The Monkey Bite That Killed Greece’s King Alexander I

King Alexander I of Greece died on October 25, 1920, after complications from injuries sustained in a monkey attack. He was 27.

The fatal episode began with a monkey bite. It was the complications that followed his injuries, rather than the attack itself, that ultimately claimed his life.

His death brought the young monarch’s reign to an abrupt end, with an animal encounter proving fatal to a reigning king.

More than a century later, the circumstances of Alexander’s death remain a striking detail of his story: a Greek monarch whose life ended not on a battlefield, but in the aftermath of a monkey attack.