September 22, 2011 / Featured articles / 0 comments
This is no way for one to die, but since we are talking here about the 9th century and people who didn’t hesitate of cutting someones head, than there are no many surprises. People were dying of common flue those days, so a minor infection is not something what was harmless in the year 892. Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney killed his enemy Mael Brigte with cutting his head. He took his head to show off back home, but as you know at that time dentists were not to popular and this guy (decapitated one) had very rotten teeth. Since the head was just hanging on the horse saddle, it cut Sigurd’s leg and caused an infection. He died after that.
If you thought that an infection from a teeth cut is a bummer, than think twice. Edward II in 1327 was imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. As if this was not enough, the rumor is that he was killed by red-hot iron inserted trough his anus! Ouch! That must have been one painful death, specially knowing that he couldn’t have died instantly. King is dead, long live the king!
Not all the people have a privilege to chose how to die, but there are some who have a really unusual requests. For instance, George Plantagenet, almost 1st of everything, 1st Duke of Clarence, 1st Earl of Salisbury, 1st Earl of Warwick, who was best known from the War of Roses. Following his conviction, he was “privately executed” at the Tower on 1478. Since he was a noble man, the death could not be an usual one. The tradition may have originated in a joke, based on his reputation as a heavy drinker. So, he got drowned in a vat of a Malmsey wine. Strange, isn’t it? Would you chose a death like this?
Arthur Aston was not a lucky man, he didn’t have a leg, but that just leaded to rumors that he has gold in that wooden led, so what happened is that he got beaten to death with the very same leg. Being a solider and expecting death like this was not likely, he was more likely prepared to die in the combat, but there are some bizarre faiths you can’t escape.
Adolf Frederic the king of Sweden died the most bizarre way. One would think that money and power can buy everything, but this king died from digestive problems in 1771 after having consumed a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert: hetvägg served in a bowl of hot milk. In Sweden children learn about this king as the one who eaten himself to death!
You know that story, how it is much easier to get stroke by a lighting than win lotto? Well it seems like it would be better for this football team to had been playing some lottery or other luck games. In 1998 an entire visiting association football team playing against Basanga was killed by lightning during a match in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone on Basanga, the home team, survived.
The World Sauna Championships were an annual endurance contest held in Heinola, Finland, from 1999 to 2010. They originated from unofficial sauna-sitting competitions that resulted in a ban from a swimming hall in Heinola. After the death of Vladimir Ladyzhensky, a competitor from Russia, in 2010 this competition got forbidden!