And You Thought YOU Were Having a Bad Day...
 * A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a
 river near Naples, Italy. 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 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 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 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. 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.
 
 * A man hit by a car in New York 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.
 
 From: Dave

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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