The Gentlest Death

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Weeki_Wachee_spring_10079u.jpg

Drowning victims:

  • Hippasus of Metapontum, reputedly drowned by Pythagoras for discovering irrational numbers
  • Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII, in the Nile
  • George, Duke of Clarence, in a barrel of Malmsey wine, according to legend
  • Peter Artedi, ironically now considered the father of ichthyology, Amsterdam, 1735
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, possibly a suicide or political murder
  • John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim, on the Titanic
  • Grigori Rasputin, eventually
  • Enrique Granados, jumping from a lifeboat to rescue his wife, World War I
  • Virginia Woolf, suicide
  • Josef Mengele, swimming off the Brazilian coast, 1979
  • Hart Crane, suicide in the Caribbean
  • Natalie Wood, drowned in a yacht accident, possibly a murder
  • Dennis Wilson, ironically a Beach Boy
  • Jeff Buckley, in Tennessee’s Wolf River, 1997
  • Spalding Gray, in the East River, suicide

Canadians John and Jackie Knill were vacationing in Thailand when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, killing both. A missionary later found their camera, which showed the wave approaching until it was nearly upon them.