1667 Emojis & Text

Sneaking a boy into your bedroom is perhaps not that unusual, but killing him while doing it is. In 1667, James Betts passed from asphyxiation after his lover, the young Elizabeth Spencer, sealed him in a cupboard when her father returned early. Sadly, Elizabeth committed suicide shortly after. This all took place at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

An Eerie Premonition Chicago firefighter Francis Leavy was dedicated to his job and loved by his peers, which is why his co-workers were understandably puzzled when his demeanor suddenly changed on April 18, 1924. Gone was the friendly, ever-smiling man, and in his place was a silent, unsmiling guy who avoided everyone. Later that day, Leavy made a chilling announcement. He claimed that he had a premonition that he was going to die that day. Just as the words left his lips, they were called to a fire, and lo and behold, Leavy died when the building’s roof caved in.

Drowning In Sorrow I had a cousin who drowned when I was much younger. At the time, he was off at college, so nobody knew about it until the next day. His parents were taking care of his 2-year-old niece. The night he drowned, she woke up screaming in the night and would not go to sleep. She just kept pointing to a picture of him that was on the nightstand. His parents gave it to her, and she hugged it and wouldn't let go of it all night.

The Bad Omen During the filming of the 1976 movie The Omen, the film crew hired a private plane to transport them, but they had to make a last minute cancellation. Instead, the plane flew elsewhere, only it didn’t get very far. The plane crashed violently onto a road, into two traveling cars. And who was in one of those cars? The wife and children of the pilot who crashed the plane.

Driving over an IED in Iraq. Its battery had gone bad in the heat. If the battery was alive, I wouldn’t be.

After nurse told a visitor he seemed to be feeling a little better, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen turned to them both and muttered, “On the contrary!” before dying.

The Revenge Of The Dead Sigurd the Mighty, the ninth-century Viking Earl of Orkney, managed to get killed by a man whom he'd beheaded. Following a particularly vicious battle, the earl tied the head of his enemy to his horse’s saddle. On the way home, one of the corpse's teeth grazed him as he was riding, and he perished from the resulting infection of his leg wound.

The Mix-Up In 1986, my mother came for a routine pregnancy exam at the hospital... It wasn't her usual gynecologist because they were on holiday. As the gynecologist enters the room, she's waiting with her two feet in the stirrups, wearing the typical hospital grown with the opening at the back. He revealed the instruments for the exam. My mother was a nurse. She recognized the instruments for an abortion and asked the doctor, “What's going on? Is there a problem?" and the gynecologist said, "Well yes, as you know the baby is dead, we need to remove it." My mother threw the biggest tantrum in the history of tantrums. My dad usually picks up the narrative at this part of the story, "I saw your mother storming out of the exam room, she passed by me as she was howling. The gynecologist had mixed up the files. He was supposed to do the abortion on someone else.

The Ultimate Prediction “You will not find me alive at sunrise,” said Nostradamus; his last words proved also to be his last prediction.

Zap Michael Anderson Godwin, a murder convict, managed to have his death sentence overturned. While he avoided the death by electrocution, he fatally shocked himself in his cell. He was trying to fix a pair of broken earphones while sitting on a steel toilet, and inadvertently created a makeshift electric chair.

She Knew Something Was Up When my great-grandma was on her last legs, she was convinced that my mom was having a baby and wanted to know if it was a girl or boy. My mom replied by telling her that she was not pregnant, and after asking the same to my aunt she said, "Oh, guess I was wrong". Here's where it gets unsettling. Exactly nine months later, I was born.

In Case of Emergency I had a guest speaker who was in the trade centers when they were hit in 2001. He said that he took the stairs all the way down 74 floors because he didn't trust the elevators. He was in a meeting with 55 other people, and he was one of four to survive. He said as he was heading down the hall to escape, he turned around and noticed everyone cramming in the elevators from the meeting. Only the people in the meeting that took the stairs survived.

Skateboarder’s Nightmare In 2006, I had leg pain and it lasted for like four months. I was refusing to get it checked for fear that I would have to stop skateboarding for any amount of time. I was 15 years old. I had a math test I didn’t study for come up one day, and I used it as an excuse to leave and got my leg checked instead. If I hadn’t have done that, I don’t know what would have happened. That day, I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer). 11 years later I’m still fighting it, but not a day passes where I don’t think how lucky I was to just pop over to the hospital. If I would’ve broken my leg (my femur was getting more brittle every day) the tumor would’ve broken and spread to my lungs—and there’s no way I would be sitting here typing this.

The Beheaded Man’s Revenge A ninth-century Norse earl named Sigurd the Mighty was killed by an enemy he had beheaded hours earlier. He tied the severed head to his horse’s saddle, but on the ride home the man’s tooth scratched his leg. The resulting infection killed the earl.

Tag! You’re It! Have you ever been stuck as “it” in a game of tag for a really long time? Industrialist and multimillionaire Richard B. Mellon had a 70-year game of tag going with his little brother Andrew. On his deathbed, he called his brother to him and whispered, “last tag.” Andrew remained “it” until he died four years later.

Falling Bobby Leach was famous as the second person to go over the Niagara Falls in a barrel, surviving the falls with very serious injuries that took him 6 months to recover from. 15 years after the feat, he fell again, in a much less dramatic fashion this time. Leach slipped on an orange peel on the street. What, were there no banana peels around? As minor as it may have seemed, his fall caused an infection in his leg that was so serious that he eventually passed away from the medical complications it had caused.

Last Christmas You might be familiar with “Last Christmas” by Wham an often-played holiday song about the vocalist giving his heart to someone and having it be given away the very next day. Well, George Michael—that very same vocalist, died on Christmas day of heart failure.

Take This Snore and Shove it Mark Gleeson suffocated in his sleep because he inserted two tampons in his nostrils before going to bed. It’s believed that the 26-year-old from Hampshire, England was just trying to cure his snoring problem. No word on if it helped.

Hesitation As his executioner hesitated with the ax poised above his neck, Sir Walter Raleigh urged the man on. “Strike, man, strike!” he called out.