On January 22, 1987, Robert “Budd” Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician, created history when he committed suicide during a televised press conference. He’d been charged the previous year with receiving $300,000 in kickbacks, and he was convicted although he proclaimed his innocence. Naturally.

Controversy erupted over which TV stations chose to air the suicide in its entirety vs. those that stopped the action and only played the audio track. There was a snowstorm in Pennsylvania that day, and many schoolchildren were home watching TV, because that’s what kids did in the 80s. Apparently, the unpleasantness also contributed to a change in AP photo policies. At the time, AP photographers shot mostly in black and white, but they received so many requests for color photos of the Dwyer suicide that they switched to taking all photos in color.

If, like me, you’re interested in more delightfully macabre reading about unusual deaths, Wikipedia has a lovely selection.