List of Unusual Deaths - Middle Ages

Middle Ages

• 762: Li Po (Li Bai), Chinese poet and courtier, supposedly tried to kiss the reflection of the Moon beside the boat in which he was travelling, fell overboard and drowned.
• 892: Sigurd the Mighty of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe, Máel Brigte, to his horse's saddle. The teeth of the head grazed against his leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection.
• 1063: Béla I of Hungary died when his wooden throne collapsed upon him.
• 1219: Inalchuk, the Muslim governor of the city of Otrar in Central Asia, was ordered to be executed by Genghis Khan by pouring molten silver in his eyes and ears in vengeance for his execution of Mongol traders the year before.
• 1258: Al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses.
• 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumoured to have been murdered by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body.
• 1387: Charles II of Navarre, after having been wrapped in bandages soaked in brandy in an attempt to cure an illness, was burned alive when a servant accidentally set the bandages on fire.
• 1410: Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.
• 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine at his own request.