Weird news - Kid died in hot car, father charged

It is an accident, something that no parent would want to happen. At the same time, it would seem as a lot of common sense that a car will quickly get hot when left in the open, and anybody left in the car would quickly become uncomfortable in the vehicle and given enough time, suffocate in the heat. This is more problematic when a child is left in the car and because of their inability to help themselves, suffer the heat and some of them even die. In such cases, even if the parent would most likely have forgot the child in the car, the child died and this is a crime (link to article):

A Mississippi man has been charged with second-degree murder after he left his 8-month-old daughter in an overheated car while he went to work. Joshua Lewis Blunt left the child in the vehicle outside the restaurant where he works for “some period of time,” Grenada Deputy Police Chief George Douglas told the Clarion-Ledger.

Weird news - Head severed by leaning out of the bus

When we are on the road, there is a constant need to follow safety precautions, because with the speeds and the forces involved, there is always the threat of serious injury or death. From childhood, along with other safety precautions, the need to keep all parts of the body inside the car and not have anything outside the windows has been emphasized. Part of the reason for the same is because passing vehicles (in the same direction or in the opposite direction) can hit and with enough force, the shearing action can cause serious injuries or death.
In the following case, a lady was feeling a vomiting sensation, and in order to do it quickly, she moved her head outside the window, and that is where it got tragic. Her head hit an electric pole outside, and the impact was so severe that her head got severed from her body (link to article);

The head of a 56-year-old woman was smashed and severed after hitting an electric pole when she leaned out of the window of a rashly-driven bus to vomit here in Madhya Pradesh Friday, police said. The incident took place near Diamond crossing here and the victim was identified as Asha Rani, who was travelling from Satna district to Panna district, they said. Asha Rani leaned out of the bus’s window to vomit when her head hit the electric pole. The impact was so massive that her head got severed and tumbled on the road, Kotwali police station inspector Arvind Kujur told PTI over phone.

Weird news - Helicopter blade accident kills man

We use a lot of machinery as a part of our daily life, and this is normally fine. However, human life is fragile (in the sense that the body is fragile) and malfunction of a lot of the machinery can threaten this human life. From time to time, we hear of incidents such as a boiler accident or factory explosion or chemical accidents where people or more than one person gets killed. This is another such case where an accident claimed the life of a person, the accident being just a freak accident.
There was maintenance happening of a helicopter, when the helicopter was started and the machinery moved up and down with one of the helicopter blades striking the man, causing his death. Now, maintenance of such aviation assets such as helicopters and planes is a routine work, happening for decades now and with a checklist of activities that need to happen one after the other. For a person to die during such an operation means that something went seriously wrong (link to article):

A maintenance man was decapitated by the rotor of a helicopter at the Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport in Brooksville, Florida, a Hernando County Fire Rescue official told CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP-TV. The Federal Aviation Administration said the blade struck Salvatore Disi, 62, of Hudson, Florida, who was doing maintenance work on the aircraft Thursday afternoon. According to the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, a caller said he and another person were using a power cart to jump-start the copter when it jerked up and came down quickly. That's when Disi was struck by one of the main rotor blades. He died instantly. Deputies said no foul play was suspected.

Weird news - Vandals try to destroy large snowman, but ....

What is karma ? Karma, in nowadays everyday usage, is meant to depict an event whereby people get their just rewards, whether that be positive or negative. Look at what has happened in the following case where people were trying to be destructive and faced damage themselves. Modern cities struggle with vandalism - whether this be spray painting of walls, damage to statues, damages to new infrastructure, and so on. How much can you catch such stuff going on and punish them ? The Government of Singapore would damage such vandalism such as spray painting of cars by whipping the perpetrators. 

During the winter, with huge amounts of snow falling from the sky, building a snowman is a favorite pastime. It looks like fun, the raw material is totally free and it can be decorated with a range of items from mufflers to buttons to hats, and so on. However, there is always a worry about vandals, as the following incident highlights. The couple in Kentucky used a large tree stump as the base on which to build the snowman and ended up with a 10 feet tall structure in which the tree stump was totally hidden by the snow. A lot of people admired the massive snowman.

However, you have people who are destructive, so apparently some people with a vehicle decided that using the vehicle to knock down the snowman would be fun, so they took their vehicle and rammed the snowman. However, imagine their surprise when their vehicle hit a hard unmovable object, and it would have surely impacted their vehicle itself and would have caused some damage to the vehicle (link to article):

"Everyone driving by loved him, and waved and honked to express their delight," Lutz said. "However, evidently not everyone was a fan! I arrived home to find a set of tire tracks across my yard, ending abruptly at the base of the snowman." Lutz realized someone tried to drive into their snowman, but since the base of it was a stump, the would-be vandals failed — miserably. "The massive stump is now exposed, with a snowy imprint of a bumper stuck to it!" Lutz said. Apparently Frosty had been handing out life lessons to some very-surprised 4x4 vandals," he joked. "'You reap what you sow!' Still standing, and still smiling, Frosty certainly had the last laugh!"

Weird: Son died after being hit by mother's coffin

This is probably right there in the list of weird tragic deaths. The funerals in the Torajan community in northern Indonesia can be ornate, and very expensive, depending on the position of the person who dies as well as their family. These funerals can even last days with a large number of people attending, animals being killed and eaten, and more germane to the current situation, the coffins are placed on a temporary high platform, and that is where the problem occurred.
Coffins can be heavy, and with the dead weight of a body inside the coffin, it can be even more heavy, dangerously so. So when a group of people were trying to carry the coffin on a bamboo ladder to a temporary platform, some of the bamboo supports collapsed and eventually the people carrying the coffin fell down, with the coffin finally falling on a man named Samen Kondorura, who by a sense of twisted logic, was the dead lady's son, and who died due to the impact of the falling coffin (link to article):

The coffin, now vertical and supported by nothing, dropped more than 10 feet to the ground as frightened onlookers stared or screamed. At the bottom of the mass of people and bamboo and fabric was Samen Kondorura, Berta's 40-year-old son. He had been near the end of the coffin — one of the last trying to push it up into the tower. “As the mother’s coffin was being raised to the lakkian, suddenly the ladder shifted and collapsed, the coffin fell and hit the victim,” Julianto Sirait, chief police commissioner of the Tana Toraja municipality on Sulawesi, told the Guardian. Onlookers tried to dig him out of the pile, but it was too late. Samen Kondorura died on his way to the hospital, according to NDTV.

Weird news - Man dies after hitting a manhole

When people die tragically or in an accident, sometimes the way that they go is very strange (or weird). Consider this case, which is also a prime example of the incompetence of the local municipal authorities who left the road in a state of disrepair during a pipeline laying process. Accidents are known to have a high rate of severe injuries, or even fatalities because of the speeds involved, and because of the impact on frail human bodies. However, when you combine this with the shock caused due to the vehicle hitting a manhole, the driver being apparently drunk, and the vehicle catching fire after falling in a manhole which caused the driver to burn to death (and if he was drunk, the ability to respond quickly would have been also lost) (link to article):

As per the police the victim, a resident of Ulwe, was drunk at the time of the accident. The incident occurred when he was crossing sector 20 around 12.30am as per reports by Hindustan Times. The man lost control of his vehicle, which then jumped on to a sewage pipeline along the road. Smita Jadhav, senior inspector of NRI police station said, "The manholes along the stretch are uncovered as the construction work of a pipeline and road is going on. The victim and his two-wheeler fell into a manhole. After the accident, the two-wheeler caught fire and exploded inside the pipeline. The victim suffered severe burns and died on the spot."

Weird news - Person dissolves in Yellowstone hot water spring

A horrific accident, that just goes to show how dangerous it can be to take security considerations and safety rules lightly. Yellowstone National Park is very attractive for visitors because of the beauty, and because of the hot springs and geysers; but underlying all this is the fact that the park sits on top of a huge volcanic chamber, and the conditions on top are because of the magma chamber underneath. As a result, there are many different types of gases (many of them dangerous), different levels of heat in the water along with many minerals that can make contact with the water dangerous. For the safety of visitors, there are regulations about where all visitors can go, and visitors are forbidden to go outside these regions. In addition, even though it may seem attractive to enjoy bathing in these hot springs, the conditions can be dangerous and hence it is prohibited. This horrific accident shows why these regulations should be followed (link to article).
This sister faced the horror of seeing her brother fall and die in a hot spring, and the high level of minerals (corrosive) caused a quick dissolution of the body to the extent that when rescuers tried to retrieve the body later, it could not found (link to article):

Like many of the 840,000 people who visited Yellowstone in June, Colin and Sable Scott, a brother and sister from Oregon, came to marvel at the basin’s thermal features. But their visit took a turn for the horrific, as The Washington Post reported, when the pair left the protective boardwalk and hiked 225 yards into the basin. “Then, somehow, Colin Scott slipped, and as his sister watched, the 23-year-old tumbled into one of the boiling springs. Despite her immediate call for help and the prolonged search efforts by park staff, her brother was never seen again,” The Post reported in June. One of the few pieces of evidence left behind was a pair of Scott’s flip-flops.

Weird news - Woman regains sight due to injury after years

There are still many aspects of the human body and its various components that are not easily understood by doctors and medical science. From time to time, one comes across incidents that are sometimes seen to be miracles, where a medical practitioner is not able to logically and scientifically explain why something seems to happen; this does not necessarily mean that it was a miracle but that the level of understanding of medical science of what happened is not yet sufficient.
In the current case, it would seem that a miracle happened. A lady lost her eyesight 20 years back through a car accident and an injury to a spine in 1993. Then recently, she had a fall inside her house and hit her head, and then had to be hospitalized and had operations. And then after an operation, while coming to, she had a surprising observation; she was able to see again. The Doctor had no real reason as to why this happened; with a possible scientific reason being that a blood vessel supplying the brain had got blocked during the earlier accident and the recent one causing the blockage to get removed. (link to article):

A 70-year-old woman in Florida who was been blind for over 20 years has regained her sight after falling over and hitting her head at her home, baffling her neurosurgeon who says it is a “true miracle”. Mary Ann Franco, gradually became blind after injuring her spine in a car accident in 1993. Then, more than two decades later, another accident and a subsequent operation appears to have led to the recovery of her sight, although doctors are still trying to work out how exactly this could have happened. “I was fully blind all I could see was blackness,” she told The Independent. “I was in my living room, going over to the door. My foot caught on a tile, and it flipped me. I hit my head in the back, and hit it on something else, maybe the fireplace,” she said.

Weird news: 3 year old boy shoots himself in tragedy

In a sign of how the increasing presence of guns in US society is making it easier for tragedies to happen, another tragedy happened where a 3 year old saw a gun (which was loaded and ready to fire) in his father's store and shot himself with the gun, right under the nose of the father. The increased presence of guns with citizens has statistically increased the chances that such of tragedies will happen; there will be an increased number of people who somehow forgot to ensure gun safety at all points of time. Children play with toy guns, and if they see a loaded gun, they do not have the knowledge to avoid the gun; it is the responsibility of the gun owner to ensure that the gun is always safe, in a place where children cannot access it.
Unfortunately in this case, the loaded gun (ready to fire, no safety latch apparently on) was accessible to the child, and even though his father was just next to him, a small gap in time ensured that the child was able to pick up the gun and fire at himself, leading to his tragic death (link to article):

Manal Jr. was sitting on a stool beside his father at the store on Sunday when he found a handgun stored on a shelf beneath the cash register. The three-year-old accidentally shot himself and died shortly after. It is illegal in North Carolina to have an unsecured gun in the presence of a child, according to the Associated Press. Authorities in Lumberton, a small city 100 miles south of Raleigh, are investigating the incident and the Robeson County District Attorney's Office will decide whether to file charges. Lumberton Police Department Capt. Terry Parker urged gun owners to keep their weapons secure. "Make sure it's where the child cannot have access to it," he told WTVD Monday. "Kids are going to be naturally curious about firearms. Kids, they need to learn gun safety but at the same time we as adults have got to protect the kids to the best of our ability."

Weird news: 3 year old boy picks up gun and shoots

This is getting to be a problem on a regular basis. The proliferation of guns in the United States is pretty high, given that the constitution protects the right of the people to bear guns. As a result, a large number of guns are in private hands. There are mass shootings happening from time to time, where somebody who is over the mental balance takes a gun or rifle and starts shooting people.
Another tricky situation is with regard to gun safety. Most people who have guns ensure that the guns are carefully locked away, so that few people have access to them, especially children. Children do not have that knowledge about the difference between a toy gun and a real gun, and this has proved deadly many times, such as in this case. Here, the boy picked up a gun and pointed it to his older sister and pulled the trigger, shooting the girl in the head. Tragically, the girl died soon after in a bitter impact to the family (link to article):

The pistol lay on the bedroom nightstand loaded and untouched. And then it was in the toddler's hands, pointed toward his older sister. A moment later, Kimberly Reylander was on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to her head. The adults rushed into the room. The nine-year-old girl was flown by medical helicopter to Children's of Alabama Saturday, where she died of her injuries, according to AL.com. Irondale, Ala., Police Chief Ken Atkinson told AL.com and WIAT that the children's great-grandfather had left the pistol on his nightstand Saturday morning, not knowing that the kids were coming over. He wasn't home at the time of the shooting, but the kids' grandmother and uncle - whom police detectives are now interviewing - were, though they didn't know there was a gun in the room where the children were playing.

Weird news: Mother died in pothole, daughter charged with murder

This is a totally weird story. When an accident happens, it is normally treated as an accident, especially when the person driving is following traffic rules, not driving drunk or in similar situations. If the road was in a bad condition, or a large pothole was there which caused an accident, then it would follow logical reasoning that the road owning authorities should be held responsible, whether this be the contractor who built the road and it deteriorated within an expected period of time, or the authority engineers who were supposed to certify the road construction. But it is really weird that the police decided to take the side of these authorities and filed a case against the driver of the two-wheeler (the daughter of the lady who died in this accident) (link to article):

Losing her mother on 26 July was a huge shock for Priti Rathod. The 26-year-old was returning home with her mother when her scooter fell into a pothole in a town near Mumbai. Her mother was thrown off the scooter and died of head injuries. Priti, who works with a multinational company, has now been charged with causing her mother's death by rash driving. "I am too shocked to react. The cops have made me the accused in a case where my mother was killed," she told NDTV. When Priti went to the police to complain against the contractor involved in the construction of the road, they allegedly refused to register her complaint and recorded a case of "accidental death."

Weird news - Woman crushed in escalator in China, manages to save child

This is the like a horror story. And yet, it just underscores how so many modern items we deal with on a regular basis can become so dangerous so quickly. And this is not an isolated accident, there have been problems with escalators over the years (why do you think a red emergency stop button was added to escalators for a quick stop of everything). It becomes even more horrifying when you think of how she died (don't watch the video in the attached article if you want to avoid seeing horrifying images). The miracle in this whole episode is how the woman was with her son, and before she died, she was able to hand over her son to 2 employees of the mall, with the son surviving the accident, but seeing his mother dying horribly in front of him.
And why did this accident happen ? Well, seems criminal. A metal plate at the top of the escalator was loose, and as the woman stepped on it, it opened and she was exposed to the machinery. The machinery did not have automatic cut-off to prevent such accidents, and it ground remorselessly on, killing the woman (link to article):

The scene can only be described as horrific: On an otherwise unremarkable morning, a woman is riding up a shopping center escalator in central China with her son. When she reaches the top and begins to disembark, she steps onto a metal footplate covering the machinery. The plate collapses, dropping the woman into the gears. She shoves her child into the arms of two mall employees, and is crushed to death. According to Xiang’s sister-in-law, Xiang apparently was unaware of any problem with the escalator until she and her son had already stepped onto the moving staircase, which was still in motion and not blocked off in any way. People questioned why the escalator was allowed to keep running or was not cordoned off if it posed a danger. Two employees, seen in the closed-circuit video circulated online, were standing at the top of the escalator, apparently trying to talk with Xiang as she and her son rode up.

Weird news: Man killed by automobile plant robot in Germany

Modern factories have a lot of automation that needs to happen. If you consider the assembly line of a modern automobile plant, there are a number of steps that need to happen again, which would include assembling various metal plates, bolting and welding them together, spray painting, etc. These used to be done by people earlier, but mostly these are repetitive operations that can be done by automation. Over the years, these assembly line operations have been taken over by robots; machines which do not look anything like the robots shown in movies, but essentially machines that have been built for such custom operations. These machines are expensive, but can work much faster than humans, have lower amount of errors and can easily earn back the amount invested in them.
One of the problems with robots or machines such as these is that they have been designed for a customer purpose which they do very well, but are not really designed for sudden or unusual events that happen, in which case their response would be nothing like how a human reacts. And the power that these machines have is pretty huge, being powered by machinery and being able to lift large weights easily and manipulate them. In this particular case, a contractor was killed in a mishap involving such a robot, where the robot grabbed the human and pushed him against a metal plate, killing in the process. And no, the robot is not being sent for a murder charge, but they would do well to investigate as to how the robot came to be in such a process (link to article):

A robot has killed a contractor at one of Volkswagen’s production plants in Germany, the automaker has said. The man died on Monday at the plant in Baunatal, about 100km (62 miles) north of Frankfurt, VW spokesman Heiko Hillwig said. The 22-year-old was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate, Hillwig said. He said initial conclusions indicate that human error was to blame, rather than a problem with the robot, which can be programmed to perform various tasks in the assembly process. He said it normally operates within a confined area at the plant, grabbing auto parts and manipulating them.

Weird news - Woman falls into a ravine, develops genius like abilities in some areas

The brain is a strange and wonderful organ, not fully understood as yet, and highly complicated. When researchers feel that they have understood something, some new occurrence happens which makes everybody feel that there is a lot left to be understood. Why somebody is born a genius while others are of normal capabilities is not fully understood; in fact, why somebody is a genius in terms of chess vs. a gifted musician is also not understood. But what is being written here is even less understood. A fall into a ravine could cause severe injuries, or in some cases, depending on the height and the method of falling, even death could happen. But for the brain to be impacted in such a way that capability changes have happened while most of the life before the accident is forgotten is not totally unknown, but is extremely rare. In this case, this rancher fell into a ravine, and has forgotten most of the past life, but has developed what is called the Savant syndrome, and is extensively interested in the arts and in mathematics. Such an occurrence is very rare, and besides the impact on the person, the impact on others who were close to the lady would also be severe (link to article):

A former rancher has developed enhanced cognitive ability following a brain injury and is now an artist and poet who 'hears' colour and 'sees' sound. Leigh Erceq, form Northwestern Colorado, was diagnosed with Savant Syndrome after falling into a ravine and suffering spine and brain injuries. She remembers nothing of her life before the accident, not even the name of her mother, but since her fall she has developed new capabilities. The 47-year-old is alleged to have been a 'tomboy' NASCAR fan with no interest in the arts or mathematics, prior to the accident. She is now said to "see" sound and "hear" colours when she listens to music and enjoys tackling mathematical equations, according to ABC News Nightline.

Weird news: Widow wants to sue herself for accident that killed husband

When something as weird as this happens, it is necessary to try and figure out why a person would want to file a case against herself. One can think of this as something emotional, since this lady wants to file a case to force a trial for negligence; after all, it was a road accident where her husband was thrown from the vehicle and died of his injuries, and it would be simple to think that she wants compensation as well as some kind of action for this negligence. But where it gets weird is that she herself was the driver. She has been trying to file this case for some time, and it got rejected in a court, but then she got permission for this case from the Utah Court of Appeals.
One possible reasoning for this case is that it will provide a path for some kind of financial settlement - as mentioned in the article, it could be because this action will provide a way for a jury to decide on a financial settlement for this negligence, against herself, which in turn will be provided by her insurance companies. Obviously, a lot of people anyhow suspect such kind of motives behind the case, and there are efforts to prevent this kind of case from proceeding, but how successful such efforts will be, will need to wait and see. (link to article):

Bagley's attorneys say she is advancing this lawsuit for the benefit of her husband's estate because creditors will have to be paid before the widow can receive any money as her husband's only heir. But other lawyers are looking to once again dismiss the suit, saying if it is allowed to continue, a jury would then be called upon to figure out if Bagley's negligence caused her own trauma. "The jury would be asked to determine how much money will fairly compensate Barbara Bagley for the harm she caused herself," attorneys Peter Christensen and Kathryn Tunacik were quoted as saying. "The jury will be highly confused -- it cannot order a person to compensate herself," they said. John Holcomb, professor in the Department of Business Ethics and Legal Studies at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, said the lawsuit is "quirky and also clever."

If this case does proceed and come to some kind of financial award, it could act as a precedent, and not a very nice precedent.

Weird news - Valet wrecks super expensive car

This is something that could happen anytime, and yet most of us do not even think about it. Consider the situation, you have an ultra-expensive car that you dote upon, and which shows off your economic situation as well. You go to a hotel, and casually hand over the car to the valet at the hotel, without bothering about how the valet will drive, what are his / her driving skills, and so on. And when the valet rams the car and damages it, that is when you realize the soup you are into. Given the economic condition of valets, there is no way that the valet can pay you back for the car, or provide some kind of compensation. If the hotel also refuses, then you have to depend on your insurance to pick up the tab, and hope that the insurance will come through. Well, this is what happened to a car owner in a hotel in New Delhi (the capital of India) where the hotel valet wrecked a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder car, and it also turns out that the car owner was not even in town, his cousins had taken the car out (link to article):

A valet of a five-star city hotel virtually totaled a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder last week. The valet appeared to have lost control of the car while bringing it to the porch, rammed into a stationary car, pushed it aside and caromed into the concrete railing of the rampart. By the time the Lamborghini came to a halt after a resounding crash, the front of the Rs 3-crore plus supercar had caved in. The incident took place on July 3 at Le Meridian hotel. A hotel spokesperson said the incident was an error of the valet who also sustained injuries in the accident.

Weird news - Man spent money received accidentally from bank

Suppose a person is living a middle class life, and then suddenly gets a large amount of money deposited into his account. The next steps depend on the amount of money. Some months back, there was a case where an ATM in Britain was loaded with 20 pounds bills rather than 10 pound bills, and a number of people benefited before the bank realized. However, the bank decided not to pursue cases with the people who had benefited, letting them take the extra money. But when the money involved is much higher, the bank will take decisive action.
So it was in this case where a man received a huge amount of money in his account, and over a period of time, withdrew the money before the bank realized. And before the bank could take back the money from him, he went on the run along with his girl-friend, with the bank getting him declared as an international fugitive, spending more than 2 months on the run before he was arrested in Hong Kong where he had run away from New Zealand. Now he is back on trial (link to article):

A New Zealand gas station owner turned international fugitive has been sentenced to four years and seven months in prison after stealing millions of dollars accidentally deposited into his bank account. Hui "Leo" Gao, dubbed the "accidental millionaire," sparked a global manhunt after fleeing New Zealand with his girlfriend Kara Hurring in April 2009. Gao had applied for overdraft financing for the gas station he co-owned with his mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, court documents said. The bank approved his application with a $100,000 limit, however while inputting the figure a bank employee made a clerical error and gave him access to 100 times the intended amount.

Weird news - Bride drowned after her dress became wet

When you look at wedding gowns, they seem so elegant, with the most lavish such gowns being very long and with a lot of cloth in them. These dresses are very heavy, but a lot of people don't realize this, and it can get even more problematic if they get wet. So a recent trend where brides want to shoot more sequences after the wedding, with them wearing their dresses in more non-elegant surroundings has caught on, but can have dangerous and disastrous results as in the following case.
In this case,  a bride wanted to shoot a series of photos in more exciting circumstances, near a river. As a part of the shoot, she decided to step into the river to get a better photo. However, with the water making her dress very heavy and with some unpredictable comments, she suddenly started getting pulled into the water and within a very brief period of time, was pulled into the water and unfortunately died. (link to article):

"I can't anymore, it's too heavy." Those were the chilling last words of a beautiful Canadian bride who drowned in a river during a photo shoot last week after her wedding dress became soaked and dragged her under, a friend told a Canadian news agency. Maria Pantazopoulos, 30, was having a photographer take shots for a "trash the dress" photo series when she waded into a river near Dorwin Falls in Rawdon, Quebec, at around 2 p.m. Friday, authorities said.