Stuff You Should Know - Bizarre Ways to Die

Episode Date: April 2, 2009

When it comes to shucking this mortal coil, no two deaths are exactly alike -- and some are truly bizarre. Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to hear Josh and Chuck discuss some of the strangest deaths imaginable. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Chuck, do your cheek thing. All right, I'd like to explain to everyone. We have a little superstition here at Stuff You Should Know. And basically, every time Chuck doesn't do that with his cheeks ahead of time, we have a

terrible take. And sometimes I have to have to stop partway through. It gets so bad and do it again. And we've noticed that when Chuck does this, we have a good take. So prepare for an excellent podcast, because he just did it twice. Yes. So we're good, right, Chuck? I think we're set. Yeah. So, and I feel a little bit better after you told me that this article we're about to talk to, we talk about 10 Bizarre Ways to Die, was blowing up on the homepage. Because it means that there's a lot more people than me who have a morbid curiosity slash fascination with death. There are, buddy, this one in the Are There Dead Bodies All-Mount Everest apparently did phenomenally well on the homepage. They exploded on the homepage. And, you know,

people want to know about these wacky, bizarre deaths. So we're going to share some of them. Yeah, we agree we weren't going to do all 10, right? No, of course not. Okay. I don't know if you picked the guy from Canada, the first one. But if you didn't, I have a question for you. Okay. So this guy from Canada in 2008 got stuck in a sewer grate after he went after his wallet. Yeah. And he was still alive, right? When they pulled him out by tow truck. Yes. But then he died. So my question is, was he crushed to death when they pulled him out? Did the tow truck kill him? Like, what killed this guy? Well, that's a great question. And I don't have the answer, actually. My editor, Amanda, asked me that same question. She said, how do you

actually die? And I couldn't find it. I looked other than the fact that he was stuck in a sewer, wedged several feet down, you know, upside down for a period of hours, right, which can't be good for you. But he was still alive when they pulled him out by tow truck. He died on the way to the hospital or at the hospital. So I think he was alive when he came out of the sewer grate. He was. So yeah, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Gotcha. And this isn't the first person to die from being stuck in a sewer. I know, which is sad. It's nuts. Yeah. And we should say we're not, we're not making light of any of these very sad tragedies that have happened, but so abnormal sometimes that they, you know, well, it's in the title bizarre, bizarre, bizarre. Yeah. So he, he

went down to get something, retrieve something in the drain, his wallet. Yeah. And after a robbery and got stuck upside down and for a period of hours and was like you said, pulled out by tow truck. Yeah. And it was too late. It's odd. It is. Well, that's one. I don't know if you're playing on talking about that guy or not, but I had that question. I was not actually. Okay, well, give me, give me one of yours. Josh, I'm going to talk about the woman who died by her sheep's hand or I guess. And this again, another sad tragedy in 1999, a woman in England, you know, she was a farmer's wife and she was going out to feed the sheep and she had a little ATV that I guess she wrote out to where the sheep were. And the sheep were really hungry and apparently

they came at her with a lot of force and knocked her off of a cliff and she was parked along the edge of a quarry, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so they knocked her off and they say that the sad tragedy is that she may have lived if not for her ATV falling on top of her. So that was knocked off as well. I mean, that came down on her. Hungry sheep. Very hungry sheep. Did you get an idea of how many there were? It just said a flock. A flock, so. Well, it's like two or more, right? Sure. Yeah. So I'm thinking probably a little more than two to knock over an ATV into a woman. Yeah. That is kind of bizarre again. I think that definitely falls in the category. Let me ask you, how did you choose these? That's a good question. I thought you might ask that. Well, I mean,

you just start looking around on the Internet for strange deaths and bizarre deaths and pretty soon you've got a big master list of stories. Did you have to pare down? Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay. Give me one that didn't take the list. Yeah. I can't think of one right now. You put me on the spot. I love putting you on the spot right now. I can't think of one right now. All right. Well, maybe by the end of the podcast. Sure. Okay. Well, let me give you one of mine, Chuck, which by the way, this is just an excellent article. It's as good as numbers journalism gets, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I guarantee this is one of yours too, but I'm going to just go ahead and steal it. In 1919. Oh, yeah. I love this one. It's just so nuts. Yeah. It's weird. In 1919,

in North Boston, there was a neighborhood that was largely populated by Italian immigrants. And one of the big features of this neighborhood was, I guess, a huge holding tank at, I assume, a molasses processing plant or something. Yeah. Huge, huge holding tank that held 2.5 million gallons of molasses. Apparently, that's a couple gallons too many because the tank ruptured and from what I gather exploded with molasses. There was shrapnel that was flying everywhere. Right. So some people died that way. Sure. But I think the most horrific aspect of the deaths that came out of that day was that 21 people were killed by a 25 foot high wall of molasses. And you know the term slow as molasses? Right. That did not apply in this case because there

reports were that it was going about 35 miles an hour. The problem is, is you have that much molasses and it's traveling that fast and you get stuck in it. You're going to drown in molasses. Yes. And I can't imagine it takes more than one breath of molasses to drown you. Yeah, I would say so. But yeah, that's a pretty horrible way to go. Yeah. And the weird thing is, apparently to this day, I understand, the residents of this neighborhood almost 100 years later, at least, well, 90 years later, still say that on a hot day they can smell the molasses that took years to clean up this mess. Right. And of course, that's one of those things that might be lower at this point. Sure. But it makes for a good story. It definitely does. But yeah,

21 people died drowning in molasses. Right. Yeah. Bizarre. Very bizarre. On to the Collier Brothers. I love these two. This is my other favorite one. These guys were pretty famous too. If you're from New York City, you've probably heard of the Collier Brothers at some point. Langley and Homer Collier, they moved to New York to Harlem in 1909. When they were in their 20s and they were from an upper-crust family, kind of well-to-do, and the brothers lived together in Harlem and became hermits, basically, over the years. Yeah. And not just hermits, but compulsive hoarders. Yes. Which, you know, we should do a podcast on this sometime. We should. That's very interesting. You know, I read an analysis of compulsive hoarding using the Wonder Machine,

and they found that when asked to decide, like, if they should throw away one piece of junk mail or another, the region of the brain that's associated with processing very unpleasant experiences lights up like a Christmas tree. Really? Yep. Interesting. And I'm, yeah, from what I gather, Homer and Langley, are definitely compulsive hoarders. Legendary, right? Legendary. Apparently, they accumulated 180 tons of, you know, they called it junk in their apartment. I know. And think about that. Everything you could think of. That's 60 more tons than what they've got every year on Mount Everest, which is one of the most littered places on Earth. Right. And this is an apartment in Harlem. Yeah, these guys had an apartment. Yeah.

So I think to call them compulsive hoarders is right on the money. So, I mean, we're talking busted chandeliers, baby carriages, smashed pianos, clocks, furniture, weird newspapers, just stacked to the ceiling. Yeah. Homer went blind in the 1930s and was bedridden because of rheumatism by 1940. And his younger brother helped care for him night and day and saved all these newspapers in hopes that one day his brother would regain his sight. I know, which I found beyond sweet. Yeah, it's pretty sweet and strange. The other odd thing is, is they had their home booby trapped. Yeah. Because they were, what they did was, you know, they moved to Harlem and then Harlem over the years started becoming a little bit more of a

rough neighborhood and they never moved. They just like shut themselves in and, you know, closed all the doors. Still, it's not destroyed though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So they set these booby traps and it turned out to be Langley's undoing. He tripped on one of these booby traps and was buried beneath an avalanche of junk and Homer was starved to death because his brother wasn't around to take care of him. Did you get the impression that Langley died instantly like of a broken neck or something like that? Or did he possibly starved to death as well? You know, that's a good question. I didn't get that because it didn't say, it just said that he was buried underneath a pile of junk. So he could very well just

been trapped and had to starve to death as well. I mean, can you imagine Homer realizing that his brother's just died under a pile of junk and was blind and bedridden? Can you imagine? He would have been like, oh, right. I'm toast. Yeah, exactly. So bizarre. Yeah, very bizarre. Yeah. And apparently, I read this, I think it was a New Yorker article about this and the author said that he grew up in the 1960s and 70s in New York and his parents, that was something they would say. They'd say, you know, clean up your room and you're going to end up like this. Call your brother. Those poor guys. I don't know. But they were grossly misunderstood too. Probably. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess it's my turn, huh? Sure. I call this one death by irony because that's

what it feels like to me every time I hear this one. Okay. Pagan Twistle. Yeah. Yeah. So she was a failed actress, somewhat successful back in New York, but she was drawn to Hollywood land. Right. As the sign originally said, right? Right. And in 1932, after a string of rejections, she... Acting role rejections. Thank you, Chuck. Not romantic. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Wow. Wow. So yeah, she kept going, turned down for part after part after part. And she decided she was going to take her own life, which I call dedication to your craft, right? Yeah. So she climbs up to the H, but first leaves a suicide note at the bottom of it, climbs up to the top of the H, which is like, what, 60 feet or something like that? I think it's about that. I smell some,

listen, or mail in my future. Right. But she climbed it to the top, jumped off, 60 feet or whatever it is. It killed her. And they found her two days later. And her suicide note was very apologetic and short and sweet. And she just couldn't take it anymore, right? And what kills me is that the day after she died, she killed herself. A letter arrived at her house, offering her a part for the role of a suicidal woman. Right. Yep. Yeah. That one, that's bizarre and agonizing. Agonizing. Yeah. You know, I used to, the Hollywood sign was outside my window in my apartment in LA. Yeah. That's very cool. It's a very cool view. And didn't like a keeper Sutherland live in your neighborhood too. He did. Yeah. Mr. Malthy there. I'm going to go ahead

and jump straight to number one. Okay. I like this one. Sure. Death by unexplained phenomenon is what I'm calling it. Okay. Even though I know it's really space aliens. In the Ural Mountains of Russia, this is 1959. Yeah. A group of college students, Russian college students went hiking from Ural Polytechnic Institute. And this is in the wintertime. And so it was cold. Nine never made out of the woods. And what the investigators found was frightening. It really was. Horrific, I think is a good word. I don't even know if this one's bizarre. It's horrific. Yeah. Just unexplained and horrific. First of all, they found their tent abandoned. It was ripped open from the inside and half buried in snow. And their shoes and like their

coats and their belongings were still inside the tent. Yeah. So that's where we're starting with the investigation. There's snow everywhere. It's like winter, right? Sure. February in Russia. The first two bodies were found at the edge of the forest barefoot and dressed in their underwear. The next three bodies were found near near there in similar state. And then two months later, the last bodies were found buried in the snow about 250 feet away from them. Right. So they're all dead. Right. Four of the students had massive internal injuries, broken ribs, crushed skulls. One of them was missing her tongue, which is just freaky. Yeah. And but they had no external wounds and no signs of struggle. No. So they had like crushed skulls, but no external wounds. Right.

That's insane. Yes. But the weird thing is what they found in their clothing, right? Well, the final victims were wearing the clothing of the other victims. Right. But wasn't the clothing irradiated? Yeah. They did test on the clothing and found that it had high levels of radiation. The case records were sealed until 1990. And when the case came back open, they learned that there were bright orange spheres spotted in the sky that night by other hikers. So you think you think aliens, huh? Oh, and these people, their faces were sunburned too. That's crazy. Well, I mean, I don't know if it was aliens necessarily, but I think it was probably what I think it was some kind of army experimentation, radiation, maybe bombs, something like that. Yeah. That's very on.

But I mean, it's still to this day, they, the Russian government won't own up to anything happening out of the ordinary in the area. Nine of your youth killed at your hand. Right. Accidentally or otherwise, it makes for bad PR. Yeah. And you guys can't see this, but that one was clearly Chuck's favorite because normally, like in an article, he will highlight a little passenger to his reminder. He has that entire thing highlighted. You love that one, don't you? I do. It's really strange. In 1968, five black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama. I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School

for Negro Children, and they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can. I believe Mt. Mays was patterned after slavery. I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what. I'm writer and reporter, Josie Duffy Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a nightmare and how those five black girls changed everything. All that on Unreformed. Listen to Unreformed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making

millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God, talk about walking into the devil's den. The car kales. They just killed everybody that was home. They started pulling out pictures of Clay Williams' body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester. He never ran anything but grass until I turned over that load of coke to him on the island. Chester would claim he did it all for the CIA. Pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation. So Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered? Oh no, not by a long shot. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can I do one more? Sure. We have a hit 10, yeah, haven't we? No. Okay. So I call this one Disco Boy. The 16-year-old kid in England. Yeah. 1998. And if he was 16, he probably only started using deodorant maybe a couple of years before. Right. But he took a real shine to this stuff. Spray deodorant, aerosol. Aerosol deodorant, right? And apparently this kid would just slather it on all over his body a couple of times a day. And you say in the article it was so thick sometimes that his family downstairs could taste it. Right. Right in the air. And eventually at age 16, he dropped out of a heart attack. Right? Yeah. And the reason why they found he had heart failure due to levels 10 times the lethal

dosage of butane and propane, liquid natural gases that are used as accelerants in aerosols or were. And this kid built it up time over probably two years, man. Right. I mean, think about that. And it just built up in his system and finally just stopped his heart. Right. Which is just crazy to me. Yeah. Apparently he used it in a very confined space like his bathroom. Yeah. So not only was he absorbing it through his skin, yeah, he was inhaling it as well. Right. So we're not saying it's dangerous to use any kind of aerosol. Well, good luck finding an aerosol deodorant these days. Aren't they illegal? Illegal? At least ones with propane and butane in them? Sure. If you say so. We'll go to the store and look. Okay. You want to after this? Yeah. Well,

I'd bring that up because I know somebody who occasionally will use febreze in her hair to kind of like freshen up. And now I'm kind of like, I wonder what kind of, I kid you not. I find that really strange. As do I, Chuck. Okay. Good. As do I. So yeah. Okay. Well, it's 10 bizarre deaths, X number of bizarre deaths. There's still more that you can read about. Yeah. And I strongly recommend that anyone go on to the site, read this article, a fine one written by one Charles W. Bryant. Thank you. And all you have to do is type in 10 bizarre ways to die in the handy search part howstuffworks.com. Yes. And Chuck, while we are here, while we have everyone's attention, because we know you guys don't go anywhere, you know, listener mail is coming eventually.

You want to hear your names? So first, exactly. First, let's talk about our spoken word album. That's right. Josh and I and Jerry got together, excuse me, Josh and me, and Jerry got together and we recorded our first ever full length is like an hour plus super stuffed guide to the economy. Yep. And we break it down the economics on a global level and tell you what it means to the individual and get into some pretty complex stuff in the way that we like to do. Yeah, I feel like we broke it down into very manageable knowledge, right? Yeah. Well, that's the stuff you should know, super stuff guide to the economy. Yes. Which we love that name. It's up on iTunes for what, 399 right now? 399. 399. If you guys want

to go get it, that's cool with us. You can actually find it on iTunes by typing in super and stuffed, or super stuff, two words, I mean, in the little search bar on iTunes. And I think it's the first thing that comes up. Maybe the only thing. No, it's not. Okay. But it is definitely the first thing that comes up. And you can find it there, like I said, on iTunes. Great. And I guess while we're at it, we should go ahead and plug the blog too, right? Our web log. Well, we have a blog now, folks. It's called Stuff You Should Know. Yeah. Oddly enough. And you can access it through the homepage, howstuffworks.com over on the right side. Chuck and I each post once a day. So it's updated twice daily. Sometimes it's news items that we find interesting. Sometimes it's

something that a fan is sending that maybe isn't full enough for a podcast. I do a little recap on Fridays, so where we can, you know, talk to the fans about what we podcasted about that week. It's fun stuff. It is fun, actually. I've kind of taken to it. Taking a shine to it. Yeah. Disco. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. So Chuck, I guess it's listener mail time, right? Indeed. Josh, this is a really good one. I'm just going to call this exceptional fan mail. We get these from time to time. Remember when you brought up prosopagnosia? Yeah. Facial blindness. Facial blindness. Yeah. You want to do a real quick recap of what that is? Basically, there's a, there's a malfunction of the brain region that processes visual facial

information. And so people with pro... I will say it one more time, Chuck. Prosopagnosia. Yeah. Well, facial blindness. I have a total inability to make a memory of someone's face. So seeing somebody you've known for years for the thousandth time is like seeing them for the first time. Right. You don't recognize them. So we had someone right in who has this, which is very cool. So we like these first hand accounts. So Anna wrote in and said that we could read this to our fans. So I thought it was kind of cool. Thanks, Anna. She said that she cannot visualize the faces of her coworkers or anybody for that matter, but she does. I do see faces when I look at them. This means that we can memorize features such as hair and skin color,

haircut and facial structure to some extent. Feature based recognition like this is is useless for recognizing people out of context, but it's usually enough to differentiate between people in context when you expect to see them. So in other words, she comes up with a system of how to recognize people at work, let's say. Right. For Nina, somewhere else she might go to the club. Sure. Secondly, we recognize voices just as well as an expert. I know a lot of people wrote in and asked that question. That's an excellent point, yeah. So that safe, that safe word thing when talking to relatives is absolutely not necessary. You were talking about having a safe word. Eskimo Pickle. Right. That's fine. So in the workplace, if a colleague greets me,

I know who they are from their voice. Thirdly, people's body language is very individual and although I can't recognize somebody's face, I can recognize how they walk and move, which is very individual. That made sense to me. Yeah, because it's just the face. Exactly. Yeah. Only the face. Yes, that's what she says. It's facial recognition is specialized for faces only in the brain. Yeah. And fourth, she says that people tend to dress similarly from day to day and that's also a good guideline. So you develop coping strategies. Most of the time you get by well enough. Although I work at a large company, I very rarely have problems at work and with people I meet regularly and I don't think my colleagues notice. So that's great. Yeah, you come up with

a system. It's kind of interesting. Kind of like the guy Memento would write down important things or tattoo the really important things for somebody. Yeah. Well, thanks, Anna. You sound like a sharp tack. Appreciate you sharing all that with us. And if you want to share some tips for overcoming facial blindness or anything else, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.