Category Archives: Trivia
10 Codes your not meant to know
These are meant to be a Secret as they don’t want to Alarm the Non-Staff Members or Alert someone (like a Thief) to the fact that they have been noticed.
Code Adam was invented by Walmart but it is now an internationally recognized alert. It means “Missing Child”. The code was first coined in 1994 in memory of Adam Walsh, a six-year old, who went missing in a Sears department store in Florida in 1981. Adam was later found murdered. The person making the announcement will state “we have a code Adam,” followed by a description of the missing child. As soon as the alert is heard, security staff will begin to monitor the doors and other exits. If the child is not found within 10 minutes, the police are alerted and a store search begins. Also, if the child is found in the first 10 minutes in the company of an unknown adult, the police must be called and the person detained if it is safe to do so.
WalMart gets its own item on this list because they have a large number of codes that are store specific. Some of their codes should not worry you. A code 300 calls for Security and a code Orange means there has been a cheamical spill. But here are the ones you really need to worry about: Code Red means there is a Fire in the building – get the hell out if you hear this. Worse still, a code Blue means there is a Bomb in the Building. Exit swiftly but don’t run – in case they think you planted it. A code Green means there is a hostage situation and a code White means there is an accident.
The one you are most likely to hear is a code C which is simply a call for customer service (usually meaning that more cashiers are needed). And finally – the most famous WalMart code… well, it’s so famous it needs its own item.
Inspector Sands (or Mr. Sands) is a code for Fire in the United Kingdom. Obviously it would not be appropriate for the service staff of a store to announce a Fire publicly, so this code is used to alert the appropriate staff to the danger without upsetting customers.
The wording differs from place to place and in the Underground network a recorded “Inspector Sands” warning is automatically triggered by smoke detectors. In some shops you will hear the code used in a phrase such as “Will Inspector Sands please report to the men’s changing room” if the fire is in the men’s changing room.
Code Bravo is the code phrase for a General Security Alert at Airports. Unlike most of the codes on this list, the code is meant to cause alarm – but not through knowing what it means. When this alert is raised, all of the Security Agents will begin to yell “Code Bravo” in order to frighten the passengers.
This is supposed to make it easier for the agents to locate the source of the problem without interference from the general public. For those of you who travel on ships from time to time, you may like to know that Code Bravo means “Fire” and it is the most serious alert on a ship – if it burns, you either get off or burn with it. Ships also often use sound signals, such as 7 short and 1 long, meaning “man the lifeboats”.
On a ship, a Code Oscar means someone has gone overboard. If the ship has to maneuver erratically to handle the situation, it must also send out blasts on the signal so that other ships nearby are aware of the fact that it is about to change its course.
It should be noted that ships don’t have an internationally standardized set of PA signals and they can differ from place to place, but this is a fairly commonly used one. And a code Delta can mean that there is a biological hazard, though who knows what that might be on a passenger ship. And finally, Code Alpha often means “Medical Emergency”.
“Doctor Brown” is a code word often used in Hospitals to alert security staff to a threat to personnel. If a nurse or doctor is in danger from a violent patient or non-staff member, they can page Doctor Brown to their location and the security staff will rush to their aid.
In some hospitals, code Silver is used to refer to a person with a Weapon and code Gray can mean a violent person without a weapon.
A code 10 in Hospitals can refer to a mass casualty or serious threat (such as a Bomb Alert), but the majority of people experiencing a code 10 will do so for another far more common reason.
A “code 10 authorization” is made by a merchant when he needs to call a credit card company to enquire about your card. This means that he is suspicious of you or your card and doesn’t want you to know it while he gets it checked out. When the credit card company hears that they have a code 10, they will ask a series of yes/no questions to the merchant in order to find out what the situation is. This will often result in the merchant keeping your card if they believe it is safe to do so. This type of call often results in a call to law enforcement.
Time Check (usually taking a similar form to – “Time Check : The Time Is 12:00″) can be a code in stores for a Bomb Alert. It alerts the staff to follow the bomb procedure, which can be to either try to locate any suspicious packages or to prepare to get the hell out. If you hear a time check in a store, it is probably a good idea to start moving toward the exit.
Surprisingly and shockingly, the majority of stores that use this code actually expect their staff to search for the bomb. Certainly an aspect of the job that the majority of teenaged checkout operators weren’t expecting when they signed up, it is sure.
In computer support, a variety of codes can be used when referring to a customer. One of these codes has become fairly well known on the internet – PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair). But there are a variety of others that are lesser known.
One of these is used when reporting a fault which has been fixed – “The fault was a PICNIC” (problem in Chair, not in Computer) or “ID 10 T Error” – ID 10 T is of course, IDIOT.
The Ten Codes are a list of codes used by Law Enforcement Officers in the United States. They are available on the Internet which would make them seem inappropriate for this list, but a large number of Police Departments have tried to have them made illegal for distribution, so they deserve a mention. The codes were developed initially in 1937 and were expanded in 1974.
The California Police use a variety of Extra Codes which predated the “Ten Codes”. For example, a 187 (one eighty-seven) means Homicide. In the ten codes system, a 10-31 means that a crime is in progress, a 10-27-1 means Suicide (the 10 is usually not said when it is a three-number sequence), and a 10-00 (ten double-zero) means “officer down – all patrols respond.”
List of bizarre deaths
This article provides a list of bizarre deaths that are due to unique or extremely rare circumstances and have been recorded throughout history. The list also includes less rare, yet still unusual, strange deaths of prominent people.
Antiquity
Note: Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal (uncertain authenticity)
* 458 BC: Aeschylus, Greek playwright, was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone. The tortoise survived.
* 454 BC: Inarus, Egyptian Pharaoh and leader of the rebellion in Egypt against Persian rule, was taken captive to Susa after being defeated by the satrap Megabyzus. There, after five years, he was impaled on three stakes and flayed alive.
* 270 BC: Philitas of Cos, poet and critic reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.
* 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunk donkey attempt to eat figs.
* 53 BC: Marcus Licinius Crassus was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat, following his defeat at Carrhae at the hands of the Parthians under Spahbod Surena. Some accounts claim that his head was then cut off and used as a stage prop in a play performed for the Parthian king Orodes II.
* 42 BC: Porcia Catonis, wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, killed herself by supposedly swallowing hot coals after hearing of her husband’s death; however, modern historians claim that it is more likely that she poisoned herself with carbon monoxide, by burning coals in an unventilated room.
* 4 BC: Herod the Great suffered from fever, intense rashes, colon pains, foot drop, inflammation of the abdomen, a putrefaction of his genitals that produced worms, convulsions, and difficulty breathing before he finally gave up. Similar symptoms– abdominal pains and worms– accompanied the death of his grandson Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, after he had imprisoned St Peter. At various times, each of these deaths has been considered divine retribution.
* 64 – 67: St Peter was executed by the Romans. According to many sources, he asked not to be crucified in the normal way, but was instead executed on an inverted cross. He said he was not worthy to be crucified the same way Jesus was. This is the only recorded instance of this type of crucifixion.
* 81: According to the Babylonian Talmud, an insect flew into the Roman emperor Titus’s nose and picked at his brain for seven years. He noticed that the sound of a blacksmith hammering caused the ensuing pain to abate, so he paid for blacksmiths to hammer nearby him; however, the effect wore off and the insect resumed its gnawing. When he died, they opened his skull and found the insect had grown to the size of a bird. The Talmud gives this as the cause of his death and interprets it as divine retribution for his wicked actions in destroying the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Tales of his fate are also found in Christian sources, and the phrase “Titus’s flea” has come to refer to any idea that gnaws at one’s brain.
* C. 98 Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum, was roasted to death in a brazen bull during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian. Saint Eustace, as well as his wife and children supposedly suffered a similar fate under Hadrian. The creator of the brazen bull, Perillos of Athens, was according to legend the first victim of the brazen bull when he presented his invention to Phalaris, Tyrant of Agrigentum.
* 258: St Lawrence was executed by being burned or ‘grilled’ on a large metal gridiron at Rome. Images of him often show him holding the instrument of his execution. Legend says that he was so strong-willed that instead of giving in to the Romans and releasing information about the Church, at the point of death he exclaimed “Manduca, iam coctum est.” (“Eat, for it is well done.”)
* 260: Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by the King Shapur I. After a long period of punishment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had the unfortunate emperor skinned alive and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy. Only after the Sassanid dynasty’s defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial. (A recent report from Iran mentions the restoration of a bridge supposed to have been built by Valerian and his soldiers for Shapur in return for their freedom).
* 336: Arius, the heretical priest who precipitated the Council of Nicea, passed wind and evacuated his internal organs.
* 415: Hypatia of Alexandria, greek mathematician and philosopher, was murdered by a mob by having her skin ripped off with sharp sea-shells and what remained of her burned. (Various types of shells have been named: clams, oysters, abalones. Other sources claim tiles or pottery-shards were used.)
Middle Ages
* 1135: Henry I of England is said to have died after gorging on lampreys, his favourite food.
* 1258: Al-Musta’sim was killed during the Mongol invasion of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu, not wanting to spill royal blood, had the Caliph wrapped in a rug and trampled to death by horses.
* 1277: Pope John XXI was killed in the collapse of his scientific laboratory.
* 1322: Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford was fatally speared through the anus by a pikeman hidden under the bridge during the Battle of Boroughbridge.
* 1327: Edward II of England, after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.
* 1410: Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.
* 1478: George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence reportedly was executed by drowning in a barrel of Malmsey wine at his own request.
* 1514: György Dózsa, székely man-at-arms and peasants’ revolt leader was condemned to sit on a heated iron throne with a heated iron crown on his head and a heated sceptre in his hand (mocking at his ambition to be king). While Dózsa was suffering, he was set upon and eaten by six of his fellow rebels, who had been starved beforehand.
Renaissance
* 1556: The Mughal emperor Humayun was descending from the roof of his library after observing Venus , when he heard the mu’azaan, or call to prayer. Humayun’s practice was to bow his knee when he heard the azaan, and when he did his foot caught the folds of his garment, causing him to fall down several flights. He died 3 days later of the injuries at the age of 47.
* 1559: King Henry II of France was killed during a jousting match, when his helmet’s soft golden grille gave way to a broken lancetip which pierced his eye and entered his brain.
* 1599: The Burmese king Nanda Bayin reportedly “laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that Venice was a free state without a king.”
* 1601: Tycho Brahe, according to legend, died of complications resulting from a strained bladder at a banquet. It would have been extremely bad etiquette to leave the table before the meal was finished, so he stayed until he became fatally ill. This version of events has since been brought into question as other causes of death (murder by Johannes Kepler, suicide, and lead poisoning among others) have come to the fore.
* 1626: Francis Bacon died of pneumonia contracted while filling a chicken with ice in order to prove that freezing preserves food.
* 1660: The Scottish aristocrat Thomas Urquhart, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.
* 1671: François Vatel, chef to Louis XIV, committed suicide because his seafood order was late and he couldn’t stand the shame of a postponed meal. His body was discovered by an aide, sent to tell him of the arrival of the fish. The authenticity of this story is questionable.
* 1673: Molière, the French actor and playwright died after being seized by a violent coughing fit, whilst playing the title role in his play Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Sickness).
* 1687: Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer, died of a gangrenous abscess after piercing his foot with a staff while he was vigorously conducting a Te Deum, as it was customary at that time to conduct by banging a staff on the floor. The performance was to celebrate the king’s recovery from an illness.
Age of Reason
* 1751: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the author of L’Homme machine, a major materialist and sensualist philosopher died of over eating at a feast given in his honor. His philosophical adversaries suggested that by doing so, he had contradicted his theoretical doctrine with the effect of his practical actions.
* 1753: Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was struck and killed by a globe of ball lightning while observing a storm.
* 1771: King of Sweden, Adolf Frederick, died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as “the king who ate himself to death.”
Modern Age
19th century
* 1830: William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was crushed to death by the world’s first mechanically powered passenger train (Stephenson’s Rocket), at its public opening.
* 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, fell into a pit trap accompanied by a bull. He was gored and possibly crushed.
* 1865: Lord Francis Douglas died after falling 4000 feet, having completed the first summit of the Matterhorn.
* 1897: Salomon August Andrée, Knut Fraenkel and Nils Strindberg died in October 1897 at Kvitöya (White Island), NE of Svalbard where they had arrived after a failed attempt to reach the North Pole in a balloon. Their deaths might have been due to exhaustion but also could have been due to eating insufficiently cooked polar bear meat causing trichinosis, or carbon monoxide poisoning from the miniature kerosene stove when snow made it difficult to air out the fumes.
* 1899: Félix Faure, French president, died of a stroke while receiving oral sex in his office.
20th century
* 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination.
* 1912: Franz Reichelt, tailor, fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.
* 1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was poisoned while dining with a political enemy, and supposedly he was given enough poison to kill three men his size. When he did not die, one assassin sneaked up behind him and shot him in the head, and while checking Grigori’s pulse he was grabbed by the neck by the mystic and was strangled. He proceeded to run away, while the other assassins chased. They caught up to him after he was finally felled by three shots during the chase. The pursuers bludgeoned him, then threw him into a frozen river. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be drowning. There is now some doubt about the credibility of this account, though.
* 1920: Ray Chapman, baseball player, was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch.
* 1923: Martha Mansfield, an American film actress, died after sustaining severe burns on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia after a smoker’s match, tossed by a cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and ruffles.
* 1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon became the first to die from the alleged King Tut’s Curse after a mosquito bite on his face became seriously infected.
* 1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero, died as a result of a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands. He accidentally pierced his knee. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.
* 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated by his car’s drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.
* 1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when one of the long scarves she was known for caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
* 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.
* 1932: Eben Byers, died of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of a popular patent medicine containing radium.
* 1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.
* 1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.
* 1939: Finnish actress Sirkka Sari died when she fell down a chimney. She was at a cast party celebrating the completion of a movie, her third and last. She mistook a chimney for a balcony and fell into a heating boiler, dying instantly.
* 1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.
* 1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.
* 1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
* 1945: Scientist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a brick of tungsten carbide onto a sphere of plutonium while working on the Manhattan Project. This caused the plutonium to come to criticality; Daghlian died of radiation poisoning, becoming the first person to die in a criticality accident.
* 1946: Louis Slotin, chemist and physicist, died of radiation poisoning after being exposed to lethal amounts of ionized radiation. He died in a very similar way as Harry K. Daghlian, Jr., from dropping a block of material on the same sphere of plutonium by accident. The sphere of plutonium was nicknamed the Demon core
* 1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
* 1954: Alan Turing, English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer, was found dead by his cleaner on June 8; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a scene from “Snow White”, his favourite fairy tale. Because Turing’s homosexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested.
* 1955: Margo Jones, theater director, was 43 when she was killed by the carpet in her Dallas apartment. She died July 26 from exposure to carbon tetrachloride fumes from the newly cleaned carpet.
* 1956: Nina Hamnett, artist, died from complications after falling out her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below.
* 1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones’s absence.
* 1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.
* 1961: On March 23, Soviet cosmonaut trainee Valentin Bondarenko died from shock after suffering third-degree burns over much of his body, due to a flash fire in the pure oxygen environment of a training simulator. This incident was not revealed outside of the Soviet Union until the 1980s.
* 1963: On June 11, Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, sat down in the middle of a busy intersection in Saigon, covered himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire burning himself to death. Đức was protesting President Ngô Đình Diệm’s administration for oppressing the Buddhist religion.
* 1967: In an incident similar to the death of Bondarenko, a flash fire began in the pure oxygen environment during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The door to the capsule was unable to be opened during the fire because of its particular design. Had the Soviet Union revealed the earlier death of Valentin Bondarenko, this incident could likely have been avoided.
* 1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.
* 1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. According to urban legend, when he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped “Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?”. Cavett says this is incorrect; the initial reaction to Rodale was fellow guest Pete Hamill noticing something was wrong, and saying in a low voice to Cavett, “This looks bad.”[71] The show was never broadcast.
* 1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.[72]
* 1973: Bruce Lee, a martial arts actor, is thought to have died by a severe allergic reaction to Equagesic. His brain had swollen about 13%. His autopsy was written as “death by misadventure.”[73]
* 1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter, committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.[74]
* 1975: Physicist and businessman Kip Siegel died of a stroke while testifying before a US Congressional subcommittee.[75]
* 1975: Japanese kabuki actor Bandō Mitsugorō VIII died of severe poisoning when he ate four fugu livers (also known as pufferfish). The liver is considered one of the most (if not most) poisonous part of the fish, but Mitsugorō claimed to be immune to the poison. The fugu chef felt he could not refuse Mitsugorō and lost his license as a result.[76]
* 1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar—he was electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded.[77]
* 1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver, and a 19-year-old track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce’s car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal’s fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.[78]
* 1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated by poisoning in London by an unknown assailant who jabbed him in the calf with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin poison.
* 1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.[79]
* 1978: Claude François, a French pop singer, was electrocuted when he tried to change a light bulb whilst standing in his bathtub which was full of water at the time.
* 1978: Kurt Goedel, the Austrian/American mathematician died of starvation when his wife was hospitalized. Goedel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone else. He was 65 pounds when he died. His death certificate reported that he died of “malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance” in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978.
* 1979: Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Co. plant, was the first known man to be killed by a robot.
* 1981: Carl McCunn, in March 1981, paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska to photograph wildlife, but had not arranged for the pilot to pick him up again in August. Rather than starve, McCunn shot himself in the head. His body was found in February 1982.
* 1981: Boris Sagal, a motion picture-director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail-rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.
* 1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, along with two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (decapitated) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (crushed).
* 1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent’s foil snapped during a match, penetrated his mask, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.
* 1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during World University Games. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position, he smashed his head on the board and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.
* 1983: Author Tennessee Williams died at the age of 71 after he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. Williams’ lack of gag response may have been due to drugs and alcohol effects.
* 1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired at point-blank range.
* 1986: While on the air giving a traffic report, the helicopter that Jane Dornacker was riding in stalled and crashed into the Hudson River, killing her. This was the second helicopter crash she had been in that year.
* 1987: Budd Dwyer, a Republican politician, committed suicide during a televised press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.
* 1992: Christopher McCandless died of starvation near Denali National Park after a few months trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness.
* 1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by Michael Massee using a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol prior to the scene Brandon was in; this caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. However, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge’s explosion out of the barrel and into Lee’s body. It was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting.
* 1993: Garry Hoy, a Toronto lawyer, fell to his death after he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was “unbreakable.”
* 1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
* 1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The group’s boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident is depicted in the film Open Water and an episode of 20/20.
* 1998: In Congo a soccer game ended when every player on the visiting team was struck by a fork bolt of lightning, killing them all instantly.
* 1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWE died during a Pay-Per-View event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet, bouncing chest-first off the top rope resulting in a severed aorta, which caused his lungs to fill with blood.
* 2000: Jonathan Burton stormed the cockpit door of a Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. The 19-year-old was subdued by eight other passengers with such force that he died of asphyxiation.
21st century
* 2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes from Germany was stabbed repeatedly and then partly eaten by Armin Meiwes (who was later called the Cannibal of Rothenburg). Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten.
* 2002: Brittanie Cecil, an American 13-year-old hockey fan, died two days after being struck in the head by a hockey puck at a game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Calgary Flames at Nationwide Arena.
* 2003: Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man in Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him. In 2007, police alleged Wells was involved in the robbery plot along with two other conspirators.
* 2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.
* 2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by a bear, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. An audio recording was captured on a video camera (the lens-cap was in place during the incident), but the tape has never been released to the public. Werner Herzog’s documentary film, Grizzly Man, discusses Treadwell and his death.
* 2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Enumclaw, Washington died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion. Pinyan had done this before, and he delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance for official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington. His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film Zoo.
* 2005: 28-year-old South Korean, Lee Seung Seop, collapsed of fatigue and died after playing StarCraft for almost 50 consecutive hours in an Internet cafe.
* 2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled “Ocean’s Deadliest” in Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.
* 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian State security service, and later a Russian dissident and writer, suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.
* 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Wii console in a KDND 107.9 “The End” radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.
* 2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself live on a webcam during an internet chat session.
* 2007: Surinder Singh Bajwa, the Deputy Mayor of Delhi, India, was kicked by a Rhesus Macaque monkey at his home and fell from a first floor balcony, suffering serious head injuries. He later died from his injuries.
* 2008: Abigail Taylor, 6, died nine months after her organs were partially sucked out by a swimming pool drain. She had several organs replaced in surgery but died later due to the incident.
from: Wikipedia, http://http://www.wikipedia.org
Human World
Human World
The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married at birth.
When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn’t understand German.
St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.
The lance ceased to be an official battle weapon in the British Army in 1927.
St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death.
Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.
Some very Orthodox Jew refuse to speak Hebrew, believing it to be a language reserved only for the Prophets.
A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I.
Born 4 January 1838, General Tom Thumb’s growth slowed at the age of 6 months, at 5 years he was signed to the circus by P.T. Barnum, and at adulthood reached a height of only 1 metre.
Because they had no proper rubbish disposal system, the streets of ancient Mesopotamia became literally knee-deep in rubbish.
The Toltecs, Seventh-century native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.
China banned the pigtail in 1911 as it was seen as a symbol of feudalism.
The Amayra guides of Bolivia are said to be able to keep pace with a trotting horse for a distance of 100 kilometres.
Sliced bread was patented by a jeweller, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912.
Before it was stopped by the British, it was the not uncommon for women in some areas of India to choose to be burnt alive on their husband’s funeral pyre.
Ivan the terrible claimed to have ‘deflowered thousands of virgins and butchered a similar number of resulting offspring’.
Before the Second World War, it was considered a sacrilege to even touch an Emperor of Japan.
An American aircraft in Vietnam shot itself down with one of its own missiles.
The Anglo-Saxons believed Friday to be such an unlucky day that they ritually slaughtered any child unfortunate enough to be born on that day.
During the eighteenth century, laws had to be brought in to curb the seemingly insatiable appetite for gin amongst the poor. Their annual intake was as much as five million gallons.
Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups
The Nobel Prize resulted form a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence – he invented dynamite.
The cost of the first pay-toilets installed in England was tuppence.
Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.
In 1647 the English Parliament abolished Christmas.
Mao Rse-Tang, the first chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, was born 26 December 1893. Before his rise to power, he occupied the humble position of Assistant Librarian at the University of Peking.
Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. The largest is petrol.
King George III was declared violently insane in 1811, 9 years before he died.
In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an ‘ugly’ potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.
For Roman Catholics, 5 January is St Simeon Stylites’ Day. He was a fifth-century hermit who showed his devotion to God by spending literally years sitting on top of a huge flagpole.
When George I became King of England in 1714, his wife did not become Queen. He placed her under house arrest for 32 years.
The richest 10 per cent of the French people are approximately fifty times better off than the poorest 10 per cent.
Henry VII was the only British King to be crowned on the field of battle
During World War One, the future Pope John XXIII was a sergeant in the Italian Army.
Richard II died aged 33 in 1400. A hole was left in the side of his tomb so people could touch his royal head, but 376 years later some took advantage of this and stole his jawbone.
The magic word “Abracadabra” was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas Carols, judging them to be out of keeping with the true spirit of Christmas.
Albert Einstein was once offered the Presidency of Israel. He declined saying he had no head for problems.
Uri Geller, the professional psychic was born on December 20 1946. As to the origin of his alleged powers, Mr Geller maintains that they come from the distant planet of Hoova.
Ralph and Carolyn Cummins had 5 children between 1952 and 1966, all were born on the 20 February.
John D. Rockefeller gave away over US$ 500,000,000 during his lifetime.
Only 1 child in 20 are born on the day predicted by the doctor.
In the 1970’s, the Rhode Island Legislature in the US entertained a proposal that there be a $2 tax on every act of sexual intercourse in the State.
Widows in equatorial Africa actually wear sackcloth and ashes when attending a funeral.
The ‘Hundred Years War’ lasted 116 years.
The British did not release the body of Napoleon Bonaparte to the French until twenty days after his death.
Admiral Lord Nelson was less than 1.6 metres tall.
John Glenn, the American who first orbited the Earth, was showered with 3,529 tonnes of ticker tape when he got back.
Native American Indians used to name their children after the first thing they saw as they left their tepees subsequent to the birth. Hence such strange names as Sitting Bull and Running Water.
Catherine the First of Russia, made a rule that no man was allowed to get drunk at one of her parties before nine o’clock.
Queen Elizabeth I passed a law which forced everyone except for the rich to wear a flat cap on Sundays.
In 1969 the shares of the Australian company ‘Poseidon’ were worth $1, one year later they were worth $280 each.
Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the onset of baldness.
Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour during World War II, left school at the age of eleven.
At the age of 12, Martin Luther King became so depressed he tried committing suicide twice, by jumping out of his bedroom window.
It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.
The Turk’s consider it considered unlucky to step on a piece of bread.
The authorities do not allow tourists to take pictures of Pygmies in Zambia.
The Dutch in general prefer their french fries with mayonnaise.
Upon the death of F.D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman became the President of America on 12 April 1945. The initial S in the middle of his name doesn’t in fact mean anything. Both his grandfathers had names beginning with ‘S’, and so Truman’s mother didn’t want to disappoint either of them.
Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with the occult and the supernatural.
One of Queen Victoria’s wedding gifts was a 3 metre diameter, half tonne cheese.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.
It was considered unfashionable for Venetian women, during the Renaissance to have anything but silvery-blonde hair.
Queen Victoria was one of the first women ever to use chloroform to combat pain during childbirth.
Peter the Great had the head of his wife’s lover cut off and put into a jar of preserving alcohol, which he then ordered to be placed by her bed.
The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler’s Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Henry Ford was the inventor of the assembly line, and Hitler used this knowledge of the assembly line to speed up production, and to create better and interchangeable products.
Atilla the Hun is thought to have been a dwarf.
The warriors tribes of Ethiopia used to hang the testicles of those they killed in battle on the ends of their spears.
On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson’s fictional ship was the Titan.
There are over 200 religious denominations in the United States.
Eau de Cologne was originally marketed as a way of protecting yourself against the plague.
Charles the Simple was the grandson of Charles the Bald, both were rulers of France.
Theodor Herzi, the Zionist leader who was born on May 2 1860, once had the astonishing idea of converting Jews to Christianity as a way of combating anti-Semitism.
The women of an African tribe make themselves more attractive by permanently scaring their faces.
Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland seemed to have a prodigious sexual appetite, and fathered hundreds of illegitimate children during his lifetime.
Some moral purists in the Middle Ages believed that women’s ears ought to be covered up because the Virgin May had conceived a child through them.
Hindus don’t like dying in bed, they prefer to die beside a river.
While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.
It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.
The Emperor Caligula once decided to go to war with the Roman God of the sea, Poseidon, and ordered his soldiers to throw their spears into the water at random.
The Ecuadorian poet, José Olmedo, has a statue in his honour in his home country. But, unable to commission a sculptor, due to limited funds, the government brought a second-hand statue .. Of the English poet Lord Byron.
In 1726, at only 7 years old, Charles Sauson inherited the post of official executioner.
Sir Winston Churchill rationed himself to 15 cigars a day.
On 7 January 1904 the distress call ‘CQD’ was introduced. ‘CQ’ stood for ‘Seek You’ and ‘D’ for ‘Danger’. This lasted only until 1906 when it was replaced with ‘SOS’.
Though it is forbidden by the Government, many Indians still adhere to the caste system which says that it is a defilement for even the shadow of a person from a lowly caste to fall on a Brahman ( a member of the highest priestly caste).
In parts of Malaya, the women keep harems of men.
The childrens’ nursery rhyme ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses’ actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.
The word ‘denim’ comes from ‘de Nimes’, Nimes being the town the fabric was originally produced.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, there was a tax put on men’s beards.
Idi Amin, one of the most ruthless tyrants in the world, before coming to power, served in the British Army.
Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
It is illegal to play tennis in the streets of Cambridge.
Custer was the youngest General in US history, he was promoted at the age of 23.
It costs more to send someone to reform school than it does to send them to Eton.
The American pilot Charles Lindbergh received the Service Cross of the German Eagle form Hermann Goering in 1938.
The active ingredient in Chinese Bird’s nest soup is saliva.
Marie Currie, who twice won the Nobel Prize, and discovered radium, was not allowed to become a member of the prestigious French Academy because she was a woman.
It was quite common for the men of Ancient Greece to exercise in public .. naked.
John Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, had a payphone in his mansion.
Iceland is the world’s oldest functioning democracy.
Adolf Eichmann (responsible for countless Jewish deaths during World war II), was originally a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Co. of Austria.
The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Matami Tribe of West Africa play a version of football, the only difference being that they use a human skull instead of a more normal ball.
John Winthrop introduced the fork to the American dinner table for the first time on 25 June 1630.
Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Bristol, England on 3 February 1821, was the first woman in America to gain an M.D. degree.
Abraham Lincoln was shot with a Derringer.
The great Russian leader, Lenin died 21 January 1924, suffering from a degenerative brain disorder. At the time of his death his brain was a quarter of its normal size.
When shipped to the US, the London bridge ( thought by the new owner to be the more famous Tower Bridge ) was classified by US customs to be a ‘large antique’.
Sir Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ cloakroom after his mother went into labour during a dance at Blenheim Palace.
In 1849, David Atchison became President of the United States for just one day, and he spent most of the day sleeping.
Between the two World War’s, France was controlled by forty different governments.
The ‘Crystal Palace’ at the Great Exhibition of 1851, contained 92 900 square metres of glass.
It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on their testicles when taking an oath. The modern term ‘testimony’ is derived from this tradition.
Sir Winston Churchill’s mother was descended from a Red Indian.
The study of stupidity is called ‘monology’.
Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marring a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.
More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on Life insurance.
In 1911 3 men were hung for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry at Greenbury Hill, their last names were Green, Berry , and Hill.
A firm in Britain sold fall-out shelters for pets.
During the seventeen century , the Sultan of Turkey ordered his entire harem of women drowned, and replace with a new one.
Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill ‘if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee’. His reply …’ if you were my wife, I would drink it ! ‘.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.
The Great Pyramid of Giza consists of 2,300,000 blocks each weighing 2.5 tons.
On 9 February 1942, soap rationing began in Britain.
Paul Revere was a dentist.
The Budget speech on April 17 1956 saw the introduction of Premium Savings Bonds into Britain. The machine which picks the winning numbers is called “Ernie”, an abbreviation, which stands for’ electronic random number indicator equipment’.
Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
The Russian mystic, Rasputin, was the victim of a series of murder attempts on this day in 1916. The assassins poisoned, shot and stabbed him in quick succession, but they found they were unable to finish him off. Rasputin finally succumbed to the ice-cold waters of a river.
Bonnie Prince Charlie, the leader of the Jacobite rebellion to depose of George II of England, was born 31 December 1720. Considered a great Scottish hero, he spent his final years as a drunkard in Rome.
The Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was born of the 29th December 1809. Apparently, as a result of his strong Puritan impulses, Gladstone kept a selection of whips in his cellar with which he regularly chastised himself.
A parthenophobic has a fear of virgins.
South American gauchos were known to put raw steak under their saddles before starting a day’s riding, in order to tenderise the meat.
There are 240 white dots in a Pacman arcade game.
In 1939 the US political party ‘The American Nazi Party’ had 200,000 members.
King Solomon of Israel had about 700 wives as well as hundreds of mistresses.
Urine was once used to wash clothes.
North American Indian, Sitting Bull, died on 15 December 1890. His bones were laid to rest in North Dakota, but a business group wanted him moved to a ‘more natural’ site in South Dakota. Their campaign was rejected so they stole the bones, and they now reside in Sitting Bull Park, South Dakota.
St Nicholas, the original Father Christmas, is the patron saint of thieves, virgins and communist Russia.
Dublin is home of the Fairy Investigation Society.
Fourteen million people were killed in World War I, twenty million died in a flu epidemic in the years that followed.
People in Siberia often buy milk frozen on a stick.
Princess Ann was the only competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics that did not have to undergo a sex test.
Ethelred the Unready, King of England in the Tenth-century, spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and his mother-in-law.
Coffins which are due for cremation are usually made with plastic handles.
Blackbird, who was the chief of Omaha Indians, was buried sitting on his favourite horse.
The two highest IQ’s ever recorded (on a standard test) both belong to women.
The Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disreali, was born 21 December 1804. He was noted for his oratory and had a number of memorable exchanges in the House with his great rival William Gladstone. Asked what the difference between a calamity and a misfortune was Disreali replied: ‘If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out again, it would be a calamity’.
The Imperial Throne of Japan has been occupied by the same family for the last thirteen hundred years.
In the seventeenth-century a Boston man was sentenced to two hours in the stocks for obscene behaviour, his crime, kissing his wife in a public place on a Sunday.
President Kaunda of Zambia once threatened to resign if his fellow countrymen didn’t stop drinking so much alcohol.
Due to staggering inflation in the 1920’s, 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 German marks were worth 1 US dollar.
Gorgias of Epirus was born during preparation of his mothers funeral.
The city of New York contains a district called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.
The city of Hiroshima left the Industrial Promotion Centre standing as a monument the atomic bombing.
During the Medieval Crusades, transporting bodies off the battlefield for burial was a major problem, this was solved by carrying a huge cauldron into the Holy wars, boiling down the bodies, and taking only the bones with them.
A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.
George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.
Spot of fun with a Dash of Serious 