The Quick 10: 10 Bizarre Deaths

I stumbled upon this list of bizarre deaths and immediately thought, "Perfect mental_floss post." I think this subconsciously might be my reaction to Halloween displays going up in retail stores already "“ you might think it's too early, but I'd be happy if Halloween stuff was sold in stores year-round. Hopefully you guys are used to my morbid ways by now. Um. Happy Monday!

1. Aeschylus, a Greek playwright, supposedly met his making in 458 B.C. when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock. He dropped a tortoise on the "rock" to try to kill it and break its shell open, but since the "rock" was actually Aeschylus' skull, it didn't really work out well. Except for the tortoise: legend has it that it walked away, unharmed.

3. Speaking of faulty bladders, in 1862, baseball player Jim Creighton died when his bladder ruptured. Well, maybe. He was at bat and swung a little too hard, he gave himself some sort of internal injury and died a few days later. Many sources say it was his bladder; others say his appendix burst. He is largely regarded as baseball's first superstar.

4. If you visit the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, you'll hear the story of how Jasper Newton Daniel met his untimely demise.

It was blood poisoning, which isn't that unusual, until you hear how he got it: years earlier, he kicked a safe because he couldn't remember the combination. This resulted in a toe injury, which resulted in blood poisoning.

5. It's entirely possible that King Alexander of Greece is the only King to ever die from a monkey attack. Seriously. He was out walking his dog in the Royal Gardens when a monkeys descended upon them. He tried to defend his poor dog, but got bitten a couple of times in the process. Infection set in and the King died of sepsis later that month.

6. George Herbert died of "blood poisoning", but those in the know say he was the first victim of King Tut's curse. He was the once who financed the excavation, which he probably regretted when a seemingly harmless mosquito bite turned into a deadly infection in 1923.

8. Robert Williams was the first person to be killed by a robot (see, Flight of the Conchords know what they are talking about). Williams worked at Ford and was getting a part out of a storage bin when the arm of a robot performing the same function caught him in the head with enough force to kill him.

10. I suppose after the "unsinkable" Titanic sunk, we should have learned to never declare things definitively impossible. Garry Hoy would certainly know better, if he had survived his fall. In 1993, he hurled himself against a glass wall on the 24th story on his office building. He was at an after-hours party and was proving to the party patrons that the glass was "unbreakable." Except it wasn't.