Here's a couple of the better ones:
A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage. It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating this deadly gas. Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.
Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store: paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.
In Moscow, Russia, a drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bullet-proof vest to see if it would protect him against a knife attack. It didn't, and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound.
In France, Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him completely and cut through the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to hospital, where he died... of hypothermia.
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal imbedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road, at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. The folks in the lab finally figured out what it was, and what had happened. It seems that a former Air Force Sergeant had somehow got hold of a JATO unit, (Jet Assisted Take Off unit, actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra `push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert, and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed, and fired off the JATO! Best as they could determine, he was doing somewhere between 250 and 300 mph (350-420kph) when he came to that curve.... The brakes were completely burned away, apparently from trying to slow the car. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however, small fragments of bone, teeth, and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from the steering wheel.
Polish farmer Krystof Azninski staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen icicles, but then one man seized a chainsaw and cut off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and crying "Watch this then!" swung at his own head and chopped it off. "It's funny," said one companion, "Cos when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."
Japan Times-April 16, 1997 "The government must crack down on this disgusting craze of "Pumping", a spokesman for the Nakhon Ratchasima hospital told reporters. "If this perversion catches on, it will destroy the cream of Thailand's manhood." He was speaking after the remains of 13 year-old Charnchai Puanmuangpak had been rushed into the hospital's emergency room. "Most 'Pumpers' use a standard bicycle pump," he explained, "inserting the nozzle far up their rectum, giving themselves a rush of air, creating a momentary high. This act is a sin against God." Charnchai took it further still. He started using a two-cylinder foot pump, but even that wasn't exciting enough for him, and he boasted to friends that he was going to try the compressed air hose at a nearby gasoline station. They dared him to do it so, under cover of darkness, he snuck in. Not realizing how powerful the machine was, he inserted the tube deep into his rectum, and placed a coin in the slot. As a result, he died virtually instantly, but passers-by are still in shock. One woman thought she was watching a twilight fireworks display, and started clapping. "We still haven't located all of him," say the police authorities. "When that quantity of air interacted with the gas in his system, he nearly exploded. It was like an atom bomb went off or something." "Pumping is the devil's pastime, and we must all say no to Satan," Ratchasima concluded. "Inflate your tires by all means, but then hide your bicycle pump where it cannot tempt you."
