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It’s especially good when something like this happens. The scam artists in the BMW backed up and caused the “accident,” but anyone coming in afterward would assume that the front car was rear-ended. Notice the moment when our driver points out that all this is being recorded. -via reddit
How fast can a cannonball travel? Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage were tackling this question yesterday for an episode of their TV show Mythbusters when things went completely wrong. The cannon misfired, and the cannonball went up into the air over Dublin, California. The next question they will probably tackle is whether the footage will be used on TV.
“This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill,” said J.D. Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.
Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiraling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile.
It flew straight though the front door of a home on Cassata Place, and bounced around like a pinball, flying up to the second floor before blasting through a back bedroom wall.
The wayward cannonball then blasted across a busy road and through a second home some 50 yards away, demolishing roof tiles.
The story doesn’t stop there, and neither did the cannonball. It finally came to rest inside a minivan. The driver had just left the vehicle minutes before. Incredibly, no one was injured in the incident. Ta da! Link -via reddit
Joe Diffie had a song called “Third Rock from the Sun” about an unbelievable chain of events. A traffic accident in New Zealand is almost as strange. A motorist was traveling near the town of Kaponga Friday night when he hit a cow, killing it.
The animal was thrown over the top of the car, peeling back the bonnet and shattering the windscreen. The car smashed into a pole which caused a power surge to race along the wires into the farmer’s house.
The same surge blew up the cowshed meter board and set it on fire. However, it melted a water line directly above which extinguished the blaze.
The driver was not seriously injured. Link -via Fark
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Let’s all sing together- “99 bottles of wine on the wall..” Hey, what if ALL of those bottles should happen to fall? This video contains one mild expletive in the audio commentary, and so might be NSFW, but the audio is not necessary for the clip. -via Arbroath
AT&T produced this documentary about what happens when overconfident drivers think they can multitask -sending text messages while driving. It’s not worth it. -via Metafilter
Does two wrong make a right? Perhaps not, but two fails do cancel each other out!
Cubiclebot has a video clip of a bicycle rider going the wrong way hitting a pedestrian who was jaywalking. Watch how two "fails" cancel each other out: Link
First I laughed, then I cried in horror because I suddenly realized these people drive on the same roads as the rest of us. From Miss Cellania:
These are statements from insurance forms where car drivers tried to summarize accident details in as few words as possible. Such instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that incompetency can be highly entertaining.
1. Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.
2. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intent.
3. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
4. In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.
5. I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.
File this under "might as well." New Zealander named Paul Nigel Sneddon was driving drunk and got himself into an accident. While waiting for rescuers in an overturned car, he decided that he might as well have another beer!
Speaking [after his trial], Sneddon said he was relieved no-one had been hurt. He was in a "dark place" that night, having lost his job at the Winter Family Bakery four days earlier and heard about his father’s prostate cancer on the same day.
"I’m separated from my wife, I’ve got no friends, no-one comes to visit me and that job was my whole life," he said. "So to remove that was to remove my purpose in life."
Sneddon said the news, coupled with the stress of not being able to afford rent on his one-bedroom flat, left him feeling "mentally unstable".
"I went for a drive to the supermarket and it was absolutely pouring down. It all happened so quick. Maybe I was speeding, maybe I blacked out for a second – I don’t really know. I was lying there, trying to get the doors open but couldn’t. I remember the inside light not working and thinking, `It’s not like I’m going to read a book,’ so I opened another can."
It was a stupid thing to do and he had only himself to blame, he said.
Losing his licence and car had hurt his chances of finding work and magnified his problems.
Link (Photo: Murray Wilson/Manawatu Standard)
Imagine the horror of the little children of Santa Catarina, Brzil when a giant Santa Claus went up in flames!
At 50 feet, this is probably the largest Santa you have ever seen. It’s a pity it got burnt down at the end. A lot of people traveled far to get a picture with it but it went up in flames covering the surrounding area in thick black smoke. This happened in Brazil on December 2, 2009 and it is assumed to be because of some mechanical error although some people speculate foul play. The pictures do make you feel sad about all the efforts going up in flames.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by rappin.
Daniel East and his sister, Tevyn were traveling on Interstate 80 near the Utah-Nevada border when a coyote ran in front of the car. They hit the animal, but kept driving as they assumed it was dead. Eight to ten hours later, they stopped in California and noticed the coyote was stuck in the car’s grill! They called the Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release office in Penn Valley, which sent a volunteer.
Jan Crowell, a rehabilitation center volunteer, said she brought a catch pole, an animal carrier, gloves and blankets.
When she arrived, East and his sister were taking the screws out of the car’s grill in an effort to get the animal out. Once the grill was pulled forward, the coyote poked its head out.
“No broken bones, no internal injuries — nothing,” Daniel East said, adding that the animal only had a few scrapes on one of his paws.
The coyote was kept at the center until it escaped on its own. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: David Lovere)
Sin Chew Daily (coincidence? I. Don’t. Think. So) and China Press reported a bizarre car accident that led to a man being Bobbitized in Singapore:
The daily reported that the incident occurred in a Singapore park where the couple met after work. To make matters worse for the woman, her husband had sent a private investigator to spy on her after suspecting that she was being unfaithful. The investigator said he had followed the woman and her boss to the park.
“On reaching the park, they did not alight from the car. Not long after, the car started to shake violently. After the car was hit by the van, there was a loud scream from the woman whose mouth was covered with blood,” he said. The woman later followed her lover to the hospital with part of the sexual organ.
Truck driver Zhian Feng went over the side of a bridge in Chengdu, China. The truck was left dangling by the bumper, only inches away from tumbling 100 feet to the ground below!
Witness Lu Wi said: ‘We heard an amazing bang and went out to see what was happening.
‘We saw a lorry hanging over the bridge, and a man in his 40s struggling to climb out.
‘When he got out the driver said he was lucky he had his seat belt on or he’d have fallen straight out of his open window.’
When driving, always keep your eye on the road and NOT on the camera! Google Street View uploaded a scene near Pittsburgh of a bridge, then a closeup, then the camera goes wildly awry. The simplest explanation is that the Street View driver hit the concrete bridge. Gawker has a video of the process, recorded from Google Street View, plus a link to the original if you want to explore more. Link -via Unique Daily
Truck driver Freddie Mitchell delivered a load of dirt to an interstate construction site and left with an empty dump truck near Talcottville, Connecticut. He entered the highway without realizing his dump body was still in the upright position. The truck soon struck an overhead sign. The sign didn’t budge, the dump body was caught, and the truck cab lifted 20 feet into the air!
Mitchell remained there until Vernon firefighters, using a ladder-tower truck, rescued him about 10:20 a.m. Mitchell was not injured, authorities said, but was taken to Hartford Hospital to be checked.
“He was fairly calm,” said Vernon fire Lt. Michael Levasseur, who helped rescue Mitchell. “He had the presence of mind to do what we were telling him and to stay still till we got him out of there.”
Link -via Unique Daily
Teenager, Aiden Kelly who got caught in in a fireball after a friend stupidly threw an aerosol can on a campfire, has regrown his skin without any scarring. The only difference? The redhead’s distinctive freckles didn’t return!
The 40 year mother of two said: ‘After it happened it looked like all his flesh was falling off. It was absolutely horrendous, he didn’t have any skin left on his nose.
‘Now he’s absolutely fine. He’s even lost his freckles which he is really pleased about,’
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
49-year-old Mark Afforde couldn’t resist a second bungee jump from the 200-foot high Canyon Creek Bridge near Yacolt, Washington. At the bottom of the drop, the bungee cord snapped, and he fell the last 25 feet into shallow water.
“I was just along for the ride. I had no idea what was going on,” he said.
“I heard and saw the snap. I definitely felt the impact, and I was underwater. Once I checked and made certain I could still move and everything was working I felt I needed to get out of the water.
He was able to walk to shore, and paramedics took him to Southwest Washington Medical Center in Vancouver.
Afforde, who was not seriously injured, says he would bungee jump again. He wife feels differently. Link -via Arbroath
PS: He was on an outing with his co-workers from Boeing. Leave your puns in the comments.
It’s a fairly rare thing to be clumsy enough to cut off your hand, and I’m sure it’s even rarer to do it twice.
That’s what happened to New Zealand meatpacker Bryan Speers. While cutting meat with a band saw, he slipped and accidentally severed his left hand. He was rushed to hospital where the attempt to reattach his limb was hindered by scarring from a previous operation to attach the same hand after a previous accident!
Eventually surgeons did manage to successfully reattach his hand, and while he is expected to make a recovery, he will have to remain in hospital for quite a while while he regains the usage of his hand.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.
Who doesn’t love going to an amusement park? There is no comparing the thrill you get from such a controlled environment. There is that off chance though that something could go wrong.
The blog below tells, in great details, every amusement ride accident dating back to 1998. There are roller coaster derailments, inflatable bounce castles blowing away with people still inside, and the county fair rides that were just not put together right, it’s all there.
I promise that you will be amazed and a little creeped out by how many of these "incidents" occur but you never hear a word.
Link – via suburbanfoodforthought
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by stevesteve8383.
In Germany, a speeding car missed a turn, and flew an amazing distance to crash into the roof of a nearby church.
The bank acted like a springboard, propelling the black Skoda about 35 meters (115 ft) forward and straight into the church’s roof frame, where it remained wedged 7 meters off the ground, police said in a statement.
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Johnny Cat.
J.Tithonus Pednaud of The Human Marvels blog has an intriguing post about Sam Alexander, the Man with Two Faces:
Although the details are a little sketchy, Sam was ultimately involved in a huge gasoline explosion that was the result of his own carelessness. While he was able to instinctively save his eyes by raising his arm, he received deed burns around his lips and lower face. Even more unfortunately his wounds festered and became severely infected. Doctors were forced to remove much of his lover face and lips, practically to the bone. As a result, Same Alexander was left with a permanent and disturbing teeth-gnashing grimace and a gruesome visage. [...]
Billed as ‘The Man with Two Faces’, Sam’s exhibition consisted primarily of a stage monologue detailing his story. Sam was a soft-spoken man with a gentle manner and soothing voice. He so lulled the crowd with his tale of heartbreak that when he revealed his face in a surprising flourish, people screamed and women cried. His showcase was so disturbing that Kortes made Sam the Blow Off attraction, an extra attraction patrons had to pay a premium to see and he was sincerely billed as ‘not for the weak of heart’. At more than one venue, Sam Alexander was paid not to perform.
Link (Once you’re at The Human Marvels blog, you can click on the photo to get a larger view)
This went ’round the Web about a few days ago, but I just found out about it: here’s a YouTube clip of a dog risking its life to save its friend who was ran over by a car.
Translation: "These images seen from the surveillance cameras show a very common situation with our overpopulated highways. It is normal for us to see dogs run over. In the video, we can see this dog fighting for his life because he was run over by the vehicle.
"What is very touching is to see the very heroic actions of this other dog who is trying to pull him to the side of the highway. We are going to keep seeing things like this until we find a solution to the dogs living on the streets."
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Larfin Jackarse!
At the end of a fashion show, a fashion promoter falls through the catwalk and obviously hurt herself. But watch the second guy who runs to the rescue.
Link: YouTube
