Historic Celebrity Deaths

What caused Marie Curie to die?

She was one of the most brilliant chemists and physicists in science and she was the first woman to ever win the Nobel prize. But her passion was working with radiation, and she didn't know the dangers of radiation. So she actually was the first person to ever die from radiation poisoning. We've since learned that radiation is accumulative in the body and we're always subjected to at least what they call rems, which are measurements for radiation, and everyone is subject to at least thirty of these rems every year just walking around in the environment. And it's now believed if you get to the point of getting over three hundred rems, then you'll surely get cancer just from being alive.

What was the cause of Roman Emperor Nero's death?

Nero was a Roman Emperor who came to power at a very early age. His mother helped him poison the previous emperor and he seemed to get a taste of poisoning people. He eventually killed his own mother. He also killed relatives and anybody who was eyeing his power, and even people that he simply didn't like. He wanted to be known as a great man of the arts and he considered himself a great actor. When we hear the phrase "Nero was fiddling while Rome burned", he was actually a number of miles away performing on stage. Even when he performed, he didn't allow anyone to make a sound. You couldn't cough while he was performing and you could definitely not leave, such that women were known to give birth under the benches as opposed to escape the wrath of Nero. Eventually, they had enough of this and the senate found an opportunity to get rid of him and they ordered for his execution. He fled Rome but he left his magic bag of poison behind, and he actually ordered his servant to slit his own throat. His last words were "What a great artist the world loses in me".

How did Greek poet Homer die?

Homer was one of the great writers of Western civilization, and probably the earliest writer of whom we have a record, as he wrote the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." And he was known for bringing these great riddles to his work. The famous Riddle of the Sphinx, "What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?" refers to man. A baby crawls on four, an adult walks on two, and you have the cane in old age. Supposedly when he was about to die, his riddles became so popular that everybody was using them for ordinary things. He was out near the water and he got caught in a tidal pool, and he started sinking up to his neck. And he saw a couple of young boys fishing, and he asked for their help. But they said, "Before we help you, old man, you have to answer a riddle." It was one of his riddles, but they didn't recognize that he was Homer. And they asked him, "If you can answer this riddle, we'll save your life, otherwise we'll let you drown." They asked him, "Tell us what it is: what we caught today, we left behind, and what we didn't catch we brought with them." Homer couldn't figure out the riddle, and he died with the rising tide.

How was Aeschylus thought to have died?

Aeschylus was a famous Greek poet and dramatist. I guess the legend that remains, most people are not familiar with a lot of his work, that he died when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock, and opened a turtle shell on it. That is how the death ranks almost as high as his work of the time.

How did Adolf Hitler die?

Adolf Hitler was the megalomaniac with an inferiority complex, as we all know. When it came to his own death, he didn't want to be captured live, so he had cyanide tablets ready to take in the event that his bunker was going to be overrun, where he was staying with his mistress and a lot of his other staff. His favorite dog was with him, and in order to test the potency of his cyanide tablets he fed it to his dog to make sure it worked and sure enough his favorite dog died. Then he sat down for a final meal of some spaghetti and retired, him and his mistress to another room. He took the cyanide tablets, but he didn't really want to wait for it, so then he blew out his head with a luger. He had ordered his staff to take his body outside the bunker and burn it. The burning process was interrupted a number of times, because the Russians were overtaking the bunker and before it was completely burned the Russians came and some say that part of his skull was taken and given to Stalin to use as an ash tray.

What is the story behind Catherine The Great's death?

Catherine The Great was a famous empress of Russia but she holds the distinction of, supposedly she died while trying to have sex with a horse when the mechanical device to lift the horse failed and crushed her to death. When we look at the records it seems like that was an attempt to discredit her power while she was alive. She was known for being an equinine enthusiast and riding a lot of horses and it was a way to try to discredit her reputation by putting the rumor that she had died by having sex with a horse that has lingered for all these centuries.

What was the cause of Genghis Khan's death?

Genghis Khan was a ruthless warrior who conquered almost the entire known world on horseback. He was such, that people feared his name more than they feared him. His policy was that once he captured a town, he would kill everyone except one or two people, then let them run ahead to warn the next village of what would happen to them if they didn't surrender before he got there. One of the little tricks that Genghis enjoyed was choosing some of the women in the village for his own slaves, and what happened near the end of his life was that he continued this policy, and when he chose one of these beauties, she ripped a knife from underneath her cloak and castrated Genghis Khan. So, when records indicate that he fell off his horse mysteriously and died at the age of 62, it was actually that he could no longer ride because he was recently castrated. When he died, his funeral procession was taken to an unknown location, and every one of the pall bearers and everyone in the party was also murdered and dumped in his grave, so that they were where Genghis Khan is buried to this day remains a mystery.

How did Stonewall Jackson die?

Stonewall Jackson was the great Confederate Army general who everyone believed was the hope of the South winning the war. What happened was halfway through the war he was shot by one of his own men during battle in the arm. He got very, very ill and started to get gangrene and they amputated the arm. What they did was they took the arm to the site of the next battlefield and buried it to bring the soldiers good luck and the rest of his body was buried at another location. It took a number of years before all the parts were rejoined in the family grave at Pottsville, Pennsylvania.