UKC

Two local men were injured when their pickup truck left the road and struck a tree near Cotton Patch on State Highway 38 early Monday. Woodruff County deputy Dovey Snyder reported the accident shortly after midnight Monday. Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc, and Billy Ray Wallis, 38, of Little Rock , were returning to Des Arc after a frog-catching trip. On an overcast Sunday night, Poole 's pickup truck headlights malfunctioned.

The two men concluded that the headlight fuse on the older-model truck had burned out. As a replacement fuse was not available, Wallis noticed that the .22 caliber bullets from his pistol fit perfectly into the fuse box next to the steering-wheel column. Upon inserting the bullet the headlights again began to operate properly, and the two men proceeded on eastbound toward the White River Bridge .

After traveling approximately 20 miles, and just before crossing the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged and struck Poole in the testicles. The vehicle swerved sharply right, exited the pavement, and struck a tree. Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the accident but will require extensive surgery to repair the damage to his testicles, which will never operate as intended.

Wallis sustained a broken clavicle and was treated and released. "Thank God we weren't on that bridge when Thurston shot his balls off, or we might be dead," stated Wallis

"I've been a trooper for 10 years in this part of the world, but this is a first for me. I can't believe that those two would admit how this accident happened," said Snyder.

Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia ( Poole 's wife) asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them from the truck? Though Poole and Wallis did not die as a result of their misadventure as normally required by Darwin Award Official Rules, it can be argued that Poole did in fact effectively remove himself from the gene pool.

Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina 's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. While sitting on a metal toilet in his cell attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

In reply to mypyrex:

Oh that's a shame I thought this was going to be a thread about Aylesbury Prison. Few contenders on there.

E

In reply to mypyrex:

Thank you. That's the funniest thing I've read today.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Even funnier when you picture the wife askin about the frogs and you understand that there really are people out there like that.

In reply to mypyrex:

It's a fun story, but a myth sadly.

I think it even got busted on Mythbusters once...

Sorry to blow it. Still a good read.

In reply to Rampikino:

Indeed. Cars have blade fuses, there's no way you could use a bullet as a replacement.

In reply to stewieatb:
Also, if you heated up a .22 to the point where it went off, you'd find it just blows itself into small fragments as the cartridge case is so thin.
(Don't ask me how I discovered this...)

In reply to stewieatb:

Not all. Older British cars had glass cartridge fuses. Maybe some older American ones did as well...

In reply to Ridge:
Alledgedly <cough> the bullet can still fly a reasonable distance <mumble> especially if you happen to have clamped it in a fuse holder <whistles and stares at the ceiling>. I'd argue that making .22LRs the same size as fuses was almost insightment to acts of youthful stupidity.

In reply to mypyrex:

I like this bit...

So how will they now operate?... his testicles must now operate in a way never intended by God, man, or nature,

it's like the opening of a superhero movie.

In reply to Ridge:


depends if you managed to securely enclose it or not surely?

In reply to Reach>Talent:

I'm not sure why a .22 bullet would get so hot if you used it as a fuse in the headlight circuit. Lead has 10x higher resistance than copper but even so its a thick chunk of metal compared to the normal wiring in a headlight circuit.

It also seems unlikely that, outside of the virtual reality of a joke, a bullet clamped in the fuse box would be aimed directly at the drivers testicles.

In reply to mypyrex:

This tale reminds me of an event that happened to an old chap I know.

While out collecting wood with his car & trailer, across some local fields; he filled and lit his pipe. A few minutes later there was a flash & bang; he came to a stop, gathered his senses; all that was left in his mouth was the pipe stem. At some point he'd had some short .22 bullets loose in the same pocket as his tobacco pouch, the rest is obvious.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:
Making the huge assumption that the myth is true there are several possible explanations. I'd have thought a poor contact between the bullet and the fuse holder could generate a fair bit of localised heat and if you combined that with a short you could get a lot of heat. My headlight circuit draws about 18amps normally and I'm sure there is scope to push a bit more than that through the wiring harness.

In reply to Reach>Talent: I guess too that the only area of the shell to need to get hot would be around the firing cap so on a rimfire round this would be easy to achieve by it being in a fuseholder. It probably wasn't pointing at the unfortunates nuts either, no doubt it'd have taken some deflection when it came through the bulkhead

In reply to dissonance:

Very much so. When fired in a gun the cartridge expands outwards but it then sealsagaibst the breech. The bolt resists any rearward movement, so the only thing that can move is the bullet. That's pretty much an interference fit in the barrel, so all the expanding gas pressurises the barrel and drives the bullet forward.

Clipped in a fuse holder there's no breech, and the thin brass cartridge just bursts. Even if it didn't you have a relatively heavy bit of lead, and a significantly lighter bit of brass. Which bit is going to shoot off?

You'd get a bang, but all the energy would go in all directions, there's a lot less energy in a .22LR than a banger. Even without the dash in the way at worst you'd get a couple of tiny slibters in your tackle.

In reply to mypyrex:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/fuse.asp