|
| And You Thought YOU Were Having a Bad Day...
|
| =B7 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.
|
| =B7 Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers
| o=
| f
| low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a
| low-level bridge-killing him.
|
| =B7 Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so
| afrai=
| d
| 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.
|
| =B7 George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly
| escape=
| d
| 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.
|
| =B7 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.
|
| =B7 A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay 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.
|
| =B7 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.
|
| =B7 In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the
| busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its
| roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another
| car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot
| of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed
| through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even
| more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd
| wisely scattered and only one person was hit-Bob Finnegan. In the space of
| two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg,
| and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
|
| =B7 While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti
| cam=
| e
| up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he
| sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer
| tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up
| behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the
| train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on
| the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the
| horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped down from his
| cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up
| to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the
| sports- car. At this, the sports-car driver leaped out of his car and
| joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three
| flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was
| strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to
| sort out the claims.
|
| =B7 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 centre of the road. At the moment of impact their
| heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men
| were hospitalised with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.
|
| =B7 In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged
| eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in
| Kingston-upon-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one
| of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood waiting for a=
| train.
|
| =B7 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 neighbour 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.
|
| =B7 An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express
| wa=
| s
| climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she remembered she had left
| some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed downstairs and was removing the
| muffins when she heard a noise at the door. Thinking it was the baker, and
| knowing he would come in and leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if
| she didn't answer his knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A
| few moments later she heard the back door open and, to her eternal
| mortification, the sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was
| the man from the gas company, come to read the meter. "Oh," stammered the
| woman, "I was expecting the baker." The gas man blinked, excused himself
| and departed.
|
|
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-- withheld C. L'withheld dcl@clearlight.com http://www.clearlight.com/~dcl