Unbelievable Facts - Strange Facts - Death

Unhappy Endings - Death

There was a Pope that never was. Stephen II was elected on 23 march 752, but died the following day. Since he was never consecrated, his name was omitted from the Vatican records and given to his successor.

The second Marquis of Ripon killed 556,000 game birds in his life. Fittingly, he dropped dead on a grouse hunt in 1923, having already bagged 52 birds that morning.

Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous detective agency, died on gangrene after tripping and biting his tongue.

Mithridates VI of Pontus in Asia Minor took small doses of poison throughout his life to develop a resistance in case anyone attempted to poison him. He built up such a strong immunity that when he tried to take his own life to foil the Roman invaders, the poison he took had on effect. So he ordered a slave to run him through with a sword.

Following his unsuccessful attempt to snatch the English crown. James, Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son of Charles II, was beheaded in 1685. But after the execution, the Keeper of the King’s Pictures realized there was no official portrait of Monmouth. So the decapitated head was stitched back on and the dead Duke was placed in a chair to have his portrait painted by artist Sir Godfrey Kneller.

King John was killed by kindness. The townsfolk of Lynn in Norfolk were so delighted at being awarded a handsome contract by the king that they laid on a sumptuous feast in his honour. They rounded it off with his favourite dessert – peaches in cider. But he ate too much, suffered violent stomach pains and died a few days later.

A 13th century English nobleman, Fitzwaine Fulk, died from suffocation inside his suit of armour after his horse had got stuck in a mire.

Queen Eleanor, loyal wife of Edward I, was so upset to see her husband at death’s door after infection had set into a battle wound that she personally sucked out all the poison. Her bravery saved the king’s life but killed her.

Edmund Ironside, King of Southern England, was murdered in 1016 while sitting on the toilet. He sat down on the wooden lavatory ox, blissfully unaware that an enemy knight, Eric Streona, was lurking in the pit below. Streona thrust his sword with suck force up the royal passage that it became embedded in the king’s bowels.

Margaret, “Maid of Norway”, was nominally declared Queen of Scotland in 1286 but it wasn’t until 1290 that the seven-year-old Margaret sailed from Norway to claim her new kingdom. Alsas, on the journey across the North Sea, she suffered terrible seasickness and died in the Orkeneys before ever setting foot on the Scottish mainland.

Sir Arthur Aston, a Royalist leader during the English Civil War, was beaten to death with his own wooden legs by Oliver Cromwell’s troops.

As doctors operated on the dying Caroline, wife of George II, she suddenly started laughing. One of the doctors had leaned too close to a candle and had set his wig on fire.

Czech housewife Vera Czermak was so distraught to learn of her husband’s infidelity that she threw herself out of the window of her third-storey Prague apartment … just as Mr. Czermak happened to be walking to be walking along the street below . She landed on him, killing him instantly. But his body cushioned her fall, and she survived.