Sad but true

Talk about bad luck - this lot takes the cake!


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 - and killed 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, Rhode Island, 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, killing him.


Depressed that 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. His wife pleaded with him not to do it, and after about half an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.


In 1976, a 22-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 lot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van ploughed 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, but hospital officials said he would recover.


Hitting on a 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.