January 19, 2024 • 9 mins
It seems like iconic, larger-than-life folks should meet larger-than-life demises. But that's not always the case. There are huge names who died from all sorts of ridiculous and messy mistakes.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When somebody is larger than life, doesn't it seem kind
of weird when they die in an unexpected way. Now
I'm not trying to be morbid here, but it's interesting
to see how some iconic people wrapped up. I'm Patty Steele,
the Big Exit. Next on the backstory. We're back with
(00:22):
the backstory, all right. It's easy to think that people
who are historic icons or famous villains somehow live beyond
a normal lifespan. Right now, the ones who come to
a dramatic end like JFK, A Blink and RhE Antoinette,
Bonnie and Clyde are at one end of the spectrum.
But there are those who've made the great exit in
(00:42):
much more unexpected ways. Take George Washington. He finished his
final term as president in seventeen ninety seven, headed back
for retirement to his home in Virginia, Mount Vernon. He'll
have riding around on horseback. His property included about eight
thousand acres, so there was a lot of riding to do.
In mid December of seventeen ninety nine, he was inspecting
(01:04):
fences and was out for most of the day in
an ice storm. The next day, despite a sore throat,
he did more outdoor work in a heavy snowstorm, while
by evening his chest was congested. By three o'clock the
next morning, he was struggling to breathe, and he had
an aid who worked on the estate remove a pint
of his blood. That was a common treatment in those
(01:26):
days if you were sick. Then three doctors arrived. They
not only gave him meds, including a mercury compound to
help him purge aka vomit, they put these things called
blister packs on him, thinking that that would draw inflammation
there and away from his throat, And then they also
drained him of more blood. In all, they removed as
(01:48):
much as seven pints of blood, somewhere around fifty percent
of the blood in George's body. Fighting the infection in
his throat with half his blood gone was pretty much impossible,
and he died. I'd late that evening now in a sidebar.
A fourth doctor arrived a few days after George had died,
and he proposed attempting to bring him back to life
(02:09):
by performing a tracheotomy on his throat and also replenishing
his blood supply by using lamb's blood. The other doctor said, no,
that's not going to happen, and that was that. Now
here's a guy who just didn't want to make the
big exit. They call him the mad Monk. He's Grigory Resputant.
(02:32):
He was a Russian peasant who became a big shot
with the Russian nobility at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds.
He claimed to be a mystic and said he could
heal the sick. Well, turns out he somehow did manage
to help Nicholas and Alexandra, the Emperor and Empress of Russia,
whose two year old son and heir to the throne, Alexei,
(02:53):
had hemophilia. A little boy had developed internal bleeding that
would not stop an Alexandra begged Rasputin to pray for him.
He promised her that her son would not die and
told her to keep doctors away from the little one. Inexplicably,
Alexei recovered quickly, and the royals relied on him for
guidance for the rest of his life. Now the problem is,
(03:17):
even with the support of the imperial family, Resputin had
haters among the nobility, so by nineteen sixteen they wanted
him out. A bunch of them banded together to do
him in, but it wasn't an easy job. He was
invited to one of their palaces, where they first gave
him tea and cakes laced with cyanide, but he had
(03:37):
no reaction to it. Then they gave him wine, also
laced with cyanide. He drank that, but again no reaction.
What's next They shot him in the chest, and thinking
he was finally dead, they left the palace for an
hour or so. When one of them came back, Rasputin
leapt up and attacked him. He chased his would be
(03:57):
killer upstairs to the courtyard, where the mad monk was
shot in the head and finally collapsed dead. Not content,
his killers then threw him off a bridge into a river.
He did not come back from that. Another strange pair
of deaths was that of the first really publicized conjoined twins.
In fact, Chang and Aang were the reason conjoined twins
(04:19):
were called Siamese twins for over a century since the
pair grew up in Bangkok, Siam now called Thailand. Chang
and Ag were twins born around eighteen eleven who were
joined at the chest After a relatively normal childhood. Despite
being conjoined, they decided to capitalize on their situation. So
they toured the world and they became hugely popular. They
(04:41):
made a lot of money and finally settled down in
North Carolina, of all places, and married local women. Chang
had ten children, Aang had eleven. To replenish their bank accounts,
they toured again, even working with P. T. Barnum for
a short time. Finally, in their late fifties, Chang began
to have health problems, including having a stroke. Then in
(05:03):
eighteen seventy four, he caught bronchitis. He finally died, and
this had always been Eng's biggest fear. He claimed he
had to die too, even though he wasn't sick, despite
being completely healthy. Within two hours of his brother's death,
Ang collapsed and died as well. They were sixty two
years old, and autopsy stated that Chang had died of
(05:25):
a cerebral blood clot while ag had simply died of fright,
and doctors agreed there would have been no way to
separate them, at least back in those days. And finally,
there's Isidora Duncan. She's considered the mother of modern dance.
Born in San Francisco, she had moved to New York
City by the time she was eighteen and eighteen ninety
six to study dance, but she was a free spirit
(05:48):
and didn't like the restrictions of old school ballet, so
by the time she was twenty she had moved to London.
She became a huge star all over Europe, dancing barefoot
in flowing Greek tunics and garbs. She was photographed constantly
by famous photographers and artists did spectacular modernist paintings of her.
In Paris, wearing a thin, flowing Greek gown, she danced
(06:11):
barefoot on tables at a party for three hundred people,
where they downed nine hundred bottles of champagne. Isidora lived
a freeform life. She had three kids with three men,
none of whom she married, although she was briefly married
to another man who was twenty years younger than she,
and she had a ton of lovers, most of them
also decades younger too. She lived, performed, and taught, moving
(06:34):
constantly between New York, Russia, and Europe. Finally, it's nineteen
twenty seven Isidora, now fifty, staying with friends on the
French riviera in Nice, she hooks up with twenty seven
year old race car driver Benoi Falcetto. It is a
beautiful autumn day, and she climbs into Falsetto's exotic convertible.
Her friend hands her a cape and a hand painted
(06:57):
silk scarf to keep warm, but is a Aura just
takes the scarf, throws it around her neck and calls out, Adieu,
mes ami, I am off to glory. Although another friend
claims it what she actually said was I'm off to love. Now.
That's really dramatic, but not nearly as dramatic as what
happened next. As they sped off, that long silk scarf
(07:21):
draped around her neck flew back and wrapped around the
open spokes of the wheel, as well as the axle
of the car. The New York Times said in Isidora's obituary,
Miss Duncan met a tragic death in Nice on the Riviera.
According to dispatches from France, she was hurled in an
extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding,
(07:44):
and instantly killed by the force of her fall to
the stone pavement. She died of strangulation and a broken neck. Now,
at the end of the day, all of these people
changed the way we view the world and maybe now
even the way we view the Big Exit. I'd like
(08:08):
to thank David Katz and Steve Kingston for help with
these stories and remind you that if you have a
story you'd like me to take a deeper dive into
and share, you can direct message me on Instagram at
Real Patty Steele or on Facebook at Patty Steele. I'm
(08:29):
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
(08:52):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
When somebody is larger than life, doesn't it seem kind
of weird when they die in an unexpected way. Now
I'm not trying to be morbid here, but it's interesting
to see how some iconic people wrapped up. I'm Patty Steele,
the Big Exit. Next on the backstory. We're back with
(00:22):
the backstory, all right. It's easy to think that people
who are historic icons or famous villains somehow live beyond
a normal lifespan. Right now, the ones who come to
a dramatic end like JFK, A Blink and RhE Antoinette,
Bonnie and Clyde are at one end of the spectrum.
But there are those who've made the great exit in
(00:42):
much more unexpected ways. Take George Washington. He finished his
final term as president in seventeen ninety seven, headed back
for retirement to his home in Virginia, Mount Vernon. He'll
have riding around on horseback. His property included about eight
thousand acres, so there was a lot of riding to do.
In mid December of seventeen ninety nine, he was inspecting
(01:04):
fences and was out for most of the day in
an ice storm. The next day, despite a sore throat,
he did more outdoor work in a heavy snowstorm, while
by evening his chest was congested. By three o'clock the
next morning, he was struggling to breathe, and he had
an aid who worked on the estate remove a pint
of his blood. That was a common treatment in those
(01:26):
days if you were sick. Then three doctors arrived. They
not only gave him meds, including a mercury compound to
help him purge aka vomit, they put these things called
blister packs on him, thinking that that would draw inflammation
there and away from his throat, And then they also
drained him of more blood. In all, they removed as
(01:48):
much as seven pints of blood, somewhere around fifty percent
of the blood in George's body. Fighting the infection in
his throat with half his blood gone was pretty much impossible,
and he died. I'd late that evening now in a sidebar.
A fourth doctor arrived a few days after George had died,
and he proposed attempting to bring him back to life
(02:09):
by performing a tracheotomy on his throat and also replenishing
his blood supply by using lamb's blood. The other doctor said, no,
that's not going to happen, and that was that. Now
here's a guy who just didn't want to make the
big exit. They call him the mad Monk. He's Grigory Resputant.
(02:32):
He was a Russian peasant who became a big shot
with the Russian nobility at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds.
He claimed to be a mystic and said he could
heal the sick. Well, turns out he somehow did manage
to help Nicholas and Alexandra, the Emperor and Empress of Russia,
whose two year old son and heir to the throne, Alexei,
(02:53):
had hemophilia. A little boy had developed internal bleeding that
would not stop an Alexandra begged Rasputin to pray for him.
He promised her that her son would not die and
told her to keep doctors away from the little one. Inexplicably,
Alexei recovered quickly, and the royals relied on him for
guidance for the rest of his life. Now the problem is,
(03:17):
even with the support of the imperial family, Resputin had
haters among the nobility, so by nineteen sixteen they wanted
him out. A bunch of them banded together to do
him in, but it wasn't an easy job. He was
invited to one of their palaces, where they first gave
him tea and cakes laced with cyanide, but he had
(03:37):
no reaction to it. Then they gave him wine, also
laced with cyanide. He drank that, but again no reaction.
What's next They shot him in the chest, and thinking
he was finally dead, they left the palace for an
hour or so. When one of them came back, Rasputin
leapt up and attacked him. He chased his would be
(03:57):
killer upstairs to the courtyard, where the mad monk was
shot in the head and finally collapsed dead. Not content,
his killers then threw him off a bridge into a river.
He did not come back from that. Another strange pair
of deaths was that of the first really publicized conjoined twins.
In fact, Chang and Aang were the reason conjoined twins
(04:19):
were called Siamese twins for over a century since the
pair grew up in Bangkok, Siam now called Thailand. Chang
and Ag were twins born around eighteen eleven who were
joined at the chest After a relatively normal childhood. Despite
being conjoined, they decided to capitalize on their situation. So
they toured the world and they became hugely popular. They
(04:41):
made a lot of money and finally settled down in
North Carolina, of all places, and married local women. Chang
had ten children, Aang had eleven. To replenish their bank accounts,
they toured again, even working with P. T. Barnum for
a short time. Finally, in their late fifties, Chang began
to have health problems, including having a stroke. Then in
(05:03):
eighteen seventy four, he caught bronchitis. He finally died, and
this had always been Eng's biggest fear. He claimed he
had to die too, even though he wasn't sick, despite
being completely healthy. Within two hours of his brother's death,
Ang collapsed and died as well. They were sixty two
years old, and autopsy stated that Chang had died of
(05:25):
a cerebral blood clot while ag had simply died of fright,
and doctors agreed there would have been no way to
separate them, at least back in those days. And finally,
there's Isidora Duncan. She's considered the mother of modern dance.
Born in San Francisco, she had moved to New York
City by the time she was eighteen and eighteen ninety
six to study dance, but she was a free spirit
(05:48):
and didn't like the restrictions of old school ballet, so
by the time she was twenty she had moved to London.
She became a huge star all over Europe, dancing barefoot
in flowing Greek tunics and garbs. She was photographed constantly
by famous photographers and artists did spectacular modernist paintings of her.
In Paris, wearing a thin, flowing Greek gown, she danced
(06:11):
barefoot on tables at a party for three hundred people,
where they downed nine hundred bottles of champagne. Isidora lived
a freeform life. She had three kids with three men,
none of whom she married, although she was briefly married
to another man who was twenty years younger than she,
and she had a ton of lovers, most of them
also decades younger too. She lived, performed, and taught, moving
(06:34):
constantly between New York, Russia, and Europe. Finally, it's nineteen
twenty seven Isidora, now fifty, staying with friends on the
French riviera in Nice, she hooks up with twenty seven
year old race car driver Benoi Falcetto. It is a
beautiful autumn day, and she climbs into Falsetto's exotic convertible.
Her friend hands her a cape and a hand painted
(06:57):
silk scarf to keep warm, but is a Aura just
takes the scarf, throws it around her neck and calls out, Adieu,
mes ami, I am off to glory. Although another friend
claims it what she actually said was I'm off to love. Now.
That's really dramatic, but not nearly as dramatic as what
happened next. As they sped off, that long silk scarf
(07:21):
draped around her neck flew back and wrapped around the
open spokes of the wheel, as well as the axle
of the car. The New York Times said in Isidora's obituary,
Miss Duncan met a tragic death in Nice on the Riviera.
According to dispatches from France, she was hurled in an
extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding,
(07:44):
and instantly killed by the force of her fall to
the stone pavement. She died of strangulation and a broken neck. Now,
at the end of the day, all of these people
changed the way we view the world and maybe now
even the way we view the Big Exit. I'd like
(08:08):
to thank David Katz and Steve Kingston for help with
these stories and remind you that if you have a
story you'd like me to take a deeper dive into
and share, you can direct message me on Instagram at
Real Patty Steele or on Facebook at Patty Steele. I'm
(08:29):
Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
(08:52):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
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