The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez
oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the
most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid
cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both
eaten by a killer whale.

A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a
carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions.
After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an
ax leaving her mentally retarded.

In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the
world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu he came down
eight hours short of the 400 day record, his sponsor had gone bust,
his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been
cut off.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking
frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist
towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the
deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back
door, breaking his arm in two places. Till that moment he had been
happily listening to his Walkman.

Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of
sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two
thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded,
trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a
letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it.
Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.