HOW SOMEONE DIED can sometimes tell us more about a person than how they lived. At the very least, the events surrounding one’s death can make that person more intriguing, as a new History Channel special–“The Day They Died”–attempts to reveal. The two-hour program profiles the deaths of 19 individuals, all of whom left this world in remarkable, absurd, or appropriately telling ways.

The show opens with the more well-known stories of our Founding Fathers’ last moments, stories that should be familiar–at least to viewers who paid attention in history class. But for those who didn’t, John Adams biographer David McCullough speaks of the events leading up to the day both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died–July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Despite their very different ideas about the fledgling federal government (Adams favored a strong government and president; Jefferson did not), the former presidents carried on a lively and friendly correspondence, exchanging 158 letters between the years of 1812 and 1826.