The Slow But Sure Bullet
Henry Ziegland of Honey Grove, Texas, walked out on his girlfriend one day in 1893. Her brother did his "heroic" duty and shot Ziegland. Ziegland, however, was barely injured by the bullet, which only grazed his face before embedding itself in the trunk of a tree in front of which Ziegland was standing. The brother, thinking himself avenged, ended his own life with the same weapon.
Twenty years later, in 1913, Ziegland decided to remove the tree from his property. Unable to perform the task manually, he decided to use dynamite. In the explosion, the bullet, which had originally been intended for Ziegland, became dislodged with such a catapulting jolt that it was shot violently into Ziegland's head, killing him at last.
In Prague, Czechoslovakia, a woman who leapt out of a third-floor window after learning of her husband's unfaithfulness. The husband, entering the building just as she jumped, broke her fall. She survived. He died on the spot.
Then there's the thirty-six-year-old San Diego woman who, in 1977, plotted to kill her twenty-three-year-old Marine drill instructor husband for his $20,000 insurance policy. She dropped the venom sac from a tarantula in a blackberry pie she baked, but he only ate a few bites. Next she tried electrocuting him in the shower, but that too failed. So did attempts to kill him with lye, run him down in a car, inject an air bubble into his veins, and slip amphetamines in his beer while driving in hopes he would hallucinate and crash.
Exasperated, she enlisted a twenty-six-year-old female companion in crime. Together, they beat the husband over the head with metal weights as he slept. It was only at that point that he finally succumbed.
On Memorial Day of 1987, a forty-year-old Louisiana lawyer stood up in his boat as a thunderstorm approached. "Here I am," he taunted the skies, raising his hands over his head. A bolt of lightning struck, killing him instantly. The lawyer's first name was Graves.
JUST PLAIN BAD LUCK
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.
ALWAYS LOOK BOTH WAYS --------------------- 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.
TAKE NOVOCAINE
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.
NEVER RETURN TO THE SCENE
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.
POOR SUCKER
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.
CHECK THE PULSE FIRST ----------------------- In 1983, 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.
FRAUD DOESN'T PAY
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.
