Artie Lange's attempt at suicide by stabbing places him in select company

Comedian Artie Lange's attempt to kill himself by stabbing with a knife, and not by drug overdose, roof jump or gunshot (he is, sadly but admittedly, too fat to hang from a shower curtain rod), places him in a sad yet select group.

Thanks to Wikipedia's list of notable suicides, our staff was able to research centuries notable deaths by one's own hand, and amid the hundreds of incidents, and dozens of hangings, shootings, drownings and other creative clog poppings, could not come up with more than eight suicides by stabbing in the past 99 years.

Now, because the act of stabbing oneself takes violent force, real determination and more than a quick slash of a razor, we discounted wrist-slashings

Marty Bergen (1900)
Mark Rothko (1970)
Diane Arbus (1971)

throat slittings

Robert Clive (1774)
Jacques Roux (1794)
Wolfe Tone (1798)
Jakub Jan Ryba (1815)
Samuel Whitbread (1815)
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1822)
Adalbert Stifter (1868)
Frances Ford Seymour (1950)
Kokichi Tsuburaya (1968)
Irv Rubin (2002)
Charles Rocket (2005)

or a combination of the two

Jack Thayer (1945)
Per Yngve Ohlin (a.k.a. Dead), (1991)

and have separated deaths by the Japanese samurai ritual seppuku ("stomach-cutting," performed by plunging a sword into the abdomen and moving the sword left to right in a slicing motion)

Minamoto no Yorimasa (1180)
Shibata Katsuie (1583)
Maresuke Nogi (1912)
Mitsuru Ushijima (1945)
Isamu Chō (1945)
Korechika Anami (1945)
Hatazo Adachi (1947)
Yukio Mishima (1970)

as well as the similar, ancient act of "falling on one's sword"

Dido (7th century B.C.)
Cato the Younger (46 BC)
Mark Antony (30 BC)
Otho (69)
Magnentius (353)

in order to narrow the celebrity suicide by stabbing list to

Italian writer Emilio Salgari (1911),
French violinist and composer Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1770),
Dutch-born American film actor Lou Tellegen (1934) (scissors),
Swedish author Harry Martinson (1978), (by scissors),
Leader and singer of Québec band Les Colocs Dédé Fortin (2000),
Singer songwriter Elliott Smith (2003),
British actress Fritha Goodey (2004), British actress
and British author, illustrator and cartoonist Harry Horse (2007).


Most well-known in tabloid pop culture is Elliott Smith, who died on October 21, 2003, at age 34 from two stab wounds to the chest. His live-in girlfriend says the two were arguing when he she locked herself in the bathroom to take a shower, heard him scream, and upon opening the door, saw Smith standing with a knife in his chest. She pulled the knife out, after which he collapsed, she called 911, and he died. The official autopsy report released in December 2003 left open the question of possible homicide.


Fritha Goodey was a British actress best known in the States for her role as one of Hugh Grant's girlfriends in the film, About A Boy. She had struggled for years with anorexia before stabbing herself in the chest on September 7, 2004.


Harry Horse, it seems, went a bit bonkers in the end. His wife Mandy had been terminally ill with multiple sclerosis when he stabbed her 30 times before killing their pets and stabbing himself until he bled to death. Their bodies were discovered on January 10, 2007.

We're glad Artie Lange survived to take another stab... at life.