Three teenage girls were hanging out in the public rest room sniffing lighter fluid gas, when one of them casually lit a cigarette. The explosion ignited the fumes filling the small enclosure, and the girls rushed from the toilets-straight into the arms of police, because the rest room they had chosen was in the same building as the police station.
Inspector Leif Hoy said. "We heard a bang from the toilets. A moment later the girls ran out screaming." The officers gave them first aid by dousing them with cold water, and sent them to the hospital for further treatment.
None of the gas-sniffing girls was in danger of losing her life, but unless they learn a few permanent lessons from this experience, we expect to hear from them again.
- Lesson One: When sniffing lighter fluid, avoid doing so next to a police station, unless you foresee the need for first aid
- Lesson Two: When sniffing lighter fluid in a small closed room, try to control the urge for nicotine until you are well away from the fumes.
- Lesson Three: Do not sniff lighter fluid.
Personal Account: Eat the Young
One day a ranger for the Yellowstone National Park Service joined a crowd of people, cars, trucks, and motor homes that had congregated to watch a bear. One woman and her little boy stood out in the crowd. She was smearing something unidentifiable all over the boy's face.
The ranger asked the woman what she was doing.
She answered, "Putting honey on him, of course!"
Stunned, he asked the obvious question: Why?
She answered matter-of-factly, "I want to take a picture of the bear licking it off his face!"
Fortunately for the child, but perhaps unfortunately from an evolutionary standpoint, the ranger prevented the child from approaching the bear. To this day he has nightmares about it. This event just goes to show why some animals feel compelled to eat their own young in the wild.
Darwin Award: Dive to Death
If you fly over Houston, you will see the sky-blue rectangles of countless backyard swimming pools. A Houston man joined the club and purchased his own aboveground pool on June 21, 1998. He selected the location, and the pool was installed by an independent contractor a few days later. He rated all aspects of the installation as "excellent."
A few weeks later, the pool owner was swimming with his friends and enjoying an alcoholic Fourth of July haze in the humid Houston heat. In an unprecedented show of bravado, the man decided to climb onto the patio roof and dive into his new pool.
The man was six feet tall. His pool, typical for an aboveground model, was four feet deep. So when his head hit the bottom, his legs were still sticking two feet out of the water. The dive broke his neck
He sued on the grounds of faulty installation and inappropriate location. Yes, the same installation the man had rated as "excellent," placed in the location he himself had selected.
The pool owner passed away in December. Next time you fly over Houston and see those miles of swimming pools, remember the story of this man's last, miscalculated dive.
Urban Legend: Mad Trombonist
In a misplaced moment of inspiration, Enrique Medolino, bass trombonist with a local orchestra, decided to make his own contribution to the cannon shots fired during a performance of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" at an outdoor children's concert.
In complete disregard of decorum, he dropped a large lit firecracker, equivalent in strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his aluminum straight mute, and then stuck the mute into the bell of his new Yamaha in-line double-valve bass trombone.
Later from his hospital bed he explained to a reporter through a mask of bandages, "I thought the bell of my trombone would shield me from the explosion and focus the energy of the blast outwards and away from me, propelling the mute high above the orchestra like a rocket."
However Enrique was not up to speed on his propulsion physics, nor was he qualified to wield high-powered artillery. Despite his haste to raise the horn before the firecracker exploded, he failed to life the bell high enough for the airborne mute's arc to clear the orchestra. What happened should serve as a lesson to us all during our delirious moments of divine inspiration.
First, because he failed to sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the mute between rows of musicians in the woodwind and viola section, entirely bypassing the players, and rammed straight into the stomach of the conductor, driving him backward off the podium and into the front row of the audience.
Fortunately the audience was sitting in folding chairs and thus protected from serious injury. The chairs collapsed under the first row, and passed the energy from the impact of the flying conductor backward into the people sitting behind them, who in turn were driven back into the people in the third row, and so on, like a series of dominoes. The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds increased geometrically, adding to the overall commotion of cannons and brass playing the closing measures of the overture.
Meanwhile, unplanned audience choreography not withstanding, Enrique Medolino's own personal Waterloo was still unfolding back on stage. According to Enrique, "As I heard the sound of the firecracker blast, time seemed to stand still. Right before I lost consciousness, I heard an Austrian-accented voice say, "Fur every akshon zer iz un eekval unt opposeet reakshon!"
This comes as no surprise, for Enrique was about to become a textbook demonstration of this fundamental law of physics. Having failed to plug the lead pipe of his trombone, he paved the way for the energy of the blast to jet a superheated plume of gas backward through the mouthpiece, which slammed into his face like the hand of fate, burning his lips and skin and knocking him mercifully unconscious.
But the pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet. The force of the blast was so great it split the bell of his shiny new Yamaha trombone right down the middle, turning it inside out while propelling Enrique backward off the riser. For the grand finale, as Enrique fell to the ground, his limp hands lost their grip on the slide of the trombone, allowing the pressure of the hot gases to propel the slide like a golden spear into the head of the third clarinetist, knocking him senseless.
The moral of the story? The next time a trombonist hollers "Watch this!" you'd better duck!
Urban Legend: The Bricklayer
This accident report needs an introduction so you won't be lost at the beginning. This man was in an accident at work, so he filled out an insurance claim. The insurance company contacted him and asked for more information. This was his response:
"I am writing in response to your request for additional information for Block Number 3 of the accident reporting form. I put 'poor planning as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully, so I trust the following details will be sufficient.
"I am an amateur radio operator and on the day of the accident, I was working alone on the top section of my new eighty-foot tower. When I had completed my work, I discovered that I had, over the course of several trips up the tower, brought up about three hundred pounds of tools and spare hardware. Rather than carry the now unneeded tools and material down by hand, I decided to lower the items down in a small barrel by using the pulley attached to the gin pole at the top of the tower.
"Securing the rope ground level, I went to the top of the tower and loaded the tools and material into the barrel. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a descent of the three hundred pounds of tools.
"You will note in Block Number 11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh only 155 pounds. Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope.
"Needless to say, I proceeded at a rather rapid rate of speed up the side of the tower. In the vicinity of the forty-foot level, I met the barrel coming down. This explains my fractured skull and broken collarbone.
"Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold on to the rope in spite of my pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of tools hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel.
"Devoid of the weight of the tools, the barrel now weighed approximately 20 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in Block Number 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the tower.
"In the vicinity of the forty-foot level, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, and the lacerations of my legs and lower body.
"The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell onto the pile of tools and, fortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked.
"I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the tools, in pain, unable to stand and watching the empty barrel eighty feet above me, I again lost my presence of mind.
"I let go of the rope..."
