What you do know will kill you

This week we'll be taking a lighthearted look at that most serious of matters: Death.

To be more precise, we will take a look at deaths that were self inflicted but not suicides. All the people featured on today's list caused their own demise either through some consequence they themselves set in motion or by not thinking straight.

First up in our macabre cavalcade is Sigurd Eysteinsson, a.k.a. Sigurd the Mighty, 2^nd viking earl of Orkney. I imagine you have to be pretty bad-ass to earn the moniker “the mighty”, especially amongst vikings, who took things like that seriously. Anyhow, in about the year 892, he killed his hated enemy Máel Brigte and took his head as a trophy. Perhaps he was going for an even tougher nickname, we'll never know.

For you see, Sigurd tied Máels head to his saddle and rode off. But he failed to notice that Máels teeth were rubbing against his leg as he rode. This caused a small wound which turned septic and killed Sigurd.

Talk about revenge from beyond the grave...

Next up is Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden (1751-1771).

We're not going to go into his life so much as his demise. You see on 12 February 1771, the king decide to dine on lobster, caviar, sauerkraut and kippers. He washed the whole thing down with champagne before ordering dessert. His favorite dessert in fact, semla. These pastries are traditionally served in a bowl of hot milk, and the king scarfed it down, and ordered another, and another, and another, and then ten more! All in all, he crammed down fourteen portions, before keeling over dead.

Sure, it's good to be the king, but come on!

From king to commoner, we leap into the modern age. Here we find David Grundman, an Arizona man in a serious relationship with his shotgun. One day in 1982, he decided to head out into the desert with the above mentioned shotgun to shoot the ever living hell out of some stuff. And by stuff, I mean cacti. Mostly the saguaro cacti native to Arizona. If you can't be bothered following the link, think of a cartoon cactus vaguely shaped like a man. Shooting these cacti is considered vandalism since they take centuries to grow so big.

Anyway, after executing some smaller cacti, David took aim at a really big one, blew it's top off and promptly met his maker, as it fell on him, crushing him to death in it's spiky embrace.

I guess David got nailed in the end...

Finally, I want to present Basil Brown. Basil was a very health conscious man, and you'd not find him choking down fourteen portions of semla. Oh no, Basil was all about carrots. Juiced carrots in fact. But he does have one thing in common with our unfortunate Adolf Frederick: he couldn't stop in time either. In 1974 he drank 10 gallons of carrot juice in 10 days. That's 45 liters, or 4.5 liters a day. Another way to put it would be 10000 times the recommended dose of vitamin A, which quickly killed his liver and then him.

Too much of a good thing, you know?

That's it for this week folks. Remember, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. Or how it does you.