Curated playlist
Male suicides
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- Tiberius GemellusSoldiers handed Tiberius Gemellus a sword and had to guide it themselves. Caligula had ordered his cousin to die.
- Eric Harris and Dylan KleboldEric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, on the 20th of April 1999. They killed 13 students and one teacher and wounded 23 others. Then both died by suicide in the school library.…
- Mark AntonyMark Antony offered Julius Caesar a crown, and Caesar threw it off.
- Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler died by biting a hidden cyanide pill during a British exam. He was dead within 15 minutes.
- Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was rejected twice by Vienna's art academy. He later became dictator of Germany.
- Martin BormannOn the 16th of August 1999, the ashes of Martin Bormann were scattered over the Baltic Sea. German authorities chose open water partly so that neo-Nazis would have no tomb to turn into a monument. More than half a century after the war,…
- Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. Thompson's Gonzo style began as a Kentucky Derby deadline scramble. He mailed pages ripped from his notebook.
- Judas IscariotIn the Gospel of Nicodemus, a roasting chicken crowed and Judas ran to hang himself.
- Joseph GoebbelsJoseph Goebbels was Chancellor of Germany for a single day.
- Vincent van GoghMore than 600 letters to his brother Theo hold most of what is known of Van Gogh's thoughts.
- Hermann GöringHermann Göring swallowed cyanide the night before his hanging in October 1946. He had asked for a firing squad.
- Seneca the YoungerThe Roman philosopher Seneca survived bleeding and poison, then died from steam in a warm bath.
- Death of Adolf HitlerA skull fragment long thought to be Hitler's turned out to belong to a woman. DNA testing settled it in 2009.
- AviciiAvicii, the stage name of the Swedish producer Tim Bergling, is best known for one song's remarkable run. His track Wake Me Up held the title of most-streamed song on Spotify for 506 days, until Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud overtook it…
- SocratesSocrates wrote nothing, so everything known about him comes from other people.
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard dropped his script and wrote dialogue day by day for the film Breathless.
- Jim JonesJim Jones was an American preacher who founded the Peoples Temple. On the 18th of November 1978, 912 people died at his jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana. Among them were 304 children. Jones called the event "revolutionary suicide," a…
- Kurt CobainKurt Cobain turned 14 on the 20th of February 1981, and his uncle put a choice in front of him. He could have a bicycle or a used guitar. Kurt took the guitar. Soon afterward he was attempting Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," then…
- Oda NobunagaAt Okehazama in 1560, Oda Nobunaga struck a much larger army during a thunderstorm. His 2,000 to 3,000 men faced 25,000.
- Chester BenningtonChester Bennington left his own birthday party early to record an audition. That audition opened the way to Linkin Park, and with it a place among the most recognizable rock voices of the 2000s. Yet the same singer fought a pain that he…
- Mohamed AttaMohamed Atta left behind at least eight variations of his name on documents, and al-Qaeda knew him by yet another, Abd al-Rahman al-Misri. He told some people he was from the United Arab Emirates. During flight training in Florida, he…
- Alexander McQueenAt Alexander McQueen's Voss show, the audience saw only themselves for over an hour. Then a glass box shattered.
- Robin WilliamsRobin Williams was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" by his high school classmates in 1969.
- Sergei YeseninPoet Sergei Yesenin wrote his farewell poem in his own blood. He was found dead in a Leningrad hotel room at thirty.
- Ted KaczynskiTed Kaczynski wrote a letter to The New York Times in 1995 and attached a promise to it. If the Times or The Washington Post printed his essay in full, he would "desist from terrorism." The essay ran to roughly 35,000 words and carried the…
- Chris CornellChris Cornell was born Christopher John Boyle, and the voice he grew into covered nearly four octaves, from C2 to A5. Critic Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that as the voice climbed, it could meet hard-rock turbulence with, at the…
- Stephen PaddockStephen Paddock spent the night of the 1st of October 2017 in a hotel room above a crowd of about 22,000 people. They had gathered for a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. By the end of that night, 60 of them were dead and…
- Seung-Hui ChoSeung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the 16th of April 2007. It was the deadliest school shooting in United States history. At the time, it was also the deadliest mass shooting…
- Michael HutchenceMichael Hutchence, the lead singer and lyricist of the Australian rock band INXS, was 37 years old when he died in a Sydney hotel room. The band was due to open its 20th anniversary tour in Sydney on the 23rd of November 1997. With…
- Abu Bakr al-BaghdadiAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi left so faint an impression on Ahmed al-Dabash that al-Dabash dismissed him as insignificant. Al-Dabash led the Islamic Army of Iraq and fought the allied invasion in 2003. He said he had known the insurgency's leaders…