10 Historical Figures Who Died in Mysterious Ways

10 Historical Figures Who Died Under Mysterious Circumstances

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most puzzling deaths of historical figures.

#10: Meriwether Lewis (1809)

Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, mysteriously died at an inn in Tennessee. The innkeeper’s wife reportedly heard gunshots in the middle of the night and saw Lewis moving unsteadily, asking for water. She was too frightened to help him, though, and by sunrise he was dead. Known to struggle with mental illness, alcohol dependency, and finances, many believe he died by his own hand. But there are many theories about murder too. The innkeeper’s wife’s story is doubted because it was night and she was in a different building, leading to theories that Lewis was caught in a compromising position and shot by her husband. He could have been killed by bandits or even an assassination plot, but we’ll never really know.

#9: Attila the Hun (453)

The leader of the expansive Hunnic Empire died unexpectedly on his wedding night. Details vary, but it’s consistent that guards found the body of Attila the Hun in his bedroom the morning after his latest marriage to a woman named Ildico. The lack of wounds on Attila’s body made it unlikely that Ildico did anything. However, Attila was covered in blood. Where did the blood come from? The most likely theory is that he got a nosebleed in his sleep and it turned into a hemorrhage due to excessive, long-term alcohol consumption.

#8: Martin of Aragon (1410)

Martin of Aragon ruled over many lands from 1396 until his death in 1410. The king of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily could have died from a number of issues. Some sources cite the plague. Some say it was kidney failure. Still others claim it was poison. But the most famous account of Martin of Aragon’s death deals with a goose. After Martin ate an entire goose, he suffered from indigestion. Borra the jester soon came in to entertain the court. Apparently, Borra’s joke about a deer in the vineyard was so hilarious that the king died of laughter.

#7: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1791)

The prolific classical composer died at 35 years old, maybe from an illness, maybe from medical malpractice, or maybe from poisoning. True, he was ill for a few months before his death and he did suspect poison, but the official cause of death was a severe miliary fever. Of course, military fever is pretty vague, since it refers to bumps on the skin and is not an actual diagnosis. Soon after he died, a rumor spread that another composer, Antonio Salieri, poisoned him, but that has been largely dismissed. Other theories include strep infection, kidney disease, eating undercooked pork, tuberculosis, and lack of sunlight.

#6: Edgar Allan Poe (1849)

The famed mystery writer was found semi-conscious outside a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, in dire need of medical help, and died four days later in a hospital. How did he wind up in that condition? One long-standing theory is that substance abuse played a big role, although Poe recently joined the temperance movement and the attending physician insisted there were no traces of alcohol or drugs in his body. Another prominent theory is that Poe was a victim of a violent cooping gang, a group which forced individuals into committing electoral fraud. Other possibilities include epilepsy, syphilis, a brain tumor, and even rabies.

#5: Vincent van Gogh (1890)

The post-Impressionist painter died of a bullet in his torso, but who shot the gun, and why was the bullet buried for so long? Many believe van Gogh shot himself, but his body didn't have powder burns and he would’ve had to crawl a mile to get back to the inn where he was staying. His private writings also show that he believed taking his own life was sinful and immoral. Now the murder theories come in. In 1956, a man confessed that he had been harassing van Gogh in the summer of 1890. It’s possible that as an antagonistic, gun-loving teenager, this man accidentally shot the artist. But the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is committed to the first theory.

#4: Amelia Earhart (1937)

The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean reached a mysterious end when she attempted to fly around the globe. On June 1, 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan began their journey from Miami, Florida. On July 2, they were heading for Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, but they never made it. One of the last radio transmissions from the plane was about low fuel. It’s likely that Earhart and Noonan crashed and sank somewhere in the ocean, never to be found. However, some people believe they crash-landed on Gardner Island, that they were captured by Japanese forces, and that they survived and continued living with different identities.

#3: Grigori Rasputin (1916)

Although his reputation was less than clean, Russian mystic and faith healer Grigori Rasputin was closely involved with the Tsar Nicholas II and his family. By the end of 1916, a group of nobles decided they needed to protect the Russian Empire from Rasputin’s influence. First, they poisoned the mystic with cyanide, but he was unaffected. Next, he was shot once in the chest, only to leap up soon afterward and attack the gunmen. After another shot at close range, the body was wrapped in cloth and dropped in the Little Nevka River, where he eventually died of hypothermia.

#2: Alexander the Great (323 BCE)

The king of Macedon was 32 years old when he died. He had spent most of his twelve ruling years in military campaigns to amass one of the largest empires in history. But his death was likely completely unrelated to battle. There are theories of typhoid fever, malaria, poisoning, and West Nile encephalitis, but what makes the situation so weird is that Alexander’s body didn’t start to decompose for six days. Some scientists and historians speculate that he had Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition that causes muscle paralysis, which could have made it seem that he was dead while he was still breathing very shallowly.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.


Christopher Marlowe (1593)
There Are a Few Conspiracy Theories about His Death…but Maybe It Was Just a Bar Fight

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966)
The Indian Government Still Hasn’t Released Information this Prime Minister’s Sudden Death

Giacomo Matteotti (1924)
Was Dictator Mussolini Responsible for the Murder of This Outspoken Socialist?

Lee Harvey Oswald (1963)
Was JFK’s Assassin Killed by a Man Who Was Involved with Organized Crime?

#1: Cyrus the Great (530 BCE)

The ruler of the Achaemenid Persian Empire was known to be unusually tolerant of the many different cultures he conquered. What is not known is precisely how he died. There are several documented sources about Cyrus’s death, but they all tell it differently. Herodotus said he was beheaded by Queen Tomyris as revenge for killing her son. Ctesias claimed he couldn’t settle a revolt from a nomadic Asian people. Berossus said it happened in battle with the Dahae nomads. It seems like Cyrus died at the hands of an enemy, but which one?


Do you have any theories about the deaths of these figures? Let us know in the comments!