1.
On Dec. 8, 2004, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott — formerly of the legendary heavy metal band Pantera and widely regarded as one of the best guitarists of all time — was doing a club show with his new band, Damageplan. Only 90 seconds into their first song, Nathan Gale, 25, a six-foot-three, 250+-pounds man with a shaved head, strode through the crowd and onto the stage. Fans watched in horror as Gale, at point-blank range, raised a pistol and shot Abbott in the forehead.
2.
In 2016, Irma Bule, 26, was an Indonesian pop singer specializing in Dangdut, a popular music genre in her country. A mother of three, she was not yet a nationally known singer but had a following in the Karawang area of West Java. For performers like Bule, who were still looking to go national, singing in rural areas wasn’t especially lucrative, and net only $20 per concert (plus tips from the crowd). However, if they performed on stage with a snake, the pay jumped up to $25. Another Dangdut singer, Yeyen, told local media. “If there are snake dancers, there will be more audience. Therefore … we have snake dancers.”
3.
In the category of “Yikes! That Would Never Fly Today!” we have William Ellsworth Robinson, an American magician of Scottish descent who captivated audiences using the persona of “Chung Ling Soo,” a Chinese conjurer. To sell the lie, he never spoke English on stage and wore face paint to pass as Chinese. That’s bad enough, but it gets worse — his entire act was almost entirely stolen from an actual Chinese magician named Ching Ling Foo. (He didn’t even try to hide the theft — he changed only two letters of his name!) The two magicians had a major rivalry, and honestly, there’s probably a movie there, but this post is about dying in front of your fans so…
4.
On June 10, 2016, 22-year-old Christina Grimmie — the talented young singer who’d placed third on Season 6 of The Voice — had just finished a performance in Orlando, Florida, and was holding a meet-and-greet inside the venue. She was in good spirits as she worked through the line of fans, signing autographs and taking selfies. The joyful night took a horrific turn, though, when it was 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl’s turn to meet Grimmie. According to a fan behind Loibl: “The one guy in front of us was walking up to meet her. Her arms were open, waiting to greet him with a hug. Then there was a sound of three pops, like balloons. People had brought balloons to the show, and the security guards were popping them, so at first I thought it was that.”
5.
When Cleveland Indians’ shortstop Ray Chapman arrived at the Polo Grounds in New York on Aug. 17, 1920, he was having one hell of a season, batting .303 with 97 runs scored. That wasn’t out of character, though. Chapman had hit .300 twice before and to this day holds the single-season record for sacrifice bunts. It was rumored that Chapman, who was newly married to a pregnant wife, planned to retire when the season ended to focus on his family. Tragically, while facing Yankees’ submarine pitcher Carl Mays, he was hit in the head with a fastball. This was before batters wore helmets, and the ball met Chapman’s head with a sickening thud. The impact was so strong that the ball bounced into play, and Mays threw it to first, believing it must have hit Chapman’s bat. A dazed Chapman stood, asked someone to call his wife, and added: “I’m all right; tell Mays not to worry.” He then collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where he died the next day.
6.
Barbara Weldens, 35, was an up-and-coming French singer-songwriter who had already won several prestigious music awards. Her fans loved her emotional lyrics, haunting voice, and theatrical stage presence — often performing barefoot. On July 18, 2017, Weldens was performing at a packed church during the Léo Ferré Festival. After finishing a particularly powerful song, Weldens smiled, soaking up the crowd’s applause, then suddenly collapsed. At first, some audience members thought it was part of the show — a dramatic flourish. But Weldens didn’t move. Paramedics arrived quickly, but it was too late. An autopsy determined that Weldens had been electrocuted; she was performing barefoot as usual, and when her foot made contact with a defective piece of electrical equipment, it sent electricity shooting through her body.
7.
Owen Hart may have been born into a legendary wrestling dynasty (his dad was Stu Hart; his brother was Bret “Hitman” Hart), but he was a star in his own right and at the center of some of the biggest ’90s storylines of the WWF (now the WWE). However, on May 23, 1999, during the WWF’s Over the Edge pay-per-view event in Kansas City, Missouri, his life (and those storylines) ended. Hart was set to make a dramatic entrance as his superhero persona, the Blue Blazer, by being lowered from the arena rafters into the ring. Tragically, a malfunction occurred, and Hart fell a long distance — approximately 78 feet — landing chest-first on the top rope. He was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead not long after arriving; the cause of death was internal bleeding from blunt force trauma, resulting in a severed aorta.
8.
Tommy Cooper was a towering figure in British comedy — both literally (he was a big dude, standing 6′4″) and figuratively. He was famous for his bumbling magician act. Basically, his whole shtick was that his magic tricks always went hilariously wrong, which made what happened on April 15, 1984, during a live broadcast of a variety show extra horrific. Cooper walked on stage to thunderous applause, started performing, and then collapsed backward into the curtain. The audience burst out laughing, assuming it was part of the act. But it wasn’t. For several agonizing seconds, Cooper lay on the stage floor, unresponsive. The host, Jimmy Tarbuck, told the show’s producer: “This isn’t it [part of the act]. ‘Now’, he said, ‘you know how he is.’ He’s put this in… And…I said, No… this is not him!” The cameras kept rolling — broadcasting Cooper’s death live to 12 million viewers.
9.
Nick Zoricic was a 29-year-old Canadian freestyle skier, rising fast in the dangerous, high-speed world of ski cross — a sport that combines downhill racing with motocross-style obstacles (and has been referred to as “NASCAR on skis.”) But on March 10, 2012, at a ski cross World Cup event in Switzerland, Zoricic’s final race became a tragedy seen by hundreds of spectators. As he approached the finish line at full speed, Zoricic flew off the final jump — but something went wrong. Instead of landing cleanly, he veered off course and slammed into the safety netting and a solid boundary structure just past the finish. He hit the barrier with brutal force, disappearing in a spray of snow. When the snow cleared, Zoricic was lying motionless.
10.
Japan’s Sankai Juku dance company was famous for their version of Butoh, a rebellious dance movement that gave the middle finger to both Western culture and traditional Japanese art. Sankai Juku’s version was different, though…more gentle and poetic. They made their American debut at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles in 1984, then toured the country, eventually stopping in Seattle on Sept. 10, 1985. There, they planned to perform a piece entitled “Jomon Sho,” where four dancers hang upside down from a building by ropes attached to their ankles (a metaphor for life and death or something artsy like that). They were supposed to dance while being slowly lowered to the ground, a process expected to take 30 minutes, but after only a couple of minutes — and while still 80 feet in the air — one of the company’s most senior dancers, Yoshiyuki Takada, noticed his rope was fraying…fast.
11.
British actor and comedian Sid James was famous for starring in the Carry On films (a massive British comedy franchise comprised of 31 films released between 1958 and 1992). But his life ended on April 26, 1976 — in front of a packed Sunderland Empire Theatre — as he acted onstage in the comedy play The Mating Season. The performance was proceeding as usual, according to costar Olga Lowe. “I came on, said my first lines and he answered as normal. Then I sat on the sofa with him. I said my next line and he didn’t answer.” James had suffered a heart attack and slumped over on the couch. “I thought it was a gag,” Lowe added. “Well, you would with Sid. He was such a rascal… Ten minutes earlier, he had been the same old laughing Sid.” Once the gravity of the situation set in, the curtain was dropped. James was 62.