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 his files. The remaining wall then collapsed on
him, killing him instantly.
Depressed since he couldn't 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, 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 City 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
then 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.
Two 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 from opposite directions but both near the
middle of the road. At the moment of impact, their heads were both out of
the widows where they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized
with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched.
In a case of "one thing leading to another", seven men, aged 18-27
years, received jail sentences of 3-4 years each 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.
A few years ago in California there was a raging brush fire. Once
the fire was extinguished, the firefighters began the process of
clean-up. In the middle of where the fire had been burning, they
found a dead man wearing a scuba tank and wet suit. At first the
firefighters were baffled as to why a man would be out in the middle of the
countryside wearing full scuba gear. Upon further examination, it was
determined that the man died from the impact with the ground and not the
fire. As best anyone can determine, this man was scuba diving off the coast
of California and was accidentally picked up by one of the firefighting
aircraft when it was refilling its water tanks offshore.
(Definitely an urban legend.)
