MAN DIES WHILE READING WEBSITEMay 5, 1998
Australia
Apparently the material contained within was so funny that he choked on a chicken sandwich that he was eating at the time.
...police have ruled out fowl play.
Above story registered with Darwin Awards ©1998
Here's a little historical "tidbit" for all of you I didn't know where to put it so I'm putting it RIGHT HERE...Brace yourself for this one!
The Princess of Amen-Ra lived about 1,520 years before Christ. Pyramid Texts have assigned great antiquity to the Deity Amen, and of its attributes in the Ancient Empire nothing is currently known, but, if we accept the meaning "hidden" which is usually given to his name, we must conclude that Amen was the personification of the hidden and unknown creative power which was associated with the primeval abyss.
When Princess Amen-Ra died, she was laid in an ornate wooden coffin and buried deep in a vault at Luxor on the banks of the Nile River.
In the late 1890s, four young Englishmen visiting the excavations at Luxor were invited to buy an exquisitely fashioned mummy case containing the remains of Princess of Amen-Ra. They drew lots for the right.
The man who won paid several thousand pounds and had the coffin taken to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen walking out towards the desert and he never returned.
The next day, one of the remaining three men was accidentially shot by an Egyptian. His arm was so severely wounded it had to be amputated.
The third man in the foursome found on his return home that the bank holding his entire fortune had failed. The final man in the quartet suffered a severe illness, lost his job and was reduced to selling matches in the street.
Nevertheless, the coffin reached England (reportedly causing other misfortunes along the way), where it was bought by a London businessman.
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After three of his family members had been injured in a road accident and his house damaged by fire, the businessman donated it to the British Museum. As the coffin was being unloaded from a truck in the museum courtyard, the truck suddenly went into reverse and trapped a passer-by. Then as the casket was being lifted up the stairs by two workmen, one fell breaking his leg. The other, apparently in perfect health, died unaccountably two days later.
Once the Princess was installed in the Egyptian Room, trouble really started. Museum's night watchmen frequently heard frantic hammering and sobbing from the coffin. Other exhibits in the room were also often hurled about at night. One watchman died on duty causing the other watchmen wanting to quit. Cleaners refused to go near the Princess too.
When a visitor derisively flicked a dustcloth at the face painted on the coffin, his child died of measles soon afterwards. Finally, the authorities had the mummy carried down to the basement. Figuring it could not do any harm down there. Within a week, one of the helpers was seriously ill, and the supervisor of the move was found dead on his desk.
By now, the newspapers had heard of it.
A photo-journalist took a picture of the mummy case and when he developed it, the painting on the coffin was of a horrifying, human face. The photographer was said to have gone home, then, locked his bedroom door and shot himself.
Soon afterwards, the museum sold the mummy to a private collector. After continual misfortune (and deaths), the owner banished it to the attic. A well known authority on the occult, Madame Helena Blavatsky, visited the premises.
Upon entry, she was seized by a shivering fit and searched the house for the source of "an evil influence of incredible intensity". She finally came to the attic and found the mummy case.
"Can you exorcise this evil spirit?" asked the owner.
"There is no such thing as exorcism. Evil remains evil forever. Nothing can be done about it. I implore you to get rid of this evil as soon as humanly possible."
But no British museum would take the mummy; the fact that over 20 people had met with misfortune, disaster or death from handling the casket, in barely 10 years, was now widely known.
Eventually, a hard-headed American archaeologist (who dismissed the happenings as quirks of circumstance), paid a handsome price for the mummy and arranged for its removal to New York.
In April 1912, the new owner escorted his treasure aboard a sparkling, new White Star liner about to make its maiden voyage to New York.
Because the reputation of the mummy was very well known, the owner, William T Stead, was afraid that his cargo would be refused. Therefore, he secretly arranged for the mummy to be hidden under the body of a new Renault (anyone who has driven a Renault will understand!) which was being transported to America on the ship. Stead did not reveal the truth about his cargo to any others aboard the ship until the evening of April 13th.
The following night amid scenes of unprecedented horror, the Princess of Amen-Ra accompanied 1,500 passengers down to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
TRIVIA QUESTION FOR 1500 points: In the 1997 James Cameron movie Titanic,
what type of car did the characters Jack Dawson (LEONARDO DiCAPRI) and
Rose DeWitt Bukater (KATE WINSLET) make love in?
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WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN TO SPOT "AMEN-RA"?
Finding Stead and the Renault are way too easy!
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Sensing such a moment, he pilfered one of fourteen tiny pouches from inside a canvas duffel-bag which had been stowed in the boot of a shinny new sedan awaiting transport to America.
He hid it inside the outer pouch of his smock which also held his weekly ration of flour collected early that morning from the street market.
On returning home late that evening he was sorely disappointed in his bounty because the pouch contained only silica which he reasoned was for absorbing moisture since he had seen such packing used before to prevent rust and corrosion, however there were also some chips of what looked like polished and engraved marble stonework.
The family sat down to supper and were soon enough fast asleep for the night.
Only the child awoke the next day. The orphaned boy was returned to Maidstone where he spent most of his time serving a rather nasty uncle by waiting in long, long queues. His uncle was taken into the army to fight and die in WWI and the boy was then placed into a public orphanage bringing with him nothing, save a faded picture of his mother and the now cherished bag of dust.
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The devastation from WWI took it's toll on Great Britain and the orphan boy was deemed to be surplus population when the victorious troops started returning after the war.
The lad was slated for placement with a family in New Zealand, but an insect infestation and subsequent crop failure forced a last-minute change of plan.
He was sent to Canada.
Landing at the Port of Montreal he made his way by steam locomotive to the head of Lake Ontario and there he joined a prosperous family to work on their farm the farmer had only daughters and was in need the young man's services. The expectation of the home children or "homeboy" program, as it was often called, was to have children adopted as pseudo-sons and daughters and come to share in the future of the farm or business.
Things did not go as expected. The young man had a bit too much of the world in him with all those young and innocent girls about and he possessed a smooth
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Great lightning storms were very common in that part of Ontario it's very name was and still is "Thunder Bay", so it was no surprise when the farm was completely destroyed by fire during a particularly intense storm. It was said the fire could be seen for nearly ten miles.
With no work, the youth soon left the region. Misfortune always seemed a step behind and large parts of this time period remain a mystery. It is known that the young man acquired an excellent knowledge of embalming practices and briefly returned to England at the height of the Great Depression. He returned again to Canada around the beginning of WWII.
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Back in Canada there was a great need for manual labor to serve the rural based economy of Eastern Ontario and, unlike today, hard work for room and board was the norm.
He worked on numerous small farms in Eastern Ontario to an advanced age.
It is documented that on the last farm where he actively worked in the early 1980s, he was assisting the farmer in preparing his equipment to cut hay on the first weekend of Summer. While connecting the farm tractor onto a mowing machine, the farmer seems to have misunderstood the farm-hand's request to "put it in gear" and inadvertently placed the tractor in motion causing it to crush the farmer to death under the rear wheels.
Farms can certainly be very hazardous places!
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After that misfortune, the now elderly farm-hand moved into the City of Kingston where he spent his last days roaming the streets and roads of the Limestone City apparently to maintain his health through regular exercise. On many days he was known to cover over four miles.
On the longest and possibly hottest day of the year he awoke at day-break and for no known reason took the cherished bag from a greenish-gray wooden box which he maintained under his bed. He immediately set off to the East without a word which was considered quite unusual by the other residents of the rest home.
Late that night he was found many miles to the North and taken to hospital by a concerned passer-by.
He arrived in hospital very confused and with a nasty cut high above his forehead. He did recover from the injuries incurred on that mysterious adventure, but doctors discovered he had terminal cancer and he died in July of 1995.
The contents of the bag?
Based my painstaking research I am now certain where the evil now lies
The OLYMPIC was subsequently involved in a relatively minor collision at sea and was eventually taken out of service and dismantled. Pieces of the once mighty ship still exist all over Great Britain. The BRITANIC inspite of all its safety improvements, sank fifty-five minutes after being damaged by an explosion in the Mediterranean Sea near Crete on the morning of November 21, 1916. This was actually about half the time the TITANIC stayed afloat! (705 people managed to survive TITANIC after it received that famous 240 foot brush with the iceberg which penetrated up to two feet into the number five bulkhead) The BRITANIC was believed to have been the victim of a torpedo from a German U-boat, however some experts still maintain an underwater mine was the cause of the sinking as well as some incredible bad luck. The explosion which sank the ship happened just as the water-tight doors had all been opened to facilitate movement of the 08:00 shift change and while the lower portholes were also open to air out the ship's quarters. The doors should have closed. They didn't perhaps due to warping of the frames. The ship was being used for hospital evacuation and transport of wounded troops and under Red Cross colors. Even though the ship had been "double hulled", had sealed bulkheads (unlike TITANIC), could now survive with six compartments flooded AND the 1894 Board of Trade regulations which had doomed so many on the TITANIC had now been changed, the results were still relatively bad... Had the ship gone down on the return voyage with over 3,000 patients on board, almost all would have drown. As it was, many survivors already afloat in lifeboats were killed when the Captain ordered the propellers started in a vain attempt to beach the ship before it sank which actually managed to grind up many of the lifeboats in the giant 29 foot blades. Think there's a movie in it? Naw, not without a MUMMY or two.
PPS: Final interesting fact: The TITANIC was one of three Olympic Class ships build in Belfast, Ireland belonging to the WHITE STAR LINE. The others were the OLYMPIC and the BRITANIC. The OLYMPIC was taken out of service and refitted after the TITANIC disaster, while the BRITANIC was still under construction and new safety measures where applied during its completion.
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