The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (16 page)

Turn-of-the-twentieth-century millionaire, collector of fine gems (hence the nickname), and one of the world's all-time great eaters, Diamond Jim Brady, in fact, ate himself to death.

A typical day for Brady started with a breakfast of steak, eggs, cornbread, muffins, pancakes, pork chops, fried potatoes, and hominy, washed down with a gallon or more of orange juice. Breakfast was followed with snacks at 11:30, lunch at 12:30, and afternoon tea—all of which involved enormous quantities of food. Dinner often consisted of three dozen oysters, six crabs, two bowls of soup, seven lobsters, two ducks, two servings of turtle meat, plus steak, vegetables, a full platter of pastries, and a two-pound box of chocolates.

When Brady suffered an attack of gallstones in 1912, his surgeons opened him up and found that his stomach
was
six
times the normal size of a human stomach and covered in so many layers of fat they couldn't complete the surgery. Diamond Jim ignored their advice to cut back, yet hung on another five years, albeit in considerable pain from diabetes, bad kidneys, stomach ulcers, and heart problems. He died of a heart attack in 1917.

CATHERINE THE GREAT

There are probably more rumors about the death of Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia, than that of any other monarch in history. Most of them relate to her reputedly unusual sexual appetites. For some reason, many people believe a horse was being lowered onto her when the cable holding the horse aloft snapped, crushing her. That is a complete myth—perhaps invented by the French, Russia's enemies at the time.

What really happened? Two weeks after suffering a mild stroke at the age of sixty-seven, Catherine appeared to be recovering. On November 5, she began her day with her usual routine, rising at 8
A.M.
, drinking several cups of coffee, and going to spend ten minutes in the bathroom. But she did not come out after ten minutes, and when her footman finally looked in on her, he found her sprawled out on the floor, bleeding and
barely alive. Like Elvis Presley, she had a stroke while sitting on the toilet. She died the next day.

GEORGE EASTMAN

George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak and the father of modern photography, committed suicide. In 1932, Eastman was seventy-eight years old and felt tired and ill. On March 14, he updated his will, and later in the day, he asked his doctor and his nurses to leave the room, telling them he wanted to write a note. It turned out to be a suicide note. He wrote the note, put out his cigarette, removed his glasses, and shot himself in the heart.

ISADORA DUNCAN

Isadora Duncan, one of the world's most famous dancers, died from a broken neck. On September 14, 1927, Duncan climbed into the passenger seat of a Bugatti race car wearing a long red silk scarf. The scarf was a little too long: when the car started off, the tail end wrapped around the wheel and yanked Duncan out of the car, snapping her neck and dragging her for several yards before the driver realized what had happened. In an eerie twist, the day before she died, Duncan had told an
Associated Press
reporter, “I'm frightened that some quirk accident may happen.”

MARGARET MITCHELL

Margaret Mitchell, the author of
Gone with the Wind
, was run down by an automobile when she was crossing busy Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta with her husband. She was halfway across when she saw a speeding motorist bearing down on her. Mitchell had previously said she was certain she would die in a car crash. Perhaps that's why she panicked, darting back across the street and leaving her husband standing in the middle of the road. She got hit; he did not. She died in the hospital five days later. The driver who hit her turned out to be a twenty-nine-year-old taxi driver with twenty-three traffic violations on his record.

NELSON ROCKEFELLER

When Nelson Rockefeller, the former governor of New York, the vice president under Gerald Ford, the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, and founder of Standard Oil, died in 1979 at age seventy-one, official reports said he had a heart attack while sitting at his desk. Later, this story was found to be a cover-up. He was actually alone in his townhouse with twenty-five-year-old Megan Marshack, who was on Rockefeller's staff. She supposedly had been working with him on a book about his modern-art collection, but, as the
New York
Daily News
reported, there were no work papers at his house—just food and wine. So how did he really die? What really happened? Two people know, and one of them died.