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.

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.