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Strange Deaths

Worker melted in half after falling into vat of molten iron​


A 39-year-old worker died after falling into a molten iron vat of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit molten – leaving half of his body lying on the floor.

Steven Dierkes, of Peoria, Illinois, died instantly after he was presumably working alongside a crucible when he fell in, according to Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood.

Harwood said the Thursday incident – which took place at the Caterpillar Mapleton Foundry – was accidental and no foul play is suspected.

A veteran Caterpillar worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, [said] that Dierkes “was taking a sample of iron for the met lab and apparently just tripped.”

The unidentified worker explained: “He died instantly, but not all of him went in. Part of his body remained on the deck for the coroner to retrieve.

“It must have been ghastly for those folks that witnessed it and to wait for the coroner with half of their coworker lying on the floor.”

https://nypost.com/2022/06/07/worke...n-half-after-falling-into-vat-of-molten-iron/

maximus otter
 
What a horrifying thing to have to see. You would think there would be rails or something around the crucible high enough for someone not to just tumble into it. Especially if it is common practise to take a sample of iron from it.
 
It reminds me of The Cone, an H. G. Wells story, which used to turn up on the A-level syllabus*, a few years back.

It's not very well-written, to be honest; a run-of-the-mill tale of suspected marital infidelity.

The finale, at an iron-furnace, is unforgettable, however!

*I first read it about the age of ten! :omg:
 
A young Brazilian woman was killed (by electrocution) when she put her hand into her washing machine to remove clothing, thinking the machine had finished its wash cycle.
Mum, 20, killed by washing machine as she puts hand in to retrieve her clothes

A 20-year-old mum suffered a fatal electric shock when she put her hand in a washing machine thinking her load had finished.

Viviane Rodrigues was putting on a wash at her home in Juazeiro, north-east Brazil, this week.

Investigators said she suffered a massive shock when she put her hand in the machine while it was still running to retrieve some items of clothing.

Her husband rushed her to the local hospital emergency unit, but Mrs Rodrigues - mother to a nine-month-old son - was declared dead on arrival. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mum-20-killed-washing-machine-27260705
 
JamesWhitehead said:
It reminds me of The Cone, an H. G. Wells story, which used to turn up on the A-level syllabus*, a few years back.

It's not very well-written, to be honest; a run-of-the-mill tale of suspected marital infidelity.

The finale, at an iron-furnace, is unforgettable, however!

*I first read it about the age of ten! :omg:
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*I first read it about the age of ten!
:omg:


Me too!!!
 
Nosmo King said:
US tycoon John McAfee found dead in his prison cell.

"Anti-virus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in his cell at a Barcelona prison.

Just hours earlier, Spain's National Court had agreed to extradite him to the US to face tax evasion charges.

The Spanish Justice Department said in a statement that "everything indicates" Mr McAfee took his own life.

A controversial figure, his company released the first commercial anti-virus software and helped spark a multi-billion dollar industry."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57589822
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And one year later he's still on ice!

BARCELONA, June 23 (Reuters) - The body of software entrepreneur John McAfee remains in a Spanish morgue a year after his death as a legal case lodged by his family to demand further checks is yet to be resolved, authorities and his lawyer said.

No story to speak of:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...anish-morgue-year-after-his-death-2022-06-23/
 
Mounties in British Columbia are trying to figure out why a man was lying in the middle of a road at night. Although one driver managed to avoid hitting him, a subsequent driver couldn't (and killed him).
35-year-old man was lying in roadway when killed by vehicle near Courtenay: RCMP

A 35-year-old man is dead after he was struck by a vehicle early Wednesday morning near Courtenay, B.C.

Mounties with the Comox Valley RCMP detachment are still investigating the crash.


Frontline officers were called to the scene ... at approximately 1 a.m. Investigators say witnesses told police the man was lying in the roadway when he was struck by a vehicle.

A driver who narrowly avoided hitting the man moments earlier had pulled over and activated their hazard lights in an effort to alert other drivers to the man's location ...

"Unfortunately, one of the oncoming drivers did not see the man laying in the road and struck him.

The driver remained at the scene and was cooperative with the investigation," the Comox Valley RCMP said in a statement.

"At this time, we do not know what the man was doing in the middle of the road," said RCMP Const. Monika Terragni. ...
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FULL STORY: https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/...lled-by-vehicle-near-courtenay-rcmp-1.5976431
 
A man has died after falling from an unlit bonfire.

Photo posted to explain how this could happen.

Look at the height compared to the surrounding houses.

(Those outside the UK might not be aware of this tradition to build such tall bonfires, it is political and sectarian so to adhere to Forum rules I will not comment on that part of it. You can read up on it if you wish.)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-62111760

_125850285_4e67f497f43c94d475192ccee130fac80ed49127.jpg
 
Baggage handler steals plane then crashes it

Why this story has appeared now when it happened in 2018 I don’t know. It’s the Mirror..

With colleagues walking nearby, he's seen pushing an Alaska Airlines propeller aircraft on to the runway.

He then opens the cabin door, jumps in the cockpit and takes off in the Q400 Turboprop - which is designed for short to medium haul journeys.

He tells air traffic control: "Seattle ground Horizon guy. About to take off. It's gonna be crazy. "Hey, I found myself in a predicament. I'm in the air right now. And just gonna soar around."

At one point, he says he's "just a broken guy" and that he is preparing for "jail time for life”.
Moments after the plane took off, two US F-15 fighter jets headed to his position but couldn't intercept him before his tragic descent.

Russell crashed on a remote island 30 miles away from Seattle.

People on the ground reported seeing him performing aerial acrobatics, including barrel rolls and loop-the-loops in the air.

Sheriff Paul Pastor said Russell's was like "a joyride gone terribly wrong".

An FBI report revealed how Russell said he knew how to fly the aircraft solo because he'd played video games in the past.

The report said there was no "clear motivation" for his bizarre actions after investigators probed his "background, possible stressors and personal life".
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Video at link.
 
Victory said:
an unlit bonfire
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The massive pile of pallets that always seems to be used for these usually has me wondering if there might also be some involvement from a pallet company that generates a huge amount of income from the new pallets needed to replace the burnt ones.
Except of course the 'blue chep' pallets that are illegally burnt.
 
Trevp666 said:
The massive pile of pallets that always seems to be used for these usually has me wondering if there might also be some involvement from a pallet company that generates a huge amount of income from the new pallets needed to replace the burnt ones.
Except of course the 'blue chep' pallets that are illegally burnt.
Click to expand...

"New wooden pallets can cost from £3.90 to £15.90 per unit, and used wooden pallets cost between £4.50 to £10.90 per unit. These prices differ based on pallet size, weight and load capacity."

https://associated-pallets.co.uk/blog/wooden-pallets-cost/

maximus otter
 
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mystery-jane-austens-death-finally-050000630.html
Has the mystery of Jane Austen's death finally been solved?


by Thomas Cookson

Between 1811 and December 1815, Jane Austen published four of her six novels. By the end of 1816, she had completed another. Yet by July 18 1817 (205 years ago today), she was dead.

None of her doctors seemed to know why she died, and the cause of her death has remained a mystery despite repeated attempts to solve it. How could a woman who had been healthy and energetic in her late-30s succumb so quickly by the age of 41?

Had she suffered from tuberculosis, the century’s great killer, it would certainly have been recognised and diagnosed at the time. And Addison’s disease, suggested as the cause in 1964 by the eminent surgeon Sir Zachary Cope, does not fit the facts provided by the letters from Jane to her sister, Cassandra, and other family members.

Nor does lymphoma, advanced as a candidate by Claire Tomalin in her excellent biography Jane Austen: A Life (1997) and by Mariella Frostrup in her recent Channel 4 series, Britain’s Novel Landscapes. Other reasons given for her early death, such as cancer of the stomach, have satisfied few.

But now, at last, the puzzle may have been solved. Writing in the medical journal Lupus, retired surgeon Michael Sanders, together with his former colleague Elizabeth Graham, has offered an alternative diagnosis that appears to fit the available facts. Although Cassandra burnt much of her correspondence with her sister, enough evidence remains in the surviving letters to suggest that the cause of death was systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE.

The symptoms of lupus, an autoimmune disease, can include severe arthritis, rashes, fevers and chronic fatigue. Jane describes all of these in letters she wrote in the last 11 months of her life. From August 1816, she complained of rheumatism, specifically backache and pain in her knee.

In December 1816, she told her nephew, James Austen-Leigh, that she found walking out to dinner beyond her strength. And in March 1817, writing to her niece, Fanny Knight, she described her face as, “black and white and every wrong colour”, evidence of the butterfly rash commonly associated with the onset of SLE.

In the same letter she wrote, “I have had a good deal of fever of late and indifferent nights.” By April, she was confined to bed.

“Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life,” she wrote – and so it proved. The immediate cause of her death at the age of 41, at 8 College Street, Winchester, where she had moved to be closer to her specialist, Mr Lyford, may well have been failure of the heart or kidneys, but either of these could have been as the result of SLE.

Cope’s suggestion of Addison’s disease, a condition in which the body does not produce enough of the hormone cortisol, was based in large part on Jane’s letter to Knight about her skin discolouration, which he argued was evidence of the characteristic permanent brownish appearance seen in patients with Addison’s. That and Jane’s anaemia and progressive weakness.

But in his paper, Sanders, who has spent much of his life in Chawton, the village in Hampshire where Jane lived with her mother, sister and family friend Martha Lloyd from 1809 to May 1817, points out the key flaw in this diagnosis.

“In the 19th century, Addison’s disease was frequently due to tuberculosis and both adrenal glands had to be involved. Jane had no chest or orthopaedic problems to suggest TB,” he and Graham write.

As for the suggestion of lymphoma, they say, “there are no specific features to favour Hodgkin’s or B-cell lymphoma and there is no mention of enlarged lymph glands” – a cardinal feature of these conditions.

Austen’s readers across the English-speaking world mourn her early death because it has deprived them of a flowering, not a declining, genius. Her last completed novel, Persuasion (recently turned into a Netflix film starring Dakota Johnson), describes the early autumn of life as touchingly as the earlier Pride and Prejudice describes its spring. The fact that she decided to rewrite the last chapter shows, perhaps, that she recognised how her ill health was undermining her powers.

Given what might have been, it is all the more important for her admirers to know how she died. They may even derive some small comfort from the view of Sanders and Graham that, if she had suffered the same symptoms today, she may still not have survived. Of the 2,740 cases of SLE recorded in the UK between 1999 and 2012, 75 per cent were women, and the mortality rate was approximately 10 per cent.

Even in the era of modern medicine, lupus remains a leading – and poorly understood – cause of death in women in their 30s and 40s.
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A British tourist died (or was recognized as deceased) after lying on a Cretan beach for hours.
Brit tourist found dead on Crete beach after lying motionless on sunbed

A British tourist has been found dead on a sunbed in Crete after laying motionless for hours.

The 54-year-old man was discovered at roughly 8pm on Saturday by concerned sunbathers at a popular beach.

When they went to check on the man, they realised he was unconscious and called an ambulance.

It happened at the Stalida beach in the municipality of Hersonissos, with the Brit appearing to enjoy the sun throughout the day.

However, he was described as being motionless for hours on his deckchair, prompting those nearby to call the emergency services, local media reports.

Paramedics rushed to the scene to perform CPR but couldn't save him.
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FULL STORY: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-brit-tourist-found-dead-27506327
 
Oldies but goodies ... This batch of strange death stories appeared in Fortean Times, issue #95.

WHEN SHARON R. LOPATKA left her home in Hampstead, Maryland, on 13 October, she wrote a note for her husband saying she was going to visit friends in Georgia and would not be coming back. "If my body is never retrieved, don't worry, know that I'm at peace," she wrote. She also asked him not to go after her attacker. In the event, Lopatka took a 300 mile bus ride to North Carolina, where she expected to be sexually tortured and killed by a man she had corresponded with over the Internet.

Apparently, she got her wish. Her body was found in a shallow grave in late October behind a mobile home in Collettsville. The autopsy showed she had been strangled about 16 October. The home's owner, Robert Glass, was charged with first-degree murder. Messages from Glass, recovered from Lopatka's home computer, indicate that she travelled to North Carolina knowing what awaited her. Lopatka, 35, operated three World Wide Web pages. One offered to write classified advertisements, while the other two, advertising psychic hot lines, were entitled "Psychics Know All," and "Dionne Enterprises." A friend described her as happily married and sensible. Glass, 45, a father of three who separated from his wife earlier this year, worked as a computer programmer for the county for nearly 16 years. The two first came in contact over the Internet.

Lopatka's husband reported her missing on 20 October and police discovered the e-mail messages from Glass despite his attempt to have her erase the files. Messages from "slowhand" -- Glass' apparent Internet alias -- "described in detail how he was going to sexually torture... and ultimately kill her," an affidavit said. [AP] 29 Oct 1996.

TIM NICHOLSON, 32, Editor of the men's magazine Arena, threw himself to his death from a cliff at Saltdean, near Brighton, because he disagreed with editorial decisions forced on him in his latest issue. Police found a suicide note at the top of the cliff and a copy of the magazine with savage crossings-out. Times, 31 Oct 1996.

GOLFER DAVID BAILEY, 40, of Clondalkin, County Dublin, was killed by a rat which ran up his trouser leg as he hunted for a lost ball at Caddockstown golfcourse in County Kildare. He startled the animal when he jumped into a ditch at the first hole. It shot up his leg and urinated on him. His playing partners advised him to take a shower immediately, but he laughed off the encounter, saying he had no cuts or bites. He took a shower four hours later after finishing the round. However, before this he had touched his leg and smoked a cigar. Doctors believe that the deadly Weil's disease carried by the rat was passed from his fingers to his mouth. He was admitted to a Dublin hospital with severe jaundice two weeks later, but he died in intensive care when his kidneys collapsed. D.Mirror, 30 Aug 1996.

CUI TINGXUN, a teacher in China's Shandong province, was practising the esoteric healing art of qigong with his wife when he suddenly attempted to gouge her eyes out, saying he had received instructions from a 'greater being' to change her facial features. Cui then attacked his wife's jaw with his teeth, saying her mouth smelled badly, before finally decapitating her with a meat cleaver. Police found him holding the shoulders of his wife's torso, exhorting her to sprout a new head. Hong Kong Eastern Express, 7 May 1996.

AFTER VO LIEU, 74, died of natural causes in Vietnam, his children administered a drug to his wife to prevent her screaming at the funeral; but she died of a drugs overdose before the funeral took place. A joint funeral was then held, but a truck transporting the coffins careered out of control and crashed into the funeral procession, killing a 26-year-old man and injuring six undertakers. Eastern Eve. News, 11 July 1996.

A PEASANT WOMAN, BOILING plums to make brandy in the Romanian village of Ruginoasa, died when the flames under her still set off a buried World War II shell. The woman's daughter was badly injured in the explosion. Nottingham Eve. Post, 8 Aug 1996.

SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE: https://web.archive.org/web/19980216123539/http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/95/stdeaths.html
 
Naked and Afraid contestant Melanie Rauscher has been found dead:
https://tvline.com/2022/07/24/melanie-rauscher-naked-and-afraid-dead-dies-obituary/
The story features a strange detail worthy of this thread:
According to the report, Rauscher was dog sitting at a residence in Prescott while its homeowners were away on vacation. Authorities at the Prescott Police Department said the homeowners returned to the house and found Rauscher dead on a guest room bed.

Although no foul play was suspected, the body was said to be surrounded by cans of compressed air, which can be used to clean dust from computers. No other details or cause of death have been given.
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Very odd. Those compressed air cans don't just contain air. They contain some other gas, such as butane or propane (HFCs), to act as a propellant.
Maybe she sniffed them to get high?

Butane is the most commonly abused volatile substance in the UK, and was the cause of 52% of solvent related deaths in 2000.
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Mythopoeika said:
Very odd. Those compressed air cans don't just contain air. They contain some other gas, such as butane or propane (HFCs), to act as a propellant.
Maybe she sniffed them to get high?
Click to expand...

“Dust-Off, a popular brand name of canned air, is a gaseous refrigerant-based propellant cleaner used to remove dust and dirt from computers and electronics. The main ingredient in Dust-Off is difluoroethane.

As of 2015, around 10 percent of Americans (aged 12 and older) have misused inhalant products like Dust-Off at some point in life for the psychoactive effects they can produce, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) publishes. When abused, inhalants can be sprayed onto a rag, and then the rag is sniffed – a practice known as “huffing.” In the case of Dust-Off, this is often referred to as “dusting” as well.

Huffing canned air can cause an immediate rush of euphoria as well as possible hallucinations and delusions. The effects of huffing may also be paralyzing, interfering with a person’s ability to move normally or even move at all. Dizziness, loss of inhibitions, inability to make sound decisions, and slurred speech are common results of huffing. The huffing “high” generally lasts about 15-30 minutes.

Abusing inhalants can lead to “sudden sniffing death” by causing fatal heart failure even the first time it is tried. Dust-Off disrupts normal heart rhythm, which leads to heart rate irregularities that can be life-threatening. NIDA warns that between 100 and 200 people die every year from a cause related to inhalant abuse.”

https://americanaddictioncenters.org/inhalant-abuse/side-effects

maximus otter
 
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