AND YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE HAVING A BAD DAY

  Sometimes, it seems like some people are just plain *doomed*. If you
  don't believe it, consider these weird deaths:

  A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a
  river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb
  out and swim to shore_where a tree blew over and killed him.

  Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers
  of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a
  low-level bridge_killing him.

  Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so
  afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to
  cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas
  to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.

  George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly
  escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one
  wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to
  search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing
  him.

  Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla
  sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand
  threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not to
  do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun
  to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.

  In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her
  coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she
  suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.

  A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay back
  down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was
  hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and
  crushed him to death.

  Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out
  the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found
  himself in the city prison.

  In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the
  busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung
  over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the
  road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too
  drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic
  Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake
  three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When
  a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one
  person was hit-Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan
  suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other
  assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.

  Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in
  heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car
  at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact
  their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together.
  Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars
  weren't scratched.

  Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant
  nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an
  elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When
  his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a
  neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses,
  seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room,
  her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly
  in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a
  heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he
  and his wife were reconciled.