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A routine day on a film set, a close encounter with a giraffe and a quiet moment at home each ended in tragedy for a well-known figure. This narrated history video recounts unusual fatal accidents involving director Boris Sagal, cameraman Carlos Carvalho, stunt performer Dar Robinson, actress Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, musician Keith Relf, folk singer Stan Rogers and ABBA session drummer Ola Brunkert. Their stories span film and television production, wildlife filming, a plane fire and accidents at home, revealing how quickly ordinary situations can become fatal.
Explore celebrity death stories, unusual accidents and the real-life histories behind famous performers and artists. This tragic true-history narration is suited to viewers searching for celebrity accident stories, entertainment history, music history and documentary-style accounts of unexpected deaths.
Explore celebrity death stories, unusual accidents and the real-life histories behind famous performers and artists. This tragic true-history narration is suited to viewers searching for celebrity accident stories, entertainment history, music history and documentary-style accounts of unexpected deaths.
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00:01Boris Segal, May 22, 1981, The Scenic, Snow-Covered Slopes of Mount Hood, Oregon
00:10Director Boris Segal, a veteran of film and television known for works like The Omega Man
00:14and the acclaimed miniseries Masada, is on location. He's directing a new NBC miniseries,
00:21World War III, using the majestic Timberline Lodge as a stand-in for Alaska.
00:26It's the end of a long day of shooting. A helicopter, used for aerial shots of the
00:31snowy landscape, lands in the Lodge's parking lot. It's a routine part of the job, something
00:36Boris has seen a hundred times. He steps out of the helicopter's right-side door, ready
00:42to move on to the next setup. But he makes one tiny, fatal mistake. Instead of walking
00:48forward, away from the aircraft, he turns and walks backward, straight toward the tail of
00:54the helicopter. The main rotor blades, those huge, slow-turning things you can see, are
01:01easy to avoid. But the tail rotor? Mmm, that's a different beast. It's smaller, faster, and
01:09almost invisible when it's spinning at full speed. A blurred circle of death. Boris walked
01:16right into it. The spinning blade struck him in the head and neck area. It was, for all
01:22intents and purposes, a partial decapitation. He was rushed by ambulance to a hospital in
01:28Portland, but the damage was too severe. He died about five hours later. His wife, the
01:34famous dancer Marge Champion, was on her way to Oregon when she was told her husband was
01:39gone. The irony is almost too cruel. Just a year later, another director, John Landis, would
01:47be at the center of a different, even more infamous helicopter tragedy on the set of
01:51Twilight Zone the movie, killing actor Vic Morrow and two child actors. Some in Hollywood
01:58started whispering about a combat curse, since both Vic and Boris had worked on the classic
02:03war show. But it wasn't a curse. It was just a horrifying reminder of how quickly a routine
02:09moment on a film set can turn into a bloodbath. Carlos Carvalho. Some animals just don't
02:17look real. Giraffes, with their long, elegant necks and gentle eyes, seem like something out
02:23of a storybook. They're herbivores. They're graceful. They're... not usually considered deadly.
02:31Carlos Carvalho, an award-winning South African cameraman, probably thought the same thing. In May
02:382018, he was filming at the Glen Afrit Country Lodge, a popular location known for its Tame
02:45Wildlife, the same place where the British series Wild at Heart was filmed. The star of the day
02:51was a giraffe named Gerald. Carlos wanted to get some really intimate close-ups. According
02:56to the lodge owner, he got closer than the safety instructions allowed. He was focused on
03:02a shot, on the light, on the framing. He wasn't focused on Gerald. And Gerald... well, Gerald
03:09had enough. In a sudden, shockingly fast movement, the giraffe spread its powerful legs, bent its
03:16long neck, and delivered a massive head swing. It's a defensive move, a way of using its heavy
03:23head and neck as a weapon. Estimates put the force of a single blow at around 1,700 Newtons.
03:30That's comparable to the weight of a small car hitting you in a fraction of a second, concentrated
03:36on a single point. The blow caught Carlos square on, launching him an estimated 16 feet through
03:43the air. He landed with a sickening thud. He suffered severe head and brain injuries. A
03:51helicopter airlifted him to a hospital in Johannesburg, but he died the next day. The owner of the lodge
03:57insisted Gerald wasn't dangerous, that he'd done nothing wrong. The production company
04:03said Carlos had approached the animal on his own initiative. But a man was dead. Killed
04:09by an animal most people see as a gentle giant.
04:13Dar Robinson
04:15In the world of Hollywood stuntmen, Dar Robinson was a god. He wasn't a daredevil. He was a
04:22scientist. He meticulously planned every jump, every fall, every crash. He held records for
04:28the highest free fall from a building, the longest car jump. And in a career spanning decades,
04:34he had famously never broken a single bone. He was a myth. He was basically invincible.
04:42On November 21st, 1986, he was in Page, Arizona, filming the action comedy Million Dollar Mystery.
04:49The big, dangerous stunt of the day, a motorcycle jumping a guardrail over a cliff, was already
04:55done. It went off without a hitch. The on-set medical staff was sent home. The rest of the
05:01day was just for pickup shots. Simple stuff, you know. The shot was a routine, high-speed
05:07motorcycle run. Dar and two other stuntmen, playing gangsters, were chasing the heroes down
05:12a steep, winding road. They were hitting speeds of around 75 miles per hour. As they came into
05:19a sharp curve, Dar, riding on the outside edge of the two-lane road, lost control. His
05:25Honda dirt bike slipped on the loose gravel of the shoulder. He lost his grip and fell.
05:30Not on the road, but off the edge of the embankment. He tumbled about 40 feet down the
05:36rocky slope. And then, his luck finally ran out. He was impaled by the thick, sharp trunk
05:43of a sagebrush plant. The impact caused massive internal injuries. With no medical team on
05:49sight, he was first taken back to the base camp. Then a helicopter was called. He died
05:54on the way to the hospital.
05:58Thelma, Butterfly, McQueen.
06:00We've got to have a doctor. I don't know nothing about birth and babies.
06:04I don't know. You told me you knew everything about it.
06:07It's one of the most famous lines in movie history, delivered by Thelma McQueen, playing the
06:13high-pitched, flighty house-servant Prissy in Gone with the Wind. But Thelma, who went
06:18by the stage name Butterfly McQueen, had a complicated relationship with that role. She felt it was
06:24demeaning, a stereotype she couldn't escape. She eventually left Hollywood and lived a quiet,
06:30anonymous life. In the 1990s, she was living in a small, one-bedroom cottage near Augusta,
06:37Georgia. Her neighbors just knew her as Thelma. On December 22nd, 1998, the
06:4484-year-old actress tried to light one of the two kerosene heaters in her small home. According
06:51to reports, the heater malfunctioned. It exploded, or flared up, and her clothes caught fire. The
06:58tiny cottage was quickly engulfed in flames. She managed to get out of the house, but she
07:04was already horrifically burned. Firefighters found her on the sidewalk. She had second- and
07:10third-degree burns over seventy percent of her body. She was rushed to a regional burn
07:15center, but she died later that day. Butterfly McQueen was a lifelong atheist. In her will,
07:23she donated her body to science and left her remaining money to the Freedom From Religion
07:27Foundation. Her death is a tragic footnote to a complicated legacy. A famous actress who
07:34ran from fame, dying in poverty and flames. A painful, lonely end for the woman who brought
07:41one of cinema's most memorable characters to life.
07:46Keith Ralph
07:48Keith Ralph was the voice of the Yardbirds, one of the most influential bands of the 1960s
07:53British invasion. He was the man who sang on hits like For Your Love and Heart Full of Soul.
08:00After the Yardbirds, he went on to form the progressive rock bands Renaissance and Armageddon.
08:06But his rock and roll life ended not on a stage, but in the quiet of his own basement.
08:11Keith had a history of health problems, including severe asthma, which may have contributed to heart
08:16rhythm issues. On May 12, 1976, he was in the basement of his London home doing what he always did,
08:24playing his electric guitar. The problem was, the guitar was poorly grounded. As he played, he was
08:32standing on or touching a metal gas or water pipe. That completed a circuit. The electricity from the guitar
08:39surged through his body, stopping his heart instantly. His young son found him. He was just 33 years old.
08:47For years, a rock and roll myth circulated that he had been electrocuted while playing his guitar
08:52in the bathtub. It was a more dramatic, more rock and roll story. But the truth, as his family has
08:59clarified, was much more mundane and somehow even sadder. A faulty wire. A stray pipe. A simple, tragic accident
09:09moment in the place he should have been safest. Keith Ralph was posthumously inducted into the Rock
09:14and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. His iconic status as a rock pioneer stands in stark, painful contrast
09:23to the quiet, domestic, and utterly preventable way he died.
09:29Stan Rogers. Stan Rogers was a Canadian national treasure. A folk singer with a booming baritone voice.
09:37His songs about Canadian history, fishermen, and farmers were the soundtrack for a generation.
09:42He was a giant of a man, both in stature and in talent.
09:47On June 2, 1983, he was flying home from the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas.
09:53He was on Air Canada Flight 797, a DC-9 heading from Dallas to Toronto.
09:59Somewhere over Kentucky, a fire started in or near the rear bathroom of the plane.
10:04The source was never definitively identified, but it was likely electrical.
10:09Thick, black, toxic smoke began to fill the cabin. The cockpit lost its instruments.
10:15The crew made the decision to perform an emergency landing at the nearest airport, in Cincinnati.
10:20During the descent, the smoke got worse. Passengers were choking, passing out.
10:26Stan was in the rear half of the plane, right where the smoke was thickest.
10:30The plane landed safely. The crew managed to open the doors.
10:34A few passengers near the front escaped.
10:36But just 90 seconds after the doors were opened, a flashover occurred.
10:41The fresh oxygen rushing into the superheated cabin caused the entire interior to erupt into an inferno.
10:4823 of the 46 people on board, including Stan Rogers, were killed.
10:55Official reports concluded he died from smoke inhalation, likely before the flashover even happened.
11:01But a persistent, heroic myth surrounds his final moments.
11:05Some survivors claimed he was at the door, helping others escape, before being thrown back by the flames.
11:12The NTSB investigation never confirmed this, and his biographer calls it explicit folklore.
11:19We'll never know for sure, but what we do know is that the disaster of Flight 797 led to massive
11:26changes in airline safety.
11:27New rules for smoke detectors, fire-resistant materials, and floor-level emergency lighting were all implemented because of that fire.
11:37Stan Rogers, the man who sang the stories of Canada, became part of a different, much darker story.
11:44One that, in the end, helped save countless other lives.
11:50Ola Brunkert
11:51If you've ever listened to an ABBA song, you've heard Ola Brunkert play.
11:56He was the Swedish supergroup's main session drummer, the rhythmic backbone on virtually all of their iconic hits, from Dancing
12:04Queen to Waterloo.
12:07After the ABBA years, he retired to a quiet life, far from the media spotlight, in a villa in Arta
12:13on the Spanish island of Majorca.
12:15On March 16th, 2008, a neighbor found him dead in his garden.
12:22He had a deep, gruesome cut on his neck.
12:25At first, it looked like a murder.
12:28A famous musician, a bloody crime scene, the media jumped on the story.
12:34But the reality, as determined by the Spanish Guardia Civil, was far more mundane, and somehow, even more tragic.
12:43Ola, who was 61, had been inside his house.
12:47He stumbled and fell, hitting his head on a glass door.
12:52The glass shattered, and a shard sliced open his throat.
12:56He managed to wrap a towel around his neck, apparently in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
13:02He was trying to get outside, to get help from a neighbor.
13:06But he collapsed in the garden and bled to death before he could reach anyone.
13:10It was just a freak accident.
13:13A simple fall.
13:15A piece of glass.
13:16A tragic, lonely end for the man who provided the beat for some of the happiest, most joyful music ever
13:23made.
13:24A quiet man who died in a quiet place from a wound that screamed.
13:29A km2 the halftocasts drawn to a great groundatic side currently ihtepal to the death of the 1996dzieys.
13:29So what we really liked about this is cement.
13:29I'll see you next time.