Is this the most memorable death in history? There’s a good chance that it’s the silliest. It’s certainly the one that will turn up as a question on trivia night at some point.

Aeschylus is considered the father of tragedy, an ancient Greek playwright who wrote more than 90 plays, according to Ancient Origins. His legacy includes the reimagining of the whole genre of tragedy as both written poetry and public performance, with many of the great master’s innovations still central to how we think about playwriting today.

Though his other achievements included being a valiant fighter in a number of historic battles, the name Aeschylus is most known to us today for the totally bizarre way he died. The playwright had left Athens and banished himself to Sicily after his final play, Eumenides, was badly received by the public. There — or so the story goes — Aeschylus was out walking one day when, out of nowhere, a tortoise fell from the sky, hitting him in the head and killing him in an instant.

As unbelievable as this seems, the explanation apparently is that a hungry bird, carrying the tortoise, spied Aeschylus’ bald head and, thinking it was a rock, dropped the tortoise on it in the hope that the tortoise’s shell would crack open.

The quest for immortality has long been an ironically dangerous preoccupation throughout the world, particularly in ancient times. In fact, it claimed the life of China’s very first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, all the way back in 210 BC, according to Live Science. Documents discovered fairly recently have evidence that the emperor died of mercury poisoning, due to the fact that he was taking pills of the harmful element in the belief it would grant him eternal life.

Qin Shi Huang was the first leader to unify the Six Kingdoms, gaining enormous power and influence in the process. His greatness is reflected in his tomb, which contains the famous terracotta army, first discovered in 1974. Since then, some 2,000 individual terracotta soldiers have been excavated, but archaeologists are nowhere near completing their work. Indeed, experts believe, they are decades — or perhaps centuries — away from reaching the burial chamber of the emperor, the ceiling of which is reportedly bedecked with an accurate depiction of the night sky. Other documents claim that there is a whole underground kingdom to be discovered, as well as expansive chambers filled with terracotta concubines, which are still yet to be found.

One of the risks involved is quite fitting to Qin Shi Huang’s story: The tomb is thought to be lined with rivers of, yes, you guessed it — toxic mercury. But archaeologists will just have to cross that bridge when they come to it.

As was the custom of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, Ramses III had many wives. According to Smithsonian Magazine, one of his “secondary wives,” Tiye, and her son, Pentaware, hatched an assassination plot to which would help to install Pentaware on the throne. Details of the coup attempt were recorded in contemporary documents which have survived, telling us only some details of the fallout. We have long known that Tiye and Pentaware’s power grab did not ultimately succeed: The throne went to someone else, and the new Ramses IV put the mother and son on trail. Historians have been unsure, however, whether Ramses III survived the assassination attempt and, ultimately, what the fates of Tiye and Pentaware were.

Researchers have made some interesting discoveries, however. Firstly, CT scans performed on the mummy of Ramses III in 2012 revealed multiple grievous injuries, according to Live Science, including a knife wound in the king’s throat suggesting that he was, indeed, murdered.

More grisly still, the body of a younger man found in the tomb has also been analyzed. Tests have demonstrated that the body is related to Ramses III and was probably his son. The body’s contorted face foreshadowed what was revealed by a scan on his lungs: that the man, most likely Pentaware, had seemingly been buried alive.

Have you ever been so self-confident that you thought you could do anything? That you could tackle any challenge? Plenty of ancient people were filled with such confidence — and, in fact, the idea of “kudos,” an ancient Greek word referring to the honor gained through one’s actions, particularly in combat, is still with us today to describe fame and our motivations for achieving it.

In the sixth century BC, Milo of Croton (which is now part of modern-day Italy) had it all. A great all-round athlete, Milo competed in six Olympic and seven Pythian games, according to Britannica, and won a total of 32 wrestling tournaments. He also brought himself much kudos for his military exploits, having led the Crotoniates in battle against the Sybarites (a neighboring tribe) and emerged victorious. History Collection states that the champion’s daily diet was said to include 20 pounds of meat, 20 bounds of bread, and 10 liters of wine.

Milo of Croton died when one challenge proved too much for him. Walking through the forest one day, Milo came across a tree that had been partially split by a wedge. Never one to turn down a challenge, the athlete attempted to rend the tree completely in two but instead got both his hands stuck in the gap. He was consequently eaten alive by wolves.

If laughter can kill, it stands to reason that anger must also be deadly. And in the case of the Roman emperor Valentinian I, a surfeit of emotion proved to be enough to end his life.

According to Medium, Valentinian had some terrible personality traits, which led to his own historians professing their hatred for him on the page. Chief among his quirks was an excessive temper, which fueled much of the emperor’s military decision-making and made him such a formidable enemy on the battlefield.

Valentinian and his armies rampaged throughout much of the Western world in the fourth century AD, eventually finding themselves building fortifications in the lands of the Quadi, tribal groups that lived on the Northern banks of the Danube. The Quadi decided to have a group of envoys sent to an audience with the Roman emperor in an attempt to settle the dispute. The behavior of these envoys in the eyes of Valentinian — they seemingly didn’t acknowledge the supremacy of Rome or the authority of the emperor and his decisions — so enraged him that he suffered a brain hemorrhage, dying instantly in front of his visitors.