GRAVITY KILLS... A 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to use octopus straps (the stretchy little ropes with hooks on each end) to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. Fairfax County (Virginia) police said Eric A. Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. "The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground," Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was "major trauma." An autopsy is scheduled for later in the week. Three young men in Oklahoma were enjoying the coming forth of July holiday and wanted to apparently test fire some fireworks. Their only real problem was that their launch pad and seating arrangements were atop a several-hundred-thousand-gallon fuel distillation storage tank. Oddly enough, some fumes were ignited, producing a fireball seen for miles and miles. They were launched, no doubt, countless thousands of feet into the air and were found dead 250 yards from their respective seats. A lawyer and two of his buddies were fishing on Caddo Lake in Texas. A lightning storm hit the lake and most of the fisherman immediately headed for the shore. But not our friend the lawyer. He was alone on the rear of his aluminum bass boat and his buddies were in the front. This gentleman stood up, spread his arms wide (crucifixion style) and shouted: "HERE I AM LORD, LET ME HAVE IT!" Needless to say, God delivered. (Well, wouldn't you?) The other two passengers on the boat survived. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. Big deal, you may say, but there's a twist here that makes him a Darwin Award candidate. It seems he and a friend were playing "catch" with a rattlesnake. You can guess what happened from here. The friend was hospitalized. Not much was given to me on this unlucky fellow, but he qualifies nonetheless. You see, there was a gentleman from Korea who was killed by his cell phone, more or less. He was doing the usual "walking and talking" when he walked into a tree and managed somehow to break his neck. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to drive and dial at the same time. Several years ago, in a west Texas town, employees in a medium-sized warehouse noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the vision of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket, and retrieving an object that resembled a lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician that was suspected of causing the explosion had never been thought of as "bright" by his peers. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears they decided to "moon" the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of the plane and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles. AP) LOS ANGELES - Police officials would not release the name of a Pacoima man who was found dead yesterday after responding to complaints from neighbors that a bad smell was coming from his apartment. Upon entering the apartment, officers were surprised to see that every square inch of the apartment, including appliances and even the inside of the toilet, were covered with pornographic images cut from magazines. "The visual effect was very unsettling," said Officer Hradj of the Pacoima Police. "Because everything looked the same, you could not tell where one wall ended and a doorway began." The surprises did not end there, however. Police described the man as having "concocted a wire frame around his head" upon which he had taped various pornographic images, apparently so he could freely move about his apartment without ever losing his close-up view of nude bodies. Small slits had been cut into the paper so he could find his way, but according to Hradj, "He had almost no peripheral vision. He could barely see a thing." The man was found nude with this wire frame entangled in a hanging lamp. "We think he had been dusting," said another police officer, "because a feather duster was lying nearby, and his head gear had somehow become caught in the lamp, which was chained to the ceiling." The man allegedly choked to death trying to extricate himself from his predicament. According to his apartment manager, the white male in his mid-30's never left his apartment, and had food delivered weekly. Funeral services are planned for next week. His next of kin requested that his name be withheld. A young Inuit man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply because he had no money to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister. A 27 year-old French woman lost control over her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and killing her. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have qualified for a Darwin nomination were it not for the fact that the driver's attention had been distracted by her Tamagotchi keyring, which had started urgently beeping for food as she drove along. In attempting to press the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost the control and hit the tree causing a severe head trauma. A man found dead and naked on the back of a killer whale in a tank at SeaWorld Orlando was a drifter who apparently drowned after picking the wrong place to swim police said yesterday. The same whale had earlier been involved in a trainer's death in Victoria. Police identified the man as Daniel Dukes, 27, a man who gave his address as a Miami Hare Krishna Temple. "There was no foul play or anything sinister on his part," said Jim Solmons, a spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff's Office. "He was camped out in the park and just took the opportunity to swim with the whale." An employee at the Orlando marine them park discovered Dukes Tuesday morning, dead, nude and draped across the back of a killer whale called Tillikum, named after the western North American Indian Chinook word for "friend". Investigators said the 14-yea-old whale - almost 5,000 kilos, the largest in captivity - may have played with Dukes' 82 kilo body as if it were a toy. Tillikum was involved in a fatal 1991 incident at a park in Victoria after the drowning of Keltie Byrne, who fell into the whales' pool during a show. CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Nov. 13) -- A 39-year-old Charlottesville man died Thursday in a freak accident involving his washing machine. According to police reports, Samuel Randolph Strickson was doing laundry when he tried to speed up the process. Strickson apparently tried to stuff approximately 50 pounds of laundry into his washing machine by climbing on top of the washer and attempting to force the clothing into the basin. Strickson then apparently accidentally kicked the washing machine's ON button. When the machine turned on, Strickson lost his balance and both feet went down into the machine, where they got stuck. The machine started its cycle, and Strickson, unable to free himself, started thrashing around as the machine's agitator went into gear. Strickson's head banged against a nearby shelf in the laundry room, knocking over a bottle of bleach, which poured over Strickson's face, blinding him. Forensic reports say Strickson apparently also swallowed some of the bleach. He then vomited, but was still unable to free himself. Strickson's dog, then apparently came into the laundry room. At about the same time, according to police, a large box of baking soda fell from the shelf, startling the dog, who then urinated. Urine, like vinegar, is acidic, and the chemical reaction between the urine and the baking soda resulted in "a small explosion," according to police reports. The dog, however, escaped unharmed. Strickson remained stuck in the washing machine, which eventually went into its high-speed spin cycle, spinning Strickson around at about 70 miles per hour, according to forensic experts. Strickson's head then smashed against a steel beam behind the washing machine, immediately killing him. A neighbor heard the commotion and called 911, but Strickson was pronounced dead at the scene. Buxton, NC: A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat inside it. Beachgoers said Daniel Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or protection from the wind, and had been sitting in a beach chair at the bottom Thursday afternoon when it collapsed, burying him beneath 5 feet of sand. People on the beach, on the outer banks, used their hands and shovels, trying to claw their way to Jones, a resident of Woodbridge, VA, but could not reach him. It took rescue workers using heavy equipment almost an hour to free him while about 200 people looked on. Jones was pronounced dead at a hospital. In February, Santiago Alvarado, 24, was killed in Lompoc, CA, as he fell face-first through the ceiling of a bicycle shop he was burglarizing. Death was caused when the long flashlight he had placed in his mouth (to keep his hands free) rammed into the base of his skull as he hit the floor. According to police in Dahlonega, GA, ROTC cadet Nick Berrena, 20, was stabbed to death in January by fellow cadet Jeffrey Hoffman, 23, who was trying to prove that a knife could not penetrate the flakvest Berrena was wearing. Sylvester Briddell, Jr., 26, was killed in February in Selbyville, Del., as he won a bet with friends who said he would not put a revolver loaded with four bullets into his mouth and pull the trigger. PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of poop! Investigators say ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive-oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated. It seems to bejust one of those freak accidents. Five Philippines treasure hunters were killed in March in Rizal province after they found a live World War II bomb and tried to pound it open with a crowbar. And a Philippines naval officer died in January in Zamboanga City while renovating his home when he used a live mortar shell as a hammer. In October, a 49-year-old San Francisco stockbroker, who "totally zoned when he ran," according to his wife, accidentally jogged off of a 200-foot-high cliff on his daily run. In September in Detroit, a 41-year-old man got stuck and drowned in two feet of water after squeezing headfirst through an 18-inch-wide sewer grate to retrieve his car keys. In September, a 7-year- old boy fell off a 100-foot-high bluff near Ozark, Ark., after he lost his grip swinging on a cross that marked the spot where another person had fallen to his death in 1990. In Guthrie, Okla., in October, Jason Heck tried to kill a millipede with a shot from his .22-caliber rifle, but the bullet ricocheted off a rock near the hole and hit pal Antonio Martinez in the head, fracturing his skull. In Elyria, Ohio, in October, Martyn Eskins, attempting to clean out cobwebs in his basement, declined to use a broom in favor of a propane torch and caused a fire that burned the first and second floors of his house. Paul Stiller, 47, was hospitalized in Andover Township, N. J., in September, and his wife Bonnie was also injured, by a quarter-stick of dynamite that blew up in their car. While driving around at 2 a.m., the bored couple lit the dynamite and tried to toss it out the window to see what would happen, but they apparently failed to notice that the window was closed. Four people were injured in a string of related bizarre accidents. Sherry Moeller was admitted with a head wound caused by flying masonry, Tim Vegas was diagnosed with a mild case of whiplash and contusions on his chest, arms and face, Bryan Corcoran suffered torn gum tissue, and Pamela Klesick's first two fingers of her right hand had been bitten off. Moeller had just dropped her husband off for his first day of work and, in addition to a good-bye kiss, she flashed her breasts at him. "I'm still not sure why I did it," she said later "I was really close to the car, so I didn't think anyone would see. Besides, it couldn't have been for more than two seconds". However, cab driver Vegas did see and lost control of his cab, running over the curb and into the corner of the Johnson Medical Building. Inside, Klesick, a dental technician, was cleaning Corcoran's teeth. The crash of the cab against the building making her jump, tearing Corcoran's gums with a cleaning pick. In shock, he bit down, severing two fingers from Klesick's hand. Moeller's wound was caused by a falling piece of the medical building. A paraglider from Riverton turned into a parasailor, and dropped into the Murdoch Canal near Lehi in Utah County on Monday evening. Craig's parachute filled with water, and he was unable to escape as he was dragged towards a siphon on the east side of the canal, sucked under the I-15 Freeway, and eventually pinned against a grate 400 feet downstream. An employee found his body for the Provo Water Users Association. Who knew that one of the dangers of paragliding is drowning? A 25-year-old soldier died of injuries sustained from a 3-story fall, precipitated by his attempt to spit farther than his buddy. His plan was to hurl himself towards a metal guardrail while expectorating, in order to add momentum to his saliva. In a tragic miscalculation, his momentum carried him right over the railing, which he caught hold of for a few moments before his grip slipped, sending him plummeting 24 feet to the cement below. The military specialist had a blood alcohol content of 0.14%, impairing his judgment and paving the way for his opportunity to win a Darwin Award. An unusual sport called "body-canyoning" claimed the lives of 19 people in Bern, with two more missing and presumed dead. Practitioners of "body- canyoning" don life jackets and leap into white-water rapids, swimming and climbing through narrow river gorges in a race to go the farthest the fastest. Outfitting companies in the Swiss Alps provide river guides for body-canyoning excursions. On this day, the unfortunate daredevils were woefully underprepared for the weather. A flash flood swept through the Saxteen River canyon, burying them under mud and debris. The victims were from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Switzerland. Seven Sequoyah Volunteer Firefighters decided to impress their Chief by surreptitiously setting fire to a house, then heroically extinguishing the blaze. The men apparently hatched the plan in order to help Daniel, a former firefighter, return to duty. Unfortunately, Daniel's career plans were irreversibly snuffed when he became trapped while pouring gasoline inside the house. Surrounded by smoke and flames, he was unable to escape, and died inside the burning house on June 26. His six accomplices are facing 87 years in prison for conspiracy, arson, and burglary. On February 3, 1990, a Renton (Seattle area) tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by his lack of a record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choice: 1. The target was H & J Leather & Firearms, a gun shop; 2. The shop was full of customers, in a state where a substantial fraction of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places; 3. To enter the shop, he had to step around a marked King County Police patrol car parked at the front door; 4. An officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before reporting to duty. Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a holdup and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, removing him from the gene pool. Several other customers also drew their guns, but didn't fire. No one else was hurt. MOSCOW, RUSSIA - A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bullet-proof vest to see if it protected him against the knife...It didn't and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound. Isn't it good to see the Russians getting into the spirit of the awards. A couple of years ago the old brewery in our city closed down. When the wrecking crew was demolishing the site they made an unexpected discovery. The brewery was built into the side of a hill along the river, and unknown to the builders, there was a cave right close by, which snaked down under the building. Someone had dug the rest of the way up to the floor, and then, unknown to anyone, had attached a small tube to the underside of one of the pipes giving them an unlimited supply of free beer. When the cave was discovered, a decomposing male human body was found right beside the tap! The authorities concluded that the person had drunk himself to death! Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him and cut through the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to hospital, where he died... of exposure!!! Los Angeles, CA. Ani Saduki, 33, and his brother decided to remove a bees nest from a shed on their property with the aid of a "pineapple." A pineapple is an illegal fire- cracker which is the explosive equivalent of one-half stick of dynamite. They ignited the fuse and retreated to watch from inside their home, behind a window some 10 feet away from the hive/shed. The concussion of the explosion shattered the window inwards, seriously lacerating Ani. Deciding Mr. Saduki need stitches, the brothers headed out to go to a nearby hospital. While walking towards their car, Ian was stung three times by the surviving bees. Unbeknownst to either brother, Ani was allergic to bee venom, and died of suffocation enroute to the hospital. A driver, who crashed into the side of a 3000 ton wheat train and was dragged in his car more than a kilometer before being slammed into a pylon at the edge of a cliff, fell to his death as he walked for help. The Queensland, Australia man, 63, and his female companion, 64, were driving along the Newell Highway near Moree, in Northwestern New South Wales, on Wednesday night, police said. Their car crashed into the side of a fully laden, 600 meter long train at a level crossing. (I guess that would be harder to miss than the side of a barn!) The vehicle became wedged between the second last and last carriages and was dragged sideways beside the track as the train continued towards Moree, a police spokeswoman said. After being carried more than a kilometer and a half they approached an unfenced bridge with a 10 meter drop, the spokeswoman said. Moments before they reached the precipice, the car was struck by a pylon, dislodged from the train and spun several times. When it came to rest, the pair managed to free themselves from the wreck (I wonder if it was a Volvo?) with minor bruising and the man set off along the railway line for help. But he slipped on the bridge and fell to his death, the spokeswoman said. The woman was eventually able to raise the alarm and was recovering in Moree hospital with chest injuries. Derrick L. Richards, 28, was charged in April in Minneapolis with third-degree murder in the death of his beloved cousin, Kenneth E. Richards. According to police, Derrick suggested a game of Russian roulette and put a semiautomatic pistol (instead of the more traditional revolver) to Ken's head and fired. Phillipsburg, NJ. An unidentified 29 year old male choked to death on a sequined pastie he had orally removed from an exotic dancer at a local establishment. "I didn't think he was going to eat it," the dancer identified only as "Ginger" said, adding "He was really drunk." In February, according to police in Windsor, Ont., Daniel Kolta, 27, and Randy Taylor, 33, died in a head-on collision, thus earning a tie in the game of chicken they were playing with their snowmobiles. [San Jose Mercury News] An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut [Kalamazoo Gazette,] James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft." [Reuters, Mississauga, Ontario] A man cleaning a bird feeder on his balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb slipped and fell 23 stories to his death, police said Monday. Stefan Macko, 55, was standing on a wheeled chair Sunday when the accident occurred, said Inspector D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police. "It appears the chair moved and he went over the balcony," Honer said. "It's one of those freak accidents. No foul play is suspected." [Hickory Daily Record] Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, NC, when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith&Wesson 38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear. [UPI, Toronto] Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association. [AP, Cairo, Egypt, CAIRO, Egypt (AP) Six people drowned Monday while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well in southern Egypt. An 18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down, police said. His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help, but they apparently were pulled by the same undercurrent. The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo. The chicken was also pulled out. It survived. [Bloomburg News Service, 25 March] A terrible diet and a room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing from the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. He was ". . .a big man with a huge capacity for creating [this deadly gas]." Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized. [, San Jose Mercury News] A 24-year-old salesman from Hialeah, Fla., was killed near Lantana, Fla., in March when his car smashed into a pole in the median strip of Interstate 95 in the middle of the afternoon. Police said that the man was traveling at 80 MPH and, judging by the sales manual that was found open and clutched to his chest, had been busy reading. [The News of the weird.] JOINT NOMINEE Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously in 1989. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. While sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted. On Jan. 1, 1997, Laurence Baker, also a convicted murderer once on death row, but later serving a life sentence at the state prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., was electrocuted by his homemade earphones as he watched his small TV while sitting on his metal toilet. ["The Indianapolis Star"]. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited. [AP, Mammoth Lakes] A San Anselmo man died yesterday when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad, authorities said. Matthew David Hubal, 22, was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's Department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers, said Lieutenant Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It was not clear if the tower he hit was one with its pad removed. "With the cold temperatures, the snow was probably pretty fast," said Donnelly. [Reuters, Warsaw, Poland] A poacher electrocuting fish in a lake in central Poland fell into the water and suffered the same fate as his quarry, police said Thursday. The 24-year-old man was one of four who went fishing with a cable, one end of which they attached to a net and the other to a high-voltage electricity supply line, the PAPnews agency quoted a police official in Wloclawek as saying. "For a while everything went according to the poachers' plan and they had fish in their bags. But at a certain moment the man holding the net tripped and fell into the water," the agency said. The other poachers tried in vain to revive him, it said. [AP, St. Louis] Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store: paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death. [Unknown] The poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock, and was killed instantly when it fell on him. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram] In December near Mineral Wells, Tex., three men who were attempting to steal copper wire off live electrical lines for resale were electrocuted. Copper wiring is a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is usually stolen from electric cables that are not being used. John Pernicky and friend Sal Hawkins, of the great state of Washington, decided to attend a local Mettalica concert at the Amphitheater at Gorge, Washington. Having no tickets but 18 beers among them they sat in the parking lot and after finishing the beer, decided that it would be easy enough to hop over the nine foot high fence and sneak into the show. The two friends pulled their pickup truck to the fence and the plan was for John, 100 pounds heavier than Sal, to hop over, and then assist his friend over the fence. Unfortunately for John, the fence had a 30 foot drop on the other side. Having heaved himself over he found himself crashing through a tree, falling to the ground. His fall was abruptly stopped by a large branch which had been snagged by his shorts. Dangling from the tree, with one arm broken, John looked down and saw a group of bushes below him. Figuring the bushes would break his fall, John removed his pocket knife and proceed to cut away his shorts to free himself from the tree. When finally free, John crashed below into Holly bushes, the sharp leaves scratched his whole body, and now being without his shorts he was the unwilling victim of a Holly branch penetrating his rectal cavity. To make matters worse, his pocket knife proceeded to fall with him and landed three inches into his left thigh. Seeing his friend in considerable pain and agony, Sal decided to throw him a rope and pull him to safety. However, weighing about 100 pounds less, he decided the best course of action would be to tie the rope to the pickup truck. This is when things went bad. Sal in his drunken state, put the truck into the wrong gear, and proceeded to press on the gas and crash through the fence, landing on and killing his friend. Sal was thrown from the truck, suffered massive internal injuries and died at the scene. Police arrive to find, a pickup truck, with its driver thrown 100 feet from the vehicle, and upon moving the truck, a half naked man, with numerous scratches, a holly stick up his ..., a knife in his thigh, and a pair of shorts dangling from the trees, 25 feet in the air. A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him. Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him. Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull. Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched. George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him. Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife. In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright. A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death. Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison. Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled. There are many transmission lines that criss cross Connecticut. These are held up by Transmission Towers of various constructions. Those most commonly installed near urban areas are called "metal Ornamental Towers" (supposedly prettier than wood towers). Sometimes adventurous folks climb the towers in order to enjoy the view and the night air. Most stay away from the wires, and when they get bored, come back down. Apparently, a man who was forlorn after a recent spat with his girlfriend needed some fresh air to clear his head and decided to climb a tower. He stopped for a 6 pack to help clear his thoughts, went to a tower south of Hartford, next to I-91, and climbed it. Public Service employees later pieced the story together. The man sat there 60 feet above the highway, drank his beer and consoled his bruised ego. After 5 beers, he needed to do what people often need to do after 5 beers. It being such a long hike down, he unzipped and did his business right there off the tower. Electricity is a funny thing. One doesn't need to touch a wire in order to get shocked. Depending on conditions, 115,000 volt lines, like those supported by the tower, could shock a person as far away as 6 feet. When the man "whizzed" near the conductor (wire), the power arced to his "stream" (urine is an excellent conductor of electricity), traveled up to his private parts, and blew him off the tower. The guys at the power company noted a momentary outage on this line and sent repairmen to see if there was any damage. When they got to the scene of the accident, they found a very dead person, his fly down, what was left of his private parts smoking, and a single beer left on top of the tower. In November, a 60-year-old Polish man in the village of Kosianka Trojanowka, identified only as "Czeslaw B," was accidentally shot to death by two homemade guns he had mounted on his garage door to ward off trespassers (just 2 of 28 booby traps in his house). And in Slidell, La., in December, Jason Jinks, 20, decided to open his car door and back up at 25 mph in order to look for his hat that had just fallen off; when he hit the brakes, he fell out on his head and, three days later, died. Liverpool, England -- A man picking his nose on the way to work was rear-ended by another car, causing him to ram his finger so far into his head he punctured his brain and died. David Chesterton was a compulsive nose picker until the day of the fender bender that caused his probing finger to go too far. "I always told David it was a filthy habit," said Chesterton's widow, Martha, "but I had no idea it would lead to this." The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it was and what had happened. It seems that a guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off-- actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes and extra "push" for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!! The facts as best could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location. The JATO, if operating correctly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the automobile to reach speeds well in excess of 350 MPH and continuing at full power for 20-25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, would have experienced g-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 jocks, under full after -burners, basically causing him to become insignificant for the rest of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires, and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel. |
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