Road campaigner crashes on new road

A man who led a 30-year campaign for a new bypass has become the first person to crash on it.

Jim Burley fought for the bypass in Pegswood, Northumberland, to reduce heavy traffic through the village.
Parish council chairman Jim, 70, and his wife Eunice, 69, were not seriously hurt when their Vauxhall van was in a head-on collision with another van.

The accident was on a section of the bypass which is open to traffic while work continues to complete the remaining stretch. Jim told the Sun: "I can certainly see the irony in being involved in the first accident on a bypass for which I have been campaigning for 20 to 30 years.

"Other parish councillors have been ringing to say they can't believe it was me involved in the accident when I have been making a song and dance about the bypass for years."

Britain's unluckiest man?

'Britain's unluckiest man' - who has suffered 16 major accidents - is laid up again after falling down a manhole.

John Lyne's misfortunes have included two lightning strikes, a rock-fall in a mine, nearly drowning and three car crashes.

Mr Lyne, 54, of Stainforth, near Doncaster, will be out of action for 32 weeks after his latest mishap, reports the Doncaster Free Press.

The accident damaged his back and injured his left leg and both knees - on top of a lifetime of broken bones.

Mr Lyne says he's not bitter - just glad to be alive.

"Everyone thinks it is just hilarious," he said. "My mates, family and wife Susan just laugh about it.

"I don't think there is any reason or explanation for it though, it has just happened really. I have to particularly be careful on the Friday 13ths, when a few accidents have fallen."

Mr Lyne's mishaps cover a lifetime. As a child, he fell off a horse and cart - only to be run over by a delivery van.

When he was a teenager, he broke his arm falling from a tree. On his way back from hospital, his bus crashed, breaking the same arm in another place. The date was Friday the 13th.

Pensioner survives 100ft fall

A pensioner walked away with cuts and bruises - after driving his car over a 100ft cliff.

The drama was witnessed by Andy Baldwin who called 999 - but only realised later the driver was his own stepfather Terry Flynn, 72.

Mr Flynn swerved off a coast road in his Vauxhall Corsa and smashed through a barbed wire fence into a field, reports the Mirror.

He then drove in circles round the field in the pitch black before plunging over the cliff 300 yards from the road.

But, amazingly, Mr Flynn had only minor head and rib injuries. He was winched to safety by coastguards and taken to hospital where he was said to be "comfortable".

Mr Baldwin, 54, who was driving past at the time of the crash, said: "It seems Terry swerved to avoid an animal and ended up in a field.

"He got disoriented, probably banged his head, and drove over the cliff. The car is almost completely flattened. It was low tide otherwise he could have drowned."

A Hampshire Police spokeswoman said: "We are treating it as an accident. We have no idea why he lost control."

Man unhurt after 50ft fall

A Czech man had a lucky escape after he plunged four floors onto the pavement below after mixing up the toilet and balcony doors.

Dusan Zdimala, 61, from Brno, fell 50ft but walked away with just light bruises after his middle of the night mix-up.

He was taken to hospital after a neighbour, who saw him fall, rang an ambulance.

Mr Zdimala, a painter, said: "It's miraculous. Apart from the bruises nothing happened. I didn't even break a single bone."

OAP's U-turn causes nine crashes

A pensioner caused nine separate crashes after executing a U-turn on a German motorway.

Ingrid Schoppenhauer, 76, caused £35,000 of damage along the A9 Autobahn as drivers piled into each other.

She calmly explained to officers that she had been trying to get to the Bavarian city of Bayreuth but had taken a wrong turn and got on the A9 Autobahn heading towards Berlin.

She said she wanted to get off the motorway as quickly as possible and decided to do a U-turn and head back to the correct exit.

No one was seriously injured in the accidents but police confiscated the woman's licence.

Passengers asked to fix train

Passengers on a broken-down train were shocked when they were asked if they could fix it.

The London to Manchester Virgin train was halted at Rugby station in Warwickshire when a windscreen wiper broke.

The train manageress pleaded over the tannoy for any passengers with nuts, bolts or cable ties to go to the front of the carriage.

Four men stepped forward to help, reports The Sun.

One of them, Damian Gaskin said: "It was unbelievable. I had a few basic tools with me so I went to help. One man had a foot on the platform with his other stretched across the windscreen.

"He was straddling the train. he told me he was a passenger and fixed the electrics on a service the week before."

A Virgin spokesman said: "After several repair attempts passengers got off the train and boarded a later service."

Gun blast ignites fireworks shop

LAC DU FLAMBEAU, Wis. - A man attempting to rob a fireworks shop fired his shotgun, igniting fireworks and starting a blaze that destroyed the business, authorities said.

No injuries were reported at North American Fireworks, the Vilas County Sheriff's Department said in a statement Saturday. A 20-year-old man was being held in jail after being tracked to a home about 10 miles away.

The owner told deputies a male entered the business Friday wearing a ski mask and armed with a shotgun. He fired indoors, and a shot apparently ignited fireworks, authorities said.

The owner was able to wrestle the shotgun away and remove the man's ski mask, but the suspect fled on an all-terrain vehicle that had been idling outside, deputies said.

The fireworks began to burn out of control, destroying the rest of the building.

Woman crashes car after driving test

A US woman completed her driving test - then crashed into the examiners' office.

Jessica Krasek, 20, smashed into the Portage License Bureau office in Indiana, reports the Post-Tribune.

She wasn't hurt when her Ford Taurus car struck the front window of the license branch office.

But a bureau worker suffered a hip injury and was examined by paramedics.

Portage Assistant Fire Chief Mike Bucy said Krasek was pulling into a parking space when she hit the accelerator, instead of the brake.

Susan Williams, manager of the Amazing Travel shop next door, said she thought there had been an explosion.

"We jumped up and we went to the door and saw the car half in and half out of the license bureau," Williams said.

Fire station goes up in flames

A fire chief has told of his embarrassment after a station without a smoke alarm went up in flames.

The building and a fire engine were destroyed in the blaze at Arundel Fire Station in West Sussex.

Neil Odin, southern area commander for West Sussex fire service said it showed it could happen to anyone.

"Unfortunately, we had severe damage to our fire station, which is embarrassing," he told the BBC.

He said a brand new building would need a smoke alarm.

But he added: "Automatic smoke detection wouldn't have made any difference."

Nobody was injured in the fire which was tackled by 30 firefighters in six fire engines from neighbouring towns.

The station is served by retained firefighters, none of whom were in the building at the time.

Toddler gets stuck in vending machine

ANTIGO, Wis. - Three-year-old Robert Moore went fishing for a stuffed replica of Sponge Bob and ended up trapped in a vending machine. The toddler's adventure began with a Saturday evening shopping trip with his grandmother, Fredricka Bierdemann, and three siblings.

Bierdemann ended the trip by giving each child a dollar and telling them to have fun in a retailer's game room.

A stuffed Sponge Bob in a vending machine's bin caught Robert's eye. He tried without success to fish it out with a plastic crane.

"I told him I could get it for him," his grandmother said. "He's a character. He said, 'Oh no, I can get it.'"

When she turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.

"I turned around and looked for him, and he said, 'Oma, I'm in here," Bierdemann said. "I thought I would have a heart attack."

Store employees couldn't find a key to the machine, so Robert waited while the Antigo Fire Department was called.

"He was having a ball in there, hugging all the stuffed animals," Bierdemann said. "He was so good-natured, but I was shaking like a leaf."

Firefighters broke one lock but then spotted two latches inside the plastic cube. They passed a screwdriver to Robert.

"He stacked up all the stuffed animals and used that screwdriver to open the latch," his grandmother said. "You should have seen him go."

Eventually, Robert freed himself. But his mother, Marie Moore, and grandmother said they were lucky that he remained calm when another child might not have. He went home safe - but without a stuffed Sponge Bob.

Toilet ice rips hole in couple's roof

CHINO, Calif. - An elderly couple believe a chunk of blue ice from the holding tank of an aircraft toilet ripped a hole in their roof and destroyed a bed.

William McElroy was watching a movie with his wife, Evelyn, when the ice crashed into the house Wednesday night.

"It was a huge crash. It shook the whole building, but we thought it was a car," McElroy said. The couple went outside to investigate but found nothing, so they returned to finish watching the movie.

They didn't discover the chunk of ice on the bed and the 2-foot-wide hole in the ceiling until Thursday morning.

"I think we had somebody extra looking over us," Evelyn McElroy said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Thursday if the offending chunk of ice is from an airplane, then it is likely the cause of a leak in a holding tank of the aircraft's bathroom.

Blue ice occurs when waste leaks from a plane's bathroom onto the outside of the plane and freezes at high altitudes. The liquid begins to thaw as the plane descends, Gregor said.

Panda bites off part of woman's thumb

BEIJING - A panda cub bit off part of the thumb of an American visitor who was feeding it at a reserve in southwest China, state media said Thursday.

The 50-year-old woman, identified only as Lisa, had registered in the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Sichuan province as a volunteer, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

She was wearing gloves and feeding the panda bamboo on Tuesday morning when "suddenly, the panda bit into her thumb," Xinhua said.

"When she cried out, the cub became excited and gripped more tightly," it said. "Lisa finally managed to wrench herself free."

About 20 percent of the thumb had been bitten off, Xinhua said.

A man who answered the telephone at the center's administrative office said it had no comment.

The center has been recruiting volunteers since 2004 for stints that last from one day to more than a month, Zhang Hemin, the center's director, was quoted as saying. They can prepare food, feed pandas under supervision and clear the enclosure with the help of professional keepers, he said.

More than 1,200 volunteers from America, Japan, Switzerland, France and Spain have already worked in the center, Xinhua said.

Last month, a drunken Chinese tourist bit a panda at the Beijing Zoo after the animal attacked him when he jumped into the enclosure and tried to hug it.

Tree limbs form cross on Jesus statue

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Last week's snowstorm in Buffalo brought down countless tree limbs, causing widespread damage to homes and other property. But two large limbs that fell on a statue of Jesus Christ landed in such a way that they formed a cross.

The statue is located behind a former Catholic school in Buffalo.

After the worst of the storm subsided last Friday, neighbor Georgianna Verrastro says she looked out the window and was amazed at what she saw.

Two tree limbs had landed on the right shoulder of the statue, which depicts Jesus with his arms upraised. The limbs caused only minor damage, knocking off the fingers on the statue's right hand.

Video shows the branches leaning against the statue in such a way that it appears Jesus is carrying a wooden cross.

Verrastro told a TV station that her home didn't suffer any damage or lose power during the storm, and she believes the nearby Jesus statue is proof that a higher power was watching over her family last week.

Roofer nails testicle to roof

A Austrian workman who slipped while working on a house nailed his own testicle to the roof with a nail gun.

August Voegl, 59, from Jennersdorf, shot the four-inch nail into his left testicle with the compressed air nail gun.

He was unable to extract it or pull himself away from the roof.

Emergency medics were called in to separate the man from the roof after which he was airlifted to a nearby hospital where he is reportedly recovering well after surgery.

Lightning bum burn

A Croatian woman suffered burns to her bum after lightning struck her in the mouth and passed through her body.

Natasha Timarovic, 27, was cleaning her teeth in her home in the city of Zadar when lightning struck the building.

She said: "I had just put my mouth under the tap to rinse away the toothpaste when the lightning must have struck the building.

"I don't remember much after that, but I was later told that the lightning had travelled down the water pipe and struck me on the mouth, passing through my body.

"It was incredibly painful, I felt it pass through my torso and then I don't remember much at all."

Doctors at the city hospital where she was treated for burns to the mouth and rear said: "The accident is bizarre but not impossible.

"She was wearing rubber bathroom shoes at the time and so instead of earthing through her feet it appears the electricity shot out of her backside.

"It appears to have earthed through the damp shower curtain that she was touching as she bent over to put her mouth under the tap. If she had not been wearing the shoes she would probably have been killed by the blast."

Croatian daily 24 Sata said the young woman had been released from hospital after being kept in overnight and was expected to make a full recovery.

Spider causes man to lose control of SUV

LEVANT, Maine - A Levant man told police he lost control of his 2003 Lincoln Navigator after he was startled by a spider on Wednesday morning.

James Lee, 28, was trying to get out of the SUV when it smashed into a tree. He walked away with a bloody nose caused by the air bag.

But, it could've been worse. At least it wasn't the new Volvo XC90 he won in a contest.

Last month, Lee was one of 11 people from across the country to win a new vehicle from McDonald's, the Bangor Daily News reported. After finishing a Big Mac extra value meal, he got the winning game piece for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" game.

He hasn't taken delivery of the new vehicle yet

Bungee cord breaks, leaving man dangling

TULSA, Okla. - A bungee cord on a thrill ride broke, leaving a man dangling 25 feet off the ground for a half-hour until he was rescued by firefighters.

Steve Alan Stone, 48, was not seriously hurt in the incident Monday at the Tulsa State Fair. A ride worker also was helped down by rescuers.

The ride, called the Ejection Seat, consists of a two-seat chair that is suspended from two towers by bungee cords. Passengers are propelled as much as 200 feet high at speeds of about 60 mph.

Shortly after Stone was launched, one of the cords broke, leaving the seat dangling sideways near one of the towers, Tulsa County Sheriff's Capt. Fred Cotton said.

Stone said he didn't fully realize what was happening until he saw that he was suspended sideways about 25 feet above the ground.

"I was talking myself though a lot, and they (emergency and fair workers) were talking to me, too," he said. "I wasn't scared of dying. I had the utmost confidence in them."

The malfunction is being investigated by the Oklahoma Department of Labor, which oversees fair-ride safety.

Don Hankins, senior amusement ride inspector and assistant director for the department's Safety Standards Division, said the ride has four bungee cords, all of which were replaced Saturday.

Although the bungee cord broke, State Fair Manager Amber Phillips said, "the ride's rip cord -- a redundant safety device -- operated exactly as designed, averting any serious injuries."

'Flying Elvis' suffers broken pelvis

BROWNING, Mont. - A "Flying Elvis" suffered a broken pelvis during the grand opening of the Glacier Peaks Casino here. Paul Moran is a member of The Flying Elvi, a 10-member skydiving team made up of Elvis Presley impersonators, who were hired to parachute into the parking lot at the casino Friday.

Other members of the troupe said the Las Vegas man apparently misjudged the landing and hit the ground at 50 mph.

"I talked to his family (Monday) and they said he is doing well, but he did break his pelvis," said Gary Green, casino manager.

Moran was taken to the Blackfeet Community Hospital and then flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he is listed in serious condition in the intensive care unit.

Man spends 4 hours in hole

A pensioner who was trapped upside down in a hole for four hours was rescued after a postie saw his feet sticking out.

Albert Hughes, 70, was trying to adjust the water flow to his garden sprinklers when he fell head first into the narrow shaft housing the water meter.

When postwoman Janelle Maury called to deliver letters, she saw his boots and heard his cries for help.

According to the Mirror she said: "His feet were at ground level but that was all I could see. When I was closer I could see he was down there.

"I just couldn't believe he was upside down for that long."

The emergency services arrived but couldn't pull him out by hand.

Firemen put a tripod over the hole, attached a rope and straps to his feet and winched him out of the pit at his home in Spokane in America's Washington state.

He was released later that day from hospital uninjured.

World’s Largest Cat Eats World’s Smallest Cat For Lunch

THE WORLD’S LARGEST CAT, Verismo Leonetti Reserve Red, and the world’s smallest cat, Mr. Peebles, were scheduled to be photographed together in a publicity event on Wednesday. Both hold Guiness Book World Records for Longest and Smallest cat, respectively. While it is normal for some cats to reject eachother upon meeting, an unexpected turn of events led to Mr. Peebles’s untimely demise.

It is unknown whether Verismo Leonetti “Leo” Reserve Red, a 4-foot-long Maine Coon, ate breakfast on Wednesday morning. When he was introduced to the 2-lb Mr. Peebles, they immediately took to one another. One witness says, “Leo just started licking Mr. Peebles like a mother to a kitten.”

Once the two were taken to the room with all of the cameras, things began to get a little strange. Leo, who has been rumored to have performed in a cat food commercial on one or two occasions, immediately climbed upon a table and prepared by primping for the photo shoot. Mr. Peebles crawled into a glass bowl to help emphasize his small stature. A photographer thought that this would have been a cute scene, so he asked someone on the set to move Mr. Peebles’s bowl to the table where Leo was bathing.

“From there, it was a bloodbath,” said photographer Peter Ellis. “That big cat must have thought that the bowl was carrying his lunch.” Before anyone could intervene, the massive Maine Coon cat swallowed the tiny Mr. Peebles and licked his chops as though he had just had a tasty meal.

At this time, it is not known whether anyone will be pressing charges