Lucky B*stard
The moment a car launched 100ft through the air and crashed into a church roof
By Allan Hall
26th January 2009
Fireman needed a special lift to reach the 23-year-old trapped 30ft above the ground late on Sunday night. After two hours trapped in the wreckage he was freed, badly hurt but expected to survive his injuries.
Next Sunday's service at the the Church of Our Lady in the East German village of Limbach-Oberfrohna might have to be cancelled while structural safety checks are carried out. The minister, Johannes Schubert, said: 'I think it is a miracle that the young man is alive. The church we can repair; he would have been a different story if God had not been looking out for him. If we are allowed to hold a service on Sunday I think I shall make the theme of it "God moves in mysterious ways, his miracles to perform".'
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A little deaf in one ear - meet the Japanese man who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Justin McCurry
The Guardian,
25 March 2009
That home, 180 miles to the west, was Nagasaki. His arrival came the day before it was devastated by a second US atomic bomb on 9 August. In a barely conceivable course of events, he had twice been perilously close to nuclear ground zero; and both times he had lived. More than 70,000 other residents of Nagasaki were not so lucky.
More than 60 years later, the 93-year-old became the first and only known survivor of both attacks yesterday to win official recognition from Japanese authorities. While other survivors died prematurely from cancer and liver disease caused by their exposure to radiation, Yamaguchi remains in relatively good health apart from near-deafness in one ear and complaints that his legs are "growing weak".
Japanese records show dozens of people experienced the blast in Hiroshima only to be exposed to "residual radiation" in Nagasaki three days later. But Yamaguchi is the first to have been at ground zero when both explosions occurred. According to a newspaper interview Yamaguchi gave on the 60th anniversary of the end of the Pacific war, he had spent the conflict designing oil tankers for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a wartime zaibatsu, or conglomerate, whose shipyards dominated the Nagasaki skyline.
After a three-month stint at the firm's yards in Hiroshima, Yamaguchi and two colleagues, Akira Iwanaga and Kuniyoshi Sato, prepared to return to Nagasaki on 7 August, 1945. The day before, they woke early, collected their belongings and prepared for the train journey west. On the way to the station they became separated after Yamaguchi realised he had left his personal seal in the office. He remembers hearing the Enola Gay circling above, but thought nothing of it: Hiroshima was an important wartime industrial base, and the sound of circling planes had become a fact of life.
Within seconds he had been knocked off his feet by the force of the blast as "Little Boy" detonated 580 metres above central Hiroshima just after 8.15 am, announcing its arrival with a blinding flash followed by a deafening boom. As he stumbled to the train station the next day, Yamaguchi witnessed the destruction and carnage left by the bomber's 13-kiloton payload.
The following day, his burns swathed in bandages, Yamaguchi reported for work in Nagasaki, like Hiroshima an important industrial and military base. At 11.02 on 9 August, as his boss reportedly questioned his sanity for believing that a single bomb could destroy a city the size of Hiroshima, a 25-kiloton plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki, throwing Yamaguchi to the ground. He, his wife and baby son survived and spent the following week in a shelter near what was left of their home. His son has since died of cancer aged 59. After the war Yamaguchi worked for the US occupation authorities, became a teacher and eventually returned to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Yamaguchi was quoted yesterday by the Mainichi newspaper. "My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die," he said. As a registered survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, Yamaguchi has owned a pale violet copy of the Atomic Bomb Victim Health Handbook since 1957, entitling him to monthly allowances, free medical checkups and funeral costs. More than 260,000 others are similarly covered. Yamaguchi's handbook confirmed he was within a three-kilometre radius of ground zero in both cities, but the reference to Hiroshima was deleted when he renewed it at Nagasaki city hall in 1960.
Officials refused to recognise Yamaguchi's special status because, they said, it would not affect his medical and welfare entitlements, but relented after he filed another request earlier this year. "As far as we know, he is the first one to be officially recognised as a survivor of atomic bombings," Toshiro Miyamoto, a Nagasaki city official, told the Associated Press. "It's such an unfortunate case, but it is possible there are more like him."
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I think we've found the World Champion Lucky B*stard. No joke.
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python killing a deer
Kenyan man bites python in struggle to survive
A Kenyan man bit a python that wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours, local media said on Wednesday.
15 Apr 2009
When the snake coiled itself around his upper body, Mr Nyaumbe resorted to desperate measures. "It waggled its ragged and scary tail on my mouth. I had to bite it as I struggled, one hand incapacitated," he told the paper. The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Mr Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile phone out of his pocket and ring for help.
When his supervisor came with a policeman, Mr Nyaumbe smothered the snake's head with his shirt, while the rescuers tied it with a rope and pulled. "We both came down, landing with a thud," said Mr Nyaumbe, who survived with damaged lips and bruising. The snake was stuffed into three sacks and driven to a bird and snake sanctuary, but it later escaped and remains at large.
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Woman makes cup of tea after being shot in head
An American woman who was shot in the head by her husband not only survived but made herself a cup of tea
Police and doctors hailed the survival of Tammy Sexton, 47, as miraculous after a bullet from a .38-calibre handgun struck her squarely in the forehead, passed through her skull and exited through the back of her head. She is expected to make a full recovery, while her husband shot himself dead after the attack on his wife.
But law enforcement officers in Jackson County, Mississippi, were also astonished that Mrs Sexton offered them tea when they arrived at her home after the shooting.
Sheriff Mike Byrd said: "When the officer got there she said, 'What's going on?' She was holding a rag on her head and talking. She was conscious, but she was confused about what had happened.
"She had made herself some tea and offered the officer something to drink.
"There's no way she should be alive other than a miracle from God. You just don't hear of something like this. Somebody gets shot in the head and they're dead."
He said that her husband had been on probation for domestic violence and officers had been seeking to serve him with a court order demanding he stayed away from his wife and their rural home.
He said the bullet apparently passed through the lobes of the woman's brain without causing major damage. She was rushed to hospital by helicopter where shehas been monitored for three days.
Dr Patrick Pritchard, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, said: "There is a space in the brain where a missile could pass without doing any major damage.
"Is it possible? Yes. It would be rare."
from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -head.html
An American woman who was shot in the head by her husband not only survived but made herself a cup of tea
Police and doctors hailed the survival of Tammy Sexton, 47, as miraculous after a bullet from a .38-calibre handgun struck her squarely in the forehead, passed through her skull and exited through the back of her head. She is expected to make a full recovery, while her husband shot himself dead after the attack on his wife.
But law enforcement officers in Jackson County, Mississippi, were also astonished that Mrs Sexton offered them tea when they arrived at her home after the shooting.
Sheriff Mike Byrd said: "When the officer got there she said, 'What's going on?' She was holding a rag on her head and talking. She was conscious, but she was confused about what had happened.
"She had made herself some tea and offered the officer something to drink.
"There's no way she should be alive other than a miracle from God. You just don't hear of something like this. Somebody gets shot in the head and they're dead."
He said that her husband had been on probation for domestic violence and officers had been seeking to serve him with a court order demanding he stayed away from his wife and their rural home.
He said the bullet apparently passed through the lobes of the woman's brain without causing major damage. She was rushed to hospital by helicopter where shehas been monitored for three days.
Dr Patrick Pritchard, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, said: "There is a space in the brain where a missile could pass without doing any major damage.
"Is it possible? Yes. It would be rare."
from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -head.html
Plummeting plane saved by toilets
May 5, 2009
Gary Mayor of the Federal Aviation Administration says the Cessna 182 crashed on Friday afternoon in Washington state, after taking off from Thun Field, an airfield southeast of Tacoma. Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says the plane was about 150 feet in the air when the engine gave up the ghost. Troyer told The News Tribune that the pilot tried to turn around to land but didn't quite make it.
The plane hit a fence, flipped over and landed upside down on top of the portable toilets standing in a storage yard. Authorities didn't reveal the pilot's identity.
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'Dead' Baby Found Alive At Funeral Wake
A father has described his shock at finding his 'dead' baby had come back to life when he said goodbye at the wake.
ose Alvarenga's son was born prematurely in Asuncion, Paraguay, weighing just 500 grams (17.6 ounces).
The infant was pronounced dead on Thursday and officials put the tiny body in a box and took it to his parents house four hours later.
Mr Alvarenga said: "I opened it to look at his remains and found that the baby was breathing. I began to cry."
He hurried back to the hospital where his partner was receiving treatment, and nurses put the baby in an incubator.
The infant is understood to be in a stable condition.
The hospital has said it will carry out an investigation into the incident.
"This is a very unusual case," the head of paediatric intensive care, Ernesto Weber, said.
He said the doctor in charge may not have properly checked the baby.
Other staff at the hospital said they had fought to save the infant's life for more than an hour but the pulse may have been too faint to detect.
A father has described his shock at finding his 'dead' baby had come back to life when he said goodbye at the wake.
ose Alvarenga's son was born prematurely in Asuncion, Paraguay, weighing just 500 grams (17.6 ounces).
The infant was pronounced dead on Thursday and officials put the tiny body in a box and took it to his parents house four hours later.
Mr Alvarenga said: "I opened it to look at his remains and found that the baby was breathing. I began to cry."
He hurried back to the hospital where his partner was receiving treatment, and nurses put the baby in an incubator.
The infant is understood to be in a stable condition.
The hospital has said it will carry out an investigation into the incident.
"This is a very unusual case," the head of paediatric intensive care, Ernesto Weber, said.
He said the doctor in charge may not have properly checked the baby.
Other staff at the hospital said they had fought to save the infant's life for more than an hour but the pulse may have been too faint to detect.
Who shall we call now? Firefighters need emergency services after their engine falls into huge hole in the ground
9th September 2009
The crew in Los Angeles had been summoned to help deal with a flood from a burst water pipe in a quiet residential street. But the weight of their large engine caused the sodden ground to collapse, and the vehicle slowly tipped into the muddy water-filled hole. Luckily the two firefighters escaped without injury as the cabin slowly rolled forward.
The captain and engineer had received an emergency call at about 5.20am and saw running water on the street in the Valley Village neighbourhood of San Fernando Valley, fire department spokesman Rich Matheney said. Worried the ground was unstable, the men were backing the 22-ton engine out when its front end fell into the sink-hole. The two then climbed out of the windows as water and mud began to fill the vehicle's interior, Matheney said.
Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Kim Hughes said water in the area was turned off while tow trucks prepared to pull the engine out of the hole. Last weekend another pipe breakage two miles away from this one swept cars down streets, forced people out of their homes and flooded a section of a major road. The broken main was part of the city's original water system, dating to 1914, and was scheduled for repair.
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Russian man survives five storey fall - twice[/align]
A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony - twice. Alexei Roskov says he jumped the second time because he couldn't take his wife's nagging about the first time.
Wife Yekaterina had watched in horror as her drunken hubsand opened the kitchen window of their Moscow apartment, and hurled himself out. Astonishingly Mr Roskov, 22, survived and managed to stagger back upstairs with barely a scratch after the 50ft fall. But while his wife called for an ambulance and began to scold him, he jumped again. Amazed medics treated Mr Roskov for minor cuts and bruises before releasing him.
Mr Roskov says he is now teetotal after giving up drinking, and added: "Now I can say just one thing - I was very lucky. I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and I heard my wife screaming angrily at me I thought it was best if I left the room again - out of the window."
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Russian man survives five storey fall - twice[/align]
A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony - twice. Alexei Roskov says he jumped the second time because he couldn't take his wife's nagging about the first time.
Wife Yekaterina had watched in horror as her drunken hubsand opened the kitchen window of their Moscow apartment, and hurled himself out. Astonishingly Mr Roskov, 22, survived and managed to stagger back upstairs with barely a scratch after the 50ft fall. But while his wife called for an ambulance and began to scold him, he jumped again. Amazed medics treated Mr Roskov for minor cuts and bruises before releasing him.
Mr Roskov says he is now teetotal after giving up drinking, and added: "Now I can say just one thing - I was very lucky. I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and I heard my wife screaming angrily at me I thought it was best if I left the room again - out of the window."
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Man accidentally ejects himself from plane
Passenger survives incident while flying with pilot from South Africa's Silver Falcons' air display team
Mark Tran
guardian.co.uk,
2 November 2009
The South African air force has confirmed the incident that took place last Wednesday, when the passenger took off for a flight with an experienced pilot from South Africa's Silver Falcons air display team. Investigators are assuming that the passenger tried to steady himself while the pilot was putting the Pilatus PC-7 Mk II through its paces by grabbing the eject lever.
"Much of the information has yet to be tested, but it is confirmed that a civilian passenger unintentionally ejected from a Silver Falcons Pilatus PC-7 Mk II Astra during a general flying sortie out of Langebaanweg air force base this week," a South African air force spokesman said. "The passenger was recovered [by helicopter] unharmed, and returned to Langebaanweg. The aircraft landed safely." The spokesman said the flight had been cleared and all procedures adhered to "prior to the passenger boarding the aircraft", making it unlikely charges would follow.
A retired SAAF instructor pilot said the passenger was extremely lucky to have survived the ejection with barely a scratch. "We train for this and if you don't get it right, and are not in the correct ejection posture, you can sustain severe spinal cord injuries or even worse," he told South Africa's Sunday Times. He discounted the possibility that the seat fired of its own accord, as too many safety features were built into the system. "All it takes is for the firing handle [the rubbery black- and yellow-striped loop] to be pulled up about 2.5cm and you're on your way out."
He said the ejection would have been dramatic. "You get one almighty kick under the backside and then you're gone. The seat separates from the pilot automatically and the chute opens," he said. "This is in case the pilot is incapacitated during the ejection."
Passengers would have been briefed on the ejection sequence and warned that the "loop" between his legs was not to be touched unless the pilot called "Eject, eject, eject" during the flight. Such a briefing is done routinely, even when two qualified pilots are involved in the flight. It is likely the rear cockpit was extensively damaged by the firing of the cartridges and rockets during the ejection.
The Silver Falcons are the SAAF's aerobatic team that perform precision formation and aerobatics displays at airshows around the country. The five pilots are all serving instructors at Central Flying School, Langebaanweg. As one observer said: "What a trip. That guy took off in an Astra, came down in a parachute, and landed back at base in a helicopter. Not bad for a for a single flip."