Sad over historical deaths?

[Personyouneedisnannymcphee]

Obviously death happens every day and there are many recent, very sad deaths. But some historical ones actually make me ache a little when I think about them I think due to the details and historical background of them more so than sometimes things I hear on the news. Some of these being:

-the Romanov children. Of course the Tsar was horrific but how they died thinking they were going to safety and then didn’t get killed by bullets as jewels in their clothes protected them so they were finished with bayonets.

-Anne Boylyn’s death because the details of her ladies not letting the men touch her afterwards for fears they’d violate her headless body.

AIBU for sometimes being incredibly sad over these people I never knew or do you have your own historical death that makes your stomach drop when you think of it?

Have just watched the series Chernobyl again. The death of the firefighter always upsets me terribly and his wife was pregnant with his baby at the time. She visited him and tended to him while the nurses would not (he was too radioactive). This resulted in her child dying four hours after birth. So many people died in that disaster or as a result, no one was evacuated quickly enough as they were trying to play down what had actually happened and the phone lines were cut. The official death toll numbers from Russia are something ridiculous like 31 but been estimated could be more like 600,000. The way those firefighters and Chernobyl employees died was a horrific death, basically coughing up their internal organs.

Anne Frank really gets me. All that time hidden in the attic before being caught and then dying just a few weeks before liberation.

Everyone who has suffered and gone before their time.

I haven't read the whole thread but would like to mention all those who died in the holocaust and other acts of genocide.

I have read the Wolf Hall books about Thomas Cromwell three times. And seen the RSC production. Every time I have sobbed at his death. (Sorry for the spoiler).

I agree - if the king wanted you, then that was it.

She managed very well in holding him at arms length for 7years- she probably thought he would lose interest in her, but it only served to make him more determined. Conniving - she played a bad hand she was dealt as best she could.

And of curse, once Henry had her, and her child was a daughter, he wasn't interested any more, and like many men blamed her for his own failures. He was a brutal, psychotic narcissist and a very dangerous man to cross.

*course, not curse

The sailors in the Kursk submarine.

A terrible disaster, but some of their lives could have been saved if Russia hadn't been so paranoid about security.

Sheer waste of young lives.

Obviously I can't know for certain, but I have read alot of history and this is not what the family was like at all. They plotted for her to be married to him. She was not some naive young girl. It just backfired when she couldn't have a son

On Holocaust Memorial Day a few years back, I told Anne Frank's life story to a Year Six class. They were fascinated, and as I reached the end, and described how each person in the attic rooms had their lives ended in the final months of the war, (except Otto), they were listening intently. I still remember the shocked gasps when they heard of Anne's death. They were so sure it was a story that had to have a happy ending for the heroine - Anne.

Ugh that's so disturbing

As a previous poster mentioned : Junko Furuta.
That the mothers of the boys involved could actually defend their horrific depravity and that sentences were so light.

Otherwise too many horrific deaths to mention (holocaust, Inquisition, so-called honour killings etc.) which give me nightmares if I think about them too much

I was horrified at the time - it got so little attention.

She's who I immediately thought of when opening this thread

The power of Hilary Mantel. For 100s of years people cried over Thomas More rather than Thomas Cromwell. I’m with you btw. Sobbed!

Holocaust, transatlantic slavery (all these people in sheer terror at what was happening to them and some being thrown overboard to their watery deaths eg Armistad.

I am just coming up to that part now.

The sinking of the Empress of Ireland always breaks my heart. It sank in the St Lawrence River in Canada in 1914, after being hit by another ship in fog, and 1,012 people died. It went down very quickly and the water was freezing, so nobody had a chance. But hardly anybody has heard of it because it happened just before WW1 broke out. To make it worse, I think it's 12 people who have since died diving the wreck.

I'm also really saddened by the men who died on the Mary Rose. Just the thought of those men on the deck, trapped by the netting they'd put over the deck to deter boarders, knowing the ship was going down...awful.

Jan Palach - such a shocking death. I was just in my teens and starting to take an interest in the world and politics. I still have his poem that I copied out at the time tucked in a drawer.

Me too, I went to where she and her family were hidden when we were in Amsterdam, I knew it would be sad but I could have went in a corner and wept.
Her dad had pinned a map to show how the allies were advancing and winning he must have heard or listened to the radio at night they must have had hope that help was coming.
Then I saw the detailed map by the Nazis and that was someone’s actual job, that showed every single Jewish family in Amsterdam, they were making sure they got every single one.
I sobbed all the way round it was horrific I could never go to a concentration camp I would be howling.

I agree lady Jane grey was especially sad and tragic.

The one consolation for me with Viola Beach is that they wouldn't have really known. They were killed instantly, so other than a split second of 'wtf' when the car went into the air, that was it.

I often think about John Cantlie. It's been ten years since he was kidnapped in Syria, he was tortured, held captive, saw his cellmates be executed, went through mock executions, and eventually was forced into advocating for the ISIS regime on camera by producing media for them. He was stick and bones and hopefully he knew nobody would actually believe he thought the things he was saying, he was saying them for his own survival. To this day nobody knows where he is, he was almost certainly killed at some point but his final years were horrific.

And the men who were executed on camera with a knife. James Foley. Alan Henning.

I also think of the Jordanian pilot who was set alight in a cage. Against my better judgment I watched that video and his strength to the final moments was unbelievable.

Agreed. I think, Disney is responsible for romanticising Romanovs family.
OP have you heard of the Khodynka tragedy? Nicholas couldn’t care less and still attended the ball that same day. I find those deaths devastating.

Huskar Pit disaster, where 26 children aged 7 to 17 died while working, absolutely breaks my heart.

This painting chills me. It shows her being compliant and doing as she's told, reaching for the block, even in her execution. It's in the National Gallery and worth visiting to see that alone.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paul-delaroche-the-execution-of-lady-jane-grey

Some more:

Princess Mishaal & her boyfriend
Lisa Steinberg
Nixzmary Brown
Sylvia Likens

I often pass a house with a blue plaque commemorating the place where Eleanor Marx lived and died, and spare a sad thought for her. She was the daughter of Karl Marx and, in her own right, a writer and a tireless activist for women's rights and workers' rights.

For some reason she fell in love with, and had a 15 year relationship with, a horrid little man called Edward Aveling, who was spendthrift, argumentative and a drunkard. A classic cocklodger, Eleanor paid off his countless debts, paid for him to recouperate by the seaside when he was ill, and forgave his many infidelities, including discovering him in her bed with two prostitutes.

Edward always refused to marry her, (no doubt saying 'it's only a piece of paper - I don't need one to prove my commitment to you') but their relationship continued nevertheless. Until one day Eleanor discovered that he had been having an ongoing relationship with a woman in her 20s and had, in fact, secretly married this OW.

A few days later Eleanor killed herself by consuming rat poison. She was 43.

Aaargh! So sad that such an amazing woman was brought down by a horrid little man. If only she had LTB!!