Bad Days

Think YOU'RE having a bad day? It seems like some people are
just plain doomed.


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. At last report, the insurance
companies were still trying to sort out the claims.


*****


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.