Archive for the ‘Oops’ Category
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Civil War cannonball explodes, kills Va. relic collector
Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.
As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.
But in February, White’s hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.
More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White’s home in this leafy Richmond suburb.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Oops | Comments Off
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Man Injured By Debris Falling From NYC Construction Site
A man was hurt on Thursday after being struck by a piece of plywood that fell from a Manhattan construction site.
Walter Wilkerson, a film company production assistant, was hit by the debris at East 18th Street and Park Avenue South. Wilkinson and a crew were setting up the block to shoot a Mastercard commercial.
Wilkerson was treated and released from Bellevue Hospital Center after arriving at the hospital in fair condition, according to a Bellevue spokesman.
A Buildings Department spokeswoman said the plywood that fell was on a scaffold being raised to assist in facade repair. When it arrived at the 12th floor, the spokeswoman said, it became dislodged and toppled over.
Posted in Oops | Comments Off
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Japanese Girl Commits Suicide With Detergent, Sickens 90 Neighbors
A 14-year-old Japanese girl killed herself by mixing laundry detergent with cleanser, releasing fumes that also sickened 90 people in her apartment house, police said Thursday as they grappled with a spate of similar suicides.
None of the sickened neighbors in Konan, southern Japan, were severely ill, although about 10 were hospitalized, authorities said. The deadly hydrogen sulfide gas escaped from the girl’s bathroom window and entered neighboring apartments.
The girl’s suicide Wednesday night was part of an expanding string of similar deaths that experts say have been encouraged by Internet suicide sites.
Posted in Oops, Suicidal Tendencies | Comments Off
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Hospital removes ‘wrong kidney’
A hospital in the Republic of Ireland has admitted removing the wrong kidney from a sick child.
The mistake, that led to a healthy kidney being removed, was described by Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin as an “unprecedented error”.
The Dublin facility said it has given its sincere apologies to the family.
The young child now faces regular dialysis unless a donor kidney can be found. An internal investigation is being carried out by the hospital.
Posted in Medical Monstrosities, Oops | Comments Off
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
Russian Soyuz, With Korean Space Pioneer, Lands Off Mark – New York Times
A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying South Korea’s first astronaut landed on Saturday in northern Kazakhstan 260 miles off its mark and 20 minutes late, Russian space officials said.
A spokesman for mission control, Valery Lyndin, said the crew — Yi So-yeon, a South Korean bioengineering student; Peggy A. Whitson, an American astronaut; and Col. Yuri I. Malenchenko, a Russian flight engineer — was safe, though the three had been subjected to severe G-forces during the re-entry.
The Russian-made Soyuz capsule touched down at 4:51 a.m. Eastern time about 260 miles off target, the spokesman said, which was highly unusual given how precisely engineers plan for such landings. It was also about 20 minutes later than scheduled.
Posted in Oops, Space, Technological Travesties, You lucky bastard | Comments Off
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Misfired artillery crashes into girl’s bed
A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home miles away Friday and injured a young girl’s cat, which had to be euthanized, officials said.
No people were injured when the two-pound piece hit the Jefferson Township home about two-and-a- half miles from the Picatinny Arsenal and landed in the girl’s bed, said Peter Rowland, arsenal spokesman. She wasn’t home, but her cat was sleeping on the bed.
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Oops | Comments Off
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Musician’s Fall Down Stairs Smashes $1M Violin to Bits
Can his fractured fiddle — a million-dollar Guadagnini — be fixed? It’s too early to tell.
David Garrett, a former model who has been called the David Beckham of the classical scene, said he tripped while carrying his 18th century violin as he was leaving London’s Barbican Hall after a performance, smashing it to bits.
“I had it over my shoulder in its case and I fell down a concrete flight of stairs backward,” Garrett said Thursday. “When I opened the case, much of my G.B. Guadagnini had been crushed.”
Garrett said he bought the 1772 violin for US$1 million in 2003, and he is now hoping to get it repaired in New York, where he is based.
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Doh!, Kara's Classics, Oops | Comments Off
Friday, January 25th, 2008
Military Plane Crashes in Poland After Flight Safety Conference; 20 Dead
A military plane crashed in a forested area in northwestern Poland, killing 20 people, the prime minister said early Thursday. The officers had been attending a flight safety conference in Warsaw.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the plane crash, which occurred as it was about to land Wednesday evening. The 20 victims included a brigadier general and four crew members, he said.
“Soldiers, husbands, and fathers have died, and that is the most tragic result of this catastrophe,” said Tusk, who had rushed to the site of the accident.
He called it a “huge loss for the Polish air force.”
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in Kara's Classics, Oops | Comments Off
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Two graffiti artists drown in Sydney
Two Australian graffiti artists drowned when a flash storm swept them along a drain they had been spray painting in Sydney before trapping them at its barred ocean outlet, police said.
A third graffiti artist, who remained conscious during the ordeal, managed to squeeze himself through the bars and into the ocean where he was rescued by surfers on Sunday.
“It’s believed three people, two men and one woman, were allegedly spray painting the walls of a stormwater drain at Maroubra (Beach), when it started to rain,” police said in a statement on Monday.
Posted in Oops, Teen Antics | Comments Off
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Fan Mistakenly Shreds Playoff Ticket
A little housecleaning nearly cost the Rev. Walter Hermanns a seat at Sunday’s National Football Conference championship game. Hermanns, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, was getting some help from a friend last Friday when he asked him to take care of a stack of papers left in a bin for shredding.
When his friend got to four Green Bay Packers tickets bundled together with a rubber band, he took off the band, put one in the shredder and then stopped short.
“Something rang a bell and he said, ‘Are you sure you want to shred these?’” Hermanns said.
Too late. The ticket was in shreds.
Posted in Doh!, I hate it when that happens, Oops | Comments Off
Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Christmas card arrives 93 years late
A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It just arrived in northwest Kansas.
The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Neb.
It’s a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. “It’s surprising that it never got thrown away,” he said. “How someone found it, I don’t know.”
Posted in Oops | Comments Off
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Man Spends Four Days Trapped in a Bathroom
A retired teacher who spent four days trapped in a freezing toilet says he survived by dipping his feet in hot water.
David Leggat was stuck in the bathroom at his bowling club with no food or contact with the outside world after the door jammed behind him.
The 55-year-old, who spent 16 hours of each day in darkness, was eventually freed after cleaner Cathy Scollay heard his cries for help and raised the alarm.
“There was no reason for anyone to come looking for him,” she said. “David looked awfully grey and shaky when he came out but he managed to walk up the road to his house.”
Hat tip to Kara!
Posted in I hate it when that happens, Kara's Classics, Oops | Comments Off
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
Window washers fall 47 storeys
A window washer fell 47 storeys to his death and his brother was seriously injured yesterday when the scaffolding on a high-rise apartment building gave way, authorities said.
The brothers were getting onto the scaffolding from the roof of the 47-storey building when the platform gave way, said Seth Andrews, a fire department spokesman.
“They apparently fell all the way from the top,” added John Mulligan, another fire department spokesman.
A 30-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His 37-year-old brother was in critical condition at a hospital, officials said. The brothers’ names weren’t immediately available.
Posted in Oops | Comments Off
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
Boater gets tossed out at about 90 mph
A Pasco County man escaped serious injury Sunday when he was ejected from a speedboat traveling upward of 90 mph.
James K. Helmintoller, of Land O’Lakes, was driving his 353 Fastech speedboat down the Anclote River Channel when it hit a wake, ejecting the 43-year-old into the water and sending the unmanned vessel out of the river channel and into the open waters of the Anclote Anchorage bay, according to investigators with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office Marine Unit.
Posted in Nautical Nightmares, Oops, You lucky bastard | Comments Off
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
Hospital Fined for Wrong-Side Surgery
Rhode Island Hospital was fined $50,000 and reprimanded by the state Department of Health Monday after its third instance this year of a doctor performing brain surgery in the wrong side of a patient’s head.
“We are extremely concerned about this continuing pattern,” Director of Health David R. Gifford said in a written statement. “While the hospital has made improvements in the operating room, they have not extended these changes to the rest of the hospital.”
The most recent case happened Friday when, according to the health department, the chief resident started brain surgery on the wrong side of an 82-year-old patient’s head. The patient was OK, the health department and hospital said.
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Medical Monstrosities, Oops | Comments Off
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
Computer Glitch Leads To Brawl At Wauwatosa Kmart
A melee at a Kmart store in Wauwatosa Saturday morning was started by a computer glitch.
The store was running a promotion in which it would give away $10 to anyone applying for its credit card, but the computer glitch led to everyone’s application being granted — bestowing up to $4,000 in instant credit to anyone who applied even if they shouldn’t have qualified.
Once word started to spread about the so-called “free money” Saturday, witnesses said things got pretty nuts inside the Wauwatosa store.
Posted in Anarchy, Greed is Good, Oops | Comments Off
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
Cow killed in coyote confusion
Cow. Coyote. They may begin with the same letters, but the two animals don’t particular look alike.
Try telling that to a man in Colfax, Michigan, who gunned down his neighbour’s cow, claiming he thought it was a coyote.
Unbelievably, the cow’s owner and the police don’t buy his story.
Posted in Oops | Comments Off
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Amateur Hockey Player Killed After Puck Strikes Chest
An amateur hockey player died after a puck struck him in the chest and caused him to go into cardiac arrest late Thursday, officials said.
Nathan Crowell, 22, a University of New Haven student, was pronounced dead at Bridgeport Hospital shortly after the incident during a league game at a Shelton hockey rink, police and team officials said.
His death remained under investigation Friday, but police said no foul play is suspected.
Crowell, who is from Portsmouth, R.I., tried to block an opposing player’s slapshot with 3 seconds left in the game when the puck struck him and he collapsed, said Howard Saffan, a co-owner of the SportsCenter of Connecticut facility.
Crowell was wearing the required chest protector and other gear, but the puck apparently struck an unprotected part of his torso just below the pad, Saffan said.
Posted in Oops | Comments Off
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
D’Oh: House Panel Screw-Up Reveals Whistleblower Email Addresses
Here’s a whoops with a capital W.
This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee’s website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the “strictest confidence.”
But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the “to:” field — instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or “bcc:”.
Posted in Doh!, Idiot Authorities, Oops | Comments Off
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
Aussie swimmer dives head-first into crocodile
An Australian who went for a drunken dip in the sea got more than he bargained for when he dived into the jaws of a large crocodile.
Matt Martin was camping alone near a beach in northern Queensland when he decided to go for a dusk swim, despite having drunk what he later admitted was “half a slab”, or 12 cans of beer.
When the 35-year-old construction worker dived into a wave, he butted heads with a submerged saltwater crocodile.
“I thought I was dead. It was sort of like when you hit rocks but the rocks had give and movement in them,” he told The Cairns Post.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Fun with Alcohol, Oops, You lucky bastard | Comments Off
Friday, October 12th, 2007
Why did the chicken block the road?
IN HIS 24 years as a traffic officer, Chief Inspector Donald McMillan has chased errant dogs, pigs, horses and, once, a wild boar – but never a chicken.
Until yesterday that is, when, at the crack of dawn, he had to contend with 3,000 of them, all terrified and shrieking, after falling from a lorry that had jackknifed on a dual carriageway.
Mr McMillan arrived at the scene – the A80 Glasgow-Stirling road, near Castlecary – at about 6:30am to find chickens everywhere.
Posted in Animal Rebellion Update, Oops | Comments Off
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
10,000 Wildebeest Drown in Migration “Pileup”
In a bizarre mishap that conservationists describe as “heartbreaking,” an estimated 10,000 wildebeest have drowned while attempting to cross Kenya’s Mara River during an annual migration.
The deaths, which occurred over the course of several days last week, are said to account for about one percent of the total species population.
The drownings created a grotesque wildlife pileup, after part of the migrating herd tried to ford the Mara at “a particularly treacherous crossing point,” according to Terilyn Lemaire, a conservation worker with the Mara Conservancy who witnessed the incident.
Posted in Animal Weirdness, Oops, Yuck! | Comments Off
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
Navy To Remedy Swastika-Shaped Barracks
The U.S. Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify the appearance of a barracks complex in Coronado that resembles a swastika from the air.
Navy officials said the spending for changes to the four L-shaped buildings were approved after satellite images from Google Earth revealed the swastika-like shape.
“We don’t want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika,” Navy spokesman Scott Sutherland told the L.A. Times.
One has to wonder if anyone in authority bothered to look at the blueprints before the thing was built…
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Nazis, Oops, Unintended Consequences | Comments Off
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
Pilot killed in collision at Wisconsin air show
Two single-engine war planes at an experimental air show collided while landing Friday, killing one of the pilots and injuring the other, officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the collision between the two P-51 Mustangs happened at 3:17 p.m. after the planes finished a performance at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture show.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
News helicopters collide; 4 dead
A police chase through the streets of downtown Phoenix turned into a midair tragedy Friday afternoon when two television news helicopters covering the action collided and crashed to the ground in smoke and flame, killing all four people on board.
KTVK-TV said photojournalist Jim Cox and pilot Scott Bowerback were killed. KNXV-TV identified its crew as photographer Rick Krolak and pilot Craig Smith.
The helicopters collided as the stations were covering the police pursuit of a stolen white truck towing a trailer. Assistant Chief Mark Angle of the Phoenix Fire Department said wreckage from both helicopters then landed in a downtown park.
Aerial footage from another station covering the chase, KPNX-TV, showed large plumes of black smoke and flames coming from the wreckage.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
I Was an eBay Voldemort
Wednesday evening, Atlanta — It all started about 24 hours ago, when I found a plain cardboard box on my doorstep. I was surprised to see my name on the label, as I wasn’t expecting anything this week. My surprise increased exponentially when I opened the package to find a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows within.
With no disrespect meant to J. K. Rowling’s innumerable devotees, I’m not a particularly big Harry Potter fan. But I’d read two or three of the early books, and being as susceptible as the next guy to the hype for the last book in the series, I placed an order a few weeks ago at DeepDiscount.com, the store that was offering the lowest price. Ironically, I didn’t even spring for expedited shipping.
Posted in Oops | No Comments »
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
In Braintree, firefighters cut holes in wrong house
Town firefighters learned a different kind of lesson when they punched holes in a house as part of a training exercise: Make sure you have the right address.
And now the owners of the house they damaged want the Fire Department to pay up.
“They made the mistake,” said Clayton Luu, whose family had lived in the four-bedroom white Victorian since the 1980s until an electrical fire last year heavily damaged it. “They will have to pay for it.”
Posted in Idiot Authorities, Oops | No Comments »
