Legacy MattersAspiring chef dies hours after making ultra-hot sauce for chili-eating contest.
Andrew Lee, 33, had used a bag of home-grown red chillies to make a super-hot sauce.
The forklift truck driver, who had recently passed a medical at work, dared his girlfriend's brother to eat a spoonful - then ate a plateful himself. Shortly after he had a heart attack and died.
Road rage woman burned to death by ramming rival motorist and revving her engine until her car went up in flames.
The victim was so overcome with anger she refused to get out of her burning car and even threatened a would-be rescuer who tried to persuade her.
If you do, at least know what the Death Cap toadstool - amanita phalloides - looks like.
Here's another photo of a more mature death cap.
Dryer Fire kills Lexington mother
A deadly fire that smoldered for hours while Gena Brown and her two daughters slept Friday night probably started in a dryer vent, according to state fire officials. The blaze killed Brown shortly before dawn after she shouted a warning to her girls to flee.
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State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said dryer fires are not uncommon in Massachusetts. In 2006, there were 87 such fires, 72 of which occurred in homes. Altogether the fires caused $500,000 in damage, he said.
While many were caused by mechanical malfunctions, about 20 percent occurred because people failed to clean the dryer lint screen. In addition to cleaning the lint screen, Coan said, state officials recommend cleaning the vent pipe that channels hot air from the dryer outside at least twice a year.
Lint is extremely flammable, Coan said. Brown is the second person to die in recent years as the result of a dryer fire, although the other death occurred under bizarre circumstances.
Coan said in that case, an alleged burglar who had broken into a laundromat got stuck in a vent where he died when a fire erupted
If you're drunk, don't go to the zoo to take photos of the bears
THREE bears at a Ukrainian zoo tore a man "limb from limb" after he fell into their enclosure, local media reports.
The 22-year-old man was drunk and trying to take close-up shots of the Siberian Brown bears at Mykolaev city zoo when he lost his footing, witnesses said, acording to Channel 5 television.
The three bears charged the man immediately, tearing him "limb from limb" as he tried to escape, according to the station, quoted by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency.
The man was dead before keepers could separate the animals from their victim.
A TOURIST in desperate need of a toilet break at a train station was killed when he urinated on an electrified railway track which was carrying 750 volts.
The victim was electrocuted after he crept into a recess to relieve himself. It is thought his urine splashed on the line and he died instantly when the charge leaped up at him.
In Russia, a woman upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.
The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch...The woman then walked out of the room and returned three hours later to check on what she thought was an unusually quiet sleeping husband.
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Video on the television channel's Web site showed emergency workers sawing away the side panels of a couch to remove a man in his underwear lying headfirst between the cushions.
Emergency workers said the man died instantly.
Woman kills husband with folding couch
Ruling finds Japanese man died from overwork
A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm.
The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife
A middle-aged man collapsed and died of water overdose after drinking five times recommended intake.
He collapsed with a fatal heart attack after drinking vast amounts of water to relieve pain from a gum disease.
The divorcee thought he was being sensible by refusing to take painkillers and had no idea he was risking his life by drinking excessively.
He was taken to hospital last December after collapsing at home and doctors initially thought he was drunk on alcohol because he was staggering and slurring his words.
In reality the symptoms were caused by the excess water causing swelling in the brain.
Doctors put salt back into his body in an attempt to counter the effects of his huge water intake, but the following day he suffered a fatal heart attack.
On their honeymoon husband goes scuba diving with his new wife on the Great Barrier reef only his wife never comes up.
Since the husband was an experienced diver, since he asked his fiancee before the wedding to increase her life insurance and make him the sole beneficiary, since he, as her dive buddy, didn't rush to help his inexperienced wife who was struggling to breathe and sinking into the deep but instead decided to swim away for help, Daniel Watson, an American tourist is charged with murder.
Of course, someone had an underwater camera and took pictures.
Man shoots self dead while breaking into house.
Police in a Dallas suburb say a man trying to rob a house accidentally shot himself after kicking down the door and died in the driveway.
Grand Prairie police say the body of 19-year-old Cameron Sands was found outside the house early Tuesday.
Police Lt. John Brimmer says the evidence indicates Sands shot himself while trying to pull the gun from his waistband. He then dropped the gun and ran until he collapsed.
One day in 1971, a woman called Sarah Krasnoff made off with her 14-year-old grandson, who was caught up in an unseemly custody dispute, and took him into the sky. In a plane, she knew, they were subject to no laws, and if they never stopped moving, the law could never catch up with them. They flew from New York to Amsterdam. When they arrived, they turned around and flew from Amsterdam to New York. Then they flew from New York to Amsterdam again, and from Amsterdam to New York, again and again and again, month after month.
They took about 160 flights in all, one after the other, according to the stage piece "Jet Lag." They saw 22 movies an average of seven times each. They ate lunch again and again and turned their watches six hours forward, then six hours back. The whole fugitive enterprise ended when Krasnoff, 74, finally collapsed and died, the victim, doctors could only suppose, of terminal jet lag.
Pico Iyer writes of Jet Lag in the New York Times via Kottke
To kill himself, he swallowed pesticide, but his wife found him, called the emergency medical personnel who took him to an emergency room where 54 were sickened by his toxic vomit.
The man vomited while having his stomach pumped, and odorous toxic gas spread through the emergency room. Thirty-one hospital staff members, including doctors, and 23 outpatients and their families were sickened. About 20 of them were in treatment rooms, and others were in the waiting lounge.
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The woman listed in serious condition was about 10 meters away from the man at the time of the incident. She had gone to the hospital for treatment of kidney failure and pneumonia.
Among 44 people who suffered minor health problems were two 1-year-old babies and two 3-year-old children.
After a spat in a bar between sports rivals in Nashua, New Hampshire, Ivonne Hernandez, a Yankee fan got in her car, heard someone chant 'Yankees suck' and then ran down a group of Red Sox fans killing one.
"She never braked, and she accelerated at a high speed for about 200 feet. She went directly at this group of people," prosecutor Susan Morrell said of Ivonne Hernandez, who is charged with reckless second-degree murder in the death early Friday of Matthew Beaudoin, 29.
Now comes her Shock Confession. Her defense attorney is arguing she was pushed to the breaking point.
She said, 'I didn't touch any of them,' . "She said they were running towards her car. She said, 'The guy ran on top of my car.' "
Condolences to the family of Matthew Beaudoin. They can never again believe It's only a game.
This soaring photo is the last one known of the Roman Catholic priest who wanted to raise money to build a worship center for truckers by breaking the 19-hour world record for flying with balloons.
An experienced skydiver, Adelir Antonio de Carli lifted off under a column of a thousand helium-filled balloons. He was equipped with a bouyant chair, a thermal suit, a parachute, a satellite phone and a GPS device.
He disappeared when winds blew him over the ocean. Fishing boats and rescue workers in helicopters found bits of balloons along the coast. A week after his disappearance, the Brazilian navy called off the search
An Italian woman artist who wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people was hitchhiking from Milan to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace.
Her naked body was found in the bushes of Gebze, Turkey.
"World Peace' hitcher is murdered.
Man killed while beating would-be robber
Facing the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on a dark West Baltimore street, Roland Scott fought back. He pulled out his own weapon - a fake handgun - and wrested the shotgun away from his attacker, city police said.
Scott ordered the man to strip naked in the middle of Laurens Street, took $800 from him and forced him to march into the laundry room of a nearby apartment building.
"He starts beating him, telling him to get more money, saying, 'Get me a cell phone or I'm going to kill you,'" said Sgt. Dennis M. Raftery Jr., a supervisor in the Police Department's homicide unit. "He is beating him with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun."
Raftery said the shotgun, then pointed at Scott, discharged, hitting Scott in the stomach and killing him. Authorities said his death will be ruled accidental.
"It is unusual," Raftery said yesterday. "I don't know how to put it. It is sort of like one for the books
Breast-surgery complications kill West Boca High cheerleader
Stephanie Kuleba had a charmed life: captain of the varsity cheerleading squad at West Boca High, a nearly perfect grade-point average, good looks and a ticket to the University of Florida, where she would start her journey toward becoming a medical doctor.
Her friends said she was "perfect," so when Kuleba died Saturday of complications from breast augmentation surgery, none of them could understand how the girl whose success in life "was a sure thing" could perish in such a strange and devastating fashion.
Condolences to her family.
Far from Michigan, Judy Zagorski, 57, was on a spring break vacation with her family, aboard a boat off the Florida Keys.
She was sunbathing on the boat's deck when a Giant stingray leaps onto the boat and impales her through the neck killing her
Condolences to her family.
I know it's tiresome to hear people sing off tune, especially if they are drunk, but one man in Thailand took it way too far.
John Denver karaoke sparks Thai killing spree
"When I began shooting nobody pleaded for his life because they were all drunk," he said after his arrest.
He said he was so furious with their awful singing that he did not notice he had murdered his own brother-in-law.
The inability to accept the inevitability of death can ruin your life as this book reviewer writes about Susan Sontag's son and his book,
"Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir" (David Rieff)
From the NYT review entitled A Fight for Life Consumes Both Mother and Son.
“A bad death” is another matter. We all know those when we see them, the miserably protracted and painful affairs that overwhelm everyone — the deceased and survivors alike — with panic, guilt and bitter regrets.
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Obviously,” Mr. Rieff says, “there is no comparison between the sufferings of a person who is ill and the sufferings of those who love them.” Still, one suspects he got the worst of the deal, for despite what he describes as a tense relationship with his mother, he was cast in the role of head cheerleader. His job was to enthusiastically endorse her struggle, always to be optimistic and supportive and never, ever, to talk about death.
“What she wanted from me was an adamant refusal to accept that it was even possible that she might not survive,” Mr. Rieff writes. Ms. Sontag “might be covered in sores, incontinent and half delirious,” but Mr. Rieff would “tell her at great and cheerful length about how much better she seemed to look/seem/be compared to the day before.”
Months of this duplicity left him guilty and miserable, obsessively revisiting every decision again and again, even — and especially — after she died.
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He and his mother will undoubtedly survive for a long time to come in medical school courses on death and dying — as a case study in how not to do it.
In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool because of an "astounding misapplication of judgment".
Some of the 2007 nominees
The Enema Within Getting drunk when your throat is too sore to do it in the usual way.
Coitus Interruptus - Coming and going at the same time.
Gravity still works - Amazing the number of thieves who try to steal tower supports to sell as scrap metal.
Stop. Look. Listen. Or tomorrow you'll be missing
This is sad because I can imagine so many people in a rush, on their phone, not paying attention.
Amtrak train hits, kills pedestrian who, absorbed in a cell phone call, walked around a lowered crossing gate and on to the tracks.
His house was so full that he built a network of tunnels so he could move around in it. Four tons of rubbish had to be removed before his body could be removed from his bedroom.
Collector killed by his own hoard.
A man who jumped into a lake to flee police was killed by an alligator more than 9 feet long.
