an upstairs window nearby, chucked a roof tile at his head, which knocked him out and then the soldier was able to finish off the job.”

King Louis III from the ninth century died about the age of 18 years old, Knight says.

“He was chasing a girl on his horse, and decided to pursue this girl inside on horseback and smacked his head at great speed on the door frame, as his horse apparently ran inside like this.

“Then 600 years later, King Charles VIII, he's rushing through the palace, hurrying over to watch - of all things - a game of tennis, which was very popular amongst French royalty at the time, when he slipped on a wet floor in a certain area of the castle.

“Again, bonked his head on a lintel and never recovered.” (Although the actual cause of death has been disputed.)

Before the arrival of antibiotics, people died from the simplest of infections that worsened.

“In the case of King Alexander of Greece - the second-most famous Greek Alexander, I would say – no-one wanted to chop his leg off.

“No-one wanted to amputate the leg where this monkey had bitten him, because no-one wanted to chop off the leg of a king. He died instead, because amputation is one of the only ways to deal with infections like these in an age before antibiotics.

“There's a Viking warlord [Sigurd the Mighty], who decapitated one of his foes and then mounted the head on his saddle.

“Sigurd the Mighty came undone when the teeth of this decapitated head lacerated his leg. The wound again turned septic and he died.”

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was a “leading light” in his field, Knight says.

“He was at a fancy banquet one time and thought it would be a bit rude to his hosts, if he got up in the middle of it, and went and had a wee ... He held it in and ruptured his bladder, and died a couple of days later as a result, this poor bloke.

“He died, as I said, a couple of days later, long enough for him to compose his own epitaph, which was, ‘He lived like a sage and died like a fool’.”

Although this tale is wildly popular, archaeologists studying his remains in 2018 pointed to obesity, diabetes, and alcoholism as contributing factors to death.