[pensive music]
What if I told you a safety demo
once killed a man?
- He wants to showcase the resilience of the windows
of the building.
- And he decides to show them his party trick.
- Or tomorrow, you could be brutally attacked
by an out-of-control lawnmower?
- The lawnmower takes off and climbs up in the sky.
- People are huddled around him, blood is everywhere.
- How about dueling with a cactus and losing?
- They drive deep into the park.
Fires at point blank range.
- These are the deaths so surprising,
they are truly unbelievable.
[dramatic music]
The statue of Winston Churchill stands tall
over London's Parliament Square.
Abraham Lincoln sits and keeps watch over Washington DC.
Monuments erected to people
of enduring importance are common,
but in a small town in Austria,
there's one built for a much more unusual hero.
- It's the 16th century
and Hans Steininger is the immensely popular mayor
of Braunau am Inn.
Everyone loves him.
He's elected for six consecutive terms,
but that's not what he's famous for.
- Hans is a sight to see.
He has a beard that's four and a half feet long,
and when it gets to the end, it forks.
It's so long, it reaches all the way to his feet.
- [Dan] Mayor Hans even has his suits custom made
to keep his beard neatly rolled up
and tucked into his breast pocket.
Braunau am Inn flourishes under his leadership for decades,
until one day, when things get a little hairy.
- September 28th, 1576, all mayhem breaks out.
The town of Braunau am Inn catches fire.
It's 1576, there's no such thing as a fire engine yet.
There's no such thing as a fire department.
Now the mayor has an emergency that he has to handle.
- Atop a really long staircase, Hans surveys the scene
and he just sees his entire town in flames.
So to go save the town and direct rescue efforts,
he takes off running, straight down the stairs.
However, in his haste, he forgets
to tuck his beard into his little beard pocket.
- Almost immediately, his four
and a half foot beard tangles up in his feet
and he's just tumbling down these concrete stairs.
- [Austin] Tip over top, over tip over top,
into the town square.
- [Dan] By the time he reaches the bottom,
his neck is broken.
- This is probably the first time in the history
of the world a mayor has been killed by his own beard.
- [Dan] But the people of Braunau am Inn
find an unbelievable way to honor the mayor's legacy.
- Hans may have been lost that day, but not his beard.
His beard is snipped off before he's buried
and is kept by his family
and passed down from generation to generation
until finally in the 20th century, 1919,
the beard is bequeathed to the city.
- And to this day,
it is in a four and a half foot long glass box embalmed
for everyone to remember mayor Hans Steininger.
- And there's even, on the site, a Hans impersonator
with his own four and a half foot beard.
- If getting caught up in your own beard
isn't a strange enough way to die,
here's another tale of a fatal entanglement.
- In the early 1900s, Isadora Duncan
is one of the most famous, world-renowned dancers.
She is known for establishing all kinds of innovative forms
and movements and essentially creates modern dance.
So she is this iconic, glamorous, beautiful woman.
- It's 1927, Isadora is around 50-years-old
and she's retired in the south of France in Nice,
going around and partying with her rich friends
in the French Riviera.
- She is noted for her very bohemian style.
She wears flowing dresses and these flowing scarves,
and she's almost famous for that willowy, flowing movement
that is so common in her modern dance.
- So one of Isadora's friends is the socialite Mary Desti,
who gives Isadora a gift of a scarf,
an absurdly long, crimson scarf.
This thing's gotta be at least 15-feet long
and it flows down like a long train,
and follows her as she walks along, it's very dramatic.
- [Dan] Isadora's unique style catches the eye
of a race car mechanic named Benoit Falchetto.
- And Benoit has quite the car.
This is an Amilcar CGSS.
It's a convertible,
and as typical of race cars at that time,
it has a very long hood that contains a powerful engine.
It's so long that the driver
and the passenger are sitting practically
on the rear wheels.
- [Dan] In September 1927,
Benoit and Isadora decide to take his roadster
for a spin down the coast.
- Her friend Mary tells her she should be wearing
an overcoat on this trip
because she's driving down the coast in a convertible.
It's gonna be windy and cold,
but all Isadora wants to wear is this long scarf.
- Isadora gets into the passenger seat of this open car
and she's just feeling the breeze,
and this gorgeous crimson scarf
is fluttering out behind her.
- [Chris] And then the wind hits in just the right,
or in this case, just the wrong way.
- The scarf, it gets threaded in between the spokes
of the wheel and before anyone realizes that's happening,
it's tightened around her neck.
- Within about a second, it's wound so tightly
that it pulls her from the seat,
and smashes her to the road behind.
- The New York Times says in its obituary
that Ms. Duncan was hurled from an open automobile
in an extraordinary manner and instantly killed.
- Death by scarf is certainly weird.
But there are other strange ways to die,
like during a halftime show at a football game.
- It's 1979 and we're at Shea Stadium
over in Flushing, Queens, where the Jets are the home team
and they're playing the Patriots who are dismal, terrible.
- A company called the Electronic Eagles
is this model air show organization
and they've been hired to do the entertainment.
They start the show and they send up all
these gas-powered model airplanes and helicopters.
This is super old school.
- Basically what it is, it's hobbyists
flying their airplanes around in circles and maybe
doing some dips and dives and stuff like that.
- [Dan] What every good model air show halftime extravaganza
needs is a strong ending.
But this finale is something no one sees coming.
- A man walks out pushing a full lawnmower.
How is a lawnmower in the middle
of Shea Stadium going to be the grand finale?
[lawnmower starts]
- They are gonna fly this thing.
- Yes, they removed the blades underneath it,
but it had this huge propeller on the front of it,
which arguably makes it more dangerous.
- The lawnmower takes off and it climbs up into the sky
and it's actively flying around Shea Stadium.
- In the stands right now is 20-year-old John Bowen
and his younger brother.
It's their first time in New York City.
They came all the way from Nashua, New Hampshire
to see their beloved Patriots play.
- You gotta imagine, small town guy coming into the big city.
The last thing he expects to see is this ridiculous affair.
This mower flying through the air.
- So Philip Cushman,
he's controlling it with a remote control
and he decides, let's amp it up a notch.
We're gonna do some tricks.
- Philip starts getting a little cocky
with his aerial acrobatics.
After increasingly daring swoops the crowd
where he gets closer and pulls away
and closer and pulls away, Cushman loses control
of his flying lawnmower.
- And it goes directly into the crowd,
right into John Bowen.
- Blood is everywhere, John does not get up.
People are huddled around him trying to assist and aid
and one man can be heard saying,
"It looks like he's been attacked by an axe."
- [Dan] John is carried to the field
where an ambulance rushes him to the hospital.
- Four days later, after multiple surgeries,
John Bowen passes away from the injuries inflicted
by the flying lawnmower.
Needless to say, the NFL has never fielded
a flying lawnmower halftime show ever again.
- Perhaps we know now why most NFL halftime shows today
are musical acts.
- As everyone knows, death eventually comes for us all.
But for one poor farmer in Indonesia, death comes in a way
we can only call unbelievable.
- Near a remote village in Indonesia, acre upon acre
of lush forest has been cut back to make room
for palm oil farms.
This is big business in the region.
- Akbar Salubiro is a worker
in one of these deforested areas, where they harvest palm.
- [Dan] While harvesting palm fruits sounds simple,
the job comes with its fair share of occupational hazards.
- Just steps from where Akbar is working
is a dangerous world of the jungle,
Komodo dragons, saltwater crocodiles, deadly cobras,
and the longest, largest snake in the world,
the reticulated python.
- Unfortunately, the normal prey for pythons,
medium-sized mammals like deer and bush pigs,
tend to become scarce in these cleared areas.
The presence of large predators without their normal prey
is a bad combination for anything else
in the neighborhood that might be edible.
- [Dan] When Akbar doesn't come home from work
one evening in March 2017,
his wife, Luna, is understandably concerned.
- Luna goes to the police
and they tell her there were reports
of someone screaming in the fields the night before,
which of course is the last thing she wants to hear.
- The search party and police find
an abandoned tool of Akbar's.
They find a disruption in palm leaves
and palm fronds all over the place
and the unmistakable prints of what appears
to be a very large python.
- And they follow these snake prints
and eventually reach this large bush
under which they see a python.
It's a big python, I mean, enormous.
- [Dan] 23-feet long, to be exact,
but its massive size is not the only remarkable
thing about its appearance.
- It's all bloated and deformed.
- They also see an outline
of rubber boots in the python stomach.
- [Dan] Just what did the python swallow?
- They cut the snake open
and inside, their worst nightmare is true.
- It's unmistakably Akbar covered in digestive juices.
His hair is intact, his clothes are intact.
It's 100% him.
- Python's kill by constriction,
wrapping their bodies around their prey
and then squeezing hard enough to even cause
internal hemorrhaging and cause spinal injury.
They strike with incredible speed,
usually from behind and often at the head.
They are not venomous,
but they have recurved fangs like rows of fish hooks
that when they bite
and pull back, are almost impossible to remove.
- Pythons aren't successful predators
because they're slow and lethargic.
They're only slow and lethargic after they've eaten.
Before that, they are deceptively fast
and adept at killing, finding,
and consuming things as large as boars
or water buffaloes.
- The bite of a python is dangerous,
but what happens next is even worse.
- The python slowly extends his jaws
and then squeezes his head inside the mouth,
then his shoulders and then works his way
down the body and finally consumes him whole.
- Python attacks on people are extremely rare,
but it's notable that the last five fatalities
have all occurred in Indonesia where demand
for palm oil is driving deforestation
and leaving behind a lot of hungry snakes.
[dramatic music]
- The odds of being bitten by a python are just 0.0045%,
and even less for being swallowed by one.
But that's nothing compared to the unlikelihood
of another strange animal attack.
- There is a domestic flight
that is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The flight is starting off in Kinshasa,
then heading to Kiri, Bokoro, Semendua and Bandundu.
It's not one of these commercial jet liners.
- The Let 410,
it's a twin engine, passenger carrying aircraft.
You've got 18 passengers
and you've got three crew members that consist
of two pilots and a flight attendant.
- [Dan] Unbeknownst to the crew or other passengers,
someone carries a duffle bag onto the flight,
a bag that will soon upend what should be
a perfectly normal trip.
- A flight attendant notices something a bit odd.
The duffle bag in the rear of the plane,
that's been under the seat the whole time,
starts to move.
- She goes to investigate.
She opens it a little bit and lo and behold,
there's a three-foot long crocodile inside.
- This crocodile locks eyes
on this flight attendant who naturally freaks out
and runs to the front of the plane.
All the other passengers now are trying
to figure out, why is this person screaming?
And they now see this crocodile,
just sauntering through the aisle,
so they all run to the front of the plane.
[dramatic music]
- As that happens, it forces all the weight
in the center of gravity to the front of the aircraft.
So now the aircraft begins
to start tipping over straight nose down towards the ground
and they are unable to recover from that situation.
[explosion booms]
The airplane tragically crashes
into a house about a mile short of the runway.
21 souls perished in this accident,
22 if you count the crocodile,
and one person survives to tell the tale.
In all of my time looking at aircraft accidents,
I have never seen anything remotely close to this.
- Next time you fly,
you might wanna think twice about opening the overhead bin,
but if you think a croc on a plane is strange,
you won't believe what's up next.
- It's time to hit the hay.
You brush your teeth, get into bed,
kiss your wife goodnight, and close your eyes.
But you can't fall asleep.
So maybe you try counting sheep
until you're interrupted by something surprising.
- It's the middle of the night in Caratinga, Brazil.
45-year-old Joao Maria de Souza
is lying in bed with his wife, Len.
- Caratinga is a hilly region, typically known
for dairy production and cattle raising.
And Joao's house butts on the side
of a cattle raising dairy pasture hill.
[cow moos]
- And one of the cows on that farm escapes
and he just grazing across the area,
walking through the hills near the Souza home.
- [Dan] Somehow, the lost and hungry cow
steps off the hill onto the couple's corrugated roof.
- It's a very heavy cow and it's a very thin roof.
Eventually, as the cow puts its full weight
on the thin corrugated roof, it gives way.
- And this 3,000 pound cow falls eight feet right
onto the bed that Joao and his wife are sleeping in.
[dramatic music]
As crazy as it seems, even though Joao
and his wife are sleeping side by side in the same bed,
she is unscathed untouched, but she is awakened.
- Joao's wife wakes up next to her husband under a cow,
immediately calls for medical care.
[intense music] [police sirens]
Unfortunately for Joao, his legs are fractured
and he has massive internal bleeding
and he will eventually pass away.
[heart monitor flatlines]
There's a local news report of the cow disaster
and you just have to see it to understand
how large this hole is
and how massive this cow must be to have caused this damage.
- This isn't actually the first time this has happened.
There have been three other cases of cows falling
through roofs, but this is the only time
a cow fell on a person.
This is a terrible way to go,
not just unexpected, it's terrible.
- It's a tragic and bizarre death.
Joao's brother says, "Being crushed
by a cow is the last way you expect to leave this Earth."
And his mother said,
"I did not raise my son to be killed by a cow."
- [Dan] As for the cow?
- The cow actually escapes unharmed.
There's nothing wrong with the cow.
- If death by a falling cow sounds too strange to be true,
you won't believe what lands on one man in Arizona.
- When you drive in Arizona and go out into the desert,
one of the things you notice are those very unique
and very iconic Saguaro cactuses.
The biggest species of cactus on Earth.
They grow almost to 50 feet, some of these.
I mean, they're huge.
- Saguaro cacti are American treasures,
so they are also protected wildlife.
If you damage or harm one
or kill one, you're looking at 25 years in prison.
- Despite it being illegal, there happens
to be a pastime in the area called cactus plugging
in which you take a shotgun
and you shoot at a Saguaro cactus.
- [Dan] On February 4th, 1982, 27-year-old David Grundman
and his roommate James Suchochi
drive to Lake Pleasant, Arizona
for a little cactus plugging.
- They drive deep into the park, probably far enough in
that nobody's gonna hear the shots
and they won't get bothered by park authorities.
David and his roommate come out with two rifles
and a 16-gauge shotgun they want to test.
- Grundman decides to take aim
at his first target of the night,
a 10-foot tall Saguaro.
[gunfire]
After several rounds of firing
and cactus plugging, it topples over.
He turns to his roommate
and he says, "Let's take on a bigger one."
- Next, David chooses a particular cactus
that is 27-feet high
and probably aged about 125-years-old.
- [Austin] From four feet away of a 27-foot tall cactus,
he takes aim with his 16 gauge.
- And he fires at point blank range.
[gunshot]
- And the 23-foot portion of the top starts falling over.
[cactus collapsing]
[eerie music]
David Grudman is crushed by multiple tons of Saguaro cactus.
- A cactus of this size
and weight produces a very unique injury.
While you obviously have blunt force trauma
from just the sheer weight of this cactus,
you also have sharp force injuries
from these long, three-inch, spiky needles.
So while you are being crushed by the weight of this,
you're effectively also being stabbed
by hundreds of needles.
It has to be excruciatingly painful.
- The medical examiner in Maricopa County was quoted
as saying, "I've been at this job for 25 years
and have never heard of someone being killed by a cactus."
- We are all familiar with the old saying,
"Pride goeth before a fall."
But in the case of one very confident safety expert,
this expression becomes quite literally true.
- Garry Hoy is a highly regarded Toronto lawyer
who specializes in building safety and compliance.
On top of that, he also has a degree in engineering.
This is a guy that absolutely loves his job.
- His offices are in the Toronto Dominion skyscraper
and he is oddly house proud when it comes to their offices
because they have these windows
that are the absolute apex of security,
made to withstand anything that can come at them.
- July 9th, 1993, and Garry Hoy is there
at the Dominion Tower skyscraper in Toronto
for an office party.
It's a welcome party for young, college,
soon-to-be-grads applying for apprenticeships
at his law firm.
- Because he is so passionate about building safety
and about engineering structures,
he wants to showcase the resilience
of the windows of the building.
- His offices are on the 24th floor
and he decides to show them his party trick.
[tense music]
- So he tells everybody to step back and they give him room.
He backs up and starts running.
- [Sami] He launches himself at this window.
- And he bounces right off of it and he says to everyone,
to a round of applause, cheers and laughs,
"Look how strong that glass is."
- Feeling the high of the crowd's reception
to his party trick, he goes, "I'm gonna do it again."
- [Dan] Garry backs up and he sprints at full speed
towards the shatterproof window,
24 stories above Toronto.
- The window doesn't shatter.
However, the glass and its entire frame
separate from the side of the skyscraper.
And now Garry, to his surprise,
is riding a full, intact pane of skyscraper glass
down to the ground of Toronto.
- Unfortunately, he's killed, but he's right.
His windows are actually as resilient as he always claimed.
He just isn't taking into account the frame,
which is the failure point.
And that was the ultimate demise.
- Garry's tragic death truly defines the phrase,
a bad day at work.
Well, that's something the victim
in our next story will also experience.
- It's 1980 and Mayor Monica Myers
is in charge of Betterton, Maryland.
- It's a small beach community
across the bay from Baltimore.
Mayor Monica sees herself as a true municipal worker.
- She takes this job extremely seriously.
She feels like if she is gonna be in this leadership
position, she needs to know how everything in the town runs,
especially in those infrastructure type jobs.
- And one of these things
is inspecting their sewage treatment facility.
- One morning, at 6:00 AM like normal,
she goes to test the sewage plant.
- This sounds benign, but it's not.
These are giant 15-foot tall vats
of human excrement and waste.
- She climbs up the narrow stairs,
gets to the catwalk that is above these tanks,
and she slowly leans over the railing
to try to get just a small sample from the top of the vat.
- But in reaching for it, she loses her balance,
and she falls into disgusting sludge.
- As the sewage is aerated to treat it,
it actually makes it frothy.
So it's not something that you can tread your way out
of or kick your way out of.
- But also the mechanisms are causing
a current at the base of these.
So it's a losing battle.
There's almost no way a human could actually fight
their way out of this foamy sludge.
- About an hour later, around 7:30 AM, a plant supervisor,
Carl Gustafson comes to begin his day on the job.
And he notices on the catwalk
above the vats, Mayor Monica's kit,
but there's no Mayor Monica.
- He quickly starts looking around
and then finally he sees one
of the vats has something in it.
And unfortunately when he gets a closer look,
that's something is Monica's dead body.
- [Dan] The police are called to retrieve the body
and they rule the death an accident.
As part of their official duty,
they issue what must be the strangest cause
of death this town or any other has ever seen.
- They basically have to make a statement that she has died
by drowning in human waste, which has gotta be one
of the absolute most nightmarish scenarios I can imagine.
- And in thinking about the story, one starts to consider
what would be the absolute worst way to go?
No, there's nothing worse than that.
- Being buried alive has long been considered
one of the worst ways to die.
Even scarier, that it could happen nowhere near a cemetery.
- November 24th, 2009, three days before Thanksgiving.
You have a man by the name of John Jones,
his brother Josh, and a couple of friends who are going
to be entering a cave known as the Nutty Putty Cave.
- The Nutty Putty Cave is not what you think of
when you normally think of a cave.
This is not one that you can just walk in and walk through.
You actually have to like worm your way through
these narrow crevices.
- [Dan] From the surface entrance,
the journey takes you a whopping 145 feet below ground.
- Additionally, to be able to pull yourself through one
of these very narrow crevices,
you have to be able to know how to control your breath
because you have to completely exhale all
of the breath outta your body so that you can be as small
as possible to be able to put yourself through that crevice.
You can't be claustrophobic
and enter a type of cave like this
because it's not going to go well for you.
- [Dan] Despite the danger, John and his group of friends
enter the cave at 8:00 PM on November 24th.
- As they're making their way through the cave,
at a certain point, John reaches an area known
as the birth canal.
- [Hakeem] He's at this crossroads,
you could go right or left.
- [Dan] Within minutes, John realizes
he's gone the wrong way.
- So at this point, John is 100 feet underground,
wedged in this tight 8.5 inch passageway,
but he's also pitched forward almost upside down
because of the angle of the passageway, and he's stuck.
- Imagine how terrifying this is.
- Before long, over 100 rescuers are upon the scene
and they are gonna do everything in their power
to see if they can pull John out of the cave.
- The rescuers set up a pulley system
and they tie ropes to John's legs
and they attempt to winch him out
of the place where he's stuck.
But when they pull the pulley, it brings his legs up
to the roof of the cave, creating friction
that stops him from moving.
And because he's been upside down all this time,
he has no feeling in his legs and he can't move them.
- So at one point they think to themselves,
do we just break his legs?
'Cause if we break his legs, we'll be able
to move them however we want.
But the problem with that is because he's been sitting
in this position for so long, they're worried
that if they break his legs, the shock
of breaking his legs will kill him.
On top of that, one part of the pulley system
ends up just shattering.
- The situation is dire.
The rescuers are working, his family shows up,
he has his wife there,
and so the rescuers lower a speaker down there
so that his family can tell him, "It's gonna be okay, John."
Even though John can breathe, he has another problem.
Our bodies are designed to pump blood up from our feet
to our brains because we're normally upright
in a gravitational field, so our body works against that.
If you're upside down for a long time,
blood begins to pool in the brain.
The heart has to work extra hard to get it out.
So John is starting to have issues with his brain.
He's hallucinating and things
are getting bad slowly but constantly.
- At this point, it's been over 20 hours
that he has been in this position.
Ultimately, John dies of a cardiac arrest
on November 25th, 2009, shortly before midnight.
- [Dan] Rescuers worry that recovering John's body
from the cave is too risky for their team,
so they decide against it.
- The Nutty Putty Cave will be filled with concrete,
thus intombing John Jones in his final resting place.
A plaque is put up to commemorate him.
And to this day, the cave is forever closed to the public.
- If you're not claustrophobic yet, you might be after this.
- It's New Year's Day 2015,
and this 50-year-old man named Steven Winfrey decides
to go rabbit hunting in Squirrel Woods Scout Camp.
- As a rabbit hunter, Winfrey is gonna bring along a dog
and a couple of ferrets.
- And the ferrets go down in the hole
to flush out the rabbit,
and then once the rabbit comes out of the hole,
the dog goes and catches the rabbit and he's good to go.
Dinner is served.
- [Dan] Steven, the ferrets, and his dog
have some early success catching the rabbit,
but he spots another going into a distant hole
and pursues it.
This perfectly reasonable choice
will unlock a deadly chain of events.
- Steven goes about his routine.
He sends the ferrets into the rabbit hole,
but no rabbit comes out.
So he realizes he has to go to plan B.
- He ties up the dog, takes off his jacket,
and then pulls out a shovel and starts digging.
And his idea here is to excavate the hole
so it's deep enough where he can reach in
and grab the rabbit himself.
[dramatic music]
- So he sticks his arm in and he can't find the rabbit.
He's reaching around everywhere,
and he know he saw that rabbit go in that hole.
So he comes up with plan C.
- He gets even further into the hole with his arm
and then decides to stick his head into the hole
to look for the rabbit.
- And he's looking around and he's reaching around,
and he still can't see a rabbit.
So he decides to abort the mission,
but he can't pull out. He's stuck.
His head and his arm are both stuck in this rabbit hole.
- At this point, panic sets in.
[dog barking]
He's got to get his head out of this hole.
He's pushing with his hands.
He's writhing with his body and flailing his legs back
and forth, trying to get some leverage.
And that action is so violent
that he actually throws off both of his boots.
- He is now in an enclosed space
with no oxygen and struggling.
[upbeat music]
Not a good combination.
- [Dan] The next day, on January 2nd, 2015,
a hiker arrives at the strange scene.
- It's a man's body splayed out on the ground
with his head and one arm stuck in a rabbit hole.
The hiker can see that there's
been a lot of violent action there.
- There's scratch marks all around.
You can see his struggle.
His boots are on the ground off of his feet.
His body's twisted 45 degrees
and it looks like he's not breathing.
- And his poor dog is still tied
to the tree patiently waiting for his owner
to emerge from the hole.
- So the hiker calls an ambulance,
but alas, it's too late.
This guy is dead as a doornail laying there
with his head in the ground.
- [Dan] What isn't there?
Any sign of a rabbit.
- The autopsy report
that is ultimately done on Steven reveals that his cause
of death is positional asphyxia in that he is upside down,
locked in a position with not a lot of air circulation.
- And I'm sure somewhere on it, it said, "death by rabbit hole."
- They say it's impossible to have too much of a good thing,
but could something as simple as pure water
turn out to be deadly?
- Sacramento-based radio station KDND
has a morning show called the Morning Rave.
- And the contest that they're holding,
it seems innocent enough.
- The contest is called Hold Your Wee for a Wii.
You drink copious amounts of water
and the person who holds their pee longest
wins a Nintendo Wii.
- The 20 contestants are given eight ounce bottles of water
that they have to consume every 15 minutes.
And if they vomit or urinate,
they're disqualified from the contest.
- In that group of 20
is one of the contestants, Jennifer Strange.
She is a young mother and she is hoping to win this Wii.
This is a really hard to get video game system,
so she figures this is her opportunity to get it for free.
- [Dan] Ironically, this free prize will go on to cost
a lot more.
On the morning of January 12th, 2007, the contest begins.
- 90 minutes in, people have to go to the bathroom.
Others are vomiting.
- There's a woman laying on the floor,
her teeth are chattering.
No telling if this is from over hydration
or just the stress of holding it in this long.
- All the while, by the way, the jocks on the Morning Rave
are having a ball.
- Oh, she looks sick.
- They're just taking so much delight
in seeing all these people go
through various stages of pain.
- [DJ] Oh my gosh, look at her belly!
- [Dan] After an agonizing two hours, Jennifer has managed
to make it down to the final two.
- Jennifer has consumed around two gallons
of water at this point without having
gone to the bathroom yet.
- Clearly, the DJs did not read the instructions
on the human body.
One DJ jokes, "Can you, like, die from water poisoning?"
Someone else says,
"I think that guy's gonna die over there."
And one DJ, to uproarious laughter says,
"Make him sign the release."
- [DJ] Jennifer, I heard that you're not doing too well.
- [Jennifer] My head hurts.
- Still not getting the gravity of this situation,
the DJs are looking at her
and making fun of her, saying she looks pregnant.
- [DJ] She said it looks like her belly
like when she was pregnant, look, it's totally sticking out.
- [DJ] Oh my gosh.
- [Dan] Three hours later,
Jennifer's in too much pain to continue.
She quits the contest
and takes what is probably a very long bathroom break.
Then she heads home, but something isn't quite right.
- Because Jennifer's taken in all this water
in a short amount of time and she's unable to urinate,
it runs into the cells,
especially the delicate brain cells,
and you get swelling of the cerebrum.
Some cells may rupture and then the brain itself swells,
and you can have what we call a cerebral herniation,
which destroys your brain stem and that's it.
- Within five hours of the Wii contest beginning,
Jennifer Strange is found dead on her bathroom floor.
- There are no criminal charges
because these contestants did enter of their own free will.
But there's a civil suit brought by Jennifer's husband
and the jury awards Jennifer's family,
$16.5 million in compensation for wrongful death.
- Next up, another unique death that costs a fortune.
- It's the second century, BCE
and Manius Aquillius is a very prominent Roman consul, general,
and notoriously greedy and power hungry individual.
- In 89 BCE, he is sent
to quell a rebellion in Pontus, which is modern day Turkey,
led by Mithridates the sixth,
who raised a rebellion against Roman rule.
Manius marches into Pontius with 6,000 men.
As a Roman general, he's thinking, "I've got this,
no problem whatsoever.
I'm going to crush this rebellion."
However, when he gets to Pontus, he finds
that Mithridates has 100,000 men.
And so Manius is seriously outnumbered.
- Upon seeing his insurmountable odds,
Manius Aquillius turns tail.
He's fleeing, he's outta here.
- [Dan] Unfortunately, his plan of retreat also falls short.
After his capture, Manius Aquillius
is ordered to be put to death,
but this is not your normal, everyday execution.
Mithridates has something quite special in mind.
- He is shackled atop a donkey
and paraded back to the city of Pergamum for his punishment.
- [Dan] It turns out watching an execution garners
a pretty good audience in 89, BCE,
and the crowd likes to contribute.
- The whole while, he's being pelted,
just hit with animal innards, probably manure.
- But it's not enough to simply kill him.
This is not a simple beheading or crucifixion.
- [Dan] Mithridates has something
a little richer in mind.
- Mithridates' men hold his throat open
and they pour, from a vat, molten gold down his esophagus.
A truly brutal means of execution.
[Manius screaming]
- And the heat from that molten metal
essentially bursts his organs.
As soon as it hits the soft tissue,
it just splits it like a sausage.
[sizzling]
- [Dan] A death as excruciating as it is costly.
But why gold?
- Lead was commonly used for forms
of execution in the Roman period.
But gold may have been used in this case specifically
as a means of mocking Manius' greed.
- [Dan] While Manius' life is now over,
the strange spectacle of his death is not.
- Mithridates is not about to lose that amount of gold.
And eventually, after his body's cooled a bit,
they dissect Manius' body to excavate the gold
that is in his abdomen and in his throat.
[dramatic music]
- If these stories teach us anything,
it is that death, just like life,
can be full of surprises.
But for those done in by their own beards
or killed by flying lawnmowers,
the end came in ways that were truly unbelievable.