When a 40-year-old man turned up at a hospital asking to see a doctor specialising in 'men's troubles', he was shown into a cubicle, where he gingerly unwrapped three yards of foul-smelling, stained gauze from around his scrotum which had swollen to twice the size of a grapefruit. On further inspection, it was discovered that his left testicle was missing completely, and, embedded within the swollen, tender and weeping wound, were a number of dark objects which the patient confessed were one-inch staples from an industrial stapling gun. It transpired that the man spent his lunchtimes alone in his workshop, where he regularly enjoyed the sexual thrill of placing his penis on the moving canvas fan-belt of a piece of machinery. One day, the excitement had caused him to lose concentration, and the fan-belt had snatched his scrotum into the fly-wheel, throwing him several feet across the floor and tearing off his left nut. Rather than go to the hospital, he performed first-aid on himself with the stapling gun, then went back to work when his colleagues returned. It was two weeks before he got round to visiting the hospital. A man of 20 reported to a casualty department complaining of pain in his rectum. The examination revealed a hard, stony mass. According to the man, he had been "fooling around" with his boyfriend, which involved lying on his back with his feet against the wall,while his boyfriend inserted a funnel in his rectum and poured a quantity of concrete mix through it. The man underwent surgery to remove the by now solid lump of concrete, which weighed 275 grams, and on further examination, was also found to contain a ping-pong ball. An hour and a half after he had told his wife he was going shooting, a 40-year-old airline pilot was found chained and crushed against the side of his Volkswagen Beetle. The ignition was on, the steering wheel was tied as far as it would turn to the left, and the car had been travelling in circles. The man was naked, apart from a series of straps similar to a parachute harness, and secured to the side of the car by a heavy chain. It appears that he had removed his clothes and chained himself to the back bumper of the car, which he had set on 'autopilot'. He jogged along behind it and when he wanted to stop the 'game', he went towards the car, which ran over the chain. As the chain slowly wound around the axle it reeled the man inexorably towards the car, and with no means of escape, he was eventually asphyxiated against the bumper. A man turned up at a hospital wearing an overcoat, and with blood dripping down his leg. When he removed the coat, the doctor saw he had a geranium inserted in his penis. The man had got the flower in without any difficulty, but when he tried to remove it, the hairs on the stem of the flower had dug into the urethra and ripped it to shreds. A 62-year-old farmer was found dead in his barn by a neighbour,crushed beneath the hydraulic scoop of his tractor. He was wearing stockings and a pair of shoes with an eight-inch heel and his ankles were tied to a four-foot length of pipe, which was itself chained to the scoop. By pulling on a pair of ropes, he could raise the scoop and suspend himself upside-down. Beside the dead body was a broken length of four-by-two, which was meant to act as a safety feature when the scoop was lowered, by stopping it from hitting the ground. Unfortunately, as the scoop came down, it had snapped the wood and continued downwards, trapping the man beneath it and crushing him. A policeman in Staffordshire returned home from the night shift to find his wife preparing breakfast. For some unknown reason, he wrapped a slice of bread around his penis, at which point the dog leapt up and took a bite out of it. The man needed cosmetic surgery to restore the damage. A 34 year-old New-Yorker injected a cocaine solution into his penis to heighten his sexual pleasure. After enjoying intercourse with his girlfriend, however, he couldn't get rid of his erection, and after three days he went to the doctor in search of help. Shortly afterwards, he developed blood clots in various parts of his body; gangrene set in and he lost both legs, nine fingers and his penis. A number of men, generally in the 55 to 65 age group, have ended up in hospital after attetnpting to make love to a vacuum cleaner, although their explanations are rarely so straightforward. One 60-year-old man was changing the plug of the Hoover when it "mysteriously switched itself on" and sucked him in. A 65 year-old signalman bent down to pick up his tools and caught his penis in a nearby vacuum, while another was merely bending over to turn the vacuum off when the accident happened. Bizarrely, all were in a state of almost total undress when their accidents happened. While enjoying an early morning swim, Brazilian Claudiomiro Marques decided to experiment with the sexual properties of swimming pool filters. Unfortunateiy, the structure of the filter combined with the degree of suction, meant that his penis became jammed fast. Doctors were called, who evantually managed to extricate him from his terrible predicament, although not before concerned bystanders had first contributed to the rescue procedure by attempting to demolish the wall of the pool. An Australian tourist woke one morning on his holiday in Thailand to discover his passport and money had vanished during the night. He cast his mind back, and the last thing he could remember was sucking on the nipples of a transvestite prostitute. After going to the police and making an embarrassing confession, the police were able to track down the perpetrator, who explained that he had used a tranquiliser on his nipples, a necessary subterfuge as many sex tourists didn't drink. A Somalian trucker reported to his doctor wearing rubber incontinence pants, and claiming that over the previous month he had been experiencing up to 40 involuntary ejaculations daily, He believed his condition was brought on by chewing the drug Khat. A week later, he suffered total erection failure, and even lengthy abstinence from the drug failed to restore his sexual ability. His doctor believed he had used up his lifetime's supply of orgasms. A patient in the USA went to see his doctor, and was checked for haemorrhoids. During the examination, the doctor asked if he was enjoying it, at which point the patient turned around and noticed that doctor was masturbating. The doctor was given one year's probation. When the guests at a wedding reception in Sussex sat down to watch a video of the proceedings, they were surprised to see pictures of the man who owned the video camera enjoying himself, on a bed, with the neighbour's Staffordshire bull terrier. His defence in court was that he had made it to prove that pornographic films used trick photography, and that no sex had taken place. He received a.six-month suspended sentence. Upon investigating a fire in Knoxville, Tennessee, firemen found, in a room plastered with heavy metal posters, the nude body of a 16-year-old boy with a cow's heart attached to his genitals. lnitial suspicions of ritual murder were dismissed when, in a copy of the underground porn magazine Ovid Now, they discovered instructions for the construction of a sex toy made from a fresh cows heart and an electrical circuit powered by batteries, which makes the heart beat. Unfortunately, the boy had plugged his stimulator into the mains, electrocuted himself and set the house on fire. From the pages of the Bloomberg News Service... "In retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake. But I was only trying to retrieve the gerbil," Eric Tomaszewski told bemused doctors in the Severe Burns Unit of Salt Lake City Hospital. Tomaszewski, and his homosexual partner Andrew "Kiki" Farnum, had been admitted for emergency treatment after a felching session had gone seriously wrong. "I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Raggot, our gerbil, in," he explained. "As usual, Kiki shouted out "Armageddon", my cue that he'd had enough. I tried to retrieve Raggot but he wouldn't come out again, so I peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him. At a hushed press conference, a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "The match ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and a flame shot up the tube, igniting Mr Tomaszewski's hair and severely burning his face. It also set fire to the gerbil's fur and whiskers which in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestine, propelling the rodent out like a cannonball." Tomaszewski suffered second degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the gerbil, while Farnum suffered first and second degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract. here you go folks: 1994's MOST BIZARRE SUICIDE At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story: On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this. Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by and elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and pellets went through the window striking Opus. When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus. There was an exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten- story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window. The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide. How Not To Die: The Dumbest Deaths in Recorded History Attila the Hun: One of the most notorious villains in history, Attila's army had conquered all of Asia by 450 AD--from Mongolia to the edge of the Russian Empire--by destroying villages and pillaging the countryside. How he died: He got a nosebleed on his wedding night In 453 AD, Attila married a young girl named Ildico. Despite his reputation for ferocity on the battlefield, he tended to eat and drink lightly during large banquets. On his wedding night, however, he really cut loose, gorging himself on food and drink. Sometime during the night he suffered a nosebleed, but was too drunk to notice. He drowned in his own blood and was found dead the next morning. -------------------- Tycho Brahe: An important Danish astronomer of the 16th century. His ground breaking research allowed Sir Isaac Newton to come up with the theory of gravity. How he died: Didn't get to the bathroom in time In the 16th century, it was considered an insult to leave a banquet table before the meal was over. Brahe, known to drink excessively, had a bladder condition -- but failed to relieve himself before the banquet started. He made matters worse by drinking too much at dinner, and was too polite to ask to be excused. His bladder finally burst, killing him slowly and painfully over the next 11 days. -------------------- Horace Wells: Pioneered the use of anesthesia in the 1840s How he died: Used anesthetics to commit suicide While experimenting with various gases during his anesthesia research, Wells became addicted to chloroform. In 1848 he was arrested for spraying two women with sulfuric acid. In a letter he wrote from jail, he blamed chloroform for his problems, claiming that he'd gotten high before the attack. Four days later he was found dead in his cell. He'd anaesthetized himself with chloroform and slashed open his thigh with a razor. -------------------- Francis Bacon: One of the most influential minds of the late 16th century. A statesman, a philosopher, a writer, and a scientist, he was even rumored to have written some of Shakespeare's plays. How he died: Stuffing snow into a chicken One afternoon in 1625, Bacon was watching a snowstorm and was struck by the wondrous notion that maybe snow could be used to preserve meat in the same way that salt was used. Determined to find out, he purchased a chicken from a nearby village, killed it, and then, standing outside in the snow, attempted to stuff the chicken full of snow to freeze it. The chicken never froze, but Bacon did. -------------------- Jerome Irving Rodale: Founding father of the organic food movement, creator of "Organic Farming and Gardening" magazine, and founder of Rodale Press, a major publishing corporation. How he died: On the "Dick Cavett Show", while discussing the benefits of organic foods. Rodale, who bragged "I'm going to live to be 100 unless I'm run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver," was only 72 when he appeared on the "Dick Cavett Show" in January 1971. Part way through the interview, he dropped dead in his chair. Cause of death: heart attack. The show was never aired. -------------------- Aeschylus: A Greek playwright back in 500 BC. Many historians consider him the father of Greek tragedies. How he died: An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head According to legend, eagles picked up tortoises and attempt to crack them open by dropping them on rocks. An eagle mistook Aeschylus' head for a rock (he was bald) and dropped it on him instead. -------------------- Jim Fixx: Author of the best selling "Complete Book of Running," which started the jogging craze of the 1970s. How he died: A heart attack....while jogging Fixx was visiting Greensboro, Vermont when he walked out of his house and began jogging. He'd only gone a short distance when he had a massive coronary. His autopsy revealed that one of his coronary arteries was 99% clogged, another was 80% obstructed, and a third was 70% blocked....and that Fixx had had three other attacks in the weeks prior to his death. -------------------- And finally there's Lully, one of our favorite 16th-century composers, who wrote music for the king of France. While rehearsing the musicians, he got too serious beating time with his staff, and drove it right through his foot. He died of infection.