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• NEW JERSEY
  Paul Stil­ler, 47, was hos­pi­ta­li­zed in Ando­ver Town­ship , NJ , and his wife Bon­nie was also inju­red, when a quar­ter-stick of dyna­mi­te blew up in their car. While dri­ving around 2 AM, the bored cou­ple lit the dyna­mi­te and tried to toss it out the win­dow to see what would hap­pen, but appar­ent­ly fai­led to noti­ce the win­dow was closed. 

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• In Detroit, MICHIGAN
  a 41-year-old man got stuck and drow­ned in two feet of water after squeezing head first through an 18-inch-wide sewer gra­te to retrie­ve his car keys. 

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• Bux­ton, NORTH CAROLINA
  A man died on a beach when an 8-foot-deep hole he had dug into the sand caved in as he sat insi­de it. Beach-goers said Dani­el Jones, 21, dug the hole for fun, or pro­tec­tion from the wind, and had been sit­ting in a beach chair at the bot­tom Thurs­day after­noon when it col­lap­sed, bury­ing him beneath 5 feet of sand. Peo­p­le on the beach on the outer banks, used their hands and sho­vels, try­ing to claw their way to Jones, a resi­dent of Wood­bridge , VA , but could not reach him. It took res­cue workers using hea­vy equip­ment almost an hour to free him while about 200 peo­p­le loo­ked on. Jones was pro­no­un­ced dead at a hospital. 

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• TACOMA, WA
  Ker­ry Bing­ham had been drin­king with seve­ral fri­ends when one of them said they knew a per­son who had bun­gee-jum­ped from the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge in the midd­le of traf­fic. The con­ver­sa­ti­on grew more hea­ted and at least 10 men tro­o­ped along the walk­way of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arri­val at the mid­point of the bridge they dis­co­ver­ed that no one had brought a bun­gee rope. Bing­ham, who had con­tin­ued drin­king, vol­un­tee­red and poin­ted out that a coil of lineman's cable lay near­by. One end of the able was secu­red around Bingham's leg and the other end was tied to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet befo­re the cable tigh­ten­ed and tore his foot off at the ank­le. He mira­cu­lous­ly sur­vi­ved his fall into the icy river water and was res­cued by two near­by fisher­men. "All I can say" said Bing­ham, "is that God was watching out for me on that night. There's just no other expl­ana­ti­on for it."
  By the way:
  Bingham's foot was never located .... 

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• Pader­born, Germany
  Zoo­kee­per Fried­rich Ries­feldt fed his con­sti­pa­ted ele­phant Ste­fan 22 doses of ani­mal laxa­ti­ve and more than a bus­hel of ber­ries, figs and pru­nes befo­re the plug­ged-up pac­hyderm final­ly let it fly, and suf­fo­ca­ted the kee­per under 200 pounds of p o o p! Inve­sti­ga­tors say ill-fated Fried­rich, 46, was attemp­ting to give the ailing ele­phant an oli­ve oil ene­ma when the reli­e­ved beast unloa­ded on him. "The sheer force of the elephant's unex­pec­ted defe­ca­ti­on knocked Mr. Ries­feldt to the ground, whe­re he struck his head on a rock and lay uncon­scious as the ele­phant con­tin­ued to evacua­te his bowels on top of him" said flab­ber­ga­sted Pader­born poli­ce detec­ti­ve Erik Dern. “With no one the­re to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour befo­re a watch­man came along, and during that time he suf­fo­ca­ted. It seems to be just one of tho­se freak acci­dents that pro­ves that S**T happens!" 

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[via John G.]