Young Damon Janes died playing the game he loved, but at the age of 16, it was a devastating blow to his family when it happened.
Like any young football player, he reveled in the competitiveness of the sport and, as a running back for Westfield/Brocton, played with the bravado and fearlessness of youth. Helmeted, and with all the padded protective gear, he thought nothing of rushing headlong into his opponents, heads crashing together like two young bulls.
With the resilience of youth, he would bounce back up, shake it off, and get back into position for the next play.
He was on the field a lot during any game, sometimes returning kickoffs, sometimes in the backfield playing defense as well as his usual position of running back. His parents loved to see him play and rarely missed a game.
The opening season game on September 7 against Randolph saw him play his usual fearless game, charging in, butting helmets, running yards until he was tackled.
On that fateful night, September 13, 2013, a week later, he took multiple helmet-to-helmet collisions just like he had done dozens of times before without a second thought. For him winning was everything and he played his heart out, leaving everything on the field, literally never backing down.
One particular play in the game saw him brutally hammered by two opposing players, helmets slamming together. He went down, hard, got back to his feet, and carried on with the game as if nothing had happened.
There was nothing untoward as he walked unaided from the field after his final collision a short while later, nothing to indicate that he had been hurt in any way – until he collapsed near the benches on the sidelines, unconscious.
His parents rushed over, concern turning to panic as the medics couldn’t rouse him. For three days they stayed by his side in the medical center in Buffalo, hoping against hope that he would recover, would open his eyes. But that third day was to be his last as he passed away without ever regaining consciousness, without his family ever having the opportunity to say goodbye.
Ever since she was a teenager Canadian Sarah Jean Burke was drawn to the freestyle aspect of skiing, and early on in her career she became known as a pioneer in the superpipe event.
This form of downhill skiing is considered to be an extreme sport, with curved vertical 6.7-meter walls on either side with a pitch of between 16 to 18 degrees. The skier rockets down the center of this half tube of hard-packed snow at absolutely dizzying speeds, seemingly reckless, caution abandoned to the whipping wind.
They then use the high walls to launch themselves into the air to perform flips and tricks at various degrees of difficulty, land in the center to gather further momentum, then launch from the sidewalls again to perform even more daring aerial tricks.
It is an amazing spectacle to witness, and the athlete is marked on technical difficulty, execution, and style. The one with the highest score is declared the winner, so the skiers are always trying to outdo each other with the complexity of their flips and jumps. With a distance of 120m to cover it can be a little dangerous at times.
Her dedication saw her climb to the top of the podium at the 2001 US Freeskiing Open in the half-pipe and from there she developed a taste for winning.
The Freestyle World Ski Championships in 2005 saw the debut of the half-pipe event due to her lobbying of ESPN, and it was there that she became the first woman to successfully perform a 1080-degree rotation jump (three full-body rotations) in competition and become the first world champion.
Sarah went on to win the Winter X Games several times in the half-pipe, as well as Gold medals in slopestyle competitions, and actively promoted the superpipe event to be included in the 2010 Winter Games, where she knew she would be the favorite.
Even an accident in 2009 that broke a vertebra in her back when she landed awkwardly in a slopestyle X Games competition, didn’t slow her down for long. She continued to compete as soon as possible and advocate for the superpipe event to be introduced into the 2010 Winter Olympics. That unfortunately failed but was later successfully included in the 2014 Sochi Games, and her dream of capturing an Olympic gold was finally in sight.
It wasn’t to be.
On January 10, 2012, she suffered a crash at the bottom of a superpipe run while training in Utah. Falling was part and parcel of this daredevil sport and all of the athletes were accustomed to taking a tumble every now and then and just shaking it off.
This fall appeared to casual onlookers to be no different than many others she had endured at one time or another in her career, with the jump executed well but the landing completed awkwardly.
The true severity of the crash only became apparent moments later when she pitched backward onto the slope, in full cardiac arrest. CPR was administered immediately there and then and she was rushed to the hospital in Salt Lake City. There she was placed into an induced coma.
Neurosurgery was performed the next day to repair a vertebral artery in her neck. It had been torn during the accident, restricting the flow of blood and oxygen to her brain, which very quickly had induced the heart attack.
Due to the lack of oxygen and blood flowing to her brain, there was no chance of recovery, and she passed away on January 19.
Sarah Burke’s legacy transcended winter sports and if not for a simple accident while training she would have captured gold in the 2014 Winter Olympics. In her memory, her former coach, Trennon Paynter, scattered her ashes at the one competition she had been unable to conquer.
Korey Damont Stringer was a professional American football player in the NFL with six seasons under his belt, drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 1995. Before that he played for Ohio State University for two years, so there was no doubting that he knew how to train hard and play hard.
He was a big guy at 6 ft 4 in and 346lbs, and as an offensive tackle, was accustomed to being in the thick of any action on the field.
Very early on in his career he fully understood that to be the best training was the key to success. To improve performance, drills had to be done, stamina had to be increased, physical limits had to be exceeded, pushed in every training session to increase speed and strength, until the body just couldn’t take any more.
On the morning of July 30, 2001, he was at the Minnesota Viking’s preseason training camp, going through the drills with his teammates, drills he had undergone hundreds of times before, when he began to suffer from the blistering heat. The 100 degree temperature was draining him of what little energy he had left and he was unable to complete that session, nor the one in the afternoon.
Determined not to let his teammates down, he vowed to return the next day, which he did, donning full pads for the exercises ahead. During the session, he started to have trouble breathing, and actually vomited three times.
Despite this, he continued to train through his discomfort, bravely pushing on in the withering heat regardless of the early warning signs, signs that he ignored and nobody noticed.
Two and a half hours later the training session was done, but so was Korey Stringer.
He barely managed to reach the air-conditioned shelter off the field, weak and dizzy, before collapsing.
He was immediately rushed to the hospital with a temperature of 108 degrees, where he was diagnosed with severe heatstroke. He never recovered and passed away the next day from a death that many doctors stated was entirely preventable.
The symptoms he was exhibiting the day previously were clear indicators of what is known as exertional heatstroke. If the signs had not gone unnoticed by the coaches, or the high temperatures had been factored into the training schedule of the day, who knows, maybe Korey Stringer would have had a few more seasons playing the game he loved.
The Tour de France is one of the most competitive and challenging competitions for any cyclist, even if you are the 1992 individual road race Olympic gold medalist, such as 24-year-old Fabio Casartelli.
After his Olympic Gold medal win, Casartelli turned professional the following year, competing in international races such as the Tour de Suisse, the Spanish Clasica de Almeria, and the Giro d’Italia, winning and placing in decent positions.
He was selected to ride in the 1995 Tour de France and even from the beginning of the race, other competitors were aware of the breakneck speed that he was pursuing on every leg.
It was on the short descent on July 18, 1995, on the 15th stage of the race, called the Queen Stage, in the Pyrenees mountains, that the accident happened. With the speed that the athletes achieve going downhill, all bunched together, there is no margin of error if something unforeseen happens – which it did on that fateful day.
All it took was one small misjudgment, one slight brush of tires, and the cascading domino effect became unavoidable. Speeding cyclists behind collided with the fallen riders in front, attempts to avoid the crash only added to the pile-up, and for some it happened so fast that there was no way they could avoid what they could see coming.
It was a catastrophe.
Riders caught in the worst of it suffered fractures, serious cuts, one had to be rescued after falling into the ravine beyond the concrete barriers, and another rider had to be immediately evacuated with life-threatening injuries.
Casartelli suffered the worst out of everyone. Caught in the thick of it, he went straight over his handlebars, colliding insanely with one of the blocks at the side of the road. He sustained severe facial injuries and a brutal blow to his head that knocked him unconscious, leaving him in a spreading pool of blood.
Medics rushed to his side, administered what aid they could on site then evacuated him by helicopter to the Taberes hospital. There, he was pronounced dead not long after arrival.
Conflicting reports abounded soon after his death about the debate of professional cyclists having to wear helmets. Those against argued about the discomfort of wearing the helmets in hot weather, while others simply suggested that had Casartelli been wearing a helmet, the critical blow to his head would not have been fatal.
The debate was a typical discussion about safety over comfort, but, in reality, it was mainly about change, about becoming accustomed to wearing the helmet. Unfortunately, it took the death of another cyclist in Paris-Nice for it to become mandatory in 2003, finally, but too late to save the life of 24-year-old Fabio Casartelli.
Waking up to a dormant volcano about to erupt is not a good start to the day
A dormant volcano doesn’t mean that one day it can’t wake up and start to spew volcanic ash and molten lava over the local inhabitants. There are many countries around the world that have these seemingly harmless timebombs sleeping close to cities and towns, the residents retiring to their beds each night under a false sense of security that since it hasn’t exploded in the last one hundred years, why would it explode now?
In Alaska the residents of Sitka had become very accustomed to the sight of Mount Edgecumbe on the horizon, dormant, still, just a monument to be occasionally talked about.
Imagine their surprise, and mounting horror, when one morning a thick plume of smoke could be seen emanating from the crater. Police, firefighters, and the Coast Guard immediately began to receive a slew of concerned calls. Was the volcano after all these years about to erupt? Should they evacuate?
A Coast Guard helicopter was quickly sent up to evaluate the situation, fearing the worst.
One of the residents watching the unfolding drama was 50-year-old Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar. Except, unlike most of the citizens of Sitka, he didn’t have a concerned look on his face, but one of mischief.
It transpired that for the last 3 years he had been patiently stockpiling used car parts with the help of some friends, planning a surprise for the town.
So, when the pilot peered into the smoldering crater, he was expecting to see a bubbling river of lava about to spew over the crater and braced himself for the bad news. What he saw instead through the thick, black smoke roiling up into the sky, was a huge pile of burning tires, and a big painted sign that said “April Fool.”
Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar became famous, or infamous, for this stunt, depending on if your point of view that day was from the town below, or from a few hundred miles away reading the headlines in your local paper.
Fortunately, the residents saw the funny side once they realized that death was not imminent and that this clever prank, executed in their little town in Alaska, had launched them into the limelight as the story continued to erupt around the world.
In trying to avoid repeating a tragedy of titanic proportions, an avoidable mistake created a disaster!
Everyone knows the story of the Titanic, the world’s biggest ship meeting the world’s most unfriendly iceberg on a cold dark night. The resulting catastrophe went down in history as the most famous and worst accident with a record loss of lives. Many ships built after this fateful day strived to learn from the design faults and build better safer ships.
One of those, which is seemingly forgotten in history, was the Eastland.
It was originally built in Chicago in 1902 for lake excursions and underwent numerous modifications over the years to increase its original maximum capacity of 500 passengers to over 2,500. After the Titanic sank three years previously, the lifeboats onboard were increased from 6 to 11, with an additional 37 life rafts, as well as a full contingent of life jackets.
Better to be safe than sorry.
In the early hours of July 24, 1915, the ship was chartered by an electric company to ferry its employees on a picnic to Michigan City. Many of the employees were not allowed holidays, so this event for them was a momentous occasion that was probably going to be the highlight of their year.
Excited, the 2,572 workers eagerly boarded the Eastland, waving happily to friends on the dockside from the upper deck.
Experienced dock workers noticed the Eastland listing slightly away from the port, notified the crew on board who quickly added water to the ballast tanks to stabilize the vessel. It seemingly worked and nothing else was thought of it as the ship steadied itself.
But then all of a sudden it got worse, much worse, and they could only watch in horror at what unfolded next.
Completely unaware of what was happening, and the potential danger they were in, the passengers inadvertently sealed their own fate.
For some reason, hundreds of them moved as one towards the port side, easily overbalancing the Eastland, especially as it was only sitting in 6.1 meters of water and was top-heavy. Instead of correcting the imbalance as had happened before, the pitch increased sharply to one side – and kept going. Within minutes, water was pouring through the open gangways, through open portholes, pushing the ship to the point of no return in the blink of an eye.
The Eastland fully capsized right there and then next to the dock, rolling onto its side and trapping hundreds of passengers who had ventured below decks. They were caught completely by surprise. Many of them got crushed by the sudden movement of heavy furniture, many more were trapped in cabins by the rising water, many just couldn’t find the exits that were obscured in the confusion, or escape through the ones that were blocked.
The capsizing happened that quickly, and they never stood a chance.
A nearby vessel provided what help it could by allowing stranded passengers to clamber on board from the hull of the Eastland, while rescuers provided assistance to those who had escaped through portholes or ended up in the water. But the overriding question was, how could a seaworthy vessel like this capsize so easily?
The accident occurred because the Eastland had been retrofitted for years without due inspections and stability tests conducted every time it was upgraded. The metacentric height, which is the measurement of how stable a vessel is, was reduced from about four feet to four inches due to the extra safety equipment secured onboard on the topmost levels.
Basically, a high metacentric measurement increases the static stability of a vessel and allows it to compensate quickly when it starts to roll. The metacentric height on the Eastland was just too low after all the modifications it had undergone, and the extra weight of the safety equipment created a perfect scenario for a disaster to happen under the wrong circumstances.
That day 848 lives were lost. Those lives could have been saved if previous stability tests had been carried out before hundreds of life-saving jackets and life-saving rafts had been crammed onto the upper level.
After the Titanic disaster, extra safety measures on the Eastland became a priority but, in an effort to avert a disaster, one was caused.
McArthur Wheeler was just your average middle-aged man from Pittsburgh who, one day in 1995, decided to rob a bank.
Well, two really.
In broad daylight.
Oh, and with no disguise, his bare-naked face exposed for all to see.
The first robbery went off without a hitch, and he even gave the surveillance cameras a cheeky grin on his way out. Emboldened by his successful haul, he merrily went on to his next bank, pulled this robbery just as smoothly as the first, and flashed the same catch-me-if-you-can grin at the cameras as he exited.
Satisfied with his day’s handiwork, he trotted off home to take stock of his takings.
Later that night there was a knock on his door. Well, several large, heavy knocks that rattled the door in its frame and echoed down the hallway, to be honest. Curious as to who would be knocking on his door at this time of night, he opened the door and was surprised to find the police standing there, handcuffs at the ready.
At the police station, confused, in disbelief, Wheeler, couldn’t fathom out how he had been identified. He was not just shocked that they had managed to track him down so quickly, but that they had managed to track him down at all.
Even after the police showed him the surveillance tapes of him actually robbing the banks and his grinning face for all the world to see, immortalized on film, he was still at a loss as to how they had found him.
When asked how he thought he could get away with robbing two banks in broad daylight with no disguise, his explanation was interesting, to say the least.
Before each job, Wheeler explained, he had meticulously rubbed lemon juice all over his face, having read that lemon juice can be used as invisible ink when writing. In his mind, there was no reason why it shouldn’t make him invisible to the surveillance cameras as well!
Thinking that he was pulling their leg, the police referred him to a psychologist, after charging him, of course. He evaluated Wheeler to see if he was pretending not to know what was going on, if he was crazy, or if he was a drug user. The findings of his study showed that it was none of the above.
He was just simply incompetent. He was not crazy, he was not playing the fool, but the final analysis confirmed that he was definitely lemon-juiced up.
Business was booming for an illegal condom factory in the Tan Uyen Town of Binh Duong Province in Vietnam. They were contributing to the more than 500 to 600 million condoms sold in the country each year. From their small warehouse, thousands of condoms were packed, processed, and sent to market on a regular basis.
Obviously, safe sex was being practiced on an industrial level in Vietnam.
Health and safety are major considerations when setting up a company that processes prophylactics, but it is also an expensive business to run. There were reams of rules and regulations that had to be adhered to, which cost a lot of money. The owner of this particular condom factory decided to trade illegally, to go underground, and avoid all these pesky restrictions in an effort to maximize profits.
It’s not known how long the business had been in production for but the system was working, the overheads were low, the competition was being undercut, safety regulations were being skirted, and excellent profits were being made. But all good things must come to an end.
No one knows where the actual tip-off came from, but when the authorities were alerted to the presence of this potential health hazard right under their noses they were determined to put a stop to the illegal factory immediately.
On September 19, 2020, they carried out a raid on the facility to put a stop to the sales of these unbranded condoms, and arrest the entrepreneurial owner, Pham Thi Thanh Ngoc, aged 32.
Incredibly, over 320,000 illegal contraband condoms were discovered in various stages of preparedness, weighing well over 360 kilos.
All the workers and the owner were hauled down to the police station, where the confessions began. After all, they had been caught red-handed, had no permits or legal company documents to show to the officers, and simply couldn’t deny that the condoms were being illegally packaged and sold.
But that wasn’t the shocking part. All this information the police already knew from their investigations so it was no surprise to them. What they learned next they just couldn’t believe.
When she was pressed further, the owner came clean and told them everything.
Once a month a person whose name she did not know would visit the premises with a consignment of condoms, thousands of them. It was her employee’s job to prepare and pack them for delivery to their waiting clients, who were themselves benefitting mightily from the cheap prices offered to them, so asked no questions.
Jaws dropped and eyes widened when Pham Thi Thanh Ngoc explained the process in more detail. She revealed that the condoms were used, that they had been collected and delivered to her in their second-hand state. It was the job of her staff to clean the used contraceptives thoroughly, freshen them up a bit, dry them out, reshape them, and get them ready for their second lease of life.
Thousands of these repurposed condoms had been sent out from this illegal warehouse over an unknown period of time, an unsuspecting public not practicing sex as safe as they thought.
This was definitely a case of recycling at its best. Or worse. Depending on your point of view.
King cobras have a bad reputation of being fierce predators, of hissing aggressively while rearing up, of biting first, and of not even taking the time to ask any questions. Get in their way, intrude on their space and it’s fanging time.
But the reality of the situation is that they are not really known for attacking humans for the hell of it. They prefer to keep to themselves, and only when they feel threatened do they have a hissing fit, flaring their trademark hoods out to look mean in an attempt to scare people away.
Generally, people that get bitten by them either accidentally step on or disturb them unexpectedly. Or, in the case of Nguyen Van Tam, try to catch one by hand.
Nguyen Van Tam, a native of Vietnam, thought it would be a good idea on August 19, 2020, to catch a three-meter king cobra snake weighing nearly 5 kgs, in an effort to support his family. In Vietnam, snake meat was considered to be nutritious, tasty, with a strong gamy taste between chicken and beef. The experienced snake hunter was looking forward to his meal as he closed in on his prey.
It was his son who had first alerted him to the presence of the cobra on his farm, so, off he went to investigate.
He came upon the cobra unexpectedly, surprising it and surprising himself. As the snake reared up, his instincts kicked in and he made a grab for the snake. Bad move. Swaying to one side to avoid Van Tam’s grasp, the cobra reacted in the only way it knew how by snapping forward and sinking its fangs into Van Tam’s leg.
Eyes bulging, in shock and in pain, the Vietnamese grabbed the head of the snake, hoping to dislodge it. That didn’t work. If anything it angered the cobra even more and it reacted by grabbing Van Tam just as he tried to grab it. The cobra easily won the power struggle, fangs still buried deep and its body now coiled tightly around Van Tam’s arm. It now had its victim and had no intention of letting go.
Nguyen Van Tam knew he was in a really bad position, extremely aware that a single bite from this poisonous snake could kill 20 people. Fortunately, he was not alone at the time and a taxi was called to take him to the hospital 20 km away, snake and all.
Even at the hospital the snake, obviously still incensed at being considered that day’s lunch, didn’t want to release its prize and had to be killed in order to free the unlucky snake hunter.
At first, Nguyen Van Tam was able to communicate coherently with the emergency personnel even though his leg was bleeding and turning purple. Within 30 minutes, though, his breathing became labored as the poison seeped further into his system and he had to be put on a ventilator.
After spending weeks in intensive care in critical condition, Nguyen Van Tam slowly recovered, happy to have survived the unfortunate experience. Later, he had to admit that maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea, after all, to add a king cobra to his family’s meal choices.
This species is known as the world’s longest venomous snake, and even though it’s not known for snacking on humans, in this particular case it had turned the tables on the hunter, almost having him for lunch.
Being a world-class athlete and performing at the highest level of your chosen sport takes a degree of dedication, of sacrifice, that few of us can attain. The term “World Class” evokes images of sportsmen and women who strive to be the best no matter what it takes, no matter what limits have to be pushed, no matter what dangers are involved.
Eric Wilson “Hank” Gathers Jr was just such an athlete, and growing up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia, he understood that he had to find a way to escape his humble beginnings. Basketball was his calling and he dedicated himself to it, not only to better himself but to stay out of the neighborhood troubles. Growing up in the Raymond Rosen Projects was tough, getting out was a challenge that few managed to achieve.
Still, Gathers continued to follow his dreams, playing college basketball before being signed by Loyola Marymount University in 1987. He was named MVP in the 1987- 1988 season and in 1989 he was tipped to get the Player of the Year award as well as a possible NBA lottery pick. His dreams and his years of dedication were finally about to pay off.
But even the fittest athletes need to look after their health and follow doctors’ orders, up-and-coming basketball stars being no exception. In the case of Gathers, his condition went undetected until he collapsed on court in December 1989. A doctor’s diagnosis revealed that he suffered from an abnormal heartbeat, called ventricular tachycardia, that was exacerbated by strenuous exercise.
Fearing that his career might be over, Gathers was relieved when he was prescribed beta-blockers, and within a few weeks, he was back in the game.
There was no doubt that Hank Gathers, 6 feet 7 inches and 95kgs, was in the best shape of his life at 23 years old. He was ambitious, talented, and with the invulnerability of youth, soon came to believe that the medication was affecting his performance. He struggled over the following weeks to play his best games and decided something had to be done.
So, over the next few months, he unilaterally decided to lower the recommended daily dosage so he could get back to his playing at his best. And it seemingly worked. On February 3, 1990, he was back to his high-scoring best in a televised game against LSU (Louisiana State University).
After that, his team went on to win seven out of the next eight games which propelled them into the semi-finals.
His collapse on March 4, 1990, in the middle of the semifinals, caught everyone by surprise. It was so loud when his full weight slammed into the floor, that it brought the whole court to a sudden, deathly silence, and froze many of the players in place.
For a split second, nobody reacted, stunned, then players and the team physician rushed to his aid. He was conscious for a very brief moment, attempting to sit up, then his breathing stopped altogether and he was rushed to Daniel Freeman Hospital. Once there, the doctors tried their best to resuscitate him but in the end, Gathers was pronounced dead at 6.55 pm at the age of 23.
Many spectators at the time commented that the absolute silence in the gym at the moment of his collapse was something that they would never forget.
