10 Authors Who Died In Mysterious Or Strange Ways

5. Aeschylus (525 – 455 BC)

Louis Edouard Fournier The Funeral Of Shelley Google Art Project
By Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. The father of tragedy. The dad of sad. He wrote seventy nine plays, only seven of which survive today, including The Persians, Seven against Thebes, and Agamemnon.

In 455 B.C. Aeschylus was killed when a tortoise fell from the sky and hit him on the head.

There is a type of vulture called a Lammergeier, also known as the Bearded Vulture, that prey on tortoises. They take the tortoises high up into the sky and drop them on to rocks to crack them open and get to the juicy goodness inside. It is believed one of these vultures mistook Aeschylus’s head for a rock.

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Contributor

Writer of humorous novels; The Accidental Scoundrel, and Tripping the Night Fantastic. Find them on Amazon here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Accidental-Scoundrel-Rochdale-Manor/dp/1499628226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522068925&sr=8-1&keywords=the+accidental+scoundrel