Strange Deaths
From The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, p. 284:
I've read about blues singer Robert Johnson, who died after drinking strychnine-laced whiskey in a juke joint. And Marie Blanchard, an aviation pioneer who died when her hot air balloon was set ablaze by fireworks. Explorer David Livingstone died of hemorrhoids(!); poet Henry Longfellow's wife's dress caught on fire; the Greek philosopher Peregrinus Proteus threw himself into the flames of the Olympic Games; the French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat was stabbed in his bath by a female assassin.