Fun_People Archive
9 Oct
Fate (aka Doom)

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed,  9 Oct 96 18:01:27 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Fate (aka Doom)

Forwarded-by: Lani Herrmann <lanih@info.sims.berkeley.edu>
From: jmichael@sas.upenn.edu
From: jtrue (Jennifer G True)

Sometimes, it seems like some people are just plain *doomed*. If you don't
believe it, consider these weird deaths:

* 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 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.

 * 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.

* 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.

* An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday Express was
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.

© 1996 Peter Langston