Almanac chapter 6: Unusual Accidents and Deaths

                                     Chapter 6

                   UNUSUAL ACCIDENTS, DEATHS AND OTHER OCCURRENCES


                                   Miscellaneous

              A computer with the job of issuing traffic  citations  goofed
         in  September, 1989 and sent notices to 41,000 residents of Paris,
         France  informing  them  that  they  were  charged  with   murder,
         prostitution and illegal sale of drugs.

              Did  you  know  that  steel is flammable?  It's true.  If you
         light steel wool with a  match,  it  will  burst  into  flame.  Be
         careful,  it  gets very hot. When steel rusts, that is just a slow
         form of burning. Burning and rusting are both the  iron  in  steel
         combining with oxygen from the air.
              The  National  Research Council has found out that so far, at
         least 21 ships in American ports have burst  into  flames  because
         they were carrying scrap metal from machine shops.

              The   man  who  started  Pinkerton  Detective  Agency,  Allan
         Pinkerton went out for a walk one morning and during the  walk  he
         stumbled. In the process, he bit his tongue. It became infected so
         badly that he died.

              A  Japanese  priest  set a kimono on fire in Tokyo because it
         carried bad luck. The flames spread until  over  10,000  buildings
         were destroyed and 100,000 people died. (Year: 1657)

              When Thomas Edison was 12 years old, a train conductor pulled
         him  aboard a train by his ears.  "I felt something snap inside my
         head," he said.  From that time until his death, he  was  hard  of
         hearing.

              Because  he argued that Charles Coffin was a better poet than
         Joan Saneul, the Chevalier de Firmin had to defend himself  in  13
         duels.  He killed three men. As he was dying he stated that he had
         never read anything by either poet.

              Francesco delle Barche invented a catapult that  could  throw
         large  rocks  into  the  center  of a battle.  He accidentally got
         caught in his own machine and hurled himself into  the  center  of
         town.  He fell directly on his own wife, killing them both.

              Firdinand Raimund was bitten on the finger by a dog.  He  was
         so worried about what might happen that he shot himself to death.

              When the assassin of Caliph Hakim was caught, he was asked to
         explain  how  he  had killed the caliph. He said, "thus," and then
         stabbed himself to death.


                                       Murder

              Marcus Licinius Crassus was an ancient Roman investor who was
         killed by soldiers who made him drink molten gold.

              Cleopatra had very little respect for her  slaves.  Sometimes
         she would test poisons on them.

              Napoleon  Bonaparte  had  to  cough while he was talking to a
         general who was in charge of 1,200 prisoners. He  then  said,  "Ma
         Sacre  toux,"  which  translates  approximately  to "my confounded
         cough." The general thought he said, "massacrez tous,"  is  French
         for, "massacre everyone." He did.

              Every day in India two husbands burn their wives to death.

              King  Aroudj  I of Algeria was being chased out of his castle
         by an army of the conquorers.  He  tried  to  slow  them  down  by
         scattering  three  million  dollars worth of gold and jewels as he
         ran. The soldiers merely picked up the valuables and used them  as
         clues to track the king to his death.

              The method of execution called "drawn and quartered" means to
         have  one's arms and legs each tied to one horse.  Then the horses
         are driven away from each other, pulling the  victim  apart.  They
         tried to do this to John Poltrot, a particularly strong man in the
         year 1563, but he survived. He was stronger than the horses.

              During  the civil war there was a prison called Andersonville
         in Georgia. 13,000 soldiers died there.  They  were  neglected  to
         death.

              People  in  Mongolia  used  to  be  executed in the following
         manner: They would be nailed into coffins and ignored  until  they
         were dead.

              A religious group in Bohemia that was particularly opposed to
         violence used to tickle their criminals to death.

                                 Traffic Accidents

              In  the  1920's  Isadora Duncan was a famous dancer.  One day
         she was riding in a car with an open top. She was wearing  a  long
         scarf  that  got  caught  in one of the car's rear wheels.  As the
         wheel continued turning, it wrapped up her  scarf  and  broke  her
         neck.

              You  have  a one-in-50-million chance of being killed in your
         car per mile.  That means if you  spend  20,000  miles  in  a  car
         during the next year, your chances of dying in it are one in 2500.

              Driving  along  at  55 miles per hour, if you have to slam on
         the brakes, your car will continue 56 feet between  the  time  you
         decide to put on the brakes, and the time you get your foot on the
         brake pedal.

              Every day we total enough cars in America to fill a  football
         field.

              If you are involved in a car accident, your chance of getting
         hurt  are  only  one  out  of  ten.  If  you have an accident on a
         motorcycle, your chances of getting hurt are nine out of ten.

              More people in the United States have died in  car  accidents
         than  the  total  of  all  American soldiers who have died in wars
         since 1776.

                                   Howard Hughes

              An atomic bomb was tested in the desert of  Nevada  in  1953.
         Nearby,  (downwind) in St.  George, Utah, a Howard Hughes film was
         being made with  a  cast  that  included  Pedro  Armendariz,  Dick
         Powell,  Agnes  Moorhead,  Ted  de  Corsia,  John Wayne, and Susan
         Hayword.  All these members of the cast have all died  of  cancer.
         There  were 220 other people involved in the film, and 91 of these
         folks have contracted cancer.

              In 1946 a test pilot lost control  of  his  plywood  airplane
         over  Beverly  Hills,  California  and plowed into a neighborhood,
         damaging a few houses. The test pilot was Howard Hughes.

              Howard Hughes became so compulsive about germs that  he  used
         to  spend hours swabbing his arms over and over again with rubbing
         alcohol.

              Although Howard Hughes had 15 personal attendants  and  three
         doctors  on  full-time  duty, he died of neglect and malnutrition,
         caused by his intense desire to be left alone.

                            More Aircraft, Airport Stuff

              The most dangerous white collar job is pilot.

              In 1930, five German men had to  bail  out  of  their  glider
         plane. Conditions were right for hail that day, and these men fell
         to the ground as the cores of giant ice rocks.

              Bob  Hail  jumped  out of an airplane. His main chute failed.
         His back-up chute also failed.  He smashed into  the  ground  face
         first.   In  a  moment  he  got up and walked away with only minor
         injuries.

              A German soldier was riding in the back seat of a World War I
         plane when the engine suddenly stalled probably due to an  unusual
         gust  of  wind. He fell out of his seat while over two miles above
         ground. As he was falling, the plane started falling too,  and  he
         was  blown back into his own seat by the wind.  The pilot was able
         to land the plane safely.

              The United States can be blamed for the Hindenburg  disaster.
         This  was  a  huge  blimp  that  burst  into flames in New Jersey,
         killing and burning many of its passengers. It was much  safer  to
         fill  blimps  with  non-flammable  helium than explosive hydrogen.
         Then, if there were a leak, nothing would happen. There  would  be
         plenty  of  time  to  set the ship down and fix it. But the United
         States refused to sell helium to the Germans, so they had  to  use
         the hydrogen.

              People who live near airports and have to hear the  noise  of
         planes  taking off and landing are up to sixty percent more likely
         to die than people who live elsewhere.  The rate  of  fatal  heart
         attacks  is  eighteen  percent  higher.  The rate of crime related
         deaths and suicide is double.   There  are  twice  as  many  fatal
         accidents in people who are over age 75.

              In  1945,  the  Empire State Building was hit by an airplane,
         which destroyed most of the seventy-eighth floor.

                                 More Architecture

              Yusif Bulim was the fortunate architect who was given the job
         of designing the mosque of Mohammed Ali in Egypt.   It  turns  out
         that  he  wasn't  so fortunate.  When the mosque was finished, the
         man who commissioned the work liked it so much that  he  paid  Mr.
         Bulim a lot of money, then had him blinded so he could never build
         another magnificent building for anyone else.

              And  there was a similar but worse case: The architects Barna
         and Postnik of Russia designed the Cathedral of St. Basil and then
         were blinded and their arms and tongues were removed.

              When Adolf Hitler saw a pile of bricks near the church of St.
         Matthew in Munich, Germany, he said, "that  pile  of  stones  will
         have  to  be  removed." Someone misunderstood him, thinking he was
         referring to the whole church. The church was demolished.

              Time Magazine listed Adolf Hitler as "Man  of  the  Year  for
         1938."

              The  exact  same night as the great Chicago fire, there was a
         much worse fire.  October 8, 1871, in Chicago, 250 people died. In
         a small town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, due to  a  forest  fire  that
         enveloped the town of 1700 people, more than 800 people died.
              Perhaps  the  greater  fire is less known because there was a
         delay before news of the totaled town made it to  the  press,  and
         Chicago got all the coverage.

              Because  many of the people who die in skyscraper fires don't
         burn, but smother in the smoke, inventor William  Holmes  came  up
         with  a  tube  that  you  shove  down  a  toilet. What? There is a
         connection from almost all sewer pipes serving toilets to  a  pipe
         on the roof to allow proper air flow during flushing. So, it turns
         out  the  only  source  of  fresh  air in such an emergency is the
         toilet.  You shove Mr.  Holmes' tube  through  the  water  in  the
         bowl,  blow  in  it to clear the water out, then you will have air
         you can breathe.

                                       Water

              Don't drink and dive. Sam Patch made his  fame  in  the  late
         1820's  by  jumping  into  waterfalls.   In 1929, he made his last
         jump, from the top to the bottom of Genesee  falls  in  Rochester,
         NY.  -  125  feet.   On  this occasion, he was drunk, according to
         observers.  He belly-flopped, which  killed  him.   However,  jump
         fever took over the nation.  Farmers jumped over fences, retailers
         jumped over their counters. Everyone wanted to imitate Sam Patch.

              Approximately 365 Americans drown in their own bathtubs every
         year.

              Children have been known to drown in toilets.

              A  diver,  Alexander Labret, found a great shipwreck.  He was
         going to be rich! Every day he went down 162 feet to  salvage  the
         valuables.  He went down 33 times.  Divers are supposed to come up
         slowly  to  avoid  the bends, a painful and dangerous condition in
         which  bubbles  of  nitrogen  appear  in  the  blood   and   block
         circulation  because  of the rapid decompression of rising quickly
         from deep, high-pressure water.  On his very last dive,  Alex  was
         excited  and  came  up  more  quickly than he should have.  He had
         $350,000, but he was paralyzed for life.

              In 1949, Jack Wurm, an unemployed man was  aimlessly  walking
         on  a  California  beach  when  he  came  across a bottle that had
         floated up  to  the  beach  containing  this  message:  "To  avoid
         confusion,  I leave my entire estate to the lucky person who finds
         this bottle and to my  attorney,  Barry  Cohen,  share  and  share
         alike.   Daisy  Alexander,  June  20,  1937."  It  was real and he
         received over $6 million from the Alexander estate.


                                 Natural Disasters

              There is only one person in all recorded history who has been
         killed by a meteorite. Manfredo Settala (1600-1680).

              Did you sing and play "Ring around the rosy, Pocket  full  of
         posy, Ashes, ashes, All fall down" when you were a kid? Historians
         believe  this is from the days of the Black Plague in Europe.  The
         rosy, posy, and ashes referred to the use of flowers and ashes  in
         futile  attempts  to  ward  off  evils,  and  "all  fall  down" in
         obviously the way it ended for millions of people.

              230 people died when Moradabad, India was bombed  with  giant
         balls of hail over 2 inches in diameter.

              A  church  steeple  in  Germany  was  struck by lightning and
         destroyed on April 18th, 1599. The members of the  church  rebuilt
         it.   It  was  hit  by lightning three more times between then and
         1783, and rebuilt again and again. Every time it was hit, the date
         was April 18th.

              Once every three or four days an American dies due  to  being
         struck by lightning.

              Two-thirds of the people struck by lightning survive.

              Men  are six times more likely to be struck by lightning than
         women.

              If you stand under an oak tree you are much more likely to be
         struck by lightning that if you stand under many  other  kinds  of
         trees.  Why  are oaks more dangerous?  Their roots go deeper which
         make a better electrical ground.

              An average bolt of lightning is less than one inch thick. The
         electricity is 30 million volts.

              Thunder storms can approach as fast as 50 mph.

              Major earthquakes  have  hit  Japan  on:  September  1,  827,
         September  1,  859,  September  1,  1185,  September  1,  1649 and
         September 1, 1923.

              And speaking of September:

                                 More Miscellaneous

              People have died from shaking vending machines and having the
         machines fall on them.

              A  Greek  man,  Aeschylus, was killed when an eagle dropped a
         tortoise on his head. The bird was trying to break the shell on  a
         rock;  this  is  how eagles prepare turtle lunch.  The unfortunate
         guy was bald,  and  the eagle thought his head was a good  turtle-
         breaking rock.

              In  1985,  a valve in a dairy leaked a little bit of raw milk
         into a large tank of pasteurized milk.  200,000  people  got  food
         poisoning.

              In  New  York,  attorney Burt Pugach hired a hit man to throw
         acid into the eyes of his girlfriend.  She  was  blinded  and  Mr.
         Pugach  spend  the  next 14 years of his life in jail. When he was
         freed, he married his blind girlfriend.

              Five hundred Americans freeze to death every year.

              Thirty-five Americans per day die from falls.

              Dying from carbon monoxide poisoning was more common  in  the
         nineteenth  century  than  today.   Here is some advice that later
         proved to be quite incorrect. This is quoted  from  an  old  book:
              "CHARCOAL FUMES.   -  The  usual  remedies  for  persons
              overcome   with   the  fumes  of  charcoal  in  a  close
              apartment are, to throw cold water on the  head  and  to
              bleed  immediately;  also  apply mustard or hartshorn to
              the soles of the feet."

              Young children are poisoned by houseplants more often than by
         detergents and other chemicals.

              When  doctors  took  apart soldiers killed in World War I for
         autopsies, they found no arteriosclerosis, blocking of  the  blood
         vessels   with   cholesterol.   In  Vietnam,  soldiers  were  also
         autopsied and almost all of them,  even  though  many  were  under
         twenty  years  old, there was already pronounced blockage.  During
         World War I, people ate less junk food.

              If you had two people in a test, one was  deprived  of  food,
         and  the  other deprived of sleep, the one without sleep would die
         sooner. We do not recommend you test this at home.

              There was a tourist guide in China who had bored  a  hole  in
         the top of his own head into which he put lighted candles in order
         to light dark alleys for his tourists.

              The  ruler  of Iran was shot three times on February 4, 1949,
         but he survived. All three bullets went through his hat, but  none
         went through him.

              A great artist, Correggio, was paid for one of his  paintings
         with  a large bag of copper coins.  He died of over-exertion while
         trying to move the bag.

              Because someone sent an unsigned complaint, Emperor  Mohammed
         Toughlaq  of Delhi ordered that all 60,000 people abandon the city
         and walk 600 miles.

              11.11  percent  of people are left-handed.  A psychologist in
         Canada conducted some research that proved left-handed people  are
         more  accident-prone  than  right-handers.   After  studying 2,300
         major-league baseball players who had died, he  found  that  those
         older   than   35  were  two  percent  more  likely  to  die  than
         right-handers.  In the group who had made it to  over  eighty-five
         years old, there were very few left-handers.
              Another  study  of  Canadian  college  students found that 44
         percent of the left-handers had been hospitalized within the  last
         five  years  due  to  an  accident,  yet  only  36  percent of the
         right-handers  had  been  hospitalized  for  an   accident.    One
         hypothesis that may account for some of this is that the tools and
         machines of our modern world are designed for right-handers.

              For   four   days  in  1952 the fog in London became so thick
         with pollution that over 4,000 people died.

              One time American President William Howard Taft  who  weighed
         352  pounds  settled into his bathtub for a warm soak. When he was
         ready to get out, he couldn't.  He became stuck  in  the  tub  and
         required help getting out.

              15  percent  of gun owners worry occasionally that someone in
         their own homes will be injured with their gun.

              41 percent of gun owners say they know someone who  has  been
         shot in a gun accident.

              Debi Lane went into the hospital for a test, a thyroid x-ray.
         Someone  misread  the order and gave her a major dose of radiation
         designed as a last-resort attempt to  kill  thyroid  cancer.   The
         dose  was  so  high,  when  she  went  home,  she contaminated her
         children with radiation.  Now, she is fairly certain to come  down
         with cancer within the next twenty-five years.

              Men are twice as likely to die from an accident as women.

              According to the National Safety Council,  bicycles  are  the
         most  dangerous  object  in  a  typical home. Next on the list are
         stairs then doors.

              There are three million people in America that have permanent
         problems with their back or legs due to an accidental fall.

              125,000 people are injured in or because of a bed every year.

              27,522 people were hurt in skateboard accidents in 1975.

              Railroad  worker  Phineas  P.   Gage  was  working  with some
         dynamite  that  exploded  unexpectedly.   A  meter-long  iron  bar
         weighing  13  pounds  went  clear  through his brain.  He remained
         conscious, but was unable to see out of  his  left  eye.  After  a
         while his sight returned and he fully recovered.

              At  one  time,  10 percent of the workers in the hat industry
         went insane before  they  died  due  to  mercury  poisoning.  This
         mercury  came  from one of the chemicals that they dipped the felt
         into.  There were a lot more workers in the hat industry  at  that
         time  than  now,  since  hats were so much more fashionable, and -
         hats were all made by hand, not whipped out on machines. The  "Mad
         Hatter"  in  Alice in Wonderland was a character fashioned after a
         mercury poisoned person.

              William Henry  Harrison  was  inaugurated  President  of  the
         United  States  and  caught  a  cold  at the ceremony.  He died of
         pneumonia one month later.

              Monaco issued a postage stamp honoring Franklin D. Roosevelt.
         His picture on the stamp showed six fingers on his left hand.

              There was a postage stamp  issued  which  showed  Christopher
         Columbus  using  a  telescope. Telescopes had not been invented in
         1492.

              Germany issued an incorrect postage stamp. This  one  was  in
         honor  of  Robert Schumann, a composer. In the background was some
         music written by Franz Schubert.