Although people say that “a penny’s not going to kill you,” that’s not strictly true. Sometimes a penny will kill you.

There are several cases on record where ingesting a penny has killed a child,1 but, this report deals only with adult misadventures. Children have respect for pennies. Too often, adults do not.

Yen and A Quarter

Pennies are not uniquely a source of danger. There are two notable and curious cases,2,3 which I will not go into here except briefly, of other kinds of coins being involved with death.

Sectional view of the nose, mouth, pharynx, etc.

A 50-yen coin and/or a 100-yen coin can kill you, as researchers at Osaka University Medical School handled discovered. As they describe it:

A 28-year-old male was found dead on a bed in a hotel. He had two electric wires, the ends of which were fastened to each coin (50 and 100 yen); the coins were attached to a left hypochondrial region and a left side of the chest. The other ends of the wires were connected to a time switch, which had been connected to a plug top (100 V, 60 Hz alternating current)…. The cause of death was thus judged to be suicidal electrocution. It seems that suicide was influenced by a “Manual Book of Suicide,” which was found in his bag.

However, it appears that a quarter cannot kill you, at least not if you are already dead. Investigators at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Department made that discovery, which they describe thusly:

A 69-year-old Chinese woman… was found at autopsy to have a quarter in her air passages. Inquiry showed that her family had placed the coin in her mouth at the time of death according to traditional Chinese funeral practices. This practice is apparently not widely known among forensic pathologists.

Other than these two cases, however, the scope of the current investigation is limited to pennies.

Penny Potency

Although I was not able to find a case in which a single penny killed an adult human being, adult death-by-single-penny is not a far-fetched theoretical abstraction. Far from it. The evidence below, coupled with the additional evidence I alluded to in the previous paragraph (see especially footnote 1, referenced in the first sentence of that paragraph, which is the second paragraph of this report) suggests that it could easily, or fairly easily happen, and perhaps already has happened or is about to happen. Maybe it has just happened, but so very recently that there has not been time for me to persuade the editors that they should re-compose this page to include the information, thus publishing a report that is truly up to date rather than almost up to date.

There is no controversy as to whether several pennies, together, can do you in. Pennies in quantity unquestionably can be instruments of death.

Let’s look at the medical record.

Twenty Pennies Can Do It

Vertical section of the larynx and upper part of the trachea.

Twenty pennies can kill you, if you are a hyena. Investigators at the Detroit Zoological Institute explain how they discovered this fact:

An 11-yr-old captive-born female striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) acutely developed lameness and swelling of the left front foot with anorexia, depression, and lethargy. Hematologic evaluation revealed regenerative anemia, azotemia, and other mild serum electrolyte and mineral abnormalities. Twenty radiographically visible coins and 10 coin fragments were removed by laparotomy and gastrotomy following unsuccessful medical therapy. The animal died during anesthetic recovery…. The case highlights the risk posed by penny ingestion for subsequent zinc toxicosis in captive omnivores.4

Twenty Times Twenty Can

Four hundred sixty-one pennies can kill you. Investigators at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center claim credit for the discovery. In their words:

This is the first reported case of human fatality associated with zinc intoxication following a massive ingestion of coins. Four hundred and sixty-one coins were removed from the gastrointestinal tract of a schizophrenic patient during the course of hospitalization. Many of the post-1981 pennies, which consist primarily of zinc, showed severe corrosion due to their prolonged contact with acidic gastric juice. The patient presented with clinical manifestations consistent with the local corrosive as well as systemic effects of zinc intoxication and died 40 days after admission with multi-system organ failure.5

Discussion

My preliminary research indicates that most coin-related deaths in adults—at least most of the deaths reported in the official medical literature—involve American coins, and most of those coins are pennies.

What of other coins?

Many nations have coins that cause medical problems. My report about deaths due to those coins will be reported in a series of separate publications. This report, as I have stated several times, deals mostly with pennies.

It may be true that American coins smaller or larger than a penny are seldom involved directly in causing death. One cannot rule out the possibility, though, that people are more careful in how they use these other coins, because each coin is worth more than a humble penny. That is mere speculation, though. Based only on the available evidence, one must conclude that while a penny can do you in, a dime’s not going to kill you.

References

1. See, for example, “Esophagoaortic Perforation by Foreign Body (Coin) Causing Sudden Death in a 3-Year-Old Child,” M. Dahiya and J.S. Denton, American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, vol. 20, no. 2, June 1999, pp. 184–8.

2. For the full report, see “A Suicidal Case of Electrocution With Hypnotic Drug Poisoning: An Autopsy Report” [article in Japanese], M Yamazaki, M Terada et al., Nippon Hoigaku Zasshi [Japanese Journal of Legal Medicine], vol. 52, no. 2, April 1997, pp. 95–101.

3.For the full report, see “A Coin in the Airway,” C. Rogers, B. Chang, and R. Shibuya, American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology, vol. 15, no. 1, March 1994, pp. 91–2.

4. “Zinc Toxicosis in a Captive Striped Hyena (Hyaena hyaena),” D.W. Agnew, R.B. Barbiers, et al., Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, vol. 30, no. 3, September 1999, pp. 431–4.

5. “Zinc Toxicity Following Massive Coin Ingestion,” D.R. Bennett, et al., The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, vol. 18, no. 2, June 1997, pp. 148–53.

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This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Then recently, while doing research about a 1924 Mercury-head dime, she remembered the penny and typed “gold penny” into Google, which returned information on science experiments to give a penny a gold color. She added “1970” and found an item about how Mr. Daws had put a 18-karat gold penny, dated 1970 with no mint mark, into circulation. It was heavier and smaller than a real penny.

In disbelief, she weighed the penny on a digital scale. It came in at three grams, one gram more than similar pennies from 1970. And it was slightly smaller than a normal penny, owing to the shrinking after the casting process.

She traced Mr. Daws’s phone number through the gallery and left him the message. When he called back, he knew it had to be his penny as soon as she described it to him.

Reed will keep the penny as a work of art. How many other hands did the gold coin pass through before she found it? We will probably never know. Link -Thanks, Bill!

(image credit: Lynn Rogan)

Remember the record-breaking Penny Pyramid built by Marcelo Bezos? Well, Marcelo had built a "glow in the dark" pyramid featuring Neatorama:

Marcelo's selling the Penny Pyramid, along with the house it comes in:

How do you get a record 3,500 lb. Penny Pyramid out of a house before you sell it ?........ YOU DON”T, you list it as one of the many upgrades and amenities that comes along with it!

Welcome to the current home of the World’s Largest Penny Pyramid! The penny pyramid which was originally built in 2006 to raise awareness for colorectal cancer and the screening process will be auctioned off along with the house it was built in this winter to raise funds in support of the Penny Pyramid Project. Mr. Bezos, the creator and holder of the record is also the founder of the Penny Pyramid Project, a non-profit child philanthropy educational program that uses its signature world record penny pyramid in fundraisers used to support other charitable organizations in the greater Miami area. The Penny Pyramid Project was founded in 2007, it ran its first annual fundraiser that same year raising over 1,200 dollars in pennies alone. Unfortunately, the fledgling program was temporarily forced to go dormant during the 2008 school year. Mr. Bezos, “it is my hope that this unique approach to the sale of the house will generate enough local and national interest that will generate the necessary funding in order to bring back this really neat educational program for our school children.”

and…. if it does not sell?, well then each coin used in the pyramid will be encased in an aluminum outer shell, a lost art only a few companies in the US now can reproduce. In its hay day from 1900-1970, millions of these encased pennies were used to commemorate or used as a premiums to help advertise a company’s product. Mr. Bezos, This type of coining is just a really cool way to showcase what now is the Worlds Largest “Glow” in the dark penny pyramid!”

The current Pyramid has grown to just over 525,000 pennies. The accompanying video series has also been a viral sensation around the world receiving over 3,300,000 views and counting!

The latest work has caused the outer coins to glow in the dark turning the current structure into the Worlds Largest “Glow” In The Dark Penny Pyramid!

Link - Thanks Marcelo!

Update 11/3/09: Marcelo gave us further info on the Neatorama Penny Pyramid statistics:

The letters are made up of the following number of piles and coins
All pennies are uncirculated 2009 D Professional Series.

N= 57 piles 570 pennies
E= 63 piles 630 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies
T= 61 piles 610 pennies
O= 40 piles 410 pennies
R= 56 piles 560 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies
M= 65 piles 650 pennies
A= 64 piles 640 pennies

1. takes about 1min 30 to process each pile so it glows, (secrete process, last about 600 hours when subjected to continous UV light)

2. took about 5 hours to insert in pyramid

ok, that’s a total of 534 piles or 5340 pennies

Here’s the video clip of the Penny Pyramid Project from 2006 – the structure contained some 280,000 pennies (Marcelo’s most recent pyramid contains over 435,000 pennies):

[YouTube - turn your speakers down if you don't like O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, the techno version]

Thanks Marcelo!

Millions of US coins and bills are exchanged daily and billions of them are in circulation.  Visual Economics put together a great graphic to compare the values and number of currency in circulation, and even looked at how long each stays in circulation. 

Would you have guessed there are almost 6 times as many $100 bills in circulation as there are $20 given that most ATMs use only $20s?  Would you have guessed the $5 bill has the shortest life expectency of any bill, or that there are 4 times as many pennies than any other coin?

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

The Standard Grill in the Standard Hotel in New York has a very unusual floor: it’s made of pennies! I guess if you’re a couple of pennies short on tips, just pry them off the floor!

Link

That many pennies weighs about 170 pounds, so the two men worked to carry the duffle bags into BVU’s Lee Highway office.

"We pulled into BVU about 2 (p.m.) and took the bags of unrolled pennies to the pay counter," Almany said. "To make my case better, I noticed a man just paid cash right before me. I laid my bill on the counter and told the lady, ‘Here is my bill and I’m here to pay every penny of it.’"

After about 20 seconds of silence, Almany then explained what that meant.

"She seemed shocked and told me, ‘We can’t take that.’ She said we’d have to wrap that up and repeated they couldn’t accept it. I asked her if she was refusing my payment and she said she wasn’t," Almany said. "They said they didn’t have the manpower to count all those pennies and I said as much as BVU is billing its customers, they ought to have all the manpower they need."

Link – via Rue the Day (Photo: David Crigger / Bristol Herald Courier)

Previously on Neatorama: Don’t Mess with New Jersey: Paying with Pennies Got Man Into Trouble