3. An Idiot Death Made This Obscure Lawyer World Famous
As a Toronto police detective described what happened when Gary Hoy tried to demonstrate the sturdiness of his building’s windows on July 9, 1993: “At this Friday night party, Mr. Hoy did it again and bounced off the glass the first time. However, he did it a second time, and this time crashed right through the middle of the glass“. The idiot lawyer fell to his death 24 floors below. His unfortunate demise could have been averted had he left window tensile strength testing to the experts.
As a structural engineer told the Toronto Star in the aftermath: “I don’t know of any building code in the world that would allow a 160-pound man to run up against a glass window and withstand it“. Hoy’s auto-defenestration made the obscure lawyer a greater celebrity in death than he had ever been in life. His demise became the basis for sundry urban legends that were actually based on a true factual foundation. His death was featured in episodes of the TV shows Mythbusters and 1000 Ways to Die, garnered him entries in Snopes and Wikipedia, and won him a 1996 Darwin Award.