| When a 24-year-old man showed up at a British hospital emergency room with chest pains, doctors also heard a loud crunching sound each time his heart beat and felt air bubbles under his skin. According to the British Medical Journal, the patient disclosed that the day before he had blown up about 20 party balloons. Doctors concluded that the man had burst some of the little air sacs in his lungs when he blew up the first balloon, then inflated himself a little bit more each time he blew up another balloon. His symptoms cleared up within 10 days. |
| It started out as just a simple fender-bender but a couple of hours later the driver, Chinnamma Sebastian, 49, Philadelphia, PA, wound up in a hospital in critical condition with multiple injuries. Sebastian stood in a grassy area near the location of the minor accident and watched as her car was hooked to the flatbed of a tow truck, when suddenly the 1988 Mercedes went into reverse and rolled off. The car ran over her and hit the tow truck driver, who suffered minor injuries. It finally stopped when it hit another tow truck. |
| Ankara, Turkey - Under Turkish law, women can be fined up to a quarter of their salaries for appearing in public with their heads covered with cloth. To sidestep the law, women in central Turkey`s Islamic strongholds have been buying and wearing wigs, in hospitals and state offices. |
| A man whose son was crushed to death by a soda vending machine has filed a $500,000 wrongful-death lawsuit against the company that manufactured the machine. The 27-year-old man apparently rocked the machine, which fell, pinning him against a wall and crushing his chest. The father decided to sue after learning that his son`s death was not an isolated incident. "The penalty for jiggling a machine to get a quarter out or a free Coke shouldn`t be death," said the man`s lawyer. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission found that between 1978 and 1995, at least 37 deaths and 113 injuries resulted from falling vending machines, which can weigh 1,000 pounds. |