Bizarre: AND YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE HAVING A BAD DAY ...

[Eric Thelin <eric@generation-i.com>]

* 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.

* 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.

* 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 pretended he was hurt so he
could collect insurance money.  The car rolled forward and crushed him to
death.

* 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.

* 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.