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Strange Deaths

Re, the phones in bathrooms (and toilets)...

I've learnt something today.

The mobile phone (excuse the misquote), is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.
 
Re, the phones in bathrooms (and toilets)...

I've learnt something today.

The mobile phone (excuse the misquote), is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.
I made the decision not to install a phone in the loo long ago.
 
Yes, most smart phones charge at 5v/2A.
However, keep in mind, it's not the voltage that kills, it's the amperage. And it only takes 100 milliamps to disrupt your heartbeat.
 
At face value it would seem a house being burglarized chomped down on the would-be burglar and killed him.
Florida man dies after window closes on him during burglary attempt, sheriff says

A man died during an attempted burglary Saturday after a window closed on him, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday.

Jonathan Hernandez, 32, was attempting to burglarize a home on Nora Avenue and 46th Street SW by climbing through a window. While he was partially through the window, it slammed down on him.

Hernandez’s neck was caught in the window, according to the incident report. He was dead by the time deputies arrived on scene, LCSO reported.

His family and friends said they believe that’s not the full story and say looks can be deceiving. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/f...-on-him-during-burglary-attempt-sheriff-says/
 
At face value it would seem a house being burglarized chomped down on the would-be burglar and killed him.


FULL STORY: https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/f...-on-him-during-burglary-attempt-sheriff-says/

While he was partially through the window, it slammed down on him.
His fiancee and friends don't accept that.

Perhaps he was caught climbing in and decided to withdraw, and the householder slammed the window down a second too soon and trapped his head or neck. If so it's an accident, if a totally unnecessary one.
 
This has precedent in London -

(BBC News link)

Man dies charging iPhone while in the bath
I love how they say they are going to have a word with Apple in how to prevent this happening like it's their responsibility for humans being stupid
His fiancee and friends don't accept that.

Perhaps he was caught climbing in and decided to withdraw, and the householder slammed the window down a second too soon and trapped his head or neck. If so it's an accident, if a totally unnecessary one.
Is this another, 'My brother, son, insert member of said saintly family, wouldn't do such a thing, and that the owner had no right to slam the window down on his neck as he was taking a peek into their house to see if all their valuables were safe.
 
I love how they say they are going to have a word with Apple in how to prevent this happening like it's their responsibility for humans being stupid
Is this another, 'My brother, son, insert member of said saintly family, wouldn't do such a thing, and that the owner had no right to slam the window down on his neck as he was taking a peek into their house to see if all their valuables were safe.

They reckon he wasn't even there as he was kind and humorous individual who would never do such a heinous thing.

Have to admit, if I caught some scrote climbing through my window first I'd twat him HARD with whatever was to hand and then that window would indeed go SLAM.

In Texas, you can shoot someone in the window-climbing position.
 
So, what was he doing going thro their window, wait, did his arch enemy clonk him on the head and shove him thro the window, or did someone perchance to walk by, grab a stranger and think, ummm, i will slam his head in a window, what was the families excuse for his head being in the window?
 
So, what was he doing going thro their window, wait, did his arch enemy clonk him on the head and shove him thro the window, or did someone perchance to walk by, grab a stranger and think, ummm, i will slam his head in a window, what was the families excuse for his head being in the window?

The window is 5'5'' or so off the ground which is above my height. So if, say, my neck were trapped in it, my feet would be dangling above the ground and I would asphyxiate quite quickly.
Compressing the chest would also do the trick if the window caught me further down.

This'd only work if I were present in the open window, of course.
 
A man died during an attempted burglary Saturday after a window closed on him, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday.

Jonathan Hernandez, 32, was attempting to burglarize a home on Nora Avenue and 46th Street SW by climbing through a window. While he was partially through the window, it slammed down on him.

Hernandez’s neck was caught in the window, according to the incident report. He was dead by the time deputies arrived on scene, LCSO reported.

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A pet stag, not often someone is killed like that.

Gardaí and the Health and Safety Authority are investigating an accident in north Cork in which a professional huntsman – who was a father of a young family in his 40s – was killed by a stag yesterday.

The accident took place at the Duhallow hunt kennels in Liscarroll. It is understood the deceased man went to feed the pet stag at the kennels and was attacked by the animal and killed. He has been named locally as Ger Withers, a married man and a father of three young children. The alarm was raised when he did not return home. Mr Withers was well known in the area and highly regarded as a skilled huntsman hunting with Old English hounds.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40198659.html
 
A pet stag, not often someone is killed like that.

Gardaí and the Health and Safety Authority are investigating an accident in north Cork in which a professional huntsman – who was a father of a young family in his 40s – was killed by a stag yesterday.

The accident took place at the Duhallow hunt kennels in Liscarroll. It is understood the deceased man went to feed the pet stag at the kennels and was attacked by the animal and killed. He has been named locally as Ger Withers, a married man and a father of three young children. The alarm was raised when he did not return home. Mr Withers was well known in the area and highly regarded as a skilled huntsman hunting with Old English hounds.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40198659.html
A friend of a friend from Cambridge was almost killed by a stag. It was in the news a few years back.
She'd (ill-advisedly) gone over to it to shoo it away from the party they were having and it gored her in the throat.
She survived.
https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/story/2013-12-31/cambridge-woman-injured-by-stag/
I dimly seem to remember meeting her once, probably when I was working in Cambridge.
 
A pet stag, not often someone is killed like that.

Gardaí and the Health and Safety Authority are investigating an accident in north Cork in which a professional huntsman – who was a father of a young family in his 40s – was killed by a stag yesterday.

The accident took place at the Duhallow hunt kennels in Liscarroll. It is understood the deceased man went to feed the pet stag at the kennels and was attacked by the animal and killed. He has been named locally as Ger Withers, a married man and a father of three young children. The alarm was raised when he did not return home. Mr Withers was well known in the area and highly regarded as a skilled huntsman hunting with Old English hounds.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40198659.html

@EnolaGaia and @escargot: Will you be conveying your amusement and delight at Mr. Withers’ death to his wife and three young children?

maximus otter
 
A friend of a friend from Cambridge was almost killed by a stag. It was in the news a few years back.
She'd (ill-advisedly) gone over to it to shoo it away from the party they were having and it gored her in the throat.
She survived.
https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/story/2013-12-31/cambridge-woman-injured-by-stag/
I dimly seem to remember meeting her once, probably when I was working in Cambridge.

I recall that story. I think she was in Scotland at the time, and the theory was that the group she was with had inadvertently cornered the animal while walking in the dark.

If she was actually trying to shoo the animal away then she was very ill-advised; trapped and frightened wild animals of any variety - from owls to red deer - need to be provided with a clear escape route, not directions.

(Having said that, I did once have to physically intervene when a tawny owl got stuck in my parents' garage. I opened the main door, turned the front outside lights on and got right out of its line of sight, but it kept battering itself against the rear window. I eventually caught it by throwing an old blanket over it and gathering it inside - but I had taken the precaution of wearing goggles, welders gloves, my climbing helmet and a heavy canvas coat. The poor little beauty must have though it was being abducted by aliens.)
 
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@EnolaGaia and @escargot: Will you be conveying your amusement and delight at Mr. Withers’ death to his wife and three young children?

You're confusing 'liking' the fact an informative post was posted with 'liking' the content of the posted post.
 
You're confusing 'liking' the fact an informative post was posted with 'liking' the content of the posted post.
If we are discussing the ironic death of a huntsman in an altercation with a deer, then yes, I for one DO like the content of the post.
 
If we are discussing the ironic death of a huntsman in an altercation with a deer, then yes, I for one DO like the content of the post.

But the stag was a pet! I bet you wouldn't be happy if yer cats killed (and ate) Techie!
 
This was published in the READER'S DIGEST compendium FACTS & FALLACIES:

On March 21, 1947, the 122nd Street police station in New York City received a call from a man claiming that there was a dead body at 2078 Fifth Street Avenue.

The police knew the house, a decaying three-story brownstone in a run-down part of Harlem, and its inhabitants, Langley and Homer Collyer, two eccentric recluses.

No one could recall having seen Homer for years. There were even rumors that his dead body was in the house. Langley was seen only when he went out on furtive sorties, usually after midnight. He earned himself the nickname of "the ghostly man." The day after the call, patrolman William Barker broke into the second-floor bedroom. What he found there took his breath away.

The room was filled from floor to ceiling with objects of every shape, size and kind. It took him several hours to cross the few feet to where the dead body of Homer lay, shrouded in an ancient check bathrobe. The autopsy revealed that Homer had not eaten for several days and had died of a heart attack. There was no sign of Langley, and the authorities immediately began to search for him. It took 3 weeks to shift through the estimated 136 tons of junk with which the house was filled. The bizarre collection of objects included 14 grand pianos, two organs, and a clavichord; human medical specimens preserved in a glass jars; the chassis of a Model-T Ford; a library of thousands of medical and engineering books; an armory of weapons; the top of a carriage; 6 U.S. flags and one Union Jack; a primitive X-Ray machine; and 34 bank deposit books with the balance totaling $3,007.18.

Gradually the story of the Hermits of Harlem unfolded, and the presence of some of the contents of the house began to be explained. Homer Lusk Collyer and Langley Collyer were born in 1881 and 1885 respectively. Their father, Dr. Herman L. Collyer, was an eminent gynecologist and their mother, Susie Gage Frost Collyer, a well-born lady noted for her musical abilities. The family set up home at 2078 Fifth Avenue in then-fashionable Harlem. But around 1909 Herman left. When he died in 1923, all the furniture, medical equipment, and books that he had collected over the years were taken back to Fifth Avenue and crammed into his wife's house. Langley had been trained as an engineer; Homer became a lawyer. Both were eccentric in innocuous ways - increasingly so when left to fend for themselves after their mother's death in 1929. Langley apparently never had a job, but was always tinkering with inventions, such as one for vacuuming the insides of pianos, and attempting to make the Model-T engine run via electricity. In the 1930's Homer became blind, crippled with rheumatism, and progressively paralyzed. Langley devoted the rest of his life to caring for him.

Distrustful of doctors, but with access to his father's extensive medical library, Langley devised odd "cures" for his brother's illness, subjecting him to regimes as a diet of 100 oranges a week, black bread, and peanut butter. The house was already cluttered with the content of two large homes, but Langley stuffed it with yet more objects picked up on his nightly excursions. After all windows were boarded up, and the gas, electricity, and water cut off, one small oil stove served all their cooking and heating needs; Langley collected water from a standpipe four blocks away. On more that one occasion thieves tried to break in to steal the fortune that was rumored to be kept in the house. Langley responded by building booby traps, intricate systems of trip wires and ropes that would bring tons of rubbish crashing down on any unwary burglar.

A honeycomb network of tunnels carved out in the mountains of junk enabled Langley to grope his way to where Homer sat. As the world's newspapers revealed the secrets of 2078 Fifth Avenue, there was a final, grisly twist. On April 8, Artie Matthews, one of the workmen commissioned to clear the place, raised a pile of newspapers, tin boxes and other debris near a spot where Homer has been found.

His horrified gaze fell first on a foot, then the remains of a body. It had been gnawed by rats, but there was no doubt that it was Langley Collyer. Langley had died some time before his brother, suffocated under the garbage that had cascaded down upon him when, he had sprung one of his own burglar traps.

Homer's death was now easily explained. Blind and paralyzed, and totally dependent on Langley, he had died of starvation and shock. The house was gradually emptied and its more valuable contents sold at auction. But despite the Collyer brothers lifelong hoarding, the 150 items raised only $1,800. The house too has now gone.

Condemned as a health and fire hazard, number 2078 Fifth Avenue was razed to the ground.

Today it is now a parking lot.



The article turns up word for word at this site: http://www.theplan.com/dmi/collier_story.htm
with no credit given to the original source, and with a copyright affixed. Also, the web owner demands $650.00 to read any e-mail you send him.
This is an incredibly sad and depressing story
 
The washing machine story sounds unlikely to me because-

1. The man couldn't kick the 'on' switch with BOTH his feet in the washer. If only one foot was in it, and it came on, he'd be unlikely to put the other foot in.
2. The bleach bottle had no top on- most unusual.
3. The 'off' switch should have been as accessible as the 'on' so he'd have been able to find it while the machine was going slowly. Well, before being blinded maybe.
4. The baking soda was also open, it seems.
5. The exact sequence of events is described when there were no witnesses. Very fine detective work!
6. Most washing machines won't go with the door open.

Glad the dog survived though. :)
I tbink i remember them doing this one on mythbusters,
 
Man dies from pet emissions

What a smell!

AMSTERDAM — Police suspect that a man found dead in his home Wednesday was poisoned by ammonia gas from the excrement of his pet parrots and ferrets who had been badly cared for.

The man reported feeling unwell early in the morning in his house in the town of Tegelen in North Limburg.

An ambulance reached his home by 7am, but he was already dead. A post mortem is to be carried out on his body to confirm the cause of death, newspaper De Telegraaf reported.

A spokesman for the emergency services said it appeared the victim had not cared for his parrots and ferrets well and ambulance workers were struck by a "penetrating odour" when they entered the house.

It is suspected that the animals' excrement was allowed to accumulate in the building over a long period of time and that it began releasing toxic amounts of ammonia.

Normally, police seal of a property where a person has died in suspicious circumstances, but in this case the windows and doors were opened to clear the ammonia vapours. Locals reported the parrots' screeching was heard all around the town.
Surely if the cause of death was a build upof toxic gas then the much smaller parrots and ferrets would have succumbed also???
 
Six staff members at a Georgia food processing plant have died from asphyxiation following a liquid nitrogen leak.
Liquid nitrogen leak at Georgia poultry plant kills 6

A liquid nitrogen leak at a northeast Georgia poultry plant killed six people Thursday and sent 11 others to the hospital, officials said.

At least three of those injured at the Foundation Food Group plant in Gainesville were reported in critical condition.

Poultry plants rely on refrigeration systems that can include liquid nitrogen. Sheriff’s deputies, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the state fire marshal were investigating the deaths and cause of the leak. ...

Foundation Food Group Vice President for Human Resources Nicholas Ancrum called the leak a tragic accident and said early indications are that a nitrogen line ruptured in the facility.

When leaked into the air, liquid nitrogen vaporizes into an odorless gas that’s capable of displacing oxygen. That means leaks in enclosed spaces can become deadly by pushing away breathable air, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. ...

Workers who had fled the plant were gathered outside when firefighters responded to the leak Thursday morning, Hall County Fire Department Division Chief Zach Brackett said.

“Once the units arrived, they found a large contingent of employees that had evacuated, along with multiple victims that were in that crowd that were also experiencing medical emergencies around the facility,” Brackett said. ...

Beth Downs, a spokesperson for Northeast Georgia Health System, said five people died at the plant and one person died in the emergency room. ...

Fourteen American workers died from asphyxiation linked to nitrogen in 12 workplace accidents recorded between 2012 and 2020, according to OSHA. ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/lliquid-nitrogen-leak-georgia-plant-34698174274717f4ec84b6964782e9fe
 
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