David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

Transgression : Violence, corruption and generalised wickedness.

Method of execution : Flood.

Transgression : Widespread wickedness and lack of respect for the deity.

Method of execution : Rain of fire and brimstone.

Transgression : Looked back.

Method of execution : Turned into a pillar of salt.

Transgression : Wickedness.

Method of execution : Unknown.

Transgression : Refused to make love to his brother Er’s widow.

Method of execution : Unknown.

Transgression : Egypt was cruel to the Jews.

Method of execution : Unknown.

Transgression : Pursued the Jews.

Method of execution : Drowned.

Transgression : Offered strange fire.

Method of execution : Fire.

Transgression : Rejected authority of Moses and started own congregation.

Method of execution : Swallowed by earth.

Transgression : Supported Korah.

Method of execution : Fire.

Transgression : Murmured against Moses and his brother Aaron following execution of Korah and his supporters.

Method of execution : Plague.

Transgression : Fought the Israelites.

Method of execution : Hailstones.

Transgression : Touched the ark of God after oxen shook it while pulling it on a cart.

Method of execution : Unknown.

Transgression : King David ordered a census of the population.

Method of execution : Plague.

Transgression : Tried to capture Elijah the Tishbite.

Method of execution : Fire.

Transgression : Land fraud.

Method of execution : Unknown.

Pat Burke of St Louis, Missouri, took his first bath in 20 years on August 23, 1903. It killed him. Burke was the second victim of cleanliness in a week at the city hospital, and the third in its history. The first was Billy O’Rourke, who had been bathed on the previous Tuesday. Both men had been scrubbed with a broom.

Li Po (d. 762AD), the great Chinese poet and drunkard, often spouted verses he was too intoxicated to write down. His admirer Emperor Ming Huang served as his secretary and jotted down the poems. Li Po was given a pension that included the right to free drinks whenever he travelled. One well-tanked night he took a boat excursion on a river. Seeing the reflection of the moon on the water, he tried to kiss it, fell overboard and drowned. Some scholars believed he actually died of cirrhosis.

Mr Raymond Priestley of Melbourne, Australia, was playing snooker in a garage with a friend when he met his doom. He had climbed onto a crossbeam in the ceiling to attempt a trick shot and was hanging upside down by his legs when he slipped. He crashed down on the concrete floor headfirst and later died from brain damage.

Hans Steininger was known for having the longest beard in the world. One day in September 1567, while he was climbing the staircase leading to the council chamber of Brunn in Austria, Steininger stepped on his beard, lost his balance, fell down the stairs and died.

On February 4, 1982, 27-year-old David M. Grundman fired two shot-gun blasts at a giant saguaro cactus in the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona. Unfortunately for Grundman, his shots caused a 23-ft section of the cactus to fall on him and he was crushed to death.

Clement L. Vallandigham was a highly controversial Ohio politician who engendered much hostility by supporting the South during the Civil War. Convicted of treason, he was banished to the Confederacy. Back in Ohio after the war, Vallandigham became an extremely successful lawyer, who rarely lost a case. In 1871 he took on the defence of Thomas McGehan, a local troublemaker who was accused of shooting Tom Myers to death during a barroom brawl. Vallandigham contended that Myers had actually shot himself, attempting to draw his pistol from his pocket while trying to rise from a kneeling position.

On the evening of June 16, Vallandigham was conferring in his hotel room with fellow defence lawyers when he decided to show them how he would demonstrate his theory to the jury the next day. Earlier in the day, he had placed two pistols on the bureau, one empty and one loaded. Grabbing the loaded one by mistake, Vallandigham put it in his trouser pocket. Then he slowly pulled the pistol back out and cocked it.

‘There, that’s the way Myers held it,’ he said, and pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and Vallandigham explained, ‘My God, I’ve shot myself!’ He died 12 hours later. Vallandigham’s client, Thomas McGehan, was subsequently acquitted and released from custody.

Keith Relf, who had gained fame as the lead singer of The Yardbirds, a 1960s blues-rock group, was found dead at his home in London on May 14, 1976. The cause of death was an electric shock received while playing his guitar. Relf was 33 years old.

It is almost impossible to die of an overdose of water, but Tina Christopherson managed to do it. The 29-year-old Florida woman, who had an IQ of 189, became obsessed with the idea that she suffered from stomach cancer, a disease which had killed her mother. In an attempt to cleanse her body, Christopherson went on periodic water fasts, during which she ate no food but drank up to four gallons of water a day. By February 17, 1977, she had consumed so much water that her kidneys were overwhelmed and the excess fluid drained into her lungs. She died of internal drowning, otherwise known as ‘water intoxication’.

William Shortis, a rent collector in Liverpool, England, and his wife, Emily Ann, had not been seen for several days. Worried friends and a policeman entered the house on August 13, 1903, and were horrified to discover William, dazed and dying, at the foot of the staircase pinned to the floor underneath the body of his 224-lb wife. A coroner’s jury concluded that the elderly couple had been walking up the stairs when Emily Ann fell backwards, carrying her husband with her, but William remained in his unfortunate position for three days, too seriously injured to be able to extricate himself.