Death by Chandelier

May 20, 1896 - During a performance at the grand Paris Opera House, a massive counterweight supporting the building's enormous chandelier suddenly broke loose and crashed through the ceiling into the audience below. One woman was killed and several others were injured. The accident would later help inspire one of the most famous scenes in Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera.

The building where it happened is the legendary Palais Garnier, widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of 19th-century architecture. Its lavish interiors are crowded with gilded cherubs, marble gods, and sweeping staircases that give the place an almost dreamlike grandeur.

The opera house also carries a darker reputation. During construction, workers encountered groundwater beneath the foundations, forcing engineers to create a vast underground reservoir. That subterranean chamber still exists today and is reportedly used by Paris firefighters for dive training in complete darkness. The mysterious underground lake became another source of inspiration for Leroux's Phantom.

In 1964, celebrated artist Marc Chagall was commissioned to paint a monumental ceiling mural above the auditorium. His vibrant masterpiece still stretches across the ceiling today, while the opera house's famous chandelier continues to hang beneath it—a glittering reminder of the disaster that helped give birth to one of literature's most enduring gothic legends.