Five who died in odd places
A bedroom in Paris, the sand at Syracuse, the steps of an Alexandrian church, a Stabiae beach, a monumental tomb.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
What killed Émile Zola in his Paris bedroom on 29 September 1902?
Zola was found dead and his wife Alexandrine unconscious in their bedroom at 21 bis rue de Bruxelles. A coal fire had smoldered overnight in a poorly drawing chimney; carbon monoxide accumulated to lethal concentrations. Officially ruled accidental in 1902. A 1927 deathbed confession by the bricklayer Henri Buronfosse — surfaced in *Libération* in 1953 — claimed he had been paid by anti-Dreyfusards to block the chimney from the roof. The case has never been judicially reopened.
Who killed Archimedes during the Roman sack of Syracuse in 212 BC?
The Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus had ordered that Archimedes — the famous engineer who had defended Syracuse with siege machines for two years — be spared. A junior Roman soldier found the 75-year-old man drawing diagrams in the sand. Archimedes told him not to disturb his circles. The soldier killed him. Marcellus was reportedly furious and ordered Archimedes given an honourable burial.
How was Hypatia of Alexandria killed by the mob in March 415 AD?
Socrates Scholasticus, writing within a generation, records that a Christian mob led by a man named Peter the Reader pulled Hypatia from her carriage, dragged her to the Caesareum church, and killed her with *ostrakois* — a Greek word that means either roof tiles or oyster shells. She was the most famous philosopher in the eastern Mediterranean and the head of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school.
Where and how did Pliny the Elder die during the Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD?
Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman fleet at Misenum and sailed across the Bay of Naples on a rescue mission. Floating pumice prevented landing near Herculaneum so he diverted to Stabiae and stayed at his friend Pomponianus's villa. When the second pyroclastic surge reached Stabiae the next morning Pliny — asthmatic and overweight — collapsed on the beach and could not be revived. The household survived.
From whom does the English word *mausoleum* derive?
Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria from 377 to 353 BC, was buried in the monumental tomb at Halicarnassus built (mostly after his death) by his sister-wife Artemisia. The structure was so famous it gave the Greek and later Latin word *mausoleion* / *mausoleum* — the generic word for a large monumental tomb. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.