Life is full of the weird, the wonderful and the outrageous.
People often overlook the fact that death can come in many forms. Here are a few of the
strangest deaths that have occurred through the ages.
Molière
Born in 1622, the Fench actor and playwright Jean Baptiste Poquelin,
better known by his stage name, Molière, was considered a giant of the
comedy genre. Famed for his farces, Molière was a hero of the stage and,
despite falling foul of certain religious groups, enjoyed immense
popularity in his lifetime. (The King of France even agreed to be the
godfather to his son!)
Unfortunately for him, he died the way he lived - being laughed at. The end came during a performance of his last play Le Malade Imaginaire, normally translated in English as The Hypchondriac.
Whilst he was treading the boards in the titular role, acting out to
be someone pretending to be ill, he was struck by a very real fit of
coughing and haemorrhaging and promptly died. Obviously, nobody moved to
help him, putting the fit’s uncanny authenticity down to the craft of a
master thespian, rather than pulmonary tuberculosis.
Tommy Copper, legendary British comedian and magician, easily
identifiable by his iconic fez hat, died on stage in 1984 in a
Molière-like fashion during a live show, televised to millions of people
form Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Tommy was renowned for his off the wall word play, charmingly amateur
illusions and the catchphrase “just like that.” He was a subtle master
of physical comedy, able to raise a laugh before he’d even said anything
merely by altering his stance and facial expressions.
During a routine which involved him pulling various items out of his
cloak, Cooper suffered a heat attack on stage, clutched his chest, fell
back into the curtain and died whilst the audience, unaware of the
situation, continued to laugh, waiting to see where the gag was going. A
fitting end for a comic genius who couldn’t help being funny, right
until the end.
Brendon Lee
In 1993 another performer lost his life in the course of plying his trade, when reality and artifice traded places. On the film set of
The Crow Brandon Lee, son of famous martial artist and actor
Bruce Lee, was himself killed whilst attempting to film his character’s
death scene.
Weeks before the accident the crew had been filming a scene in which a
hand gun was shown being loaded. They used cartridges with just a
bullet and a primer, however, when, off stage, somebody messing with the
prop squeezed the trigger, the primer exerted enough force to move the
cartridge into the barrel of the gun, where, unknown to anyone, it
remained lodged.
When the time came to film the scene in which Lee’s character is
shot, the same gun was loaded again with a blank cartridge, this time
containing a propellant and a primer, in order to give the visual effect
of gunfire. Nobody checked the barrel and, when the gun was fired, the
explosion from the newly inserted blank sent the cartridge lodged in the
barrel into Lee’s abdomen, killing him.
To this day even the most dedicated method actors avoid working with that particular crew.
Marcus Garvey
Whilst Lee was killed in the process of pretending to die, Marcus
Garvey, the Jamaican publisher, entrepreneur and key figure in many
Pan-African movements, was killed by somebody pretending he’d already
died.
Legend has it that Garvey expired as the result of several heart
attacks induced by the shock of reading a premature and highly negative
obituary of himself published in the Chicago Defender. The offending
article described him as “broke, alone and unpopular”, flying in the
face of the dictum “never speak ill of the dead.” (Although, at the time
it was written Garvey was actually still alive, so perhaps they can be
let off…)
There are many theories that media coverage actually creates the
reality it is supposed to report on. Being killed by reading your own
obituary is a rather extreme example of said phenomenon.
Tennessee Williams
Finally, Tennessee Williams, the writer of A Street Car Named Desire
(a play made famous by an Oscar winning film adaptation featuring a
young Marlon Brando) died in tragic, but rather stupid circumstances,
despite being one of the most talented minds of his generation.
Williams would routinely place eye drops on each of his eyes before
bed each night. In order to avoid misplacing the cap from the bottle, he
had a habit of placing it in his mouth.
One night in 1983, whilst leaning back to administer his eye drops,
the cap slid down into his throat and chocked him to death. To be fair
to him, though placing a small piece of plastic in your mouth and
leaning back may not seem sensible to us, he never lost that bottle cap
as long as he lived.
Source : http://www.funcage.com
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