While en route to an Illinois hospital after doctors discovered a nail lodged in his brain, one man did what anyone with a smartphone and shocking personal news would do: he uploaded a photo of the X-ray to his Facebook profile.
Poor Matthew Wall. A tragic motorcycle crash shortly after he got married left him with extensive nerve damage, a shattered pubic ramus bone, and some unfortunate damage to his penis. Reconstructive surgery could only help so much, and the 27-year-old Navy man lost a total of 1.5 inches from his manhood.
Francesco Schettino, the Italian cruise ship captain who caroused with his passengers before steering his ship dangerously close to shore and then fleeing immediately when it ran aground and capsized, leaving 11 (at last count) to die and thousands to flail in terror, sounds like a real go-getter. Here is a tape of an Italian Coast Guard official ordering Schettino, who was speaking by phone from a lifeboat, to get back aboard and help evacuate the women and children who were still on his boat. He said no.
The cruise ship Costa Concordia capsized over the weekend, just off the coast of the Italian island of Giglio, killing at least six and terrifying the ship's 4,200 passengers. (All but 15 have been accounted for.) It sounds unbelievably horrifying. But also sort of funny.
Rachel Yoder, a 15 year-old Amish girl in Ohio, was riding home in her buggy from a Christmas party last week when she was, mysteriously and without warning, shot in the head and killed. Now police have found the killer: a man who fired his "muzzle-loading rifle" into the air while cleaning it, more than a mile away.
Five people and a dog were killed around 10 a.m. today when a small plane crashed on I-287 outside of Morris Township in New Jersey. The single-engine turbo-prop plane, which was piloted by a managing director of the investment bank Greenhill & Co., and carrying his wife, two children, and a coworker, had taken off from Teterboro Airport and was headed for Atlanta when it disappeared from radar. The Newark Star-Ledger writes that it "appeared to nosedive and disintegrate"; although no one on the ground died, the debris was strewn across a half-mile area and the wreckage was horrifying:
You know, the one thing not missing from the Friday Night Lights series finale was the presence of a possessed golf cart mowing down the Permian Panthers' defensive line. The Spring Dekaney Wildcats were not so lucky: The Texan high school football team were barely able to celebrate their new state title when just such a berserk vehicle — like something out of a not-particularly-terrifying Stephen King novel! — sent the stadium into a panic. Everyone was okay, though, so it's all right to laugh. Hahaha! Runaway golf cart! [Buzzfeed]
Imagine going to work in a Midtown office tower, trudging your way to a job you don't really like anymore, and while getting into the elevator as it shoots up in the air, crushing you against the ceiling, splitting your body in half, and killing you. Hell of a way to go.
A special message for you Christmas celebrators: This year, when using your helicopter to set up and decorate your tree, try not to fly close to any structures. Otherwise, your propellers might get caught and cause you to have a crash in which you die. That would ruin Christmas!
In July 2010, 79-year-old Florida man Richard Smith went to the hospital complaining about breathing troubles and stomach pains. After his nurse accidentally injected him with Pancuronium—a drug that's given to death row inmates during the execution process—Smith's health troubles were gone. But so was he, eventually.
If you, like me, are a big fan of nonfiction, then you'll want to add Stuck Up! 125 Objects Inserted and Ingested in Places They Shouldn't Be to your holiday reading list, and pronto. Who wouldn't want to curl up to a roaring fire this Christmas with a definitive compendium of funny things stuck inside people's bodily cavities? Sure, slowly squatting onto a 12-Inch Karate Action Buzz Lightyear might sound like a good idea after a couple of grams of high-grade crystal methamphetamine; it's the journey back to Earth that isn't always quite so pleasant. (And if you think that's bad, you should see what happened to the guy's Woody.) [Stuck Up! via TMZ]
At least 19 fire companies from Long Island have responded to a blaze at the Pavilion and LaFountaine buildings on Fire Island Pines, the social hub of the legendary gay beach community. The fire began around 9:15 p.m. The complex was sold in 2010 to FIP Ventures, and encompasses the Pavilion nightclub, the Blue Whale and Bay Bar restaurants, the Hotel Ciel, a grocery store and gym. Word from the scene is that firefighters have the blaze under control, and that it hasn't spread to any residences or rental properties. No cause has yet been determined. We'll have more on this story as it develops. [Photo credit: The Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society/Facebook]
Two collisions took two lives within four hours of each other on San Diego's Interstate 8 today. Not particularly newsworthy. Add to the story the fact that the victims were father and teenage son, and you get one hell of a chilling tragedy.
Chris Birch was a big, tough Welsh rugby player who was engaged to a woman and loved nothing more than sports. Then one day he had an accident while trying to do a back flip and broke his neck and had a stroke. When he woke up, he was gay.
This glowing fireball is not the coming of Harold Camping's apocalypse but the aftermath of a collision between a tanker carrying 8,500 gallons of gas and a minivan, which took place on the New Jersey Turnpike last night. Citizen journalist @MelissaJoann was there and filmed what she saw; this image is a still from her crazy-looking video.
Sounds like last night was another eventful one for the demonstrators of Occupy Oakland. After yesterday's general strike, during which anarchists who seem to hold a grudge against $10 tempeh loaves defiled the sanctity of a local Whole Foods, protesters occupied the local Travelers Aid building, danced in the streets, and hung an "Occupy Everything" banner, reports ABC.
On Monday morning, an 80-year-old Long Island man walked out his front door to get his paper—as he'd done hundreds of times before—only to fall, suddenly, into an eight-foot-deep hole, from where he was forced to scream to his daughter for help. Were you looking for a living, breathing metaphor for the newspaper industry? Because there's one in a hole in Oceanside, New York.
Breakups are bad news, as we all know. Who here hasn't spent a week binging on raw cookie dough and episodes of The Good Wife after getting dumped? Or gotten behind the wheel of his cab, naked and drunk, and crashed into 17 cars?
