Strange but True Stories of Stupidity

Do yourself a favor: Next time you do or say something dumb, keep it to yourself. Shut the door, close your mouth, drop the shades, swear the parrot to secrecy. Do whatever you have to do, but don’t tell a soul about your latest dumb deed. Or you might see yourself written up in another compilation from the team that just put out “More Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: True News of the World’s Least Competent People.”

John J. Kohut and Roland Sweet’s newest (Plume) “yields more than 500 all-new, all-true examples of human ineptitude.” In some cases, “ineptitude” is just a tad too polite, don’t you know.

* “After Robert Ricketts, 19, was hit in the head by a train in Bowling Green, Ohio, he explained to police that he was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his head without being hit.”

* “Authorities in Hillsborough County, Fla., accused Robert Meier, 55, of marrying his 49-year-old girlfriend, Constance Sewell, just hours before her death as she lay in a coma, then running up nearly $20,000 on her credit cards. Det. Ed Hancock said Meier admitted that what he did was wrong but explained ‘he was sitting on the couch when Sewell’s dog told him she would want him to go on living, have a better life and it would be OK to use her credit cards.’ ”

* “In Owensboro, Ky., a Davies County road department driver attempted to drive a 20-ton dump truck across a bridge with a posted weight-limit sign of 3 tons. He had made it halfway across when the bridge collapsed.”

* “Queensland, Australia, issued a workplace health-and-safety guide covering the state’s growing crocodile industry. Besides advising crocodile handlers not to ‘place any part of one’s body in the mouth of a crocodile,’ the guide points out the occupational hazards of . . . capturing adult crocs--especially if the boat is smaller than the reptile.”

* “An unidentified 26-year-old Spanish airport guard was hospitalized in Madrid after he shot himself while playing Russian roulette. Instead of having the customary one bullet in his revolver, the man had loaded four live rounds.”

* “John Anderson, 37, of Berkeley Springs, W. Va., placed an ad in the Morgan Messenger announcing he was seeking his state’s gubernatorial nomination. A week later, Anderson took out a second ad retracting the first, explaining, ‘I had just been discharged from the hospital under heavy medication.’ ”

* “Officials in Vilnius, Lithuania, erected a monument to rock star Frank Zappa, explaining that even though the two had no connection, they were sure he would have visited Vilnius had he not died two years earlier.”

* “Dallas police arrested an 18-year-old Roadway Express loading-dock worker who tried to cash a check made out to his employer by presenting a photo ID as proof that he was indeed ‘Roadway V. Express.’ The Western Union clerk told the man, ‘OK, Mr. Express, I’ll be right back,’ explaining he had to get the money from another room, where he called police.”