Just when YOU thought you were having a bad day......

jxm@ARINC.COM (jxm@ARINC.COM)
Wed, 4 Sep 1996 11:48:07 -0400


     All,
     
          I hope you enjoy this!  It is called "Just when you thought
you had a rough day".

     Jim Millette
______________________________________________________________________


     * A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a
     river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window,
     climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.
     
     * Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the 
     dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on
     passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him.
     
     * Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so
     afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try
     to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch
     caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a
     fractured skull.
     
     * George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly
     escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for
     one wall.
     After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene
     to search for files.
     The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him.
     
     * Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla
     sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand
     threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not
     to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw
     the gun to the floor.  It went off and killed his wife.
     
     * In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her 
     coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she
     suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
     
     * A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay back 
     down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was
     hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward
     and crushed him to death.
     
     * Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled 
     out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down
     and found himself in the city prison.
     
     * In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing 
     the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and
     flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay
     stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into
     the gutter. It too drove on.  As a knot of gawkers gathered to
     examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the
     crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an
     even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came
     along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit-Bob
     Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a
     fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted
     injuries.  Hospital officials said he would recover.
     
     * While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti 
     came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. 
     While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the 
     farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and
     cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in
     a sports car.
     When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit 
     Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by 
     punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped 
     down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The 
     horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away
     briskly, smashing the cart into the sports car. At this, the
     sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The
     farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As
     he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled.

     * 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 center of the road. At the moment of
     impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked
     together.  Both men were hospitalized 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-on-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 neighbor 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.


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