nm. ninja’d.
What about falling air conditioners from high-rises? I saw a “Seinfeld” where Kramer looses one through an open window.
Is there anyone who doesn’t know that an air conditioner will fall out the window unless actively prevented from doing so? This isn’t Murphy’s Law, it’s Murphy’s Money Back Guarantee.
Okay, I’ll be the one to mention the old* joke about a piano being accidentally dropped into a pit, the crash at the bottom being the sound of a flat miner.
- I heard this groaner 40 years ago, and it was probably already ancient.
Cecil will be posting an update to this column in 2 weeks. One of the Teeming Millions sent in several good news reports which validate the actual tropes.
Una,
For the Straight Dope.
This is one of the cases where it is unclear whether the air conditioner falls accidentally (i.e. Kramer loses it), or whether it was let go on purpose (i.e. Kramer looses it).
If you look at really old death records, like from the 1700s, it may list something called “Planet Struck.” I was telling someone about this and wondered what it might be, and he said, “The person probably jumped off a tall building.”
My guess would be “afflicted in some mysterious way attributed to astrology,” such as fever or madness.
No, he was not named ironically. He was named Keys.
…but I once dropped a cast iron object weighing about a ton from a height of over 100ft, narrowly missing a group of people below. And on another occasion I found myself clinging to a ladder in an 8’x8’ vertical shaft 150’ deep, while half a dozen timbers the size of railroad ties bounced by, carroming off the walls all around me.
All of this happened years ago when I was a college student, working for the summer as a laborer 3200 ft underground in the Homestake Gold Mine in my home town in South Dakota. The cast iron object was a “slusher motor” (don’t ask) – essentially a very large compressed air motor – that my coworker and I were lowering down a shaft to the miners below. Apparently, there are two ways to hoist a very heavy object with a winch – the right way and the wrong way. We did it the wrong way, the winch cable came unhooked, and the rest is history. Luckily, the miners weren’t directly below us when the slusher motor hit (and went straight through) the timber floor of the shaft with the force of a tactical nuclear weapon. I think it was an Acme slusher motor.
What goes around (or down!) comes around, as I learned when a different coworker made the same mistake with a load of timbers – with me in the Wile E. Coyote position.
These were learning experiences. I now work in a job where the greatest danger of being crushed comes from the towering piles of paper on my desk.
I was hanging out with a German buddy of mine as he transferred some of his training videos onto DVD and one of the helicopters dropped a 5 ton training weight onto the edge of the piste, effectively cratering it. :eek:
Not a lot of articles online about this, but Arkansas Nuclear One had a non-nuclear accident on or around march 30, 2013, in which part of a generator was dropped a significant distance.
A “stator,” the part of an electrical generator that remains stationary while the “rotor” rotates, was being lifted by crane. This object weighed…a lot; the news cites below say 500 tons, but I have seen estimates of 700 tons from sources I consider more reliable. The object fell about 50 feet or a little more. This was not a small accident.
One person was killed and 8 hospitalized. I do not know if the object fell on the person who died or if some other mechanic was involved – there was a LOT of energy released in that accident.
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/21894074
http://enformable.com/2013/05/healthy-discussion-of-the-arkansas-nuclear-one-accident/
MOD NOTE: kibitzer, I’ve merged your thread into an existing thread on falling pianos &c. just to try to keep everything in one spot. No problem, just sort of house-cleaning in hopes that it will be spring.
Well, I am sure they were sad, but they were after all minor Keys.
Perhaps, but only because of clumsy wording. Try this on for size: “A man with the ironic surname Keys…”
And you weren’t the only one making a joke.
As if the NYC police didn’t have enough to worry about on 9/11, there were dangers of the people jumping from the WTC hitting people on the ground. I know someone whose daughter was killed when a suicide jumper landed on her.
Not Funny.
Was looking at holiday pics of Amsterdam when I thought of this thread. How many cases in the Netherlands? Surely with all the hoisting up through windows this has got to be quite common (but piano falling standards).
Cheers
Luke
The fatality rate has dropped dramatically since the invention of tiny umbrellas.
Unfortunately it’s been tempered by a sudden increase in fatalities associated with people jumping off roofs with umbrellas.
I found this very interesting as I was struck by a falling piano when I was 7 years old. I knew I couldn’t have been the only one…