Post by Graveyardbride on Aug 20, 2023 21:16:53 GMT -5
Dead Man Wins Race and Other Bizarre Deaths
The dead man wins! Although his age is in dispute – some say he was 35, others 22, – Frank Hayes (shown above on Sweet Kiss), a stable hand who eventually became a stand-in jockey, did something no other jockey has ever done: he won an equestrian event after death!
On June 4, 1923, at a steeplechase race at New York’s Belmont Park, Hayes was riding Sweet Kiss, a 20-1 shot. Everyone expected Gimme, the favorite, to take the prize that day, but long-shots do occasionally win. What made this win noteworthy though is that during the event, Hayes suffered a heart attack and died. “The grim reaper paid a sensational visit to the Belmont Park track yesterday,” a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote.
No one knows precisely what happened, but some believed his heart failed as a result of having to quickly reduce his weight to 130 pounds. “He was confronted with the task of taking off nearly 10 pounds in 24 hours,” the Buffalo Morning Express reported. “This morning he spent several hours on the road, jogging off surplus weight. He strove and sweated and denied himself water and when he climbed into the saddle at post time he was weak and tired.”
Nonetheless, Hayes managed to remain in an upright position to cross the finish line, after which he tumbled from the saddle. He was buried in the silks he wore on the day of his last race – the only race he ever won.
Death on stage. During a live television broadcast of the play Underground in London on November 30, 1958, Gareth Jones, 33, dropped dead of a heart attack. According to British actor Peter Bowles, “During transmission, a little group of us was talking on camera while awaiting the arrival of Gareth Jones’s character, who had some information for us. We could see him coming up towards us, but we saw him fall. We had no idea what had happened, but he certainly wasn’t coming our way.” Ironically, Jones was playing the role of Carl Norman, who suffers a fatal heart attack.
Vegetables can kill you. In February 1974, Basil Brown, a 48-year-old health food enthusiast, was found dead, and when the doctor performing the postmortem saw his corpse, the first thing he noted was that the man’s skin was bright yellow. A coroner’s inquest revealed that Brown was drinking a gallon of carrot juice a day and downing Vitamin A tablets. During a 10-day period, he had ingested an unbelievable 70 million units of the vitamin. His liver was in an advanced stage of cirrhosis, and the pathologist said Vitamin A’s effect on this vital organ was indistinguishable from that caused by alcoholic poisoning. The coroner’s jury determined Brown died of cirrhosis of the liver brought on by his “carrot juice addiction.”
It’s the Grand Canyon, fool! On November 28, 1992, Greg Austin Gingrich, 38, took his teenage daughter to the Grand Canyon and for reasons unknown, decided to play a sick joke on her by pretending to fall. He hopped atop the guard rail and began flailing his arms with the intention of sliding down a small slope just beyond the edge, where he apparently believed he could land safely on the ridge. Unfortunately, he lost his footing and plummeted 400 feet to his death.
The glass didn’t break. Garry Hoy (above), an esteemed member of the law firm of Holden Day Wilson located on the 24th floor of a skyscraper in Toronto’s financial district, specialized in building safety and compliance. It was common knowledge the 38-year-old attorney never passed up an opportunity to let everyone know that in addition to his juris doctor degree, he also possessed a degree in engineering, so on July 9, 1993, when the firm threw a party to welcome summer interns, no one was surprised when Hoy commenced bragging about the building’s unbreakable windows.
So keen was he to demonstrate the sturdiness of said windows and impress the young lawyers-to-be, he suddenly rushed forward, throwing his full body weight against one of the huge expanses of glass. The window did not shatter, however, it’s frame popped and window and all plunged 24 stories to the pavement below. Hoy was killed instantly when he impacted a concrete block, but he was right – the glass didn’t break!
Founded in the early 20th century, Holden Day Wilson was one of the largest law firms in Canada, and despite his reckless exhibitionism, Hoy was one of its most valued members. Unfortunately, the publicity generated by the fatal stunt had a detrimental effect on the corporation and during the following three-year period, 30 lawyers left the firm, which dissolved in December 1996.
The Segway just never caught on. Segway is the registered name of a two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery powered personal transporter invented by Dean Kamen. Some may recall that in June 2003, President George W. Bush (above), who was in top physical shape, fell while attempting to operate such a device at his family’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Undeterred by the clumsy president’s inability to remain upright on the Segway, in December 2009, James “Jimi” Heselden, a British businessman, purchased the company. Less than a year later, on September 26, 2010, the 62-year-old multi-millionaire was maneuvering a rugged country version of the two-wheeled transporter along the cliffs above the River Wharfe, when he went over the edge and plunged 30 feet to his death.
Sources: Alchetron, September 4, 2022; Bianca Britton, CNN, December 10, 2018; The Brooklyn Daily Eagle; The Buffalo Morning Express; Grand Canyon Deaths; IMDb; Amelia Jones, Unilad, June 8, 2023; NBC News, September 27, 2010; and The New York Times, February 17, 1974.
