Comic books have nurtured this idea in our heads that maybe -- just maybe -- we can one day be super powered. Maybe we can one day learn to fly, or stop a speeding bullet, or even become invincible to harm. While the first two are still in the realm of the impossible, the last one may not be as unattainable as you think.
In fact, history has shown that there are plenty of people out there that may have been on the verge of invincibility. Sure, they still died in the end, but they came oh so very close to surviving some of the harshest and most brutal treatments the world has ever seen. All of which would have killed any normal human. But, no. Not these guys…
Michael Mallory was a nothing more than a common Irish street drunk in 1930s New York. Mallory’s favorite bar was owned by a one Tony Marino, a murderous crook that specialized in insurance scams. Marino, having just come off a successful insurance scam that saw his friends murder his girlfriend so they could all collect the profits, felt that the drunken Mallory would be his next victim. So, Marino and his friends took out 3 insurance policies on Mallory and assumed that his need to be drunk all the time would soon do him in. To hurry this along, Marino granted Mallory unlimited access to his bar. All drinks were free to him for as long as he were alive, which, Marino hoped, wouldn’t be too long.
He was dead wrong.
After Mallory’s liver proved to be made of some unearthly material that could soak up inhuman levels of alcohol, Marino had his barkeep substitute a normal beverage with antifreeze. Six antifreeze shots later and Mallory was not dead, just passed out on the floor. He later woke up and asked for more. This went on for about a week, and Mallory ingested more antifreeze then probably any car you’ve ever owned.
So, they tried turpentine. Nothing, Mallory guzzled it down and asked for more.
Realizing that Mallory’s liver was too strong, Marino and his gang tried to go for the stomach; so they feed him rotten oysters. Mallory came back for seconds.
They tried rat poison. Nothing.
They even went to a crazy extreme: A sandwich of spoiled sardines and carpet tacks. Nothing. Mallory actually asked for more.
After this, Marino and his gang gave up on trying to be slick with the killing and instead decided to just kill him in as blatant a way as they could. On a night when the temperature was 14 below, Marino and the gang tossed Mallory in to a bank of snow and drenched him in cold water, thinking he would die from hypothermia. He didn’t.
They hired a professional killer to run him over with a car. This one seemed to work as Mallory didn’t make a single visit to the bar for a while. But then, three weeks after he was hit by a car, Mallory casually walked back in and asked for another drink.
Fed up with it all, Marino and his gang crammed a tube down Mallory’s throat and loaded him up with gasoline fumes. Finally, Mallory died.
While they may have collected the insurance money, Marion and the gang didn’t have time to spend it because they were soon arrested for Mallory’s murder and were all sentenced to the electric chair.
Samuel was a grave digger in New Orleans (then called simply Orleans) just after the Civil War. Samuel angered some other guys in the grave digging field of work because of his incredibly low rates. Rather than lowering their own rates and creating some good old fashioned competition, the grave diggers banded together and plotted to kill Samuel.
The diggers called upon the services of Dr. Beauregard, a man that was said to have had magic powers. Beauregard put a curse on Dombey. Was Beauregard really a great witch doctor? Probably not. The day after he put the “curse” on Dombey, Dombey heard a loud explosion come from some nearby bushes. He rushed over to find a man stumbling out in pain. The man mad off before Dombey could help. Later, a heavily bandaged Beauregard threatened to curse anyone that questioned how he got the bandages.
After the witch doctor failed, the diggers took it upon themselves to kill Dombey. Knowing that Dombey took a mid-day nap every afternoon, they placed a powder keg under his bed. When Dombey went to sleep that afternoon, he was rudely awoken as he exploded. But, he didn’t actually explode. He landed 20 feet away was almost entirely unhurt.
After you blow up a man and it fails, you’d think you would give up on the whole trying to kill him thing. But the diggers didn’t. They then kidnapped Dombey late at night and paddled him out to the middle of a lake. There, that night, they tossed Dombey over as he was ganged and bound; knowing for sure they had just sunk the pesky, low rate gravedigger. Luckily for Sam, the diggers were idiots and the lake wasn’t so much a lake as it was a really big puddle. Sam sank a whole 2 feet below the water before he hit the bottom. Sam shook loose the bonds and walked to shore.
Of course, it didn’t end there, either. A short time later, the digger tried to set Sam’s house on fire. When Sam came running out of the house he was greeted with a shotgun of buckshot to the chest. The firefighters put out the blaze and rushed him to the hospital. He was eventually nursed back to health.
In the end, Sam continued to dig graves and his competitors stopped trying to kill him. Sam later died…at the age of 98. Everyone that tried to kill him died before Sam did.
We’ve all heard of the legendary pirate Blackbeard and we all know that his life was one of insanity and debauchery. He regularly killed his first mates because…well…because he could. There was also word that he had many, many wives, none of which would be considered of legal age today. He even had his crew, uh, “enjoy” his wives one after another. Blackbeard’s life was far from kindly.
But his death was amazing. And manly. The kind of way everyman wants to die. By that I mean, being impossible to kill.
Blackbeard, for all his years of daring on the high seas and making everyone he encountered either hate him or dead, Blackbeard reached an age where even he felt it was time to pack it all up and retire. He moved to Virginia and decided to just rest. But the then Governor of Virginia hated Blackbeard. He decided to put out a hit on him, and sent two ships to take him out. They were commanded by a one Robert Maynard.
Blackbeard saw the two ships that were coming for him, so being Blackbeard, he ran at them screaming, essentially. Yes, he attacked them. He started off by tossing aboard some homemade bombs, and then charged the decks, killing everything he saw. When Blackbeard reached Maynard, he nearly cut of his fingers. Maynard responded by trying to stab Blackbeard in the back. BUT HIS SWORD BROKE. The crew unloaded gunshot after gunshot and they stabbed and stabbed; Blackbeard never went down.
Finally, Blackbeard bled out and died as he was trying to reload his pistol. He died from 20 stabbings and 5 gun shots. Oh, and because his head was cut off by Maynard.
All of the stories thus far have been about people trying to kill other people that couldn’t be killed. This next one is about a man realizing that he couldn’t die, even if he wanted to. And he really, really wanted to.
Alan Urwin’s wife left him in 1995. He dearly loved his wife. So much so that when the split he couldn’t stand living if he wasn’t with her. So, knowing he would never be able to win her back, Alan figured that now was just about the right to release himself of his mortal coils. He was going to kill himself.
Too bad for Alan, though. He’s apparently a deity of some sort because his suicide attempts all failed. And yes, we said “attempts.” Plural. Within a three-month time span, Alan attempted suicide 7 times. At first, he started small: Drug overdoses. He survived 3 of them. So, he moved on to electrocution. He wrapped himself head-to-toe in electrical wires, then sat in a bathtub filled with water. He plugged himself in and…he got a minor shock and the power outlet blew out. He immediately got up and tried to hang himself with the same wires he had wrapped around his body. Of course, the wires snapped and Alan hit the ground, relatively unharmed.
A short time later, Alan broke a gas pipe stationed in his bed room. He lied on his bed waiting for the embrace of sweet, sweet death. It never came. He probably just ended up being bored, or falling asleep. This was the last straw. It was this day that he was going to die. He was going to make it happen. He lit a match. An explosion. Out blew the windows. The roof flew clean off. Everything was decimated. Except for Alan, who was pulled out of the wreckage by firefighters.
Alan was convicted of Arson and was placed on two years probation. Not long after, he speaking to his ex-wife again and he was a bit happier.
For some reason, people tend to believe that Rasputin was an evil, wicked man that murdered and maimed thousands. He wasn’t he was just a man. Not a nice man, but far from the ruthless, blood thirsty manic that people believe him to be. Really, he was just a man that was caught up in the world of polices that most felt had no business in politics. He was an extremely powerful man as Empress Alexandra had everyone she meet first go through Grigori. This infuriated 5 noblemen who felt that this peasant shouldn’t have had that much power. So, they deiced to kill him.
First, it started with wine an cake. The five noblemen probably surprised Grigori with these lovely food stamps one evening shooting “Happy Birthday!!” To which Grigori responded, “But it’s not even my birthday! Thanks, bros! You’re awesome!” So he ate the cake and the wine as the noblemen probably stood by and watched, occasionally refusing sips and slices offered by Grigori. “No, no. We couldn’t. It’s all yours.” And, “Nah, I just ate. I'm sooooooo full! Phew!” So he downed the cake and wine, thanked them and left. They were all shocked. They were both poisoned. Now, the poison could have been backed out of the bake during the heating process, so that’s understandable. But the wine? Grigori probably processed every drop of it.
But all that cake eating, wine drinking and not dyeing got really boring for one of the noblemen, so he just shot Grigori in the back. The men cleaned off their hands and felt content as the completed a full’s day of murder. They left. But one left his coat in the room, so he went back. Big mistake. Grigori sprang up and choked him. The other noblemen rushed back in and shot Grigori in the back three more times. This didn’t kill him, it just made him struggle to the ground as he continued to choke the first guy. Refusing to go down, the men started to club him to the ground. This knocked him out, but didn’t kill him.
They wrapped his body in cloth and dumped him in a nearby freezing river. When his body was found examiners discovered a body loaded with bullets, poison, bruises and bumps. None of them killed him. It was hypothermia.
But the biggest and most startling discovery of them all was the fact that the cloth he was wrapped with was nearly undone when they found his body. He had almost escaped.
In fact, history has shown that there are plenty of people out there that may have been on the verge of invincibility. Sure, they still died in the end, but they came oh so very close to surviving some of the harshest and most brutal treatments the world has ever seen. All of which would have killed any normal human. But, no. Not these guys…
Michael Mallory
He was dead wrong.
After Mallory’s liver proved to be made of some unearthly material that could soak up inhuman levels of alcohol, Marino had his barkeep substitute a normal beverage with antifreeze. Six antifreeze shots later and Mallory was not dead, just passed out on the floor. He later woke up and asked for more. This went on for about a week, and Mallory ingested more antifreeze then probably any car you’ve ever owned.
So, they tried turpentine. Nothing, Mallory guzzled it down and asked for more.
Realizing that Mallory’s liver was too strong, Marino and his gang tried to go for the stomach; so they feed him rotten oysters. Mallory came back for seconds.
They tried rat poison. Nothing.
They even went to a crazy extreme: A sandwich of spoiled sardines and carpet tacks. Nothing. Mallory actually asked for more.
After this, Marino and his gang gave up on trying to be slick with the killing and instead decided to just kill him in as blatant a way as they could. On a night when the temperature was 14 below, Marino and the gang tossed Mallory in to a bank of snow and drenched him in cold water, thinking he would die from hypothermia. He didn’t.
They hired a professional killer to run him over with a car. This one seemed to work as Mallory didn’t make a single visit to the bar for a while. But then, three weeks after he was hit by a car, Mallory casually walked back in and asked for another drink.
Fed up with it all, Marino and his gang crammed a tube down Mallory’s throat and loaded him up with gasoline fumes. Finally, Mallory died.
While they may have collected the insurance money, Marion and the gang didn’t have time to spend it because they were soon arrested for Mallory’s murder and were all sentenced to the electric chair.
Samuel Dombey
Samuel was a grave digger in New Orleans (then called simply Orleans) just after the Civil War. Samuel angered some other guys in the grave digging field of work because of his incredibly low rates. Rather than lowering their own rates and creating some good old fashioned competition, the grave diggers banded together and plotted to kill Samuel.
The diggers called upon the services of Dr. Beauregard, a man that was said to have had magic powers. Beauregard put a curse on Dombey. Was Beauregard really a great witch doctor? Probably not. The day after he put the “curse” on Dombey, Dombey heard a loud explosion come from some nearby bushes. He rushed over to find a man stumbling out in pain. The man mad off before Dombey could help. Later, a heavily bandaged Beauregard threatened to curse anyone that questioned how he got the bandages.
After the witch doctor failed, the diggers took it upon themselves to kill Dombey. Knowing that Dombey took a mid-day nap every afternoon, they placed a powder keg under his bed. When Dombey went to sleep that afternoon, he was rudely awoken as he exploded. But, he didn’t actually explode. He landed 20 feet away was almost entirely unhurt.
After you blow up a man and it fails, you’d think you would give up on the whole trying to kill him thing. But the diggers didn’t. They then kidnapped Dombey late at night and paddled him out to the middle of a lake. There, that night, they tossed Dombey over as he was ganged and bound; knowing for sure they had just sunk the pesky, low rate gravedigger. Luckily for Sam, the diggers were idiots and the lake wasn’t so much a lake as it was a really big puddle. Sam sank a whole 2 feet below the water before he hit the bottom. Sam shook loose the bonds and walked to shore.
Of course, it didn’t end there, either. A short time later, the digger tried to set Sam’s house on fire. When Sam came running out of the house he was greeted with a shotgun of buckshot to the chest. The firefighters put out the blaze and rushed him to the hospital. He was eventually nursed back to health.
In the end, Sam continued to dig graves and his competitors stopped trying to kill him. Sam later died…at the age of 98. Everyone that tried to kill him died before Sam did.
Blackbeard
But his death was amazing. And manly. The kind of way everyman wants to die. By that I mean, being impossible to kill.
Blackbeard, for all his years of daring on the high seas and making everyone he encountered either hate him or dead, Blackbeard reached an age where even he felt it was time to pack it all up and retire. He moved to Virginia and decided to just rest. But the then Governor of Virginia hated Blackbeard. He decided to put out a hit on him, and sent two ships to take him out. They were commanded by a one Robert Maynard.
Blackbeard saw the two ships that were coming for him, so being Blackbeard, he ran at them screaming, essentially. Yes, he attacked them. He started off by tossing aboard some homemade bombs, and then charged the decks, killing everything he saw. When Blackbeard reached Maynard, he nearly cut of his fingers. Maynard responded by trying to stab Blackbeard in the back. BUT HIS SWORD BROKE. The crew unloaded gunshot after gunshot and they stabbed and stabbed; Blackbeard never went down.
Finally, Blackbeard bled out and died as he was trying to reload his pistol. He died from 20 stabbings and 5 gun shots. Oh, and because his head was cut off by Maynard.
Alan Urwin
Alan Urwin’s wife left him in 1995. He dearly loved his wife. So much so that when the split he couldn’t stand living if he wasn’t with her. So, knowing he would never be able to win her back, Alan figured that now was just about the right to release himself of his mortal coils. He was going to kill himself.
Too bad for Alan, though. He’s apparently a deity of some sort because his suicide attempts all failed. And yes, we said “attempts.” Plural. Within a three-month time span, Alan attempted suicide 7 times. At first, he started small: Drug overdoses. He survived 3 of them. So, he moved on to electrocution. He wrapped himself head-to-toe in electrical wires, then sat in a bathtub filled with water. He plugged himself in and…he got a minor shock and the power outlet blew out. He immediately got up and tried to hang himself with the same wires he had wrapped around his body. Of course, the wires snapped and Alan hit the ground, relatively unharmed.
A short time later, Alan broke a gas pipe stationed in his bed room. He lied on his bed waiting for the embrace of sweet, sweet death. It never came. He probably just ended up being bored, or falling asleep. This was the last straw. It was this day that he was going to die. He was going to make it happen. He lit a match. An explosion. Out blew the windows. The roof flew clean off. Everything was decimated. Except for Alan, who was pulled out of the wreckage by firefighters.
Alan was convicted of Arson and was placed on two years probation. Not long after, he speaking to his ex-wife again and he was a bit happier.
Grigori Rasputin
First, it started with wine an cake. The five noblemen probably surprised Grigori with these lovely food stamps one evening shooting “Happy Birthday!!” To which Grigori responded, “But it’s not even my birthday! Thanks, bros! You’re awesome!” So he ate the cake and the wine as the noblemen probably stood by and watched, occasionally refusing sips and slices offered by Grigori. “No, no. We couldn’t. It’s all yours.” And, “Nah, I just ate. I'm sooooooo full! Phew!” So he downed the cake and wine, thanked them and left. They were all shocked. They were both poisoned. Now, the poison could have been backed out of the bake during the heating process, so that’s understandable. But the wine? Grigori probably processed every drop of it.
But all that cake eating, wine drinking and not dyeing got really boring for one of the noblemen, so he just shot Grigori in the back. The men cleaned off their hands and felt content as the completed a full’s day of murder. They left. But one left his coat in the room, so he went back. Big mistake. Grigori sprang up and choked him. The other noblemen rushed back in and shot Grigori in the back three more times. This didn’t kill him, it just made him struggle to the ground as he continued to choke the first guy. Refusing to go down, the men started to club him to the ground. This knocked him out, but didn’t kill him.
They wrapped his body in cloth and dumped him in a nearby freezing river. When his body was found examiners discovered a body loaded with bullets, poison, bruises and bumps. None of them killed him. It was hypothermia.
But the biggest and most startling discovery of them all was the fact that the cloth he was wrapped with was nearly undone when they found his body. He had almost escaped.
