Really Stupid and needless ways to die

There are a great many ways in which a person can die other than by natural causes such as disease and old age but some people bring about their own deaths and the deaths of others by being really stupid. When you read this piece, ask yourself this question; “How many people like those in this piece are killed every year by their stupidity or the stupidity of others?

In 62 BC: Eleazar Maccabeus was crushed to death at the Battle of Beth- zechariah by a War elephant that he believed was carrying King Antiochus V. Eleazar rushed underneath the elephant and thrust a spear into its belly, whereupon it fell dead on top of him. That is about as dumb as when soldiers during the Second World War would sleep under tanks in order not to get wet during rainfalls. During the night, the tanks sank in the mud and crushed the soldiers.

In 1771, Adolf Frederick, king of Sweden, died of digestion problems on 12 February, 1771 after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk.

In 1871, Clement Vallandigham, U.S. Congressman and political opponent of Abraham Lincoln, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound suffered in court while representing the defendant in a murder case. Demonstrating how the murder victim could have inadvertently shot himself, the gun, which Vallandigham believed to be unloaded, discharged and mortally wounded him. His demonstration was successful, and the defendant was acquitted.

I remember when I serving in the Canadian Navy in the early 1950s when a petty officer was showing his men how not to load a four-inch naval gun. He told the men to quickly move their hand from the breach as soon as they shoved the shell into the breach. He didn’t pull his hand away quickly enough and as a result the breach closed, cutting off his hand,

In 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. It appears that it really was a dummy that went over the railing.

In 1920, Dan Andersson, a Swedish author, died of cyanide poisoning while staying at Hotel Hellman in Stockholm, because the hotel staff had failed to clear the room after using hydrogen cyanide against bedbugs.

In 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.

1927, Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of a 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. Something like that happened years later when a belly dancer was practicing for an upcoming competition while in her home. She practiced one a particular move where she wrapped one end of her sash around her neck and threw the other end in the air. Unfortunately for her, the other end got caught in a moving ceiling fan and she was strangled to death.

During the 1920s, at the U.S. Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey, a group of women who worked in the company’s watch factory used fluorescent paint that contains radium to paint the numbers on the faces of watches. They also noticed that the paint glowed when they applied it to their skin so they applied it regularly to their skin. They eventually exposed themselves to much higher amounts of radium that normally they would be exposed to and as a result, they invariably died from bone cancer.

In 1932, Eben Byers died of radiation poisoning after having consumed large quantities of a popular patent medicine containing radium.

In 1944, Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.

In 1947, the Collyer brothers, who were 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 time later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.

In 1960, over 100 Soviet rocket technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting a rocket. The dead included Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations.

In 1972, Luigi Greco, the Mafia boss of the Sicilian faction of Montreal, died from an incident occurring while renovating a family pizzeria. He used a mop dipped in gasoline and a metal scraper to remove the filth on the floor. Obviously, the combination provoked an explosion and flash fire, and Greco died four days later at the Sacré-Cœur Hospital.

In 1973, Bruce Lee, an American martial artist and 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."

On December 21, 1978, in St. Augustine, Florida, a female scuba diver was recovering in a decompression chamber after getting decompression sickness due to making an emergency swim to surface. A crew worker accidentally released the pressure of the room causing her body to instantly explode, thereby killing her instantly.

A similar incident like that occurred five years later. Four divers and a tender were killed on the Byford Dolphin semi-submersible, when a decompression chamber explosively decompressed from 9 atm to 1 atm in a fraction of a second. The diver nearest the chamber opening literally exploded just before his remains were ejected through a 24 in (60 cm) opening. The other divers' remains showed signs of boiled blood, unusually strong rigor mortis, large amounts of gas in the blood vessels, and scattered hemorrhages in the soft tissues.

On December 21, 1978, in Bordeaux, France, a man with the eating disorder called Pica Syndrome had a habit of swallowing small metal objects. The objects filled up his stomach and then cut the veins and arteries filling it up with blood. Eventually, his stomach ruptured and blood spilled into his abdomen. He died a slow death.

In 1978, Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox ten months after the disease was eradicated in the world, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some Small Pox virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.

1978, Claude François, a French pop singer, was electrocuted when he tried to change a light bulb while standing in his bathtub that was full of water at the time.

On July 28, 1979, in Norman, Oklahoma, a man who pleasured himself by shoving large items up his rectum was recovering in the hospital after shoving a shampoo bottle up his rectum. While the doctor was out of his hospital room, he grabbed nine thermometers, taped them together and shoved them up his rectum. When the doctor walked in, he sat back down on the hospital bed to avoid being noticed, but when he sat down, the thermometers in his rectum shattered causing internal bleeding and mercury poisoning. He died.

In 1981, American photographer Carl McCunn paid a bush pilot to drop him at a remote lake near the Coleen River in Alaska in March to photograph wildlife, but failed to confirm arrangements 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.

There was a similar case like that one where a man was dropped off at a lake and who had made arrangements for the pilot to pick him up when he signaled the pilot on the return trip two weeks later. Unfortunately, he gave the wrong signal and the pilot left without picking the man up. The man later starved to death in his cabin in the mountains.

In1981, Boris Sagal, a film director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail rotor blade of a helicopter and was decapitated.

In 1982, actor Vic Morrow, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (who was decapitated) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (who was crushed), also died. Later the court found the Morrow and the children weren’t at fault.

In 1982, David Grundman was killed near Lake Pleasant, Arizona while shooting at cacti for fun with his shotgun. After firing several shots at a 26 ft (8m) tall Saguaro Cactus from extremely close range, a 4 ft limb of the cactus that was weakened by the gunfire detached and fell on him, crushing him.

I don’t know when this next incident occurred but it also involves cacti. Two men with a large collection of cactuses were leaving the desert with a stolen Saguaro cactus. They stopped to celebrate by sharing a bottle of Mezcal and getting drunk. They later had a shared hallucination where the cactus told them that they are going to die causing the two men to panic and run away. One man fell on an Agave plant and was impaled through the heart and the other ran head on into another Saguaro cactus and its needles pierced his eyes and went into his brain. He later died after telling his rescuers what had happened.

In 1983, American author Tennessee Williams died when he choked on an eye drop 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 eye drops in each eye. Williams' lack of gag response may have been due to the effects of drugs and alcohol abuse, and it is highly likely that Williams was high when the cap ended up in his throat as drugs and alcohol were found in his room and inside his body. When I was seven-years of age, I accidentally swallowed two pennies. Why I put those two coins in my mouth is beyond me. My youngest daughter also swallowed a ring which got lodged in her mouth. Needless to say, we both lived through our ordeals.

1983, George Schwartz, a factory owner in Providence, Rhode Island, was injured in a factory explosion, which toppled every wall except one. After being treated for wounds, he went back to the factory to search for files. Unfortunately, the final wall toppled and crushed him.

On July 4, 1983, at Happy's Trailer Park, Lawrence, Kansas, three rednecks celebrating the Fourth of July with beer and a barbecue got the idea of having a fireworks display in their yard. They tried to launch a homemade firework from a homemade launcher, but when the firework won't ignite, one of the three rednecks looks directly into the launcher only to have the firework explode into his face causing pieces of his skull to shatter into his brain.

In 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, playing Russian Roulette using a revolver loaded with a single blank cartridge. Hexum apparently was not informed that blanks have gunpowder that explodes into a gas with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired too close to one’s head.

On July 3, 1992, at the Cross River Links in Monrovia, California, an Irishman who had taken a golfing trip to the United States was on the golf course when a rat crawled up his pant leg and while the rat was scratching his leg, it urinated on it. The urine seeped into the cut which caused leptospirosis that caused the man to die a week later. There were parasitic aerobic bacteria in the rat’s urine which can be fatal. He should have sought medical help after the rat scratched him, after all it could have been rabid.

1993: Actor Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, (who also died accidentally) was shot and killed by Michael Massee using a prop gun while filming the movie The Crow. A cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in the pistol before the fatal scene; 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. His death was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors; they believed he was still acting

On July 9, 1993, Garry Hoy, a 38-year old lawyer and a senior partner at the Holden Day Wilson Law firm in Toronto, Canada, fell to his death after he threw himself against a window on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in an attempt to prove to a group of visiting Law Students that the glass was unbreakable. His first attempt failed to damage the glass at all. On his second attempt the glass still didn't break but instead actually popped out of the window frame and he fell over 300 feet to his death. He must have read about the janitor in an American city who wanted to assure the women working in a high rise office building that they didn’t have to fear falling out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He ran full force into one of the windows and bounced back. Then he immediately left the office. The women were assured.

In 1993, Michael A. Shingledecker Jr. was killed almost instantly when he and a friend were struck by a pickup truck while lying flat on the yellow dividing line of a two-lane highway in Polk, Pennsylvania. They were copying a daredevil stunt from the movie The Program. Marco Birkhimer died of a similar accident while performing the same stunt in Route 206 of Bordentown, New Jersey.

In 1995, a 14 year old girl, Ryan Bielby, plummeted to her death while riding the rollercoaster the Timber Wolf at Kansas City's Worlds of Fun amusement park. She had unbuckled her seatbelt and maneuvered herself free from the lap bar and restraint devices in an attempt to switch seats with a friend. She fell about 25 feet to her death

On November 21, 1995, at the Owanda Steel Corporation in Kobe, Japan, two Japanese business men accidentally banged their heads together after bowing to each other, rupturing a previously unknown aneurysm in one of the men’s brain. He died. Bowing to one another is a time honoured custom in Japan but there should be a reasonable distance between the two people before bowing to each other.

In 1996, Sharon Lopatka, an Internet entrepreneur from Maryland, 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. In 2001, Bernd-Jürgen Brandes from Germany was voluntarily 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 as it was to be a sexual high for him. Meiwes was sentenced to thirty years in prison for the murder of Brandes. I should add that several others came to Meiwes’ apartment but changed their minds about being killed and eaten by the cannibal.

On October 14, 1997, in Newark, Delaware, a female sex addict was given an ultimatum by her boyfriend to either give up her smoking habit or to give up sex with him. Not wanting to give up sex, she tried to give up her smoking habit overnight by putting a month's worth of nicotine patches all over her body. She later died of a heart attack brought on by a nicotine overdose.

On June 19, 1998, in Waterloo, Iowa, a thief tried to steal from some patrons at an arcade before closing time. He hid behind the virtual golf display and he then cut a hole in it with his pen knife to see if the coast was clear. The man playing the game at that precise moment the thief was looking through the hole; hit the ball, which then hit the thief in the forehead, killing him.

In 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’s captain accidentally abandoned them owing to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident inspired the film Open Water and an episode of 20/20.

When my wife and I went scuba diving off of the Florida Keys and later off of the east coast of Cuba in 1999, the crew on the boats counted heads two times to make sure that everyone was on board. The two-man crew didn’t have to count heads when my wife and I were scuba diving off the Island of Bali in the Indian Ocean in 2005 because we were the only passengers in the small boat.

On February 20, 1998, Bucket-O-Wings, Naperville, Nevada, a man who was on a date began to belch constantly due to peptic ulcers in his stomach. Thinking that his belching was just due to gas, he asked his date to punch him in the stomach to stop the belching, but the impact of his date's punch caused his stomach to rupture. He died naturally. The great Houdini died when he was punched the same way at the request of a college student.

On September 20, 2000, in Encino, California, a Gothic teenager who had spent her life in and out of foster homes and was recently adopted by a couple of religious fanatics who believe her Gothic life was a sign that she was possessed by the devil. She was tied down onto a pentagram inside an enclosed tent while her foster parents burned coal and incense. The combination of the two created carbon monoxide inside the tent which eventually caused the two foster parents who were standing up, to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. The teenager on the other hand was able to escape death because she was breathing in clean air that was closer to the ground where she was tied up.

In 2001, Michael Colombini, a 6-year-old from Croton-on-Hudson, New York, was struck and killed, at Westchester Regional Medical Center, by a 6.5-pound metal oxygen tank when it was pulled into the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine while he underwent a test. He began to experience breathing difficulties while in the MRI and when a technician brought a portable oxygen canister into the magnetic field, it was pulled from his hands and struck the boy in the head.

Another incident involving an MIR occurred at another hospital when a drug addict sneaked into a hospital at night and ordered a nurse at gun point to give him drugs. Once the addict had had his fix, he then threatened her into having sex with him. The nurse then fooled the robber by stripping off her clothes and while the robber was distracted, the nurse turned on the MRI machine. The strong magnetic forces of the machine attracted the metal of the robber's gun, thereby disarming him. However the addict had a steel plate in his skull and the MRI machine was attracted to it causing the addict to have his head being slammed into the machine causing fatal brain damage.

On April 2, 2001, at the La Paz liquor store in Jasper, Tennessee, a shoplifter choked to death on a hot dog after he shoved it in his mouth while fleeing from a convenience store. Didn’t his mother tell him to not eat his food on the run?

On August 19, 2001, at Bonelli Park, San Dimas, California, two really stupid teenagers who were obsessed with Ozzy Osbourne, celebrated an Ozzfest by snorting fire ants, because they believed in the urban legend that Ozzy Osbourne did the same with fellow rocker Nikki Sixx. However, the fire ants latched onto the teenager’s nasal cavities and then onto their tracheae, and the ants proceeded to bite and sting causing swelling of their tracheae. They both eventually died from suffocation.

On March 9, 2002, in Newton, Massachusetts, a man claimed that he could lift a 350 pound I-beam he found at a construction site. He lifted it but when he lost is grip, he dropped on his neck, breaking his windpipe and killing him. Never lift a heavy weight without someone next to you.

On October 9, 2003, in Dallas, Texas, a thief stole a former stripper's purse and threatened her with a screwdriver. When a neighbor spotted the thief, he escaped on a bicycle but the bike’s front wheel hit a rock and the thief was impaled through the heart with his screwdriver when he fell off his bike.

On October 24, 2003, in Gould's Gym, Seattle, Washington, a body builder who used anabolic steroids and human growth hormones on daily basis died of a heart attack due to cardiomyopathy caused by the steroids. Didn’t he read all the warnings published about steroids?

In 2004, a 24-year-old man, Phillip Quinn, who was high on drugs believed his lava lamp was not flowing fast enough so he placed his lava lamp into the microwave so that the heat would make the simulated lava move faster. When he removed it from the microwave, the lava lamp exploded into his face causing severe burns from the lava lamp liquid and glass shards getting embedded into his skull and heart and killed him.

On June 5, 2004, in Manatee, Florida, a car thief attempted to steal a muscle car by descending down from the garage ceiling from a rope. His leg got tangled in the rope leaving him dangling upside down. Unable to free himself, he died due to rising blood pressure and multiple strokes caused by hemorrhaging in his skull.

On March 15, 2005, in Portland, Maine, two groups of drunken men tried participating in extreme sports. One group decided to kill time by bungee jumping off of a cherry picker, and the other group decided to create a new extreme sport by tying a mattress on top of their pickup truck and having one of the two friends ride on it. While one of the bungee jumpers died when his bungee cord was too long; another fell off the top of his friend's truck going 60 miles per hour. Those are two sure ways to kill time----permanently

On May 2, 2005, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a jealous man crashed his ex-girlfriend's wedding for revenge against her. He bribed a waiter to slip laxatives into her champagne, but the waiter became aware of his scheme and switches the drinks so that the man would be the one to get the spiked drink. After the man drank all of his champagne, he got diarrhea and rushed to the bathroom, only to discover that it was locked. He then went outside and defecated in a garbage can, but was unable to get out of the can as he was stuck in it. During his attempts to extricate himself from the can, it tipped over and the man began rolling downhill in the can, causing spinal injuries and a fatal fractured skull, thereby killing him.

On July 23, 2005, in Beijing, China two Chinese heavy metal enthusiasts spent their nights playing an air guitar, listening to loud music and jumping back and forth on their beds. However, one of the dummies slipped off his bed and crashed through the open window and fell six stories to his death. Not wanting to rock out all alone, his friend followed suit and jumped to his death.

On August 19, 2005, in Irvine, California, a man was texting his girlfriend while he was driving and his girlfriend was texting him while she's walking. Both were not paying attention to where they're going, and as a result the boyfriend ran over his girlfriend with his half ton pickup truck after she unknowingly stepped in front of it.

On October 19, 2005, at the Hallandale Ranch in Tooele County in Utah, a really stupid man was electrocuted after he rigged a dead cow’s heart to a car battery and used it as a sex toy. That was a shocking way to die. Now there is a pun for you. You know what they say about puns? Whereas a bun is a form of wheat, a pun is a form of wit. Oh my. Will he ever stop?

In 2005, Kenneth ‘Mr. Hands’ Pinyan of Gig Harbor, Washington died of acute peritonitis after seeking out and receiving anal intercourse from a stallion, an act he had engaged in previously on numerous occasions without injury. Pinyan delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance to explain the circumstances of his injury to doctors. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in that state.

On July 18 2006 in Dallas, Texas, a man was trying to steal copper from a telephone pole in a vacant lot. He died by electrocution when he cut into the live wire.

In 2006, Erika Tomanu, a seven-year-old girl in Saitama, Japan, died when she was sucked down the intake pipe of a large pool at a water park. The grille that was meant to cover the inlet came off, yet lifeguards at the pool at the time deemed it safe enough to allow swimmers to stay in the water as they had issued a verbal warning about the situation. She was sucked head first more than 10 metres down the pipe by the powerful pump and it took rescuers more than 6 hours to remove her by digging through concrete to access the pipe.

A similar event occurred two years later when Abigail Taylor, age 6, died nine months after several of her internal organs were partially sucked out of her lower body while she sat on an excessively powerful swimming pool drain. After several months, surgeons replaced her intestines and pancreas with donor organs. Unfortunately, she later succumbed to a rare transplant-related cancer.

On January 17, 2007, in Paso Robles, California, a woman who has stolen millions of dollars from her millionaire husband played with the money in her personal vanity room. An earthquake then shook the room and she was crushed to death after the heavy sacks of money on the shelf fell on her.

On August 11, 2007, Miami, Oklahoma, a drunken clown who strangely enough suffered from coulrophobia (fear of clowns) as a child, was driving to his next kiddie party. After stopping suddenly, a CO2 canister in his car activated thereby inflating a giant balloon he used for his act. He was too drunk to sense the danger and when he did it, is too late. He died from suffocation after the balloon pinned him inside his car. If he was sober, he would have gotten out of his car as fast as he could before the balloon enveloped him.

On August 12, 2007, at the reservoir at New River in Arizona, a college student jumped off a cliff and into the lake but he hit the water at an angle where water rushed into his rectum and ruptured his large intestine. He died. That is one of the consequences of jumping into water from a high place.

On August 20, 2008, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a man who was traumatized by his abusive uncle who abused him while wearing a cow suit; develops a fetish of being humiliated by animals. His fetish then drove him to sneak into a barn one day to drink milk from a cow's udder, but when he bit down too hard on one of the cow’s teat, he was killed after the cow kicked him in the face.

On October 29, 2003, in Los Angeles, California, an unhappily married couple took a hike in the mountains, only the husband planned on murdering his wife to make it look like an accident, so that he can have her insurance money. He tried to take a photo with his wife so that he can push her off the cliff, but he ended up tripping and falling off himself breaking most of his bones on the ground below and being killed in the process.

On November 7, 2008, in Hollywood, California, a musician who was about to be evicted by his landlord, hid out in his hide-a-bed in his wall. The bed got stuck and he suffocated since no one could hear his cries for help because he sound-proofed his apartment.

In 2009, Sergey Tuganov, a 28-year-old Russian, bet two women that he could continuously have sex with them both for twelve hours. Several minutes after winning the $4,300 bet, he suffered a heart attack and died. It is believed that the heart attack was the result of Tuganov ingesting an entire bottle of Viagra just after accepting the bet.

This following story also proves that old age that too much of a good thing can be fatal. A man's erectile dysfunction caused his sexual life with his wife to fail. At dinner his wife ground up three Viagra pills and slipped them unseen into his beer in an attempt to ‘jump start’ his sex drive. He then got a call from his mistress and took three more Viagra pills before he left his house. Later on, his mistress dropped three more Viagra pills unseen into his drink. The man who by then had taken nine times the recommended dose of Viagra when he began to have sex with his mistress and after his orgasm, he died from a heart attack after overdosing on the Viagra. It must have been one hell of an orgasm. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to brag about it.

In 2009, Vladimir Likhonos, a Ukrainian student, died after accidentally dipping a piece of homemade chewing gum into a sensitive explosive he was using on another project. He mistook the jar of explosive material for citric acid, which was also on his desk. The gum exploded, blowing off his jaw and most of the lower part of his face.

I don’t know the dates in which these following fools died.

Three fools got high off of the paint fumes from their aerosol spray paint cans. They later found some varnish and poured it all over their clothes so that they could get high off of it. One of the fools then lit a cigarette causing his clothes to ignite, engulfing him in flames. He died by being burned to death because the other two fools couldn’t get near him lest their own clothes burst into flames also.

A young couple got high on painkillers in their hot tub. The hot tub temperature gauge malfunctioned causing the temperature in the hot tub to rise resulting in them boiling them to death. Why didn’t they get out of the tub? They didn't get out because they were too high to notice what was happening to them.

Two Japanese American teenagers got bored of their video games and samurai movies so they began to fight each other with real samurai swords. Just when one of the teens tried to kill the other, his sword came into contact with a bare high voltage electric wire above him which resulted in him immediately being killed by electrocution.

Five strippers posing as college cheerleaders organizing a car wash fundraiser to con men out of their money. When they washed an old widower's car, they dried off the car with an electric car buffer. However the buffer had an exposed wire and it got wet causing all five strippers to be electrocuted simultaneously. They all died.

A man with anger issues was invited to watch wrestling with a group of friends. He then fought with them and in an attempt to tackle one of the guys; he tripped over his own foot and crashed head first through the television set; embedding glass shards into his skull, breaking his neck and electrocuting him.

An elderly widower who hated Christmas went outside with rotten fruit in his hands to pelt carolers who where on his property. A hailstorm suddenly occurred and he was killed when suddenly a two pound chunk of hail fell on his head. If he had any sense, he would not have tried to chase the carolers of his property.

This reminds me of the true story of a Greek who two thousand years ago was afraid to go outside because when he was a small child, his mother was told by a seer that if he did, he would die. When he was an old man, he finally decided to test fate so he stepped outside for the first time in his life. As fate would have it, within minutes of him stepping outside of his home, a large bird carrying a turtle it had captured accidentally dropped it and it fell on the Greek’s head and killed him. Now that is what I call fate.

A woman who was always drinking energy drinks so that she could work harder. As most people know, energy drinks have large amounts of caffeine in them. When humans drink caffeine, (which is actually a drug) it acts as a stimulant which can make us feel more awake and alert. It's also known to affect heart rates and force the heart to work harder. The woman was working hard to impress her boss for a promotion. Her boss offered her the promotion but he told her that to get the promotion, she would have to engage in oral sex with him. In disgust she refused and guzzled down more energy drinks. Then she saw the new employee get the promotion. She barged into her employer’s office in anger and suddenly her heart stopped because of the caffeine overdose.

A purse snatcher's windpipe was crushed by an elderly woman who had over 30 years of experience in Taekwondo after he tried to steal her purse. You have to watch these old folks. Some have been known to carry concealed weapons.

To prepare for a farting contest, a college student hired a flatulence trainer. (I didn’t now that such a trainer exists; did you?) When the trainer held a lit blow torch near the student's buttocks, it killed the student when gases emanating from his anus caught on fire. I guess I will have to explain this to you as to how this could happen. Gastrointestinal gas (farts) is a heterogeneous mixture of gasses that have been swallowed and which have passed through the digestive system, gasses that have been released from the bloodstream into the intestine, gasses that have been generated by the interaction of internal fluids, and gasses that have been generated in the intestine by the action of microorganisms. In general, the major components of gastrointestinal gas are Nitrogen (N2), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Oxygen (O2), Hydrogen (H2) and Methane (CH4). These five gasses represent 99% of the gastrointestinal gasses. Methane is used as a fuel and NASA is looking into its potential use as rocket fuel so it follows that you don’t want to be bringing a flame in the immediate area where Methane mixed with Oxygen and Hydrogen is leaking, if you follow my meaning.

A talented but clumsy violinist fell down a flight of stairs. Refusing to break the fall with her hands, she ended up slamming her head against the wall on the way down, fracturing her skull and killing her. I have some mixed thoughts about her actions before she was killed in her fall. Twenty years ago, I tripped over a wire in our living room and on the way down; I braced myself with my right arm lest I fall on my face. The upper bone in my right arm literally broke in two and in doing so; it tore some of my nerves in the arm. I no longer have full use of my arm and a day doesn’t go by when I don’t feel pain in my right arm. Now had I fallen on my face; well I won’t ponder that possibility. The pain in my arm is bad enough.

A robber trying to hide from the police in a drainage pipe; got stuck in it. When night time approached, rats appeared and they begin to eat him alive all the way to his brain. That is a horrible way to pay for one’s crime. Of course, he didn’t suffer as long as Mithridates did in 401 B.C., who was condemned for the murder of Cyrus the Younger. He was executed by scaphism, (the insect torture) for 17 days before he died from the insect bites.

A French maid performed a striptease for an old millionaire who was hooked up to a respirator. The maid then plugged in Christmas lights and wrapped them around herself to amuse the old man. It caused the house's circuits to overload resulting in a power failure. The respirator stopped working and the man died due to lack of oxygen. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as she was explaining to the cops how the old man died.

An Italian man made the mistake of borrowing money from the Mafia and was forced to dig his own grave as two mobsters who were going to shoot him were having a picnic in the Sicilian countryside. While digging, the man inadvertently dug up a shrapnel grenade which was left over from World War II. He threw the live grenade at the two sitting killers which then blew up in the mobster’s faces.

A necrophiliac (a person who likes having sex with dead bodies) had sex with a corpse before delivering it to a funeral home. Before driving to the funeral, he forgot to secure the wheels of the cart holding the casket in place and after suddenly stopping after almost hitting a car in front of him, the casket rolled to the front of the car ramming into his head and severing his brainstem. Obviously, his mind wasn’t on his work.

A paroled man planed to rob a jewelry store. He put a pair of pantyhose over his head and the material was so dark, he could barely see where he was going. For this reason, it caused him to walk into a gun store next door with gun in hand instead of the jewelry store. The customers and employees in the gun store shot him to death in self defense.

A drunken man missed his chance to have sex with a women so when he saw a wild raccoon and caught it, he tried to have sex by putting his penis in the animal’s mouth. Big mistake. His penis was severely bitten by the raccoon and he subsequently bled to death.

A woman was riding on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle when the vibrations of the motorcycle caused her to have an orgasm and for a moment she forgot that she is still on the motorcycle until she fell off the bike and broke most of her bones, killing her. Many years ago when I was riding my motor bike, a woman sitting behind me tried to fondle me. I told her to stop. Being fondled and driving a motor bike at the same time are not compatible, I assure you.

A thief who has just stolen groceries from a blind pregnant woman was on the run from the police. He hid in a car wash to evade them but car wash owner not being aware that the their was in the car wash then turned on the car wash for a daily maintenance check. The thief tried to find the exit of the car wash but was disoriented by the spraying water nozzles and the moving brushes. Not being able to see where he was going, he ran headlong into a water nozzle which impaled his head, resulting in his cranium being filled up with water. The pressure of the water in his skull caused his head to explode.

A man cheated in a cock fighting competition by placing razor blades on his rooster's feet. His rooster immediately killed his opponent's rooster but his opponent immediately noticed this and pointed it out to the crowd. The crowd then turned into an angry mob and before they could kill the cheater, the man's own rooster cut his jugular vein, causing him to bleed to death.

A woman went online via a webcam with her husband who was away on business. She tried to sexually gratify him by duct taping her mouth shut and handcuffing herself to the chair that she was sitting in. After she was handcuffed to the chair, a robber broke into her house and after he robbed her, he talked to her while standing close to her. Because the robber had extremely bad breath, she began to vomit as response to the robber’s breath but the duct tape prevented the vomit from exiting her mouth. The vomit then traveled from her mouth into her lungs. She then drowned in her own fluids. Tying yourself up is stupid enough but taping your mouth also just adds to the stupidity.

Two dwarf wrestlers got paid lots money by battling each other for a crowd. They celebrated one night by going to a hotel room to have sex with women and to get drunk. They trashed the hotel room and then they tried to impress the women by running their heads into the wall hoping to break it. One successfully put a hole in the wall with his head but the other ended up running head on into a 2x4 stud that was in the wall. The veins inside his head burst and he died from combination of brain swelling and loss of blood.

A man who was paranoid to the point of insomnia, placed booby traps around his house to protect himself from burglars. To get some much needed sleep he took sleeping pills that were prescribed by his doctor, but the pills came with the side effect of sleep walking. In his sleep walking state, he walked to the refrigerator to get some food avoiding every trap he placed in the house but when he sat down on the couch, he triggered a laser operated shotgun which shot him in the head.

Two men searched the world for the ultimate high. They went to Peru to look for the Colorado River Toad so that they can get high off of the hallucinogenic effects of its secretions but they end finding a Yellow Banded Poison Dart Frog. They licked the secretions hoping that they can get high off of it but the frog's poisonous secretions paralyzed them and shut down their hearts.

A woman gardener was searching for a vegetable in her garden to practice oral sex on for an upcoming date. She found a zucchini and placed in her mouth while she was walking to her house. She accidentally stepped on the blade of a hoe. The handle then sprung upwards and hit the zucchini which was then forcefully lodged into her windpipe, choking her to death.

A drunken man and his equally drunken friend got into a car and drove on road in the country. The driver felt sick and stuck his head out of the window to throw up. Not noticing the mailbox in front of him, he hit his head on the mailbox and was decapitated.

A boxer who lived a secret life as a cross dresser got confronted by a rapist who didn't know that the female he was attacking was actually a man. In self defense the cross dresser punched the rapist so hard, the rapist died from brain damage.

A brewer sampled a taste of his family whiskey and asked his workers to perfect it. He gets drunk after sampling the whiskey repeatedly but ended up making the batch. He wanted to update the family recipe which was locked in a safe but he was too drunk to remember the combination. In a fit of drunken rage, he kicked the safe but ended getting a cut on his big toe. His cut soon got severely infected and he died two weeks later from blood poisoning. He should have sought medical help. Back in the 1950s, I got blood poisoning after climbing a mountain in British Columbia. Within days, the pain was so bad; I went to a doctor who immediately said I was suffering from blood poisoning. I was hospitalized for several days. The doctor in the hospital said that I was within days of dying of blood poisoning.

A woman asked a man with asthma to smell spices for a meal she was preparing for him. The man inhaled the spices and then suddenly he stopped breathing due to an asthma attack. He died because he had used up his inhaler from smelling the previous spices he was asked to smell.

An elderly man was sitting in his old car and he later passed away while he was still in it. Meanwhile, a thug robbed a gas station nearby. While the robber was fleeing the scene, the old man's car emergency brakes suddenly failed and the car rolled down a hill while the thug was running across the street. Then he was run over by the moving car and killed. Even when you are fleeing from the police, you should follow the instructions your mother gave you when you were a child. Look both ways before you cross the street.

When three friends took an airplane trip after scuba diving, Nitrogen bubbles formed in their blood and they became paralyzed from decompression sickness so there was nothing they could do to stop the plane from crashing to the ground and killing them.

A fish fanatic created his own fish-suit to swim like a fish and took it to a lake to try it out on a hot summer day. Unable to cool down his body because of the suit, he eventually died of a heat stroke.

A chef who earned a living cooking and serving dangerous and endangered animals sold on the black market in a restaurant was killed by the poisonous king cobra that he tried to cook when it escaped and bit him on the cheek.

All of these deaths were needless and caused by stupidity. No doubt there were millions of other needless and stupid deaths that occurred that I haven’t read about. Do you think that what happened to these people is nature’s way of culling (not killing but culling) the human population on earth to reduce our planet’s population growth?