From The Book of Lists #3 by Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky.
Illustrations by Laura Park.
KILLED BY JAZZ
Seventy-nine-year-old cornetist and music professor Nicola Coviello had had an illustrious career, having performed before Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and other dignitaries. Realizing his life was nearing its end, Coviello decided to travel from London to Saskatchewan to pay a final visit to his son. On the way, he stopped in New York City to bid farewell to his nephews, Peter, Dominic, and Daniel Coviello. On June 13, 1926, the young men took their famous uncle to Coney Island to give him a taste of America. The elder Coviello enjoyed himself but seemed irritated by the blare of jazz bands. Finally he could take it no longer. “That isn’t music,” he complained and he fell to the boardwalk. He was pronounced dead a few minutes later. Cause of death was “a strain on the heart.”
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
It is almost impossible to die of an overdose of water, but Tina Christopherson managed to do it. The 29-year-old Florida woman, who had an IQ of 189, became obsessed with the idea that she suffered from stomach cancer, a disease which had killed her mother. In an attempt to cleanse her body, Christopherson went on periodic water fasts, during which she ate no food but drank up to four gallons of water a day. By February 17, 1977, she had consumed so much water that her kidneys were overwhelmed and the excess fluid drained into her lungs. She died of internal drowning, otherwise known as “water intoxication.”
KILLED BY A ROBOT
Kenji Urada, 37, was a worker at the Akashi plant of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in western Japan. On July 4, 1981, he entered a restricted zone to repair a machine on a processing line for automobile gears. Although reports of the incident are confusing, Urada apparently became so engrossed in his work that he failed to notice the approach of a transport robot that delivered parts to the machine. The robot came up on Urada from behind and crushed him to death against the machine.
THE DEADLY DANCE
In August 1981, 11-year-old Simon Longhurst of Wigan, England, attended a Sunday-afternoon junior disco session where, along with other youngsters, he performed the “head shake,” a new-wave dance in which the head is shaken violently as the music gets faster and faster. The following day, young Simon began suffering headaches and soon a blood clot developed. Three weeks later he died of acute swelling of the brain. The coroner ruled it “death by misadventure.”
REVENGE OF THE PLANT KINGDOM
On February 4, 1982, 27-year-old David M. Grundman fired two shotgun blasts at a giant saguaro cactus in the desert outside Phoenix. Unfortunately for Grundman, his shots caused a 23-foot section of the cactus to fall on him, and he was crushed to death.
WHAT A WASTE TO GO
The 70-year-old mayor of Betterton, Maryland, Monica Myers, considered it part of her duties to check on the sewage tanks at the municipal facility. On the night of March 19, 1980, she went to the Betterton treatment plant to test for chlorine and sediment. Unfortunately, she slipped on a catwalk, fell into a tank of human waste, and drowned.
THE ELECTRIC GUITARIST
Keith Relf, who had gained fame as the lead singer of the Yardbirds, a 1960s blues-rock group, was found dead at his home in London on May 14, 1976. The cause of death was an electric shock received while playing his guitar. Relf was 33 years old.
A WISH FULFILLED
American revolutionary patriot James Otis often mentioned to friends and relatives that as long as one had to die, he hoped that his death would come from a bolt of lightning. On May 23, 1783, the 58-year-old Otis was leaning against a doorpost in a house in Andover, Massachusetts, when a lightning bolt struck the chimney, ripped through the frame house, and hit the doorpost. Otis was killed instantly.
TO BE CONTINUED:
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