http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Beer_Flood
One of many great deaths listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths
207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after giving his donkey wine then seeing it attempt to eat figs.[6]
6th century BC: Legend says Greek wrestler Milo of Croton came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. Testing his strength, he tried to rend it with his bare hands. The wedges fell, trapping his hands in the tree and making him unable to defend himself from attacking wolves, which devoured him
So many good ones!
1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by a locomotive (Stephenson's Rocket), at the public opening of the world's first mechanically powered passenger railway.[45]
1862: Jim Creighton, a very early baseball player, died when he swung a bat too hard and injured himself, possibly by rupturing his bladder
1919: In the Boston Molasses Disaster, 21 people were killed and 150 were injured when a tank containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) of molasses exploded, sending a wave traveling at approximately 35 mph (56 km/h) through part of Boston, Massachusetts, United States.[55][56]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster1930: William Kogut, an inmate on death row at San Quentin, committed suicide with a pipe bomb created from several packs of playing cards and the hollow leg from his cot. At the time, the red ink in playing cards contained flammable nitrocellulose, which when wet can create an explosive mixture. Kogut used the heater in his cell to activate the bomb
1947: The Collyer Brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, was crushed to death when he accidentally triggered one of his own booby traps that had consisted of a large pile of objects, books, and newspapers. His blind and paralyzed brother Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers
