Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (20 page)

R
eed Harris and his girlfriend, Kaitlin Whipple, liked to eat at Wendy’s. So when he decided to propose marriage, the fast-food place was the obvious, if nontraditional, place to do it. Harris, Whipple, and some friends went to Wendy’s one night, with the friends there to record the momentous proposal on their camera phones. Harris’s clever idea: hide the ring in Whipple’s Frosty, Wendy’s extra-thick milkshake beverage.

Everyone sat and waited for Whipple to bite into something hard during one of those Frosty spoonfuls… but it never happened. The rest of the party told Whipple to finish up her cup fast, and she did. No ring.

After a quick trip to the hospital, Harris proposed to Whipple holding up not the engagement ring but an X-ray of Whipple’s stomach with a diamond ring clearly visible in her stomach. (Whipple eventually passed the ring, which she still wears, because she actually married Harris.)

U
p to 40 people are killed each year by jellyfish. And that’s just in the Philippines.

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Don’t grumble when your seat assignment is way in the back of the plane, in crying-baby class. In the event of a crash landing, the rich folks up front in first class are most likely to die.

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According to England’s
Daily Mirror
, “More than 2,500 left-handed people are killed every year around the world from using equipment meant for right-handed people. The right-handed power saw is the most deadly item.”

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Each year roughly 1,000 Americans die because they insist on texting or talking on a cell phone while driving. According to a Virginia Tech study, if you text while you drive, your risk of collision is 23 times greater than if you were paying attention.

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Hippos kill 2,900 people a year in Africa. In the U.S., that number is virtually zero…because there are no hippos native to the U.S. But there are dogs in the U.S., and dog attacks take about 35 American lives each year.

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The press sure had a field day after
Kill Bill
star David Carradine was killed in 2009 by “autoerotic asphyxiation” (which involves pulleys and gags and other such strange apparatuses). Carradine wasn’t alone (well, at the time he was). More than 1,000 people die each year from these kind of sexual mishaps.

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On average, two Americans are killed by vending machines each year.

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Approximately 450 Americans die annually after falling out of bed. Most are very young, very old, or very drunk.

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They don’t feel very safe, but the rate of injury and fatalities on roller coasters don’t lie: 900 million rides are taken each year, with only about 7,300 injuries…and 10 deaths. So buckle up and keep your hands and feet inside the car.

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Of course, the leading cause of dying is death. The Grim Reaper takes away about 57 million people worldwide each year. That means that today, 155,000 of your fellow humans will perish. A dozen or so died while you read this sentence.

A
fter years of risky loans, a “handsoff” regulation policy, and other factors, by 2008 the Royal Bank of Scotland was in such bad shape that it needed a $70 billion bailout from the UK government. RBS tried numerous ways to right the ship, including a computer upgrade and outsourcing jobs to India. Both strategies are usually good for helping a company grow. But not always.

On June 19, 2012, a technician in Hyderabad, India, was updating software when he made a mistake. While working in a database that held the entire day’s transactions, he hit delete. Before the problem was noticed, he deleted two more days of transactions. Bank records for 17 million accounts were gone. Customers went days without access to their money; some had to wait 10 weeks. Even companies without RBS accounts were affected, like mortgage and utility companies that received automatic payments from RBS customers.

The error could ultimately cost the bank $3 billion, including reimbursement of late fees and overdraft charges, overtime for 7,000 employees, even hotel fees for customers who were kicked out of their homes after rent checks bounced.

T
wilight Zone: The Movie
(1983)

A horrific hallucination scene set during the Vietnam War involved both night shooting and a low-flying helicopter. Lead actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were crushed and decapitated after the pilot lost control and crashed into them. Director John Landis and several others involved in the production were tried and acquitted on charges of manslaughter. As a result of the tragedy, many movie studios avoided helicopter stunts in the years that followed, and several regulations to protect child actors were substantially revised.

Troy
(2004)

In this swords-and-sandals flick, Brad Pitt played Achilles, the Greek warrior who died after his heel was hit by an arrow. Appropriately enough, Pitt injured his foot while filming a fight scene with co-star Eric Bana. The sequence required Pitt to leap and hit Bana’s shield with a spear. But Pitt landed wrong, rupturing one of his Achilles tendons in the process. Production continued during Pitt’s recuperation, which took three months. When Pitt’s ankle was healthy, the crew celebrated by filming the scene where his character is undone by his delicate heel.

Top Gun
(1986)

This action-packed blockbuster featured several tricky air stunts. Professional stuntman and pilot Art Scholl, whose credits included
The A-Team
and
The Right Stuff
, was brought on board to perform many of them. During the filming of a flight maneuver called a “flat spin,” Scholl’s plane began losing altitude and he radioed, “I have a problem…I have a real problem.” He was unable to regain control and crashed off the coast of Southern California. Neither the aircraft nor Scholl’s remains were ever recovered, and the cause of the accident was never determined. The film was dedicated to his memory.

The Crow
(1994)

The set of this supernatural action film was infamously problem-plagued, if not downright cursed. Star Brandon Lee, the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, died from injuries sustained after being shot with a prop gun that had been mistakenly loaded with live ammunition. Earlier in the production, a carpenter survived life-threatening electrical burns after the crane he was operating came into contact with high-voltage power lines. A disgruntled carpenter seeking revenge against the film’s producers (he’d been fired) drove his car through the studio’s plaster shop. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, a crew member accidentally drove a screwdriver through his own hand, and a stuntman fell through one of the set’s roofs.

Gothika
(2003)

This psychological thriller didn’t feature a lot of stunt work, but Halle Berry still managed to break her arm. Co-star Robert Downey Jr. was supposed to grab her arm and twist it. Unfortunately, he twisted too hard and Berry’s arm snapped. The production had to shut down for eight weeks while Berry recovered.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
(2010)

Several scenes in this Nicolas Cage movie were shot on the streets of New York City. During the filming of a chase scene, a stuntman driving a Ferrari lost control of the vehicle while attempting to perform a “power slide.” The car slid too far, jumped a curb, took out an electrical pole, and careened through the entrance of a Sbarro restaurant in the middle of Times Square. Two people were injured, one of whom was hit by the pole. Two nights later, another nine onlookers were hurt when a stunt driver lost control of a BMW X5 after she slammed into a parked SUV. Many crew members began to wonder if the film was cursed while media reports questioned why the sidewalks around the set weren’t closed to pedestrians. The producers later blamed both accidents on inclement weather and slippery pavement.