People who died in freak accidents

The whole Sam Ballard story is so disgusting, freaky, weird. I'll let you look it up - if you dare.

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Hi....my name is Chris Burrous....

I read a story about a kid slipping in the shower on his HS graduation day. He broke his neck and died.

That story haunts me.

This one

I was going to compile a list of artists who met odd deaths. Middleton Manigault believed his hallucinations would enhance his art, but he starved himself to death. J. Frank Currier said goodbye to his brother at the train station then threw himself under the train. Frank Tenney Johnson kissed his hostess good-night after dinner, she died of spinal meningitis a few days later and he a week later. Carel Fanritius, painter of The Goldfinch, died from an armory explosion near his house in Delft. The painter Alfred Maurer (whose work I admire) was forced to live with his father for many years due to poverty. When his father died at the ago of 100 Alfred hung himself a week later.

^Fabritius

I forgot to add that Maurer's relationship with his father was extremely unpleasant, I'm sure for both of them. His father was a traditional painter and Alfred was a modernist and they despised each others work.

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a "freak" death, but my innate, reflexive, defense mechanism engaged when Mr. Irwin violated my space.

A young man in my area (I knew his sister) worked in a food factory and one day he slipped and fell into a boiling vat of pickle juice and died. Truth is stranger than fiction.

well, check this in-depth investigation from Vanity Fair, a fascinating read!

This is just over the border from me in TX, almost too much to comprehend. A man at a local pottery died when he was LOCKED in the automated pottery kiln, you can imagine the outcome.

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This one still haunts my dreams.

I knew a guy who fell into a giant mixer at a Colonial bread factory.

This one happened not too far away from me. Not exactly what you want in your Bumblebee tuna.

[quote]you can imagine the outcome.

A matte terra cotta finish?

He touched me in my no-no place, R14.

I knew a woman whose daughter was partying after hours with circus workers/carnies.

Drunk, they decided it was a good idea to raise hell with the elephants and went into their trailer. The daughter got caught between the elephant and wall of the trailer and was crushed to death.

Here's another "crushed by elephant" death

R10, R15, and R16 Yes, those who meet an untimely death and freak accident in a food factory freak me out the most. Even when they don't die, yet lose limbs or digits, those freak me out as well.

Poor Anton Yelchin who was pinned by his car. I think he had a lot of potential.

I knew of a man who was beheaded by a tree in a hurricane.

Froze to death

The segway inventor who died failing off a Segway.

R18, I, Rubbit

talking about the car, a few years ago, I had a rental and it came with this then brand new keyless ignition technology, push the button to start the engine and there was no key to insert, the purpose of the key fob is to let "car" know the owner is inside the car, you need the key fob nearby to start the engine, but once it is started, the detection of key fob is no longer needed, unless you turn it off by pushing the button, the can will keep running even after you grabbed the key and walked out the car. I felt something was off with this new keyless ignition, I was not used to it. Soon, , news came out there were deaths and injuries caused by it, people forgot the car was still running in the garage, the buildup of carbon monoxide killed the family.

Not as grisly as some of the above, but Isadora Duncan's demise involving her long scarf getting caught in the wheel/axle of a convertible haunts me.

Women Dies After She Falls Off Escalator While Reaching to Grab Hat

Garry Hoy, the lawyer from Toronto who ran into the glass of the Toronto high rise where he worked to demonstrate its durability and fell to his death when the entire sheet of glass popped out of its frame with him following.

Not so much an accident as stupidity but I imagine it was jarring to the group who was watching.

Dan Motherfuck is the patron saint of this thread.

[quote]Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:28:03 GMT — The family of a 6-year-old girl whose intestines were partially sucked out by a Minnesota swimming pool drain last year says the child has died.

[quote]Family attorney Bob Bennett says Abigail Taylor's parents were with her when she died Thursday evening at a Nebraska hospital.

[quote]Abigail was injured when she sat on a pool drain and its powerful suction ripped out part of her intestinal tract on June 29. She had small bowel, liver and pancreas transplants but suffered complications.

Toronto was [italic]over[/italic], R30.

OP Look for the Smothers Brothers song "Chocolate" on Youtube, it's made for you.

The Houston doctor who was decapitated by an elevator in the early 00s. His head went up while the rest of his body stayed in the lobby. I believe his colleague was in the elevator with the head.

That poor guy in Indonesia who was swallowed whole by a snake a few years ago. There are nasty pics of the snake after they tore up its belly online...A pretty gruesome sight.

This 2013 Python attack in New Brunswick that killed two young boys has always stayed with me. Just grisly.

Butane and propane induced heart attack after months of deodorant abuse.

[quote]His father Keith Capewell said: "When we told him he was using too much, he said he just wanted to smell good."

[quote]He said that his son was using so much deodorant that "even when we were in a room downstairs we couldn't just smell it, we could taste it".

My best friend from high school died in a hang gliding accident at age 27.

[quote]This one happened not too far away from me. Not exactly what you want in your Bumblebee tuna.

I was going to mention this one. It's the reason I never eat Bumblebee tuna.

There's a lengthy list on Wikipedia. It's more than a bit creepy, either because the deaths are so bizarre or because they happened to people doing very ordinary things.

The Great Molasses Flood, Boston 1919. Twenty-one dead.

Thanks, R40. There are many crazy deaths there! I'm not done reading, but I have to love the one of the woman who walked naked into her rented villa's airing cupboard and closed the door. When she went to leave, a piece of the door handle broke off. She used the broken piece to dig into the wall, only to break a pipe that flooded the cabinet with ice cold water. She was found dead days later.

Cruise ship grandpa's granddaughter

A worker at a Phillip Morris facility in Virginia got pulled into a cigarette making machine. Yikes.

Jefferey Epstein.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I was on a mock jury for a horrific accident in my area, toddler fell into uncovered septic tank while visiting someone's home.

I witnessed the worst of humanity amongst my fellow mock jurors.

About three years ago, a Texas woman died in Ocean City Maryland while on a family vacation at the beach. She had gone for a walk on the beach after midnight and disappeared. Authorities believe that she came across a 3- to-4-foot deep hole and decided to sit down in it. Then the hole collapsed, and she was unable to get out. The next morning, the tourist walking on the beach noticed a human arm revealed in the sand, leading to the discover of the body.

Several people have died while playing in sand. In 2014, a nine-year-old girl had dug a hole on the beach with some playmates. She got in to see how deep the hole was, and the walls collapsed. Several onlookers tried to dig her out, but sand kept falling back into the hole. It took more than five minutes to pull her out, and by then she was unconscious. She died at the hospital.

It's extra horrible that this happened when these people were on vacation.

R34- There is an episode of Six Feet Under that has a scene where a man gets decapitated by an elevator.

[quote] “...you can imagine the outcome.”

His eyes glazed over, no doubt.

Steel worker fell into the giant ladle of molten steel. I'm told that all one heard when it happened was the brief, split-second sizzle and that was that. "SSSST"

If I die on vacation I will be really pissed off.

R25 he wasn't the inventor, he bought the company.

A coworker's wife worked at the university hospital. She was somehow locked into the room-size autoclave and it was turned on. Boiled/steamed to death.

Sure, he got a settlement, but he gets to imagine her trapped and suffering night after night after night. Poor man.

R30, well, to his credit, he was right about the glass not breaking...well, you know, until he and it hit the pavement from 24 stories up.

Sounds like murder to me, R53

I remember that R47! It was so bizarre - I can't imagine being at the beach & spending the time to dig a hole that big, never mind thinking: well, how about I go sit in this hole for a while & see what happens?

Not exactly "freak" accidents, but the worst accidents are when people accidently run over small children (and I mean "accident", Mr. Patsy Ramsey, formerly of Boulder, CO!)

I had a friend named Allan from 7th grade until high school. Ironically enough when I started working full time at 19 I worked with his grandmother. When he was about 21 he was deer hunting with his dad. Dad put his rifle down against a rock with the safety off and it fell off the rock, discharged and shot Allan in the head. He died instantly.

R50 what did they do with the molten steel? Did they fashion girders for skyscrapers from it? Was the carbon percentage still within specs?

R50 Don Martin would have had a better sound for this:

that dude who died while a horse fucks him.

The poor woman sucked out of a Southwest airplane window

Quite a few people have died in wood chipper accidents. I saw a picture of the aftermath of one. Don’t do it.

Obituary Notice: John Peach, truckman, "drowned near South Bridge, Salem, by falling through the ice while in pursuit of a hat," Jan. 29, 1830.

Somebody should do something about these lethal hats.

Here’s a coincidence: The first guy who died while building the Hoover Dam was he father of the last guy who died building it. It’s odd how previous generations seemed to consider such construction deaths to just be a fact of life. Today, even a single death is unacceptable.

Four workers died during the massive, decades-long Big Dig project in Boston that involved creation of a tunnel under the city’s financial district, and another under Boston Harbour, plus much more. Considering the size of the project, just the sheer number of people involved would register some deaths, even if they were all just going to the beach, so I suppose that’s not too bad. After it was completed, a section collapsed on a motorist. They discovered the tunnel cement-ceiling was glued-on, rather than bolted on as required, a major screw-up. The tunnel also had problems with more leaks than anticipated. I hope they solved that one.

The largest brIdle in Connecticut where I grew up was completed in 1943. It’s been rumored that some number of young men fell into the concrete supports as they were hardening and were never fished out, so became permanently entombed in them. That seems unlikely as the supports are not a solid mass on concrete, but instead are steel reinforced. plus, the bodies would interfere with the strength of the supporting structure. But that’s the “local lore”.

About 25 years ago, my gym used to host all night parties for local graduating senior classes. A young woman got into a hotter by the pool and submerged to pull her hair back. Her backside hit the drain at the bottom and the suction from it acted like a vacuum. They couldn't pull her off it, and she drowned. The cut-off switch was in the basement.

Now, it's mandatory to have emergency cut-ff switches near the tub.

God, that sounds awful, R65, Charlie. Reminds me of the child who had her guts sucked out of her by a swimming pool vacuum. I have read that it isn’t an unusual occurrence, too. It’s sickening. Some of these stories makes me wonder how people actually can live long enough to procreate.

This story actually has a happy ending but the son of an acquaintance got caught in an avalanche while skiing and was totally engulfed by snow, unable to move. Thankfully, he was wearing a device with a transponder so his brother, who was skiing nearby, was able to find him and dug him up enough so he could breathe. That story just scared the shit out of me, knowing you were stuck there and couldn't do anything about it.

Six Feet Under had great weird deaths.

The deaths where people get cooked by steam or fall into something boiling or corrosive always seem particularly terrible. It seems like the pain is prolonged and the death is slow and agonizing.

And, R68, I think all of the deaths were based on actual deaths.

R42 A similar thing happened to a man in Britain. He got locked into his windowless bathroom. He was able to live for weeks by drinking water. Eventually he tore a hole in the wall and hit a pipe. After being drenched for days, he died of pneumonia.

A woman disappeared and was found quite a while later behind a bedroom dresser. She was petite, and for whatever reason fell head first between the dresser and the wall.

Two woman in England went missing. A small landslide buried their car in under rocks. The rock slide was small enough that road maintenance took their time clearing it, only to find their car underneath.

R70 here. I forgot the one about the woman decapitated by a mailbox. She was a passenger in a car. She put her head out the window because she wasn't feeling well and hit the mailbox. Her friend didn't realize what had happened and drove a distance.

Decades ago, teenagers in a convertible crashed. One of the passengers was catapulted through the second-story window of a house.

R57 sounds fishy, were there witnesses? Maybe the dad just killed him.

The boy who was found dead inside a roll-up wrestling mat. Authorities said that his shoe fell into a mat, which was upright and leaning against a wall. He apparently climbed in head-first and got wedged in.

Wasn't a body found in the air ducts of Studio 54? They think he was trying to sneak in and got stuck.

Just within the last couple of years, a teenager was found dead in a chimney.

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Magician "The Amazing Joe" Burrus was killed when a "coffin escape" stunt, made famous by Harry Houdini, went horribly wrong. Burrus, bound at the wrists and ankles, was placed in a homemade (!) plexiglass (!!) coffin and buried under 7 tons of dirt and, to one-up Houdini, wet concrete. Onlookers reported hearing the plexiglass cracking as the "grave" was being filled. Almost immediately after the cement truck drove off, the coffin collapsed. Someone on Reddit calculated that between 8 and 11 thousand pounds of weight came down on Burrus.

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My tennis coach.

Oh, damn, visiting the wrong thread. My tennis coach is fine and sends his love.

Death of Gareth Williams. Police visited Williams's home during the afternoon of Monday 23 August 2010, as a "welfare check" after colleagues noted he had been out of contact for several days. His decomposing naked remains were found in a red The North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom.

His family alleged that crucial DNA was interfered with and that fingerprints left at the scene were wiped off as part of a cover-up. No fingerprints, palm-prints, footprints or traces of Williams's DNA were found on the rim of the bath, the bag zip or the bag padlock. A key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body.

^R79...Police concluded, inexplicably, that the death of Gareth Williams was an accident.

Naya Rivera.

Sonny Bono...impaled by a tree while skiing.

One of the Kennedys also died in a skiing accident.

Isadora Duncan...her scarf got caught in the wheel of her lover’s convertible and she snapped her neck or something.

Freak accident in paradise. The bottom of the harness wasn't secured. He died a few days later. It is astonishing that the worker rides on the cables.

Freak accident in paradise. The bottom of the harness wasn't secured. He died a few days later. It is astonishing that the worker rides on the cables.

I knew a guy who was chopped in half by his brand new dump truck.

Some woman in a bikini crawled from the roof into a duct of a food court by a Thai restaurant got stuck, and passed away just before she was freed by the rescue team.

R82 and 83: less than week apart, too. Michael Kennedy (the one who was diddling the babysitter) hit the tree on NYE, 1997; Sonny met his end on January 5th, 1998.

On the key fob thing, I was at a gas station and a lady was getting her minivan towed. She had started the Van remotely and left the keys at the house. The house was 6 hours away in Florida. This was apparently her first stop.

OP's story is not a freak accident. Sounds like negligent safety protocols on a work site, hardly "freak" in nature. If you cut corners or don't train workers properly, this is what happens. There is no reasonable excuse for a worker "falling" into an industrial mixer. Something went horribly wrong long before that worker fell.

What r4 describes is freak: a young, healthy person dying suddenly, doing something mundane, at home, that we all do every day. It's completely unexpected and tragic.

OP's story is not a freak accident. Sounds like negligent safety protocols on a work site, hardly "freak" in nature. If you cut corners or don't train workers properly, this is what happens. There is no reasonable excuse for a worker "falling" into an industrial mixer. Something went horribly wrong long before that worker fell.

What r4 describes is freak: a young, healthy person dying suddenly, doing something mundane, at home, that we all do every day. It's completely unexpected and tragic.

Mama Cass chocking to death on a meatloaf sandwich, yeah yeah yeah I know they say it is a hoax but it is too good not to list.

It might be a hoax, but it was a ham sandwich when I heard it...

There are several cases where people fell or were pulled into a wood chipper, I am guessing they didn't have an open casket funeral.

Tennessee Williams

[quote]The boy who was found dead inside a roll-up wrestling mat.

I still don't think that was an accident.

Suicide by fruit roll up? ^

Child killed when a tire blew out, and cables from that tire ripped through the floor and seat of the van, and pulled the kid out of the van and onto the highway. Nobody could see that coming.

My dad was an attorney and he had a case when I was a kid in which the blade on a large commercial mower dislodged and killed a passing motorist. The damn thing went through her front window and didn't quite decapitate her but almost. This happened on a small two lane highway.

Since then, each time I see one of those large commercial mowers I start to sweat a little.

A 200-pound manhole cover "became dislodged and airborne" and killed an art teacher driving to her school Friday morning on a Boston highway, officials said.

A tire on a truck ahead of the killed art teacher gripped the cross piece on a storm grate, and kicked it up, into the windshield of the teacher. As a result, all the storm grates were soon inspected. They were soon after replaced with grates that ran parallel to traffic, and didn’t have a cross piece to grip on to, by other motorists.

R85 & R86, I don’t think that this was an accident. One of the handlers can be seen riding up with the tourist. Immediately, you hear fellow workers yelling out. One also waves his hands, in a motion as to say, “quit”. That handler’s actions in the air are hard to see, but it looks like he struggles with the tourist to dislodge him, and succeeds in doing so.

I call, “foul play”.

Grusome.

[quote]Gruesome.

Murdered here.

This happened in my home town, apparently while I was away in either the army or college. A friend told me about it, while we were driving up Riverside Drive. A freak wind sailed a single plank from the local minor-league ball park and dropped it straight through the window of a car driving along the same Riverside Drive, decapitating the driver. Almost like the finger of God, but I can't imagine why it might really have happened. Clinton, Iowa, sometime between the fall of 1970 and the summer of 1975. (For those of you who want to dig in deeper. I know there are far better researchers on the Lounge than me)

r31: is "Dan Motherfuck" what you call Chuck Palahniuk? Because the second book of his I tried to read after Fight Club had a main character who had his intestines sucked out after a sensuous experience with a swimming pool drain. Or was that Dan Motherfuck?

Oh, no, that was St. Gut-free. When askt by anyone (as if anyone would ask) why I stoppt reading this author, I can say it was St. Gut-free who enabled me.

Vic Morrow, actor, decapitated *and* crushed by a helicopter while filming The Twilight Zone movie in 1981. Two children were also killed.

Director Alan J. Pakula's death on the LIE -- a metal pipe fell from a truck, another car ran over the pipe, causing it to fly straight through Pakula's windshield, killing him instantly.

When I was little, I was not allowed outside when dad was mowing. This was because back in Oklahoma, some kid on my mom’s block died when their Pa was mowin’ the lawn and he went and run over a clothes pin and that mower projected it through the poor youngster’s heart, killing her, DEAD!

There was a young woman driving her car who keeled over dead. Not until the autopsy was conducted did they learn she'd been shot behind the ear. Turns out, a stray shot from a hunter at a really far distance had just enough oomph left to penetrate her soft tissue. If she'd had the window up, it would have saved her.

Natalie Wood.

This.

I'm going to hell for this but I keep watching this over and over and hear the sound bowling pins and "Sti-Riike!"

Isn't it the dream of every woman to die in the mall surrounded by beautiful things?

What hit the woman above?

A runaway shopping cart

[quote] [R85] & [R86], I don’t think that this was an accident.

Also, I understand that the video was taken by his girlfriend. She never stops the recording. Not when that guy rides up with the Australian; not when it looks like there is a struggle; and not even after he falls to the sea. Wouldn’t you drop the camera, at some point? Or are we so damaged that our society values dramatic posts over human life?

During the 1700s, conductors didn't wave a baton, they stomped the stage with a tall hand held staff to beat time for the orchestra. The French composer Lully got carried away leading one of his own pieces and stomped the staff right through his foot.

The infection got very bad and developed into gangrene. Lully's doctors told him they would have to amputate his foot to save his life. Lully was a very vain man and refused. The infection spread and he died of gangrene and sepsis.

Lully was a true Datalounger.

Some young people were having a keg party in the woods in Connecticut. An idiot put an empty keg into the fire and after a little while it exploded, injuring 7 people with the shrapnel and killing a 22 year old guy with a severe blast to the neck.

Remember the young guy from a few months ago who stuck his head out the hatch of a party bus with totally not awesome results? I think it was Jersey and there was a thread or two about it here.

The 10 year old boy who was decapitated on the water slide right in front of his family. His blood sprayed all over them. Disgusting and sickening.

R120. I never once heard that..

His blood sprayed on some bystanders though (and I think the folks behind him)

That was horrible.

Lully refused to let his doctors amputate his foot (or leg, according to which you read) not only due to his vanity but also because he loved to dance. A true Datalounger, indeed.

So he'd rather be dead than not be able to party? I've known a few people like that. They're all dead.

R120/R121: the reliable Horror channel about the boy.

r121 There's a photo of the two women family members who were sitting behind him. Their faces are flecked and spattered with blood! It's so traumatizing to see the trauma on their faces.

R125 do you have a link to the photo?

Maggie Gioberti Channing's ring got caught in a swimming pool drain and she drowned.

One of my closest friends went to high school with someone who was killed by a truck with metal bars in its bed, ala Final Destination. A bar slipped from the bundle and impaled him as he was driving behind the truck.

ANOTHER Chinese mall accident. If a visit to China is on your bucket list, make sure it’s number “last.”

[quote][R121] There's a photo of the two women family members who were sitting behind him. Their faces are flecked and spattered with blood! It's so traumatizing to see the trauma on their faces.

Actually, the two female passengers were not related to him, were also hit by the support beam, and both suffered severe facial fractures and lacerations.

So tell us more about that “photo” you saw. Was there a hidden trauma-cam?

I started a job at a Groton CT shipyard shortly before moving into a new, waterfront building. As the “new guy”, I had last choice of my office location. No one wanted to sit next to the boss, so I had to take that seat. Ironically, it faced away from, but was directly in front of the floor to ceiling window overlooking the river, I need only swivel my chair while on the phone, or face the guest chair behind me, and I had a stunning view.

This also gave visitors the impression that I was far more expert an Engineer than the fresh college graduate that I was. I cultivated that image buy habitually wearing a white shirt and tie, like the NASA engineers were known for. A power-nerd look. This was where I befriended a man I later learned was the son of the last Governor General of the Dutch East Indies. A man who had spent time in a Japanese POW camp as a child.

Anyway, I was gazing out the window one day when I, and some others, observed a cement truck jump over a New Jersey style barrier on the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, and plunge off the side. The guy had a heart attack. He certainly had another one on the way down, about 60 stories, knowing that there was a load of cement directly behind his cab as he fell.

(If the link does not resolve, it says no more that I just related.)

I had a cousin who died in a freak accident. A bearded woman ran over him with her circus car.

Maybe not so much of a "freak accident" (except nobody else died but him), one of my first sexual partners, who was chosen to host Shark Week in 2007, died before he got the chance to host when he was BASE jumping with a bunch of friends/co-workers while on a project in Canada. Apparently, there was a group of them that jumped at the same exact time and he was the only one that was slammed into the cliff and killed instantly. i didn't find out about it until a few years ago. Still kind of haunts me, this guy was such a live wire...always out for the next adventure and thrill. it was kind of hard to know that this guy i grew up with who was so driven was dead from doing the thing he loved the most - chasing the next thrill.

R133 You got fucked by Jimmy Hall? I am jealous he was pretty damn hot.

So jealous. RIP Jimmy.

i was 18 and we made out and i gave him my first ever handjob and suck (had never done that before). he was my brother's best friend and had a crush on me for a year or so which i was completely oblivious to until i went to visit my dad, my bro and him when i was 18. he was a character. i will never forget the monkey they had as a pet and how they retrofitted their entire living room with ropes/shelves for said monkey. an extremely interesting family.

R136 How old was he? He never fucked you? I like to think he was a top.

i was 18, he was 21, my brother's age - that's how we met, he was my brother's best friend. i was still a virgin at that point, so the night we spent together was like my first full-on sexual experience even though we didn't fuck - there was my brother and another guy in the room and no way was i going to lose my virginity in that scenario. i remember the next day when we all got together though on the beach in the morning and he had cum stains on his leg from our activities...i'm sure i turned so red seeing the spots on his calf. He was a nice guy, but i was not ready to go down the road then and there and he let me off easy. We played bullshit the next evening with the entire family and there was no awkwardness. We even went on a moped ride around the island together after that. great guy.

R129 I'm always perplexed that a place like China, who claims to lead on some technology development fronts, could also be so primitive, neglectful, and ill-equipped. But then again, knowing what I know about their government, it's not really shocking at all.

I say all of this, because I've seen these sorts of things happen in China time and time again. Having a larger population will result in more accidents over time, but...so many of these things seem like they could've been prevented, and only happened due to neglect where public safety is concerned (among other things). At one point I genuinely wanted to travel to China. In the last few years, I've lost that desire.

Yes, the is a neglect where public safety is concerned. Not every culture has this reverence for human lives or rights that we do. It is how they were able to stamp down on the virus so efficiently.

Don't worry, we are headed that way. The Feds just got taught that they can pass the buck back to the underfunded state services when they don't want to deal with the shit. That tide will reverse as people watch friends and relatives close to them die or go through the infection because the states are ill equipped. That will shift back to national outrage and the Feds will come back with even more authority. (Dare I say FEMA?)

I'm going to move R129 over to the foul play column right under parasailing guy. That will be all.

(1) A couple of decades ago in Oxnard, CA, a celebrant at a wedding party drowned when he fell into an open septic tank. My only question: who throws a wedding party adjacent to an open septic tank?

(2) My best friend in high school, Don. Don always drove a convertible and he always knew he would die one day in an auto accident. He told us this constantly. As a result, he always drove extremely slowly and cautiously. One night he was driving home on a city street in his Chevy convertible (top down, as always) at his usual sedate crawl, and for whatever reason, he ran into a light pole. The Chevy's front bumper was bent. Slightly. The damage? Less than a couple of hundred dollars. HOWEVER—the huge glass light globe became dislodged in the impact and crashed down directly onto poor Don's head. He died instantly.

I used to collect stories of funny deaths, but I can't find my file anywhere.

Don. He spoke it into existence.

I like this one.

There was an attraction at Disneyland called America Sings (the sister attraction at Disney World, The Carousel of Progress, still operates). The theater was round and rotated from one scene to the next. A teenage girl working as a hostess for the attraction didn't get off the rotating stage fast enough and was crushed between walls. The audience heard her scream and the theater lights flickered as her body was crushed. They closed the attraction for a respectable two days before reopening.

But as an homage to her, they renamed the ride "America Screams."

A professor at CWRU in Cleveland was ducking his wife from a window sill with a rope to keep her from falling out, rope broke. Wife died, professor went to jail for manslaughter.

R147 — Do you mean ducking or fucking? I guess either one could apply.

I have never forgotten this one. two people swing dancing after a country music concert. He accidentally drops her and she breaks her neck ad dies. just a random freak accident.

I hear working at “America Sings” is a real grind

More Disney stories: a few years ago, "Captain Jack Sparrow" was performing for guests when he slipped on a puddle of water, hit a wall, broke his neck, and later died.

The (very handsome!) guy who played Gaston was clowning around with his family and friends on the 4th of July; he attempted to launch fireworks off his back/neck. Instead, he literally blew his head to smithereens right in front of everyone.