That Sux!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo
Falatti came 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.
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.
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-on-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.
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.
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