Top 5 People Made Famous By Their Deaths

5. Horst Wessel
October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930

Horst Ludwig Wessel (October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930) was a German Nazi activist who was made a posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent murder in 1930. He was the author of the lyrics to the song “Die Fahne hoch” (“Raise High the Flag”), usually known as Horst-Wessel-Lied (“the Horst Wessel Song”), which became the Nazi Party anthem and Germany’s official co-national anthem from 1933 to 1945. The song was banned along with all other Nazi symbols in 1945, and both the lyrics and tune remain illegal in Germany to this day. The clip above shows the song being sung at the Nuremberg Congress
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4. Casey Jones
March 14, 1863 – April 30, 1900

John Luther “Casey” Jones was an American railroad engineer from Jackson, Tennessee who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad (IC). On April 30, 1900 he alone was killed when his passenger train collided with a stopped freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi on a foggy and rainy night. His dramatic death trying to stop his train and save lives made him a railroad icon who became immortalized in a popular ballad sung by his friend Wallace Saunders, an African American engine wiper for the IC. Due to the enduring popularity of this classic song, he has been the world’s most famous railroad engineer for over a century.
3. Crispus Attucks
c. 1723 – March 5, 1770

was one of five people killed in the Boston Massacre in Boston, Massachusetts. He has been frequently named as the first martyr of the American Revolution and is the only person killed in the Boston Massacre whose name is commonly remembered. Although little is known for certain about Attucks, including his ethnicity, the possibility that he was African American or Native American has elevated him to an important symbolic status in U.S. history.
In the early 19th century, as the Abolitionist movement gained momentum in Boston, Attucks was lauded as an example of a black American who played a heroic role in the history of the United States. Because Crispus Attucks may also have had Wampanoag Indian ancestors, his story also holds special significance for many Native Americans.
2. James Bulger
16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993

James Bulger was the victim of abduction and murder. His killers were two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. The murder took place in Merseyside, England. James disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre, where he had been with his mother Denise, on 12 February 1993 and his mutilated body was found on a railway line at Bootle on 14 February. As the circumstances surrounding the death became clear, tabloid newspapers compared the killers with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady who had committed the Moors Murders during the 1960s. They denounced the people who had seen Bulger but not realized the trouble he was in. The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was flooded with hundreds of bunches of flowers.
1. Nathan Hale
June 6, 1755 – September 22, 1776

Nathan Hale was an officer for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Widely considered America’s first spy, he volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission, but was captured by the British. He is best remembered for his speech before being hanged following the Battle of Long Island, in which he reportedly said, “I only regret that I have but one life to give my country.” Hale has long been considered an American hero and, in 1985, he was officially designated the state hero of Connecticut.
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