10 Weirdest Deaths In History
1. Aeschylus
We've arrived: the ultimate "wrong place, wrong time" death in human history.
Aeschylus was a renowned Greek author, known widely as the father of the tragedy genre. As per a potentially apocryphal story by Pliny the Elder, Aeschylus was living in fear after he heard a prophecy that he'd be killed by a falling object. To avoid this, he figured he'd stay outside, where there was nothing but the sky above him.
According to 1st-century Roman author and historian, Valerius Maximus, in 455 or 456 BCE, Aeschylus was sitting outside in the city of Gela, Sicily, when an eagle picked up a tortoise, flew into the air, saw Aeschylus's bald head below, mistook it for a rock onto which it could drop and crack the tortoise's shell, and promptly released it. As you'd expect, a flying tortoise to the noggin usually results in death.
In reality, it was probably a vulture, as they actually do drop tortoises on hard surfaces, but honestly, if you've been killed by a falling tortoise, the minutiae of which bird murdered you hardly matters.
It seems as though Aeschylus's life was mired in tragedy all the way to the end, except this was one he didn't write.