Nine Weird Wacky Historical Deaths of Famous People

Source (Lamprey waiting to be cooked)

Henry loved lampreys and on this day he supposedly ate three pails full of them and promptly died from food poisoning.

Adolf Frederick of Sweden

Adolf Frederick was the King of Sweden for 20 years. On February 12, 1771, he had a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: semla (fine pastry seen below) served in a bowl of hot milk.

The meal gave him bad indigestion and he died. He is remembered in Sweden today as “the king who ate himself to death.”

John Kendrick

Image via Wikipedia

Kendrick was an American sea captain who took part in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. He then became a commissioned privateer and was captured by the British. Upon release he commanded several Navy vessels until the end of the war. He then commanded missions into the Pacific Ocean and in 1794 in the Hawaiian Islands Kendrick and a British Navy ship helped Chief Kalanikupule repel an invasion by a rival chief. After the victory Kendrick’s ship fired a 13 gun salute. When the British ship fired a return salute the British mistakenly shot off a cannon loaded real grapeshot and Kendrick and several of his men were killed as they watched the salute from their deck.

Francois Vatel

Source

In April of 1671, Vatel was the head chef for an extravagant banquet for 2,000 people hosted in honour of Louis XIV at the Château de Chantilly. Vatel is famous for inventing Chantilly cream, a sweet, vanilla-flavoured whipped cream. Vatel was a perfectionist to say the least and he was planning on serving fish at the banquet but when it did not arrive he committed suicide by running himself through with a sword. In the 2000 film Vatel starring Gerard Depardieu, Uma Thurman and Tim Roth, the reason given for Vatel’s suicide is his affair with Louis XIV’s mistress. Uma Thurman played the mistress in the film and if the real mistress looked like that, one can understand.

Image via Wikipedia

William Huskisson

(Replica of the train that killed Huskisson)

Huskisson was a financier and Member of Parliament in England. While he was attending the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 he was attempting to leave the train he was on to greet the Duke of Wellington at a stop. Another train was coming from the other direction and Huskisson misjudged the space between the two trains while holding the carriage door open. The other train hit the open door Huskisson was holding onto and he was knocked under the moving train’s wheels and his leg was horribly mangled. Huskisson was taken by train to the hospital but died a few hours later. He was not the first person to die from a train accident but due to his stature his death by train was the first to be widely reported.

Saint Peter

One of the Twelve Apostles, Peter is generally credited with founding the Roman Catholic Church and is considered by many as the first Pope. It is believed that after the great fire that destroyed Rome during Nero’s reign, Peter was one of the Christians rounded up and blamed for the fire. Tradition states that when Peter was ordered executed by the cross that he requested to be crucified upside down as he was not worthy of being killed the same way Jesus Christ was. The Romans granted him his wish in roughly 64 AD.

For more see 12 Bizarre and Wacky Deaths and Seven Extraordinarily Bizarre and Wacky Deaths