These historical mysteries remain unsolved. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most puzzling deaths of historical figures.
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00:00 "So now we have two guns and two killers."
00:03 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most puzzling deaths of historical figures.
00:09 "It seems very strange for us to think that a man like Edgar Allan Poe could just vanish."
00:15 Number 10. Meriwether Lewis.
00:19 "He could have found something that would be so frightening to that day and age,
00:26 that somebody might want to kill him for it."
00:29 Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition mysteriously died at an inn in Tennessee.
00:35 The innkeeper's wife reportedly heard gunshots in the middle of the night and saw Lewis moving unsteadily,
00:40 asking for water. She was too frightened to help him though, and by sunrise, he was dead.
00:45 Known to struggle with mental health issues, alcohol use, and finances,
00:49 many believe he died by his own hand. But there are many theories about murder too.
00:54 "The Latin inscription on the monument basically says, 'I died too young, but my country will live out my life for me.'"
01:03 The innkeeper's wife's story is doubted because it was night and she was in a different building,
01:07 leading to theories that Lewis was caught in a compromising position and shot by her husband.
01:12 He could have been killed by bandits or even an assassination plot, but we'll never really know.
01:18 "We've just uncovered that a senior American military general named James Wilkinson
01:23 was tipping off the Spanish about Lewis's whereabouts with encrypted cipher letters."
01:28 Number 9. Attila the Hun
01:30 "After it looked as if he was going to win, Attila is suddenly defeated and sent fleeing back to his own lands."
01:36 The leader of the expansive Hunnic Empire died unexpectedly on his wedding night.
01:40 Details vary, but it's consistent that guards found the body of Attila the Hun in his bedroom
01:45 the morning after his latest marriage to a woman named Ildiko.
01:48 The lack of wounds on Attila's body made it unlikely that Ildiko did anything.
01:53 However, Attila was covered in blood.
01:55 "According to Priscus, it wasn't the Romans who caused Attila's sudden death, but booze.
02:01 He simply got a nosebleed and was too drunk to wake up."
02:07 Where did the blood come from?
02:09 The most likely theory is that he got a nosebleed in his sleep,
02:12 and it turned into a hemorrhage due to excessive long-term alcohol consumption.
02:17 "My lord Attila didn't die at the Catalonian fields, but he may as well have done."
02:23 Number 8. Martin of Aragon
02:26 Martin of Aragon ruled over many lands from 1396 until his death in 1410.
02:32 The King of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily could have died from a number of issues.
02:37 Some sources cite the plague, some say it was kidney failure, still others claim it was poison.
02:43 But the most famous account of Martin of Aragon's death deals with a goose.
02:47 After Martin ate an entire goose, he suffered from indigestion.
02:51 Bora the jester soon came in to entertain the court.
02:54 Apparently, Bora's joke about a deer in the vineyard was so hilarious,
02:58 the king died of laughter.
03:00 "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
03:12 Number 7. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
03:15 The prolific classical composer died at 35 years old,
03:19 maybe from an illness, maybe from medical malpractice, or maybe from poisoning.
03:24 True, he was ill for a few months before his death and he did suspect poison,
03:28 but the official cause of death was a severe military fever.
03:32 Of course, military fever is pretty vague,
03:34 since it refers to bumps on the skin and is not an actual diagnosis.
03:39 "Wolfie? Wolfie? Wolfie!"
03:49 Soon after he died, a rumor spread that another composer, Antonio Salieri, poisoned him.
03:54 But that has been largely dismissed.
03:56 Other theories include strep infection, kidney disease,
04:00 eating undercooked pork, tuberculosis, and lack of sunlight.
04:07 "Pick him up. Pick him up!"
04:09 Number 6. Edgar Allan Poe
04:14 "He became apparently delusional, talking to objects on the wall,
04:19 lasted only a few days and then died."
04:22 The famed mystery writer was found semi-conscious outside of a tavern
04:25 in Baltimore, Maryland in dire need of medical help,
04:28 and died four days later in a hospital.
04:30 How did he wind up in that condition?
04:32 One long-standing theory is that substance use played a big role,
04:36 although Poe recently joined the temperance movement,
04:39 and the attending physician insisted there were no traces of alcohol or drugs in his body.
04:44 Another prominent theory is that Poe was a victim of a violent cooping gang,
04:54 a group that forced individuals into committing electoral fraud.
04:58 Other possibilities include epilepsy, syphilis, a brain tumor, and even rabies.
05:04 "Poe dies alone without it ever being completely clear
05:08 what exactly he was suffering from."
05:10 Number 5. Vincent Van Gogh
05:12 "Don't blame anyone."
05:15 "Do you have a gun?"
05:17 "No."
05:19 The post-Impressionist painter died of a bullet in his torso,
05:23 but who shot the gun? And why was the bullet buried for so long?
05:27 Many believe Van Gogh shot himself, but his body didn't have powder burns
05:31 and he would have had to crawl a mile to get back to the inn where he was staying.
05:34 His private writings also show that he believed taking his own life was sinful and immoral.
05:39 Now, the murder theories come in.
05:53 In 1956, a man confessed that he had been harassing Van Gogh in the summer of 1890.
05:58 It's possible that as an antagonistic gun-loving teenager,
06:01 this man accidentally shot the artist.
06:03 But the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is committed to the first theory.
06:07 Number 4. Amelia Earhart
06:14 "I wish I could have done it faster."
06:16 The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
06:19 reached a mysterious end when she attempted to fly around the globe.
06:22 On June 1st, 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan
06:27 began their journey from Miami, Florida.
06:29 On July 2nd, they were heading for Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean,
06:33 but they never made it.
06:34 "Reports of SOS calls from her radio give the world hope that she is still alive."
06:39 One of the last radio transmissions from the plane was about low fuel.
06:43 It's likely that Earhart and Noonan crashed and sank somewhere in the ocean,
06:47 never to be found.
06:48 However, some people believe they crash-landed on Gardner Island,
06:51 that they were captured by Japanese forces,
06:54 and that they survived and continued living with different identities.
06:57 "Earhart, this is Itasca. Did you receive transmission?"
07:01 Number 3. Grigori Rasputin
07:07 "On closer examination, this bears all the hallmarks of a close contact wound."
07:13 Although his reputation was less than clean,
07:16 Russian mystic and faith healer Grigori Rasputin
07:19 was closely involved with Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
07:22 By the end of 1916, a group of nobles decided they needed to protect
07:26 the Russian Empire from Rasputin's influence.
07:28 First, they poisoned the mystic with cyanide, but he was unaffected.
07:32 Next, he was shot once in the chest,
07:34 only to leap up soon afterward and attack the gunman.
07:38 After another shot at close range, the body was wrapped in cloth
07:41 and dropped in the Little Nevka River, where he eventually died of hypothermia.
07:46 "He was wrapped up in linen, and he was taken from here to the courtyard
07:53 in the belief that he was dead."
07:56 Number 2. Alexander the Great
07:57 The King of Macedon was 32 years old when he died.
08:01 He had spent most of his 12 ruling years in military campaigns
08:04 to amass one of the largest empires in history.
08:07 But his death was likely completely unrelated to battle.
08:10 "With architects and engineers like these,
08:12 we could build cities such as we've only dreamed."
08:14 There are theories of typhoid fever, malaria, poisoning, and West Nile encephalitis.
08:19 But what makes the situation so weird is that Alexander's body
08:23 didn't start to decompose for six days.
08:26 Some scientists and historians speculate that he had Guillain-Barré syndrome,
08:30 an autoimmune condition that causes muscle paralysis,
08:33 which could have made it seem that he was dead,
08:35 while he was still breathing very shallowly.
08:37 "Writers of all ages seem to have placed a smoke screen around Alexander.
08:41 He has become all things to all men,
08:43 both admired as the noblest of humans and reviled as the cruelest of despots."
08:48 Before we unveil our top pick, here are some honorable mentions.
08:52 Christopher Marlowe
08:53 There are a few conspiracy theories about his death,
08:55 but maybe it was just a bar fight.
08:57 "A black tape for us all!
08:59 There is news from a tavern in Deptford.
09:01 Marlowe is dead!"
09:02 Lal Bahadur Shastri
09:04 The Indian government still hasn't released information
09:06 about this prime minister's sudden death.
09:08 Giacomo Matteotti
09:10 Was dictator Mussolini responsible for the murder of this outspoken socialist?
09:14 Lee Harvey Oswald
09:25 Was JFK's assassin killed by a man who was involved with organized crime?
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09:47 Number 1. Cyrus the Great
09:52 The ruler of the Achaemenid Persian Empire was known to be unusually tolerant
09:56 of the many different cultures he conquered.
09:58 What is not known is precisely how he died.
10:01 There are several documented sources about Cyrus' death,
10:04 but they all tell it differently.
10:06 Herodotus said he was beheaded by Queen Timaeus as revenge for killing her son.
10:10 Ctesias claimed he couldn't settle a revolt from a nomadic Asian people.
10:14 Berossus said it happened in battle with the Dehai nomads.
10:17 It seems like Cyrus died at the hands of an enemy, but which one?
10:21 "It's Cyrus. He names you sire. It means God is with you."
10:27 "I think you flatter me, but no one has ever died a flattery."
10:36 Do you have any theories about the deaths of these figures? Let us know in the comments.
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