Many years before I discovered the Internet, I was collecting and passing on bizarre news stories that I found in the backwaters of the publishing world. Now, with the advent of the WWW, there has been an explosion of such stories, some true, some semi-true, and some that fall into that wonderful category of Urban Myth. Here on this page I have added to the confusion by publishing not only my complete archive, but also those stories that I am still mailing to like-minded friends under the heading 'Another True Story'. I don't pretend that I can prove the veracity of any of these tales, but they are the ones that appealed to my warped sense of humour, and therefore you will notice that many of them are sick and some are gross - you have been warned.
Where I can remember the source, I have quoted it, but in the early days I had no inkling that these stories would be so popular, or that I would be publishing them on a website, so these details are now lost, as are the first five stories which died on a 5.25" floppy back in the mists of time.
I'm not really updating this page any more, and I haven't incorporated it into the look and feel of the new site, but I see from the traffic reports that a lot of people are still enjoying this page, so I decided to keep it.
>Very Safe Sex. (Source: Edmonton Sun, 18/05/2004)
A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage
have found out why they’re still
childless — they weren’t having sex.
Folks at the University Clinic of Lubeck said they’d never heard of a case like
it. Doctors subjected the couple to a series of examinations and found they
were both apparently fertile and should have had no trouble conceiving.
“When we asked them how often they had sex, they looked blank and said: ‘What
do you mean?’
“We’re not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in
a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage,
of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.’
The 30-year-old wife and her 36-year-old hapless hubby are now being given sex
therapy lessons.
>A slow day at the tax office. (Source: ABC, 20/01/2004)
Workmates unaware of dead colleague Authorities in Finland are investigating how a tax office official who died at his desk went unnoticed by his colleagues for two days. The man in his 60s, died last Tuesday while checking tax returns, but no one realised he was dead until Thursday. The head of personnel at the office in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, said the man's closest colleagues had been out at meetings when he died.
>The origin of S.H.I.T. (Source: The internet)
In the 16th and 17th centuries, since commercial fertiliser had not yet been invented, large shipments of manure were common.
Manure was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once a vessel got out to sea and the cargo got wet, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas. Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern... Boom! Several ships were destroyed in this manner before the cause was determined, but after that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term "Ship High In Transit", which meant that the sailors should stow it high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T." which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.
>Worker Dead At Desk for 5 Days (Source: New York Times 22/1/2003)
Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for five days before anyone asked if he was feeling okay.
George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend.
His boss Elliot Wachiaski said: "George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself."
A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, George was proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died.
>Final Tax Cut (Source: Pravo 7/5/2002)
A man was so distraught over his unpaid taxes that he brought a homemade guillotine to a government office in western Slovakia and lopped off his head. Police told the Prague newspaper Pravo that the 56-year-old plumber, identified only as Frantisek, used the crude but effective death device outside a tax bureau in Malacky, about 35km north of Bratislava. To the shock of onlookers, he put his head in the slot and let the blade fall. In a suicide note, the man from the village of Zohora wrote: "I can't go on." According to authorities, the man owed 25,000 koruna (about EUR 830) in taxes and 15,000 koruna in penalties. The man's wife and two daughters said they had no idea he was building a guillotine. Village neighbours said the man was "eccentric" but did not frequent the local pubs.
>Homemade Parachute (Source: London Times 26/5/2000)
On the 25th of May 2000 in the Phillipines, Augusto Lacandula boarded a Phillippine
Air Airbus in Davao City, bound for Manilla. Some time into the flight, he donned
a ski mask and swim goggles, pulled out a gun and a grenade and announced that
he was hijacking the plane. At first he demanded that the plane return to Davao
City, but the pilots convinced him that the plane was too low on fuel, and they
continued on towards Manila.
Augusto, undaunted, robbed the passengers of about $25,000 and ordered the pilots
to lower the plane to 6500 feet. Discovering that his homemade parachute had
no ripcord, the cabin crew helped him to fashion one from a length of curtain
sash, before opening a rear door and depressurising the plane so that he could
jump out.
However, the wind was very strong, and he clung to the doorframe, apparently
having second thoughts about his parachute. Finally one of the flight attendants
helpfully pushed him out of the door, just as he pulled the pin from the grenade.
As he fell, he accidentally threw the pin into the cabin, falling earthward
with the grenade still in his hand. The parachute failed to open, and the hapless
terrorist plummeted into the earth.
All that could be seen of his body above ground were his two hands.
Note: Darwin Awards 2000 credit Associated Press, The Australia Age, Reuters,
and National Inquirer for a slightly different version of this story.
>Nuts (Source: The Internet)
When a 40-year old man turned up at a hospital asking to see a doctor specialising in men's troubles, he was shown into a cubicle, where he gingerly unwrapped three yards of foul smelling stained gauze from around his scrotum, which had swollen to twice the size of a grapefruit. On further inspection, it was discovered that his left testicle was missing completely, and, embedded within the swollen, tender and weeping wound, were a number of dark objects which the patient confessed were one-inch staple nails from an industrial staple gun. It transpired that the man spent his lunchtimes alone in his workshop, where he regularly enjoyed the sexual thrill of placing his penis on one of his machine's moving canvas belt. of a piece of machinery. One day, the excitement caused him to "lose his concentration", and the belt snatched his scrotum into the fly-wheel, throwing him several feet across the floor and tearing off his left testicle. Rather than go to the hospital, he closed the wound with the staple-gun, then went back to work when his colleagues returned. It was two weeks before he got around to visiting the hospital.
>Lobster Tale (Source: The Internet)
One morning at around 5am, 22 year old Susan DeLucci of Kittery, Maine, woke
up with a painful need to urinate. She wobbled to the toilet and upon sitting
on it, her vagina erupted with a burning tide of muck. She screamed wildly,
and the neighbors called the police. When medics arrived they found Ms. DeNucci
lying unconscious on the floor of her bathroom. Running down her leg was a stream
of brown and green syrup.
In order to transfer her to a stretcher, the medic lifted her left leg to straighten
her body out, exposing her vagina, at which point a creature no larger than
a fingertip wormed its way out of her genitals and landed on the floor with
a wet popping sound. Shocked, the medic stared at the creature that was lying
on the tile bathroom floor in a casing of mucus. It was a tiny mud-shrimp. The
horrified medic turned to the toilet as he felt nausea setting in, but found
that the entire toilet bowl was boiling with baby brown mud-shrimp, flipping
and splashing at a furious pace.
It is believed by police that two nights before the accident she had purchased
a live lobster at a fish market. While lying in a tub, she inserted the creature's
tail into her vagina to derive physical pleasure, holding a lighter under the
creature's head causing it to flip its tail in a violent snapping motion. The
medics found a lesbian porno video in the VCR and the TV was positioned on a
table in front of the tub.
Ms DeLucci later died of a combination of shock and head injuries sustained
when she collapsed. The lobster was found in the kitchen garbage can wrapped
in a paper bag. Traces of her DNA were found on the lobster along with pubic
hairs that had wedged themselves between the lobsters' tail joints. The lobster's
head was lightly burned with lighter fuel, and it's digestive tract was found
to be full of mud-shrimp egg casings. Doctors believe that the lobster had eaten
them (they are common in the water at fish markets and are usually harmlessly
boiled to death) and the lobster had crapped them out into Ms DeLucci's vagina
when she was torturing it.
Maine mud shrimp only take two days to gestate and Ms DeLucci was only four
days away from getting her period. Doctors believe that at that point of her
menstrual cycle, her womb was the perfect PH balance to grow these mud-shrimp
which are a much larger version of the popular 'Sea Monkey' pets sold throughout
the US. Overnight the eggs had hatched and the mud shrimp began doubling in
size every ten minutes...
>Plug it in (Source: Cape Times, 13th June 1996)
"For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient
in the same bed every Friday morning" a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital
(Free State, South Africa) told reporters. "There was no apparent cause for
any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and
a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues.
"However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It
seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug
that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into
the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores,
she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the
patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the screams and eventual
death rattle over the whirring of her polisher.
"We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question. Further,
the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician
to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The
enquiry is now closed."
>Live Fuse (Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette)
Two men were seriously injured when their pick-up truck left the road and struck
a tree near Cotton Patch, Arkansas, reported Woodruff County Deputy Dovey Snyder.
Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc, and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock, were
admitted in serious condition to the Baptist Medical Center.
The accident occurred as the two men were returning to Des Arc after a frog-hunting
expedition. On an overcast Saturday night, Poole's pick-up truck headlights
blew a fuse. They did not have a replacement fuse, but Wallis noticed that a
.22 cartridge from his pistol fitted perfectly into the fuse box, which was
mounted next to the steering column.
Upon inserting the brass cartridge, the headlights came on, and the two men
carried on east-bound toward the White River Bridge. After about twenty miles,
and just before crossing the river, the cartridge overheated, discharged, and
the bullet struck Poole in the right testicle. The vehicle swerved sharply to
the right, left the highway and hit a tree. "Thank God we weren't on that bridge
when Thurston shot his balls off or we might both be dead" said Wallis.
>Repetitive Strain Injury (Source: Houston Chronicle 20/11/1999)
A Florida phone sex operator won a worker's compensation settlement claiming
that she was injured after regularly masturbating at work. During the course
of her claim, the now 40-year old employee of Fort Lauderdale's CFP Enterprises
Inc, said that she developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands from masturbating
as many as seven times a day while speaking to callers.
The woman used one hand to answer the phone and the other to note customers'
names and fetishes and to give herself an orgasm during the verbal exchanges.
The calls usually lasted 15 minutes, but callers who asked for her by name were
given 30 minutes.
In her petition for worker's compensation benefits, the woman claimed weekly
benefits of $267 a week and also asked for $30,000 in medical bills after a
neurosurgeon operated on her hands to relieve the pain. Her attorney, Steven
Slootsky, said that his client, who remained anonymous, had agreed to a 'minimal
settlement'. He declined to disclose the amount.
>Chicken without mayo (Source: Internet)
A woman went through the drive thru of Burger King for lunch. She ordered a chicken sandwich (the breaded kind...before spicy chicken or grilled chicken became big sellers for BK) and specifically requested NO MAYO because she couldn't stand the stuff. She drove away without confirming that she got what she ordered. As she drove, she began to eat the sandwich and realized that there was mayo on it. She was none too pleased but was so hungry that she ate it anyway. When she got about halfway through the sandwich, she began to feel very ill. She stopped eating but felt increasingly worse as she continued to drive. She felt so bad that she drove herself to the hospital emergency room, taking her sandwich with her. The hospital performed tests on both her and the sandwich and found out that the sandwich really didn't have any mayo on it. In reality, the chicken had had a tumor on its breast. When the chicken was breaded and fried, the tumor burst and the pus flooded out...
>Gerbil (Source: LA Times)
"In retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake. But I was only trying to retrieve the gerbil," Eric Tomasyewski told bemused doctors in the Severe Burns Unit of the Salt Lake City Hospital. Tomadzewski, and his homosexual partner Andrew "Kiki" Farnum, had been admitted for emergency treatment after a felching session had gone seriously wrong. "I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Raggot, our gerbil, in," he explained. "As usual, Kiki shouted out "Armageddon", my cue that he'd had enough. I tried to retrieve Raggot but he wouldn't come out again so I peered into to tube and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him." At a hushed press conference, a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "The match ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and a flame shot out the tubing, igniting Mr. Tomaszewski's hair and severely burning his face. It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers which in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a cannonball." Tonaszewski suffered second degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil, while Farnum suffered first and second degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.
Note: This was I believe the very first of the stories that I mailed all those years ago, and subsequently lost. I think that I first saw it in 'Private Eye'. It's nice to see it again, still doing the rounds on the Internet.
>Electrocution (Source: Internet)
A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Up until that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman.
>Rhino Glue (Source: Darwin Awards 1999)
Ronald Demuth, a native of Vermont, was touring the Eagle's Rock African Safari
with a group of thespians from St. Petersburg, Russia. Mr. Demuth went overboard
to show them one of America's many marvels. He demonstrated the effectiveness
of "Crazy Glue"...the hard way.
Apparently, Mr. Demuth wanted to demonstrate just how good the adhesive was,
so he put about 3 ounces of the adhesive in the palms of his hands, and jokingly
placed them on the buttocks of a passing rhino. The rhino, a resident of the
zoo for the past thirteen years, was not initially startled as it has been part
of the petting exhibit since its arrival as a baby. However, once it became
aware of its being involuntarily stuck to Mr. Demuth, it began to panic and
ran around the petting area wildly, making Mr. Demuth an unintended passenger.
"Sally [the rhino] hasn't been feeling well lately. She had been very constipated.
We had just given her a laxative and some depressants to relax her bowels, when
Mr. Demuth played his juvenile prank," said James Douglass, caretaker.
During Sally's tirade two fences were destroyed, a shed wall was gored, and
a number of small animals escaped. Also, during the stampede, three pygmy goats
and one duck were stomped to death. As for Demuth, it took a team of medics
and zoo caretakers' to remove his hands from Sally's buttocks.
First, the animal had to be captured and calmed down. However, during this process
the laxatives began to take hold and Mr. Demuth was repeatedly showered with
over 30 gallons of rhino diarrhea. "It was tricky. We had to calm her down,
while at the same time shield our faces from being pelted with rhino dung. I
guess you could say that Mr. Demuth was into it up to his neck. Once she was
under control, we had three people with shovels working to keep an air passage
open for Mr. Demuth. We were able to tranquilize her and apply a solvent to
remove his hands from her rear," said Douglass. "I don't think he'll be playing
with Crazy Glue for a while."
Meanwhile, the Russians, while obviously amused, also were impressed with the
power of the adhesive. "I'm going to buy some for my children, but of course
they can't take it to the zoo," commented Vladimir Zolnikov, leader of the troupe.
Note: The latest Darwin Awards site regards this as an urban myth.
>Husky (Source: The Australian, May 1994)
The Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania, was holding
an Antarctica exhibition. It included a couple of stuffed huskies and a wooden
sledge of the type pulled by the dogs. Alerted to the fact that two live huskies
would shortly be arriving from Australia's Mawson Antarctic Station, the museum
authorities arranged for them to visit so that people could see what a real
husky looks like. On arrival in the exhibition hall, the dogs Ursa and Morris
padded over to the stuffed dogs and rubbed noses with them. Then they went over
to the sledge, cocked their legs, and peed on it. After that, it was back to
the stuffed dogs. Ursa and Morris clearly decided that they were rivals. Ursa
grabbed one by the scruff of the neck, ripped it's ear off and shook it. Morris
jumped in for the kill, hurling the stuffed dog off the platform so it landed,
legs akimbo, on the floor. Then, happy that they had re-established their dominance,
Ursa and Morris strutted off.
They have since been moved to Melbourne.
>The Duck Shoot (Source: The Internet)
A guy in Michigan, USA bought a brand new $30,000 Grand Cherokee on credit.
He was pretty proud of this rig, and got hold of his friend to do some male
bonding with the new ride. They decided to go duck hunting on a frozen lake
and turned up with their guns, a dog, lots of beer and of course the new vehicle.
They drove out onto the ice. Now, they needed to make a hole in the ice to attract
ducks - something for the decoys to float on. In order to make a hole large
enough to interest a flock of ducks, they needed to use something a bit bigger
than your normal ice drill. However, thinking ahead, they had brought with them
a stick of dynamite with a 40-second fuse.
To their credit, these guys realised that they wanted the explosion to be far
away from themselves, the jeep and their equipment. However, they didn't want
to light the fuse and run back to the jeep in case they slipped on the ice,
so they decided to stay where they were, light the dynamite and then throw it
as far as they could. This they did. The explosive landed a suitable distance
away and they waited for the explosion.
However, they reckoned without their dog. A well-trained black labrador, it
immediately set out across the ice to bring the back the stick. The hunters
started yelling, stomping, and waving their arms, which the dog took as encouragement
and happily ran back toward the hunters, fizzing stick of dynamite firmly clenched
in it's jaws.
As the dog approached, one of the pair thought rapidly, grabbed his shotgun,
and shot the dog. Unfortunately the shotgun was loaded with #8 duck shot and
was hardly effective enough to stop a labrador. The dog did pause for a moment,
slightly confused, but then continued on. Another shot, and the dog became really
confused and, quite naturally, scared.
Changing direction, and now with an extremely short fuse still burning, it headed
for the nearest and indeed only cover on the wide expanse of ice - underneath
the guy's brand new Cherokee. The dynamite went off, and dog and jeep plummetted
to the bottom of the lake. Strangely, the insurance company refused to pay up.
Note 1: The latest Darwin Awards site regards this as an urban myth.
Note 2: In South Australia, two men who tied a lighted stick of gelignite
to a rabbit for a laugh, lost their A$20,000 4x4 vehicle when the terrified
animal took cover underneath it. (Source: New Scientist August 1984)
>The far-reaching effects of a horse's backside (Source: The Internet)
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?>British GCSE Answers (examinations for British 16 year olds) (Source: The Internet)
>A Frenchman's Suicide (Source: Darwin Awards 1999)
Frenchman 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 then 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 completely 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 a hospital, where he subsequently died of hypothermia.
>Deadly Virus
In Berlin, cinema usher Albrecht Kronin, 54, suffered a coronary just prior
to a screening of the film 'Deadly Virus'. Unfortunately, his prone body was
mistaken by cinemagoers for a promotional wax dummy.
"We were walking into the auditorium and I tripped over him in the dark", explained
film-fan Marie Grantz. "I said, 'What's that?' and my boyfriend said "Someone
with a deadly virus!" so we jumped up and down on him and poured popcorn on
his head."
Other customers, equally convinced of Herr Kronin's promotional nature, kicked
him, stole his shoes and stuck a frankfurter sausage up his nose, and it was
only when the lights came up at the end of the film that the awful truth emerged.
"It's funny," said Herr Kronin's employer, "because one of our ice-cream ladies
had a cerebral haemorrhage during a screening of 'Coma'".
>An Italian's Suicide
Sergio Mazzaro, 37, of Bologna, Italy, had made several unsuccessful suicide attempts, including one attempt to set himself alight in a local park which was foiled when it started to rain. Eventually he put his head in his gas oven. After a short while, the oven exploded, destroying the entire block of flats and killing fourteen people. Mazzaro, however, survived. "He was lucky," observed one rescuer. "If it hadn't been for the oven his head would have been crushed by falling concrete."
>Speed Trap (Source: Berwickshire Gazette - 11/11/1998)
Two traffic patrol officers from North Berwick were involved in an unusual incident whilst checking for speeding motorists on the A1 road between Oldhamstocks and Grantshouse. They were using a hand-held radar device to trap unwary motorists on the Edinburgh to London trunk road. One of the officers used the device to check the speed of an approaching vehicle, and was surprised to find that his target had registered a speed in excess of 300 miles per hour. The £5000 machine then seized up and could not be reset by the bemused PCs. The radar had in fact latched on to a NATO Tornado aircraft in the North Sea, which was taking part in a simulated low-flying exercise over the Borders and Southern Scotland. Following a complaint by Sir William Sutherland, Chief Constable of the Lothian & Borders Police force to the RAF liaison office, it was revealed that the officers had a lucky escape - the tactical computer on board the aircraft not only detected and jammed the "hostile" radar equipment, but had automatically armed a Maverick air-to-ground missile ready to neutralise the perceived threat. Luckily the Dutch pilot was alerted to the missile status and was able to override the automatic protection system before the missile launched. The Police have so far declined to comment, although it is understood that officers will be advised to point their radar guns inland in future.
Note: I've also seen this story in Bike magazine, who apparently saw it in Pilot. There are some versions set in other countries that have been distorted enough to be now considered Urban Myths, but I believe that this original tale is true.
>Jato Rocket (Source: Darwin Awards 1998)
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smouldering metal embedded into
the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. At first they
thought that the wreckage was the site of an aeroplane crash, but after further
investigation it turned out to be that of a car.
Exactly what type of car it was they were unable to ascertain at the scene,
but forensics finally figured out what type of car it was and what had actually
happened.
It seems that the driver of the car had somehow got his hands on a JATO (Jet
Assisted Takeoff) unit - a solid fuel rocket used to give heavy military planes
an extra 'push' when taking off from short airfields. He had attached the JATO
unit to his 1967 Chevy Impala, driven it out into the desert, found a long straight
stretch of road, got up some speed and fired it up...
The facts, as best as could be determined, are that the driver of the Impala
hit JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3 miles from the crash site;
this was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location.
The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5
seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350mph and it would
have continued at full power for an additional 20 - 25 seconds.
While this was happening, the driver most likely would have experienced G forces
usually reserved for dog-fighting F14 pilots under full afterburners. However,
the car remained on the road for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the
driver applied the brakes, completely melting them and blowing the tyres, leaving
thick rubber on the road surface.
The car then became airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and slammed into the
cliff face at a height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in
the rock.
According to the Arizona Highway Patrol, "Most of the driver's remains were
not recoverable." Small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from
the crater however, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece
of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Note: Sadly, it appears that the Arizona State Patrol have confirmed that this is an Urban Myth. For this reason, the story was later disqualified as the 1998 Darwin Awards winner. However, if you want to see a particularly impressive "true explanation" and/or extension of this pervasive myth, then check out the Cult of the Dead Cow's file 363. Thanks to Marc Rassbach who dropped me a line to tell me about it.
A new craze for pumping air into one's rectum with a bicycle pump has developed
among young men in Thailand. Doctors have asked the Thai government to crack
down after one man got bored of conventional bike pumps and paid a nocturnal
visit to the compressed air hose in his local garage. He inserted the hose into
his anus and popped a coin in the slot and exploded.
"We still haven't located all of him" said a spokesman at the Nakhon Ratchasima
Hospital. Other hospital officers were more concerned about the morality of
the new craze. "Pumping is the devil's pasttime and we must all say no to Satan,"
said one spokesman. "If this perversion catches on it will destroy the cream
of Thailand's manhood."
>Time Machine (Source: The Big Issue 1997/8)
American inventor Slattery Oniontoe of Dakota recently travelled in the world's first operational time machine. Fuelled by liquid nitrogen and based on principles of quantum physics "that simply can't be explained to normal people" Mr Oniontoe's creation took nine years to complete before it was ready for its first test. "I got inside and programmed it to take me to classical Rome", explained the intrepid inventor. "There was a huge bang and I passed out, and when I came to the whole world seemed to be on fire". Convinced that he had arrived in ancient Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius Mr Oniontoe huddled in a corner screaming "I come in peace!" in Latin before firemen kicked down the door and carried him to safety.
>Birthday Surprise (Source: The Big Issue 1995/8)
Mr Arnold Skevic of Volgograd decided to surprise his ex-wife for her 60th
birthday. With the help of two friends he stripped naked, tied a bow around
his penis and was then packed into a large box which was conveyed to the local
post office. Unfortunately, postal workers chose that day to go on strike, leaving
the gift-wrapped Mr Skevic for three weeks in a sorting office before he was
eventually delivered, by which time he had suffocated.
"A beautiful present arrived on my doorstep", recalled Mrs Skevic, "so I ripped
off the paper and there was Arnold, nude, with a mouth full of polystyrene balls.
Frankly I would have preferred a rowing machine."
>Toilet Job (Source: The Big Issue 1997/8)
Pepe Cortes, 39, approached cashiers at the Madrid Bank armed with a porcelain lavatory bowl and threatened to throw it at them unless they filled it with money. "It was a huge thing," recalled the cashier, "with a wooden seat. I didn't fancy getting crushed by a loo, so I did what he asked." Staff had, however, activated a hidden alarm, and when Mr Cortes left the bank he was confronted by 20 armed police, who ordered him to "drop your toilet and squat beside it", whereupon he threatened to flush the money away unless they let him go.
>Toilet Burglars (Source: The Big Issue 1996)
Two Italian burglars, Franco Gaspard and Fabio Donatini, were attempting to break into a house in Rome. Donatini was crawling in through a side window when he fell forward into the room. He cried "My head's stuck down the toilet!". Gaspard rushed to his aid, discovering his friend upside down with his head stuck in the lavatory bowl "like a geranium. I tried to climb in but I stood on the toilet handle and it flushed," he admitted tearfully. Gaspard screamed 'berk!' and then drowned.
>Turnip Field
Gazna Poorga, a turnip farmer in Kavarna, Bulgaria, was so incensed with birds
eating his crops that he buried 100 Russian anti-personnel mines in his field
as a deterrent. "A bird only had to land close to them and they'd go off.",
he explained.
Unfortunately, he forgot to tell his best friend Lukner Silas about the mines,
and one night, on the way home from a drinking session, the latter rushed into
the field with a cry of "Let's run naked in the turnips!".
"I shouted, 'Don't move!'" said Mr Poorga, "but he exploded, and the whole field
went up". The force of the explosion not only killed his friend and knocked
him unconscious, but it also destroyed his entire crop and flattened his farmhouse.
"Next time I'll use scarecrows", he said.
>The Last Birthday Party
Mr Kurt Jarlsonn of Stockholm had dreamt every night for 30 years that he would
die before he was 50. On the morning of his 50th birthday he was so overjoyed
to find himself still alive that he threw a large party to celebrate. One partygoer
explained what happened. "Kurt was dressed as Death with a big scythe. He was
running around shouting 'I'm alive!' but then he fell out of the window."
As he tumbled to his death from his seventh floor flat, he was spotted by 85-year
old Ingar Gunterrson, who cried "Just one more year, Father Death!" before himself
keeling over with a terminal coronary.
>Roofrack
In Sydney, Billy Snout, 19, after having drunk "a ridiculous amount of vodka",
staggered into a pitch dark bedroom, stripped naked, and climbed into a bunk.
What he didn't realise was that the 'bedroom' was actually a garage and his
'bunk' was the roofrack of his friend's car.
Later that night, unaware that there was a sleeper on the roof, Mr Snout's friend
took the car on a 70mph spin through the streets of Sydney. "I woke up and everything
was whizzing around," explained the drunk, "but I thought it was just the booze
so I dropped off again."
The car's occupants were only alerted to his presence when a shower of sick
splattered over the windscreen. "I was devastated," said the driver, "but Billy
just farted and told me to turn the bloody lights out."
>Hog Sex (Source: The Big Issue 1995)
Bertram 'Hot Thing' Tonks, 32, emerged somewhat inebriated from a Miami bar
to find his Harley Davidson being raped by a randy 50lb pig that had escaped
from its pen. "When I came out I saw what looked like a burns victim in a pink
jumpsuit straddling my bike" explained the inebriated biker, "so I attacked
him."
A group of passers-by came to the pig's defence, convinced that it was "a beautiful
woman being assaulted by a hippy". Mr Tonk's colleagues then entered the fray,
hitting the passers-by with baseball bats. In all, 14 people were hospitalised,
the only combatant emerging completely unscathed being the pig.
The pig's owner explained "It's them corn husks what makes him randy."
>Bus Driver
Passengers on a Buenos Aires bus waited patiently when their bus driver, Jose
Peccaro, 51, pulled into the side of the road and put his head down for a nap.
Three hours later, a small group of people got off, and were replaced by some
new passengers, who sat down in the vacant seats.
A few hours later, a woman suggested that perhaps they should call a doctor,
but she was dismissed as a scare-mongering old crone and pushed off the bus.
Finally, seven hours after the bus originally stopped, an irate commuter stormed
forward and attempted to strangle Mr Peccaro. It was then discovered that he
was already dead of a heart attack.
>A Letter from the Smithsonian
Apparently, this is a copy of a genuine letter sent out by the Smithsonian Institute to a Scott Williams of Newport, Vermont.
Smithsonian Institution
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078
Dear Mr Williams,
Thank you for your latest submission, labelled '211-D, layer seven, next to
the clothesline post. Hominid skull.' We have given this a careful and detailed
examination and we regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that
it represents 'conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Hennepin County
two million years ago.' Rather, it appears that you have found the head of a
Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes
to be the 'Malibu Barbie'.
It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of
this specimen, however, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes
which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:
The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised
bone. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimetres,
well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids. The
dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common
domesticated dog than it is with the 'ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams' you
speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This finding is certainly one
of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted so far, but the evidence
seems to weigh rather heavily against it.
Without going into too much detail, let us say that the specimen looks like
the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on, and clams don't have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to
have the specimen carbon dated. This is partly due to carbon dating's notorious
inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge,
no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely
to produce wildly inaccurate results.
Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science
Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen
the scientific name 'Australopithecus spiff-arino' because the species name
you selected was hyphenated, and doesn't really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen
to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless,
yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate
so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf
in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted
to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen
upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We
eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your
last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are
particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the
'trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix' that
makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered
take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent
wrench.
>Collision Course (Source: Memorial U. campus paper)
Conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast
of Newfoundland in Oct. 95. Actual radio conversation released by the Chief
of Naval Operations on 10-10-1995
Note: Thanks to Phil Reed for pointing out that not only was the USS Missouri a battleship (not an aircraft carrier), but she was in any case decommissioned in 1992.
>Microsoft Maledictus (Source: Computer Weekly 1997)
Perhaps you will have seen Microsoft's TV ads for the Internet Explorer, backed
by dramatic choral music? The music in question is in fact the "Confutatis Maledictus"
movement from Mozart's "Requiem". At the end of the advert there is a final
crescendo of music accompanied by Microsoft's slogan, "Where do you want to
go today?". The actual words that accompany the final piece of music are "Confutatis
maledictis, flammis acribus addictis...", which interestingly enough translates
to "The damned and accused are convicted to flames of hell."
Are Microsoft trying to tell us something?
>Mr Gorsky
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not
only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement
but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other
astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however,
he made the enigmatic remark "Good Luck Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at USA though it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet
cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian
or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong
as to what the "Good Luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always
just smiled.
Then, on July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL, while answering questions following a
speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. this time
he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt
he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His
friend hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbour's bedroom windows.
his neighbours were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the
ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Oral sex! You
want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
Note: It's a lovely story, but I'm sure it's an urban myth.
>Dead Grandmother
An English girl, living with her mother and grandmother, had been planning
a caravanning holiday abroad for some time. She and her boyfriend had purchased
tickets for themselves and for her mother, and had arranged for the grandmother
to stay at a friend's house while they were away. The great day came, and they
set off with caravan in tow to drop off the grandmother on their way to the
ferry.
On arrival at the friend's house, however, they discovered to their horror that
the friend had just died. In desperation - they were getting late for the ferry
and the grandmother had nowhere else to go - they decided to smuggle her to
France hidden in the caravan, as she not only had no ticket, but had never been
abroad and thus had no passport either.
The English customs posed no problem, and on the ferry they reasoned that it
would cause the least trouble if the grandmother stayed comfortably hidden in
the caravan for the duration of the voyage.
After docking at Calais they drove out through French customs, who didn't give
them a second glance, and headed straight for the caravan site. On arrival,
they opened up the caravan and found to their consternation that the grandmother,
too, had died.
Not knowing what to do with a dead body in a foreign country with no passport
and no identification, they eventually decided to come clean to the local gendarmes.
Hitching up the caravan again, they drove into the nearest town to give themselves
up. However, the town was completely packed and they couldn't find anywhere
to park.
Reasoning that it would be easier without the caravan, they drove back out of
town and left it - and the body - in a roadside lay-by, and returned to town
where they managed to park up in the Gendarmerie car park.
Given that they spoke no French and the gendarmes little English, it is not
surprising that they had some difficulty explaining their problem to the native
police, but in the end they managed to make one of them understand that he should
come with them to the caravan, where hopefully things would become a little
clearer.
They drove back to the lay-by with gendarme in tow, only to discover that the
caravan had been stolen.
The rest of the fortnight was spent waiting for the caravan or the body to turn
up, but perhaps unsurprisingly nothing came up, so they were forced to go back
home to England.
Where, of course, they are now having to explain a missing grandmother, no body,
no record of death, and no record of her ever leaving the country...
Note: I've heard this one myself, but I'm still sure it's an urban myth.
>Have a Cigar (Source: The Internet)
A Charlotte, North Carolina man, having purchased a case of rare, very expensive
cigars, insured them against fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire
stockpile of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single premium payment
on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company.
In his claim, the man stated that he had lost the cigars in "a series of small
fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that
the man had consumed the cigars in a normal fashion. The man sued... and won!
In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that since the man held a policy
from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable, and
also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining
what it considered to be "unacceptable fire," it was obligated to compensate
the insured for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process,
the insurance company accepted the judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for
the rare cigars he lost in "the fires."
After the man cashed his cheque, however, the insurance company had him arrested
... on 24 counts of arson! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the
previous case being used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally
burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24 consecutive one-year terms.
Note: This is now believed by several web researchers to be an urban myth.
>Skydiving Sex (Source: Private Eye 1998)
Mark and Arlene Snuckherry, of Texas, were almost killed during a mid-air sex session. Trouble started when the Snuckherrys decided to combine their two favourite pastimes: sex and skydiving. "We had specially modified jump suits," explained Mrs Snuckherry. "All you had to do was rip away some Velcro and everything was exposed." They duly leapt out at 10,000 feet and got down to business, thoroughly enjoying themselves until Mr Snuckherry, who was at the time "sort of kneeling behind Arlene, found his Velcro fastenings had become stuck to those of his wife. Frantic pulling failed to unstick them and Mrs Snuckberry was forced to release her parachute, leaving them both to float down into the middle of a busy shopping mall. "I wish my wife was like that," sighed one shopper. "She won't even do it in bed."
>Blank Screen (Source: The Internet)
Allegedly this is the transcript of a recorded conversation between a caller
and the United Nations' computer helpline.
Note: There are hundreds of help-desk stories like this. Working as I do in the IT idustry, I am sure that 90% of them are true.
>The following are excerpts from various American medical journals (Source: The Internet)
>Stories from America's Emergency Rooms (Source: The Internet)
>Elephant Enema (Source: Private Eye 1998)
On April 23 in Paderborn, Germany, conscientious zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt,
45, noticed that his prize 8,000-pound African elephant didn't seem to be producing
his usual copious quantities of dung. "Friedrich had actually been concerned
for several days because he knew that severe constipation can kill an elephant,"
assistant zookeeper Kurt Herrman recalled. "He told me he was going to stay
late that Thursday night to treat Stefan with laxatives and possibly give him
an enema. I offered to help, but he sent me on home, saying he had everything
under control." The zookeeper then gave his ailing animal 22 doses of animal
laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs, and prunes. This didn't seem
to have any effect, so he attempted to give the beast an olive oil enema, but
it was then that disaster struck. Two hours later, horrified night watchman
Walter Pleuger found Friedrich lying lifeless under a mound of 200lb of muck,
his body visible only from the knees down.
"The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Herr 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 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.
"I had never really thought about it before," Det. Dern said. "But obviously,
giving an elephant an enema can be a very dangerous activity -- and not something
that should be attempted alone." Shrugging, he continued, "Well, at least the
elephant feels better."
Note: This story was checked by Ralph Lewin while he was writing his excellent book "Merde". Not only did Paderborn officials deny the story, but in addition Paderborn has no zoo. Pity really.
>Lightning Sex (Source: Internet)
A pre-med student from the University of Arizona was looking to score big
with his date on a Friday night. Determined to put the girl in the mood, he
drove her up to a spot on Mount Lemmon which overlooked the city of Tucson.
They walked to an open knoll where they could see the city lights. Overcome
by the romantic locale, she succumbed to his pleas and they stripped down, made
a bed of their clothes, and passionately began making love.
The heavy storm clouds rolling overhead and the low rumble of thunder inside
them excited the lovers even more. At the first few flashes of lightning, they
never looked up to see the charred remains of once great trees. Their idyllic
clearing was a hotbed of electrical activity during the warm desert nights.
With a blinding light, a bolt of lightning truck the high point on the knoll,
which happened to be the pre-med student's ass, and sought the path of least
resistance --- straight down! Incredibly, he survived, but was in excruciating
pain.
The heat of the lightning had fused together flesh and latex so that the lovers
were now stuck together like a pair of dogs. The girl, unfortunately, did NOT
survive the lightning strike! When the student looked down into the vacant eyes
of his girlfriend and realized she was dead, his immediate repulsion caused
him to jerk away from her, which of course, he couldn't! A wave of pain and
nausea made him vomit into the girl's face and open mouth! Heaving only caused
more pain and repeated vomiting until he finally passed out.
Attracted by the smell of "food," a bear found its way to the Siamese lovers
and began to lick semi-digested pizza and buffalo wings from the dead girl's
face. The student came to, but when he saw the bear, there was little he could
do but lay there silently in fear. To his horror, the bear became dissatisfied
with just a lick and started to eat the girl, loudly crunching her facial bones
only inches from his ear. The bear also tasted the student, scraping the back
of his skull with its teeth, before moving on.
Around mid-morning a group of junior girl scouts, up for a fun weekend camp-out,
arrived at the campsite where the pre-med student's car was parked. It was only
a matter of minutes before three screaming girls discovered the student, who
had regained consciousness several times in the night and had managed to drag
himself and the partially-eaten girl about 20-feet. Doctors managed to "successfully"
separate the student from the corpse, but Mr. Happy looked like a small piece
of cauliflower in its flaccid state. The first hint of arousal resulted in so
much pain, that the student was unable---and unwilling---to achieve an erection.
Future surgeries may produce a reasonably functioning penis, but the student's
family jewels, referred to by the doctors as the "scrotum mass," are irreparable.
Note: I really love this story, so I was saddened to find that the researchers at the Urban Legend site consider it to be a myth.
>Condom Week (Source: New Scientist 1999)
In South Africa's recent "condom week" promotion of safe sexual practices, the Society for Family Health, funded by donor money from Britain and the US, hit on a simple and practical idea. They sent out thousands of free condoms with a leaflet explaining the dangers of HIV infection. There was just one small snag with the scheme, which was discovered only after all the condoms had been distributed. The condom packages were stapled to the leaflets, but sadly the staples went straight through the packaging and through the condoms themselves...
>Garage Door (Source: New Scientist 1999)
Residents of Hobart, Tasmania suffered an unusual blight one morning. All over
town, people found themselves trapped in their garages when the remote controls
that operated their garage doors all suddenly failed to function. Roll-a-door
companies were flooded with calls from angry owners, but they were completely
nonplussed by the problem. Then the explanation emerged: the aircraft carrier
USS Carl Vinson had just cruised into the docks, and it's navigational radar
used the same frequency as the townspeople's garage doors.
An apologetic Lieutenant, the ship's Public Affairs officer, said that the problem
would only occur when the ship was arriving or leaving.
>Sandpaper Surprise (Source: Darwin Awards 1998)
A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call. She had no details before
arriving except that someone had reported that his father was not breathing.
Upon arrival, the officer found the naked body of a man lying face down on a
couch. When she rolled him over to check for a pulse and to start CPR, she noticed
burn marks around his genitals.
After the ambulance arrived and removed the man (who was and still is dead)
the police made a closer inspection of the couch and noticed that the man had
made a hole between the cushions. After flipping the couch over they discovered
what caused his death. Apparently the man would put his penis between the cushions,
down into the hole and between two electric sanders (with out the sand paper
obviously). Sadly, on this occasion, after he had his orgasm the discharge shorted
out one of the sanders, electrocuting him to death.
>Cactus (Source: Internet)
This Australian and his family were on holiday in the States and went to Mexico
for a week. As he is an avid cactus fan he bought a rare and expensive cactus
there. It was about a metre high and cost about $500 Aus. He got it home and
the customs people were none too impressed so they said it must stay in quarantine
for 3 months, cost $800 or so.
He finally got his cactus home and planted it in his backyard where over time
it grew to about 2 metres or so in height. One evening after a beautiful warm
spring day he was out watering his garden and thought he might give the cactus
a light spray. This he did and was amazed to see the plant shiver all over.
He gave it another light spray and it shivered and shook again. All its arms
moved. He was puzzled so he rang the council who put him on to the state gardens.
After a few transfers he got the state's foremost cactus expert who asked him
many pointed questions, how tall is it, how tall was it when you got it, has
it grown well, has it flowered, what type of spines etc etc.
Finally he asked a most disturbing question, "Is your family in the house?"
The guy answered yes, the cactus expert said get them out of the house NOW,
get on to the front nature strip and wait for me, I will be there in 15 minutes.
Ten minutes later, 2 fire trucks, two cop cars and an ambulance came screaming
around the corner at the end of the street and stopped out the front of the
house. A fireman got out and came up to him, "Are you the guy with the cactus?"
"I am," he said. The fireman turns to the truck and says, "Come on Dave!" A
guy jumps out of the fire truck wearing what looks like a space suit, a breathing
cylinder and mask attached and what looks like a scuba backpack on with a large
hose attached. "Stay here", says the first fireman, and they both head for the
backyard.
This was too much for the bloke so he ran around after them and found the guy
in the space-suit was torching his prize cactus with a flame thrower. He sprayed
it up and down with this huge flame which fried everything within a ten metre
radius of the cactus, caught fire to the back fence and set off the neighbours
trees as well. The guy of course was having kittens, what the heck is going
on etc etc, after about ten minutes the flame thrower man stopped, his cactus
stood there smoking and spitting, half the fence was gone, his garden was entirely
ruined.
Just then the cactus expert appeared and laid a calming hand on the guys shoulder.
"What the hell is going on?" says the bloke. "Let me show you" says the cactus
man. He went over to the cactus and picked away at a crusty bit of it. It was
almost entirely hollow and filled with these tiger-striped bird-eating tarantula
spiders, about the size of two hands spans.
The story was that this type of spider lays eggs in this type of cactus and
they hatch and live in it as it and they grow to full size. When they are all
grown to full size they release themselves - the cactus just explodes and about
150 of these plate-size tiger-striped hairy spiders are flung from it, dispersing
everywhere of course. They had been just ready to pop!
The aftermath was that yellow police tape was put up outside the whole area,
and not only his house but also the two houses adjoining on each side had to
be vacated and fumigated and sealed up for two weeks.
>Alzheimers Ward (Source: Southland Times, NZ 25/2/99)
The police were called to the Whangarei ward at the Aged Care Centre in Kaikohe, New Zealand, because a fight had broken out. When they arrived, they could see that the two elderly protagonists had been involved in a mighty punch-up. Both were covered in blood, their clothes were torn, one had a broken nose and half his hair ripped out, and the other had a broken arm and a hypodermic needle stuck in his penis. Furniture and equipment had been smashed flat, beds had been overturned, and the other patients on the ward were terrified. Seargeant Maurice Loveridge told a New Zealand court, "However, the fight took place in a ward full of elderly Alzheimer's patients, and it has gradually become clear that nobody can remember what happened, or who was responsible. One patient keeps repeating the phrase 'we ought to have more manure', but frankly this gives us no clue. The two accused men do not recognise each other, nor do the other patients, and the ones who initially reported the incident to us had forgotten that there even was a fight by the time we tried to question them. Therefore, because nobody can now recall the incident, the Police Prosecution Department has reluctantly decided to withdraw the case against both men."
>Shredder (Source: Brisbane Courier Mail, Australia 17/4/99)
"KLM Royal Dutch Airlines offers its most sincere apologies to animal lovers and to all those offended by recent events" said KLM spokesman Joessef Eddie in an unprecedented public statement. "We made a grave ethical mistake when we threw four hundred and forty live Chinese squirrels into a shredding machine, and we deserve criticism from the public and from animal rights groups. However, we had little choice, because they had been shipped illegally to Schiphol airport from China, and arrived without proper documentation. And it may sound strange, but dropping the squirrels into a commercial poultry shredder was actually the most humane way to destroy them. They felt no more pain than you or I would, were we thrown into a shredder."
>The Motorcycle Mechanic (Source: Florida newspapers)
A man was working on his motorcycle on his patio and his wife was in the house
in the kitchen. The man was racing the engine on the motorcycle and somehow,
the motorcycle slipped into gear. The man, still holding the handlebars, was
dragged through a glass patio door and the motorcycle dumped onto the floor
inside the house.
The wife, hearing the crash, ran into the dining room, and found her husband
laying on the floor, cut and bleeding, the motorcycle laying next to him and
the patio door shattered. The wife ran to the phone and summoned an ambulance.
Because they lived on a fairly large hill, the wife went down the several flights
of long steps to the street to direct the paramedics to her husband. After the
ambulance arrived and transported the husband to the hospital, the wife uprighted
the motorcycle and pushed it outside. Seeing that gas had spilled on the floor,
the wife obtained some papers towels, blotted up the gasoline, and threw the
towels in the toilet. The husband was treated at the hospital and was released
to come home. After arriving home, he looked at the shattered patio door and
the damage done to his motorcycle. He became despondent, went into the bathroom,
sat on the toilet and smoked a cigarette. After finishing the cigarette, he
flipped it between his legs into the toilet bowl while still seated. The wife,
who was in the kitchen, heard a loud explosion and her husband screaming. She
ran into the bathroom and found her husband laying on the floor. His trousers
had been blown away and he was suffering burns on the buttocks, the back of
his legs and his groin. The wife again ran to the phone and called for an ambulance.
The same ambulance crew was dispatched and the wife met them at the street.
The paramedics loaded the husband on the stretcher and began carrying him to
the street. While they were going down the stairs to the street accompanied
by the wife, one of the paramedics asked the wife how the husband had burned
himself. When she told them the paramedics started laughing so hard one of them
tipped the stretcher and dumped the husband out. He fell down the remaining
steps and broke his ankle.
>Email Project (Source: Computing June 1999)
Fifth-grade teacher Glynda Wimmer of Mill Cove District School in Nova Scotia hopes the tidal wave she sparked will stop by the time the school term ends in late June. But she's not sure it will. Her Grade 5 email project was supposed to be a simple geography lesson; something to take up maybe a couple hours a week of class time. Seven girls and 10 boys sent an initial note on 7 April to 15 relatives urging them to write back with their location and pass on the letter to 'more people'. The plan was to have students map the locations, to see where in the world their email travelled within a two-month span. By the end of the email proiect's first day, the class had already received 180 responses. The next day brought 250 more. By the eighth day, the Server guzzled as many as 200 messages an hour. Writers sent notes from every Canadian province and all 50 US states, from Nato warships off the coast of Macedonia, from relief missions in Honduras, from the Pentagon, Nasa, and hundreds of other schools. Then, after their server choked and they cancelled their email address, the phone calls started coming. Faxes, too. Messages even arrived via that quaint mode of communication, the Post Office. 'We've definitely put Mill Cove on the map. But what a mess' said Wimmer.
>Coroner's Nightmare (Source: the Internet)
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic
Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego
with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story.
On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded
that he died from a shotgun wound to the head.
The deceased had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit
suicide, leaving a note indicating his depression. As he fell past the ninth
floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed
him instantly.
Neither the shooter nor the jumper were aware that a safety net had been erected
at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would
not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this. Ordinarily,
Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds,
even though the mechanism might not be what he intended.
That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would
not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that
his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner
to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by
and elderly man and his wife. They were arguing andhe was threatening her with
the shotgun. so upset thatwhen pulled trigger completely missed his wife pellets
went through window striking Opus.
When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is
guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old
man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded.
The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the
unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing
of Opus appeared to be an accident.
That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation
turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately
six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut
off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father
to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his
father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part
of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
There was an exquisite twist.
Further investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly
despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder.
This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23, only to be killed
by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.
The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
Note: Thanks to Pete Gontier for sending me a link to an article in the Washington Post, which debunks this story. Unfortunately the link doesn't seem to be working any more. If anybody gets hold of the article, please let me know!
Links to Darwin Awards sites
I am of course aware of the wonderful Darwin Awards, and I try not to overlap with them too much, although some of their tales are just too good to resist. There are a number of sites out there collating Darwin Awards stories, a few much better than the others. The very best sites seem to get snowed under with work overload and shut down when their proprieters get pissed off, which is I guess the fate of success. The links below represent the sites that seem to me to be the most genuine and/or reliable. Please let me know if you come across any other good Darwin Awards URLs, or if any of these links break down under the strain.
| Darwin Awards | As far as I know, the most current site. They will also send you regular email updates of all the current stories. |
| Official Darwin Awards | Claims to be the original, and they've done a lot of research into the veracity of a huge number of stories, but nothing much has moved on this site since 1998. Still a great read, though. |
| Darwin Awards (xoom) | Slick site, also with a lot of research into the stories, and you can sign up for an email feed too. It's been very quiet since March 1999, but there's a lot of fun to be had here. |
| Darwin Awards (tiac) | A nicely put together site that simply reports the stories as they appear on the Web, without criticism. On the other hand it seems to be still alive and kicking. |