Great People Of History Who Died On The Toilet

Publish date: 2024-05-05

King George II successfully battled the Jacobites and expanded British trade (per the Royal Family website), but today, he might be best remembered for having the earliest recorded instance of aortic dissection — his main artery literally burst open while he was straining to pass a bowel movement one morning.

According to contemporary reports — including the autopsy report by the king's physician Frank Nicholls, who published the full account of the king's unseemly death in the name of scientific advancement — on October 25, 1760, George II, aged 76, rose from his bed at 6 a.m., drank some hot chocolate, and then went to his closestool to relieve himself (via the National Institutes of Health). "[A] noise was somewhere heard, as if a large billet had tumbled down," Nicholls wrote in his report, available via Google Books. "And, upon enquiry, his majesty was found fallen on the ground, speechless and motionless, with a slight contused wound on his right temple. He appeared to have just come from his necessary stool." The Jacobites probably loved that little detail.

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