• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Strange Deaths

escargot said:
A toddler removed 'button batteries' from a remote control and died of internal bleeding after swallowing one or more.

What I find is unusual here is that a small child could access the batteries. There is no mention of the control as faulty or broken so the batteries must have been easy to remove.

Who'd imagine a TV remote could be so dangerous? :(

BBC report -

Two-year-old's button battery death sparks warning
Click to expand...
I know pretty much all of the devices i have, that are easily accessable, that use button batteries, have a screw to close the battery compartment, ive not seen a remote control which uses them at all.
 
I have had button batteries explode through old age. Don't put them in your camera and leave it in a drawer for 20 years.
 
Cochise said:
I have had button batteries explode through old age. Don't put them in your camera and leave it in a drawer for 20 years.
Click to expand...
Old button batteries tend to explode - "they" recommend you leave them in the watch, where they are tightly encased and dispose of them immediately when you take them out. A while back we used a bunch of artificial tea candles powered by button batteries. When the batteries were dead, we put them all in a pot to be disposed of later. My wife reported an odd pop one day, and some items on a shelf having been moved about, and some batteries lying around. I found a button battery had exploded amongst all the others, sending half of it flying into the air, and landing on the floor, also blowing half a dozen other batteries into the air and scattering them over the shelf and floor, in turn knocking things over on the shelf.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Old button batteries tend to explode - "they" recommend you leave them in the watch, where they are tightly encased and dispose of them immediately when you take them out. A while back we used a bunch of artificial tea candles powered by button batteries. When the batteries were dead, we put them all in a pot to be disposed of later. My wife reported an odd pop one day, and some items on a shelf having been moved about, and some batteries lying around. I found a button battery had exploded amongst all the others, sending half of it flying into the air, and landing on the floor, also blowing half a dozen other batteries into the air and scattering them over the shelf and floor, in turn knocking things over on the shelf.
Click to expand...
Almost exactly my experience. Except mine were mostly dead ones from old cameras.
 
On the video it looks like the water and ham form a short the battery gets hot and
expands bursting the seal, it happened surprisingly quickly at least to me it did.
 
RaM said:
Sounds pretty horrific , you would think it would pass through
long before the acids had time to eat it.
Click to expand...
Yup, if a child were lucky they could pass it but once it got stuck it's a disaster.
Or it might leak as soon as it was wet, as demonstrated in the video.

As @Coastaljames says, acid leaking from the battery can burn through flesh. It's demonstrated with a battery and slices of ham.

Parents used to be warned about the dangers of suffocation to small children from plastic bags. Perhaps there should be a similar campaign about button batteries.

(Have to say that if this had happened when my kids were small the doofers'd be on high shelves or locked away, out of reach of tiny hands, along with hot drinks, medicines, scissors, tools, kitchen or DIY chemicals, blades; anything that they could hurt themselves with.

My generation of British parents might have been extra-conscious, as I certainly was, about hazards in the home. The 'Play it Safe' media campaign about child safety at home was led with a 10-episode TV series first shown in late 1981.

It was presented by that late stalwart upholder of children's rights and safety, Jimmy Savile.)
 
Souleater said:
I know pretty much all of the devices i have, that are easily accessable, that use button batteries, have a screw to close the battery compartment, ive not seen a remote control which uses them at all.
Click to expand...
My assumption was that the remote in question was a TV one. I've only ever seen normal batteries in those but I dunno, I thought maybe newer ones had different type that I hadn't come across.

So was it a different type of remote control with the batteries insecure for some reason? :thought:

That's enough speculation from me.
 
We had a scare with our Daughter she managed to eat a thermometer,
It passed through without any problems but she was under observation
in hospital for a few days.
Now we knew were it had been in the top of one of the high cupboards
above one of the kitchen units well as we thought out of reach but no we
had that wrong.
We asked her how she got it, she showed us how, she opened the 3 drawers
and used them as steps, then used something on the work top as another
step to open the cupboard and reach the thermometer, luckily o harm done
but we learned something that day.
Kids will always surprise you they don't miss much.
 
RaM said:
We had a scare with our Daughter she managed to eat a thermometer,
It passed through without any problems but she was under observation
in hospital for a few days.
Now we knew were it had been in the top of one of the high cupboards
above one of the kitchen units well as we thought out of reach but no we
had that wrong.
We asked her how she got it, she showed us how, she opened the 3 drawers
and used them as steps, then used something on the work top as another
step to open the cupboard and reach the thermometer, luckily o harm done
but we learned something that day.
Kids will always surprise you they don't miss much.
Click to expand...
Too right. I was raised with a dread of having kids choke, possibly because of some tragic historical family incident that was never talked of.
The little ***********s are obsessed with shoving whatever they can get hold of into their mouths and up their noses.
(And, well, anywhere they can fit things.)

The unrivalled queen of pica was my neighbour's daughter who ate dogshit when she was about 18 months old.

Glad I didn't see that! :yuck:
 
A Taiwanese boy has died after being thrown 27 times during a judo class.

"A seven-year-old boy who was slammed to the floor 27 times during judo practice has died in Taiwan.

In April, he had suffered severe brain haemorrhaging after a judo class which saw both his classmate and his coach practise their throws on him.

The boy, who has not been identified, later went into a coma and was placed on life support.

His parents decided to withdraw life support after 70 days, according to local media reports."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57661414
 
Salt overdose is really deadly!
And the required dose is lower than I expected. (I just discovered PubMed):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28644412/

In 27 reports, there were 35 fatalities documented (19 in adults and 16 in children). The lethal dose was estimated to be less than 10 g of sodium (<5 teaspoons of salt) in two children, and less than 25 g sodium in four adults (<4 tablespoons of salt).

I'm binge watching this Youtube channel:
 
RaM said:
Sounds pretty horrific , you would think it would pass through
long before the acids had time to eat it.
Click to expand...

They normally do. Even batteries that have been pierced usually never cause problems. The main issue with swallowing batteries is blockages.

I'm assuming the size of the victim was the reason the batteries proved fatal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RaM
Thank god I don't have kids! I'd worry myself to death about what they might ingest. Batteries was something that I'd never thought about until @escargot's post above. Previously I'd merely focused all my (purely theoretical) worry on the thought of children swallowing magnets (like this - one of many cases):

Newry boy has part of gut removed after swallowing magnets​

Now I have something else to obsese about. :bthumbup:Many thanks escargot! :bthumbup:

:wink2:
 
Last edited:
Not sure if this is "silly mistakes" or "strange deaths". The story says "Lightning strikes kill some 2,000 Indians on average every year," so perhaps it's not so strange, but the circumstances are definitely silly.

A large group of people taking selfies on top of a watchtower in a thunder storm. What could possibly go wrong? This:

Opening paragraph:
A lightning strike killed at least 11 people and injured many more in Jaipur in northern India on Sunday.
The victims were taking selfies in the rain on top of a watch tower at the city's 12th Century Amer Fort, a popular tourist attraction.
Twenty-seven people were on the tower and the wall of the fort when the incident happened and some reportedly jumped to the ground.
Link to story here.

I'm reminded of a passage in Pratchett:
... he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting “All gods are bastards”.
 
This Missouri story could have gone into Strange Crimes or Dumbest Criminals, but it seems deaths caused by acting out movie scenes end up here in Strange Deaths.
Fulton woman pleads guilty for shooting boyfriend while acting out movie scene

The woman accused of killing her boyfriend while acting out a movie scene pleaded guilty Friday.

Kalesha Marie Peterson, 40, of Fulton, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the first degree.

David Dalton died of a single gunshot wound to the head in March 2019. Peterson called 911 immediately after shooting Dalton.

The judge sentenced Peterson to 8 years in prison.

Peterson admitted she had been drinking whiskey and was intoxicated ...

She told police they were acting out a scene from the movie Deadpool with a handgun that was loaded.
Click to expand...
FULL STORY: https://www.komu.com/news/midmissou...cle_8cb41d7c-ebd8-11eb-bde9-a7d55895805b.html
 
Spudrick68 said:
Man dies after accidently swallowing his car keys.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...-and-chokes-to-death/ar-AAN9L2J?ocid=msedgntp
Click to expand...
Was he perhaps holding the keys in his mouth?

If he'd hired a car and was on holiday he wouldn't have a big bunch of keys with him like a person might at home. There'd perhaps just be one for the car and one for the holiday accommodation.
He might have been in the dangerous habit of holding keys in his mouth while both hands were occupied. Just two keys would slip down quite easily.

(People often hold sewing pins and needles in their mouths instead of putting them down. A terrible habit as they are far too easy to swallow.
I make myself little wrist-mounted pincushions to wear so I can avoid this. Same with screws and nails; I have have little tubs and magnets handy for them. )
 
RaM said:
I could understand how swallowing the flip key for my car
but cant think why you would stick it in your gob.
Click to expand...
A lot of people hold things in their mouths especially if they have no hands free. One might fall into a routine of putting the keys in the mouth while juggling with bags and phone.

Forensic odontologists know all this and can look for evidence of deceased people's occupations and hobbies: cobblers for example can have deformed teeth from keeping nails there and tailor and dressmakers might wear the edge of a tooth by biting through thread. (One of my teeth has this.)

It's not clever though, if only from the angle of hygiene. Bleurgh.
 
Like all the young girls they had painting luminous watch and clock faces
they would lick the brush to shape the point but most ended up with
mouth cancer due to the radium 226 in the glowing paint
 
RaM said:
Like all the young girls they had painting luminous watch and clock faces
they would like the brush to shape the point but most ended up with
mouth cancer due to the radium 226 in the glowing paint
Click to expand...
Yup, the 'Radium girls'. That was a terrible tragedy. Back then nobody knew how dangerous the substance was and more than 50 of the women died of the cancer.

The awful thing was that they were instructed to lick the brushes to reshape them after painting each number on the dials. It was totally avoidable.
 
They would also paint their faces with radium and hide themselves in closets without any light on as a joke. I saw a very sad documentary about them, with interviews with the then-survivors. They'll be dead now, they had cancer then.
 
escargot said:
Was he perhaps holding the keys in his mouth?

If he'd hired a car and was on holiday he wouldn't have a big bunch of keys with him like a person might at home. There'd perhaps just be one for the car and one for the holiday accommodation.
He might have been in the dangerous habit of holding keys in his mouth while both hands were occupied. Just two keys would slip down quite easily.

(People often hold sewing pins and needles in their mouths instead of putting them down. A terrible habit as they are far too easy to swallow.
I make myself little wrist-mounted pincushions to wear so I can avoid this. Same with screws and nails; I have have little tubs and magnets handy for them. )
Click to expand...
Modern car keys are not small things, the key to my car is a card that would be pretty much impossible to swallow
 
RaM said:
Like all the young girls they had painting luminous watch and clock faces
they would lick the brush to shape the point but most ended up with
mouth cancer due to the radium 226 in the glowing paint
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the 'match girls' who suffered terribly with 'phossy jaw'

images (1).jpeg
 
Nosmo King said:
Modern car keys are not small things, the key to my car is a card that would be pretty much impossible to swallow
Click to expand...
Yup, they are mostly quite big these days. Swallowing one might be quite a feat. Swallow it he did though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top