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Strange Deaths

Also, turning round to face a group of 'exploratory' cows (which are usually not cows at all, but bullocks, which can be sprightly at the best of times) and stamping your foot hard can work. It gives them pause for thought, anyway.

But cows are dangerous.
Cows always protect the young calves. "The female of the species is more deadly than the male."(Rudyard Kipling)
 
Back to UK rights of way, it means the UK countryside is great for exploration. With regard to cows, it is very common to cross fields with livestock. However, it is also an offence for farmers to keep dangerous livestock in a field with a public right of way. A farmer was prosecuted over one of the recent deaths.
 
Back to UK rights of way, it means the UK countryside is great for exploration. With regard to cows, it is very common to cross fields with livestock. However, it is also an offence for farmers to keep dangerous livestock in a field with a public right of way. A farmer was prosecuted over one of the recent deaths.
It's never bothered me walking through livestock and especially cows. Even when they gather round as if they're about to mug me.
I suspect that as I usually look like a farmer when I'm out walking, down to a chewing on a blade of grass/straw, they think I'm ok.
 
Back to UK rights of way, it means the UK countryside is great for exploration. With regard to cows, it is very common to cross fields with livestock. However, it is also an offence for farmers to keep dangerous livestock in a field with a public right of way. A farmer was prosecuted over one of the recent deaths.
Around where I walk, it's VERY common for farmers to put a 'Beware of the Bull' sign on a gate to try to keep walkers out. I have worked with Jersey bulls (among the most dangerous breed, but I worked with youngsters before they got too 'bullish') so am not at all intimidated and there rarely is an actual bull in the field.

Cows with calves are very dangerous, but people are also getting trampled by youngstock, particularly when they first go out onto grass because they can get extremely frisky and stupid, and will run. If people then run away, the stock will chase, and they are fast and heavy so...
 
Cows with young can be very dangerous especially to dog walkers if they see the dog as a threat to calves. I was visiting my grandma in hospital once and the lady in the next bed was there because she’d been badly hurt by cows - indeed had nearly died - after walking with her dog in a field of cows with young. I remember her saying, “I’m one of the good guys too as I’m a vegetarian!”

I remember an incident being reported where a Welsh farmer was attacked by a bull and the cows formed a protective circle around the badly injured farmer until help came.
 
I remember an incident being reported where a Welsh farmer was attacked by a bull and the cows formed a protective circle around the badly injured farmer until help came.
I had a friend that was a vet and assisted them a few times with big animals,
and I have said it before there's a lot more going on in animals heads than
most give them credit for, a great deal depends on how they are treated,
They are not usually malicious but you have to recognise that 3/4 of a ton
of bone and meat s going to hurt if anything happens just accidentally
leaning on you would be enough.
:omr:
 
I had a friend that was a vet and assisted them a few times with big animals,
and I have said it before there's a lot more going on in animals heads than
most give them credit for, a great deal depends on how they are treated,
They are not usually malicious but you have to recognise that 3/4 of a ton
of bone and meat s going to hurt if anything happens just accidentally
leaning on you would be enough.
:omr:
Oh absolutely, I don’t believe animals are deliberately malicious - if only we could say that about humans! Animals like cows tend to be viewed as pretty dumb too but they are far from it. I think it was on the same TV programme which told of the farmer being protected by his cows, that they did a little experiment to try and find out just how clever cows could be, turns out they are much brighter than we give them credit for.
 
They are smarter than horses.

(dont know if smarter than mules).
I would assume that they are intelligent in a different way to horses. Horses, after all, run away from predators whereas cows have horns to fight back, and couldn't outrun most predators. So they would need to be more capable of 'co operative behaviour' (like circling round injured/young members of the herd) while horses will just try to outrun or outkick a predator.

So different ways of thinking, different instincts. Which won't necessarily mean more or less intelligent, but having a different kind of intelligence.
 
To be fair, horses or cows don't need to be faster than predators, just faster than other horses and cows.
 
https://news.yahoo.com/dad-collapsed-dinner-table-dying-183707331.html
Dad collapsed at dinner table before dying. Family’s lawsuit blames supplement Kratom

Julia Marnin

A father sat down and had his last meal with his wife and son after mixing a supplement sold in stores — kratom — into his orange juice, according to his family.

While at the dinner table, Peter McPherson began shaking before collapsing and becoming unconscious in Georgia on Nov. 19, 2020, attorneys representing his family at mctlaw say. His wife and son tried performing CPR on him before he was taken to a nearby hospital in Chatsworth, a city about 85 miles north of Atlanta, and pronounced dead.

The Gordon County Medical Examiner ruled McPherson died from “acute mitragynine (kratom) toxicity,” according to a new wrongful death lawsuit filed in Gwinnett County by the family.

Now the family is suing the manufacturers, distributors and sellers of the specific kratom product McPherson took before he died, “Expert Kratom” powder, and says they are to blame, a complaint states.

“Peter and I dreamed of growing old together and playing with our grandchildren,” his widow, Kasandra McPherson, told McClatchy News in a statement Dec. 12. “Those dreams are replaced by sadness and emptiness.”

“I only hope that others won’t go through what we have had to suffer because of kratom,” McPherson added.

McClatchy News contacted Expert Botanicals, which makes Expert Kratom powder and is named as one of the defendants, for comment on Dec. 12 and didn’t immediately receive a response.

This provided photo shows the kratom product Peter McPherson consumed before he died, according to attorney Talis Abolins.

Kratom, often sold as a dietary or herbal supplement, is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. and was responsible for the deaths of 91 people from July 2016 to December 2017, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019.

What is kratom?

This Sept. 27, 2017 file photo shows kratom capsules in Albany, N.Y.

Mitragyna speciosa, or kratom, is a plant native to Southeast Asia that is not approved for any use by the Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA says it can expose those who consume it to “risks of addiction, abuse and dependence,” and warns against using it after receiving “concerning reports” regarding its safety.

In smaller doses, kratom can produce stimulant effects, according to the CDC. If it’s taken in higher doses, it can produce opioid-like effects.

“The kratom industry has become so profitable that they are following the lead of big tobacco, hiring lobbyists who are working to keep the kratom market open for business,” attorney Talis Abolins of Mctlaw, which represents McPherson’s family’s lawsuit, told McClatchy News in a statement on Dec. 12.

“Consumers need to be warned that kratom is not safe, and they have never been approved for human consumption,” Abolins added.

The lawsuit


McPherson was 43-years-old when he died after taking kratom, according to his obituary.

Under Georgia law, any Kratom sold in the state is required to have a label declaring information about the product, including any “precautionary statements” about its safety.

The defendants named in the lawsuit are accused of marketing and selling kratom products “based upon unproven and deceptive claims about its safety and ability to cure, treat or prevent medical conditions and diseases,” the complaint states.

The kratom product McPherson consumed, Expert Kratom, lacked safety warnings about its potential risks of abuse, dependence, addiction, overdose and death, according to the complaint.

Additionally, it was marketed as a “safe and effective alternative to prescription anxiety and/or pain medication,” the complaint states.

If McPherson was properly warned about the potential safety risks, he “would not have consumed the toxic levels of mitragynine that ultimately killed him,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of not abiding by Georgia law in selling and marketing its Kratom products and negligence on several counts.

It demands a trial by jury.

Kasandra McPherson told McClatchy News the death of her husband makes the holidays “especially hard.”

“Peter was an only child and it has affected his parents tremendously,” she said. “His granddaughter Evelyn will never get to know her grandfather!”

Abolins, the family’s attorney, said “while nothing will bring Peter McPherson back, his family hopes that the truth about kratom can be shared so that these tragedies can be stopped.”

Attorneys at mctlaw have filed wrongful death lawsuits in connection with kratom in five different states, according to a Dec. 12 news release.

Ultimately, scientists are still trying to fully understand kratom, as research on the drug is “relatively new,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
 
I will never understand why people believe that taking a virtually unknown and not researched substance, plant or otherwise, is considered a better choice than prescription drugs.

These "additives" have no info as to what they do to your body nor whether they are safe.

People talk about big pharma profit taking, but these "dietary supplements" companies make millions as well and don't pay for any research. These same companies, I believe, are the ones influencing people's views that "drugs are bad". All plants or minerals, if used incorrectly will cause damage. I keep telling younger people who seem to think that a label marked "natural" does not mean safe. Digitalis, belladonna, arsenic, mercury are all natural. Some of our medications were derived from them. But safe? Not necessarily.

And unfortunately, these same companies are manipulating people's views that someone who needs a prescription medication is to be viewed as lesser than.
 
I will never understand why people believe that taking a virtually unknown and not researched substance, plant or otherwise, is considered a better choice than prescription drugs.

These "additives" have no info as to what they do to your body nor whether they are safe.

People talk about big pharma profit taking, but these "dietary supplements" companies make millions as well and don't pay for any research. These same companies, I believe, are the ones influencing people's views that "drugs are bad". All plants or minerals, if used incorrectly will cause damage. I keep telling younger people who seem to think that a label marked "natural" does not mean safe. Digitalis, belladonna, arsenic, mercury are all natural. Some of our medications were derived from them. But safe? Not necessarily.

And unfortunately, these same companies are manipulating people's views that someone who needs a prescription medication is to be viewed as lesser than.
Agreed. That Kratom 'supplement' is not in fact a food supplement. It has some side effects.
The man who died may have been taking it with every meal. It can cause an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, which may have been what killed him.
 
Some of our medications were derived from them.
AFAIK, 'modern' medicines have only been around since the first artificially created pharmaceuticals were created in the early 1800s (beginning with 'morphine'), prior to which, every medicine was a 'natural' product, some of which were more efficacious than others, some good, some bad, and some just plain quackery.
Most of those 'old' treatments were only arrived at by 'trial and error'.

:headbang: "I've got a headache"
:omr: "Go and lick that tree"
 
I've always wondered that concerning the willow tree.
Giles: Just lick the tree, Willow. That's all we want.

willow.jpg
 
‘Road sleeping’ deaths soar in Tokyo as socialising returns to pre-Covid levels

The end of Covid-19 restrictions on Japan’s nighttime economy has brought more people out on to the streets of Tokyo – but it could also be contributing to a spate of deaths among people who are struck by cars as they sleep on the road.

The number of deaths among people who sleep where they drop on the capital’s roads has nearly doubled from last year, from seven to 13, according to police.
According to police, 10 of the people killed in Tokyo so far this year had been drinking before they were struck while sitting or lying in the road.

Tokyo is not the only part of Japan struggling with alcohol-fuelled somnolence, with other regions reporting a rise in “road sleeping” at weekends and at the end of the year, when people tend to drink more.

In 2020, police in Okinawa reported more than 7,000 cases of rojo-ne – literally sleeping on the road – the previous year, a phenomenon some attribute to the southern island’s balmy weather and enthusiastic consumption of awamori, a strong local spirit.
 
Strange Death During World Record Attempt

A woman tragically died in a freak accident during a tug-of-war game when the mile-long rope pinged back and dragged her into a concrete barrier.

Masita B was participating in a world record attempt with 5,294 other people in Makassar, Indonesia, on Sunday when the tragedy unfolded.

The 1,540-metre-long rope recoiled, tripping Masita B up and dragging her down the tarmac, smashing her head into a concrete divider

It is not clear what caused the rope to snap, as the tug-of-war had not even begun but some reports say it was a self-inflicted tragedy.
 
That’s an odd video. The rope doesn’t look like there much tension on it. Then suddenly it springs back. The one woman to the left of it is caught in it. Not sure if she is the one the report is about, but she was just standing there and didn’t have a hold of the rope.
 
That looks like a elasticated type of rope and those holding it just let go of one end,
it does look slack but it is surprising how much energy can be stored in such things.
I.ve seen a tractor pulled backwards by one still driving in forward gear.
odd one though.
 
renate.png
Whatever really happened to German film star Renate Muller will likely never be known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renate_Müller
When Müller died suddenly, the German press stated the cause as epilepsy. However, it was later revealed that she had died as a result of a fall from a hotel (or hospital) window. According to Channel 4 documentary "Sex and the Swastika", aired in February 2009, she jumped from a Berlin hospital window where she was being treated for a knee injury or drug addiction.

Officially described as a suicide, it was theorised that she took her own life when her relationship with Nazi leaders deteriorated after she showed unwillingness to appear in propaganda films. She was also known to have been pressured to end a relationship with her Jewish lover, but had refused. Near the end of her life, she became addicted to morphine and abused alcohol. Witnesses also recalled seeing several Gestapo officers entering her building shortly before she died. It has been asserted that she was either murdered by Gestapo officers who threw her from a window, or that she panicked when she saw them arrive and jumped.[citation needed] The true circumstances surrounding her death remain unclear.[1]

According to Uwe Klöckner-Draga in his book "Renate Müller – Ihr Leben ein Drahtseilakt", on 3 April, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "Renate tells me her tale of woe. She is a sick woman." On the 6th, he mentioned that she had been interrogated in a very dishonourable way, and on 25 June: "Renate Müller! I help her." At the end of September – according to her sister Gabriele – Renate was drunk and sitting on a window sill when she lost her balance.[2]

Müller's life and death were portrayed in the 1960 film Sweetheart of the Gods.
https://spartacus-educational.com/GERrenate.htm

(1) Ronald Hayman, Hitler and Geli (1998)​

Renate Miiller... met Hitler in the autumn of 1932 when she was filming on location near the Danish coast. He watched the shooting all day, and, in the evening, visited the house where she was staying, but his behaviour, when they were together, was distinctly odd. At forty-three, he still seemed ill at ease when alone with a glamorous woman. "He sat there, not moving at all, looking at me all the time, and then he'd take my hand in his and look some more. He talked all the time - just nonsense." Later, when she was invited to a party at the Chancellery, he ignored her until everyone was leaving but then took her arm, offering to show her round the building. He pointed out the changes he had made and took her to his wardrobe, where he brought out his tail-coated dinner shirt, saying he had never worn evening dress till he came to power.
After this he arranged frequent meetings with her, and the jewellery he gave her included a diamond bracelet more valuable than any of his presents to Geli and Eva Braun. But the demands he made were as unpalatable to her as to Geli. One night, for instance, at the Chancellery, he began by going into detail about Gestapo methods of torture, comparing them with medieval techniques. After they had both taken their clothes off he lay on the floor, begging her to hit him and kick him. She refused, but he went on heaping accusations on his own head, saying he was her slave, unworthy to be in the same room.
Eventually giving in, she started to kick him, abuse him with obscene words and hit him with his whip. Becoming increasingly excited, Hitler started to masturbate. After his orgasm, he suggested quietly that they should both put their clothes on. They drank a glass of wine together and chatted about trivialities. Finally he stood up, kissed her hand, thanked her for a pleasant evening and rang for a servant to show her out.
When she wanted to take a holiday in London, she asked his permission, which was granted, but the Gestapo kept her under surveillance while she was there, and after spending a lot of time with a former lover, Frank Deutsch, who was Jewish, she found, on returning to Germany, that she had been blacklisted, and it was rumoured that she was to be put on trial for "race defamation". While under this pressure, she became addicted to morphine. Eventually she went into a sanatorium and, after being discharged, asked for an interview with Hitler, who refused to see her. Back in the sanatorium, she was looking out of the window one day when a car pulled up in the street below, and four SS officers got out. She killed herself by jumping out of the window. She was thirty.
Had she survived, she could possibly have been dangerous to Hitler in the same way as Geli could: either of them could have damaged him by revealing the truth about his sexual habits. In 1937, when her death was reported in the German papers, they revealed neither that Hitler had known her nor that she had killed herself. According to the Volkischer Beobachter, it had been known for some time that she was "no longer in the best of health". Hitler did not attend the cremation, but Goebbels sent a wreath.

(2) Cate Haste, Nazi Women (2001)​

For some women, it ended in disaster. The glamorous actress Renate Muller met him in 1932, when he spent a day watching the shooting of her latest film. When he visited her in the evening, she found his behaviour distinctly odd, according to the account she later gave to director Adolf Zeissler, which he published in a magazine, and was later used as a source in the American OSS report about Hitler's sexual perversions. "He sat there, not moving at all, looking at me all the time, and then he'd take my hand in his and look some more. He talked all the time - just nonsense.'' She was invited to a party at the Chancellery, at the end of which Hitler offered to show her round the building, including his wardrobe of clothes. He arranged frequent meetings and sent her expensive jewels, until one night he took her to his rooms, where, allegedly after a discussion about methods of torture, she claimed she was required to kick and beat him, while he declared himself her slave. After he had excited himself to orgasm, he suggested that they put their clothes on, and they drank a glass of wine and chatted, until he stood up, kissed her hand, and thanked her for a pleasant evening. The reliability of the source, as with the whole OSS report, is however open to question.
Muller's subsequent history was tragic. Allegedly with Hitler's permission, she took a holiday in London, where she spent some time with a former lover who was Jewish, despite being trailed, she believed, by the Gestapo. On her return, she was blacklisted, and rumours circulated that she was to be put on trial for "race defamation" having a relationship with a Jew. With her career in ruins, she became addicted to morphine and was sent to a sanatorium. Having asked for, and been refused, permission to see Hitler in 1936, she returned to the sanatorium, but when she saw a car pull up outside, and four SS men get out, she killed herself by throwing herself out of a window. Goebbels sent a wreath to her funeral. Renate Muller was another addition to the tally of women around Hitler who committed suicide.
 
Family of woman found mummified in Yorkshire home 'believed she was alive', inquest hears

The family of a woman whose mummified corpse was found in their home believed she was alive for months after she had died, an inquest heard.

Despite extensive police inquiries, no cause of death has been established in the case of Rina Yasutake, whose remains were found at the home she shared with her mother and siblings in Helmsley, North Yorkshire.

skynews-rina-yasutake-mummified_6023298.jpg


Suspicions were raised at a local chemist in September 2018, when her brother Takahiro, 51, and sister Yoshika, 56, repeatedly bought bottles of surgical spirit over a period of days.

The emergency services were called to the address in Bondgate, where paramedics found her dead body under a duvet on a mattress on the floor.

It was obvious the 49-year-old had been dead for weeks, the inquest into her death was told.

But the reclusive family continued to believe she was alive.

Ms Yasutake's brother, sister, and 80-year-old mother Michiko Yasutake were charged with preventing a lawful and decent burial, but the prosecution was halted when it was found the family, originally from Japan, suffered from a rare mental disorder.

Coroner Jon Heath was told there was no evidence of any third-party involvement in her death, no sign of injury or toxicological cause.

Rina Yasutake was a talented pupil and won a scholarship to Cambridge University where she studied classics, specialising in linguistics.

She didn't work after university and the family had lived together in Helmsley for 20 years.

it was recorded that Ms Yasutake, who was 4ft 11in tall, weighed just six stone six pounds.

Her sister Yoshika Yasutake [said]: "She didn't say much so we said to her to eat and drink more.

"She looked like she was being nourished by eating her soul.

"I don't know how to explain.

"Even though she was not eating, she was nourished with spiritual food and she was fulfilled."

Mr Hassall described his clients as "very insular and isolated" and Ms Holden agreed that even when using a Japanese interpreter, communication was difficult, as the family spoke their own dialect.

Ms Holden added that during inquiries, it was found they had no means of communicating with the outside world and had no TV or radio.

Mr Heath recorded an open conclusion, saying: "I am unable from the evidence available to determine how she died."

https://news.sky.com/story/family-o...believed-she-was-alive-inquest-hears-12786298

maximus otter
 
India: Three children among six dead as kite strings slit throats at Gujarat festival

Three children are among six to have died from kite strings slicing their throats during a festival in India.

AN26299790People-watch-as-k.jpg


Gujarat state authorities have said 176 people were injured due to cuts and falls during the annual Uttarayan festival, which took place over the weekend.

Two girls, both two and a seven-year-old boy were the youngsters to die when “sharp strings” slit their throats. This included one toddler who was riding with her father on a bike when she became entangled with a string. Three men were also killed in the districts of Vadodara, Kutch and Gandhinagar.

Police said 30 people sustained cuts and 46 were injured while falling from a height while flying kites on Saturday and Sunday.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/india-gujarat-festival-kite-strings-deaths-b1053912.html

maximus otter
 
That’s an odd video. The rope doesn’t look like there much tension on it. Then suddenly it springs back. The one woman to the left of it is caught in it. Not sure if she is the one the report is about, but she was just standing there and didn’t have a hold of the rope.
I can offer personal experience. I am a dinghy sailor and former occasional rock climber.

I normally launch my dinghy single handedly rolling it down the slipway on its trolley.

One local slipway is too steep for this so I took an old climbing rope and carrabiners, tied off to a fixed point and lowered the trolley down the slipway using a Munter hitch: a way of paying out the rope using friction to control the load.

When it was time to recover the boat, I used the same fixed point and set up a tackle. That is a force multiplier. For example, on 4:1, you pull 4 metres of rope and the load (the boat) moves 1 metre.

Pull a long way with 50 Kg of force and the tackle applies 200 Kg of force (less an allowance for friction) over the shorter distance. It's similar to a lever.

So I set up the tackle and pulled for all I was worth. I pulled metres of rope through the tackle but the boat didn't move. Instead, the rope stretched. I pulled and sweated to the point of exhaustion and all I was doing was stretching the rope.

I then changed my approach and took several loops of rope from the trolley to the tow bar on my car which was on level ground at the top of the slipway.

I pulled forward slowly and the boat stayed where it was. I drove further and the boat started to move. She came up the slipway nicely but as she came off the steep slope and onto the level, the elasticity of the rope came into play and the boat began to accelerate towards the back of the car.

Climbing rope is if course designed to be stretchy so that it softens the effect of a fall. However, most ropes are elastic to some extent.

The longer the rope, the more energy it can store at a given level of tension.

Rope is also heavy, so that potential energy in the tension can result in dangerous levels of momentum. People have been beheaded by snapping ropes.

The ancient Romans used twisted skeins of rope to store and release energy in early artillery. It was capable of throwing rocks or darts far further than a person could.
 
What the heck? I have never heard of these contraptions. Only in England you say? They pop up at night? How are they cleaned? Is Superman only able to come to someone’s rescue during nighttime hours? Oh wait, that was a telephone box. Though even those don’t exist any more.

I have lots of questions about this.
 
What the heck? I have never heard of these contraptions. Only in England you say? They pop up at night? How are they cleaned? Is Superman only able to come to someone’s rescue during nighttime hours? Oh wait, that was a telephone box. Though even those don’t exist any more.

I have lots of questions about this.
I think they have a self-cleaning mechanism.
I think they're a bad idea.
 
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